Will Vaus

It really is a challenge keeping the names of all these kings of Judah and Israel straight, especially when I go back and try to compare the lists in Chronicles with those in Kings. It is startling to me on this reading how different Kings and Chronicles really are. I had forgotten, if I ever knew it before, that Kings focuses so much more on the kings and prophets (Elijah and Elisha) of Israel, whereas Chronicles focuses on Judah. Elijah and Elisha get very little mention in Chronicles. 2 Chronicles 21 zooms in on the life of King Jehoram of Judah, son of Jehoshaphat. He gets a whole chapter here, whereas in Kings he gets only nine verses. (See 2 Kings 8:16-24.) When the Chronicler wants to point out how bad a certain king was, he says: “He walked in the way of the kings of Israel…” (2 Chronicles 21:6) rather than simply saying, as Kings does, “he did evil in the sight of the Lord”. Of course, the reason the Chronicler does this is because he wants to emphasize

In these four chapters, we cover quite a number of kings. I am finding, as I try to track the years that these kings reigned, that Lawrence Boadt’s years do not match the Scripture very well. The bottom line is that different scholars have different estimates for the exact years that the kings of Israel and Judah reigned. The dates we are most sure of are the dates when both kingdoms came to an end. In the chart below I am following dates taken from this web site: http://ldolphin.org/kings.html …. Israel                                        Judah Jehoahaz (814-798, evil)         Amaziah (796-767, good) Jehoash (798-782, evil)           Uzziah/Azariah (767-740, good) Jeroboam II (782-753, evil)     Jotham (740-732, good) Zechariah (753-752, evil)        Ahaz (732-716, bad) Shallum (752, evil) Menahem (752-742, evil) Many of the accounts in this section do not give us many details about these kings. However, we are given a bit of narrative with some

Though these chapters have many characters and many incidents take place, they largely focus on the character of Elisha and on one principle lesson. The lesson is that we can look at life either in the natural or the supernatural dimension. We can walk either by physical sight or by faith. Elisha is, of course, a man of faith. He is, as we know, a prophet. More accurately, he is in the sense that Samuel was, a seer. Elisha sees the spiritual dimension of life in every situation. Sometimes it is troubling to see so much, as in the case of Elisha and Hazael (2 Kings 8). Other times it is comforting to see the supernatural dimension, as in the case where the King of Aram sent horses and chariots to seize Elisha. On this occasion, the servant of Elisha was frightened by the army that had come to carry off his master. However, Elisha said, “Do not be afraid, for there are more with us than there are with them.” (2 Kings 6:16) Then Elisha prayed for the Lord to open th

2 Kings picks up where 1 Kings left off, which is no surprise since it is really all one great book. 2 Kings begins with the story of Ahaziah who was evil like his father Ahab. Ahaziah had a serious fall and wondered whether he would recover. Rather than inquire of the Lord, he chose to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron. Because of this, an angel speaks to Elijah and tells him to instruct Ahaziah that he will not recover.  We may not be as evil as Ahaziah, but sometimes we too seek for answers in the wrong places, rather than going to the Lord. At the end of chapter one we read that Ahaziah’s brother, Jehoram, succeeded him as King of Israel because Ahaziah had no son. In 2 Kings 2 we learn about the passing of the mantle of prophecy from Elijah to Elisha. Elisha asks to have a double share of Elijah’s spirit. Elijah tells him that he will be granted his request if he sees Elijah being taken from him. Elijah, subsequently, has perhaps the most dramatic depa