Day 359: 2 Chronicles 13-16 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

We're a couple days away from the end of our reading plan, which means you're about to be a part of the 6% of Christians that have actually read the entire Bible cover to cover. So stay tuned until the very end of this episode to hear about something special that we have planned just for you. Bible nerds, let's dive in to today's episode. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, Emily, welcome to day 359. I'm super, super excited. We got 2nd Chronicles chapters, 13, 14, 15, and 16. And I'm super excited to get into the content today. If you haven't done the reading, what's wrong? What's going on? Hey, stop the video, pause the audio, go get the reading done, and then come back. You'll have so much more content. We're so much more context for the content. You'll have so much more context for what we're talking about, what we're discussing, the big ideas. For all of us that have done the reading, pretty solid reading today, a lot of battles, narrative-based, a lot of-- we're getting introduced to a lot of characters and getting a lot of attention on certain characters. Honestly, it was cool to see Ace's development, like character arc. So for all of us that have done the reading, let's dive into our context clues, our nerdy nuggets, and our timeless truths. So the context for the reading for today is two kings. Both of the kings are going to be from the tribe of Judah.

One of the things that you're going to begin to realize now that the northern kingdom has split from the southern kingdom is that unlike kings that's going to toggle back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, you're not going to have the context from what's happening in the north. Everything that we hear about from the north is only going to be in relationship to the south. So back in kings, it would tell you when you're talking about a southern king, which year of the reign of the northern king we're on. And then when you're talking about northern king, which year of the reign of the southern king we're on, and back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. And we literally just have no context anymore for what's happening up in the north. It's not relevant to the story. And so we only engage with the northern kingdom as a character in their southern kingdoms like plot. And so the southern kingdom really is the main character, big main character energy, like no exaggeration. So we're going to get two kings, both are with the letter A. So yesterday, our big picture 30,000 foot idea was Sheba in Shashak. Today it's Abijah in Asa. So what we are going to see in Chronicles is this loop of decline and reform, decline and reform, decline and reform. You've kind of talked about this like a couple of days ago,

maybe even maybe our first day on second Chronicles. And so we've seen decline. Rhea Bohm has been a king that signifies decline, especially as it relates to how incredible David and Solomon were as kings. So Rhea Bohm does not hit the gold standard. No pun intended. He hits the bronze standards. When it comes to the precedent set by his grandfather and his father. However, Abijah in Asa, we're back on reform, okay? So as soon as chapter 13 begins, in the 18th year of the reign of Jeroboam, that's the king reigning in the north, Abijah became king of Judah. And he reign in Jerusalem through years. His mother's name was Makah, Makah, the daughter of Euryale of Givia. It was war between Abijah and Jeroboam. Abijah went into battle with an army of 400,000 able fighting men and Jeroboam drew up a battle line against him with 800,000 able troops. So right there alone, it's like double 400 versus 800,000. And Abijah, what is he gonna do? He's literally going to make it very, very clear that the Northern Kingdom is a foreign army. These are not like your fellow countrymen. Abijah stood on Mount Zemarayim in the hill country of Ephraim, okay?

So they're in the north. The Ephraim is the biggest tribe up in the north, actually. And said, Jeroboam in all Israel, listen to me, okay? All Israel, listen to me. So he's following the same, like this, Isaiah is following the same idea. All Israel does not mean the Israelites that have broken off, okay? It means those that are faithful. Do you know that the Lord the God of Israel has given the kingship of Israel yet Jeroboam son of Nabat, an official of Solomon, son of David rebelled against his master. Okay, some worthless scoundrels gathered around him in a post-reobomb son of Solomon when he was young and indecisive and not strong enough to resist them. So you see exactly where the blame is going, okay, to the north. And now you plan to resist the kingdom of the Lord, which is in the hands of David's descendants, you are indeed a vast army and have with you the golden calves that Jeroboam made to be your gods. And these are idols. Also, kings is gonna give us way more context for these golden calves than we get in chronicles. But again, at chronicles, we're only getting one side of the telephone call. We're only getting the southern kingdom's conversation. We're not getting what is happening

with the northern kingdom, okay? But kings is gonna give tons of context and when we were in kings, I gave tons of context for these golden calves 'cause they're really connected with Exodus and the golden calves that Aaron makes in the book of Exodus, okay? To be your gods, but didn't you drive out the priests of the Lord and the sons of Aaron and Levites? Like you don't even have Levites with you guys, okay? And make priests of your own as the people of other lands too. So like you guys are pagans. You're no different than pagans. Whoever comes to consecrate himself with a young bull in seven rams may become a priest of what are not gods. So it's like you're selling the priesthood and priest of what? Not the one true God. These are not even gods. As for us, the Lord is our God and we have not forsaken him. So again, this is like, you gotta get this. To choose Yahweh means choosing Jerusalem, which means choosing the Davidic line, which means choosing the temple, which means choosing the Levites. These are a package deal. There is no salad bar Judaism. There is no like, oh, it takes some lettuce, but I don't want cucumbers. Or, you know, I want tomatoes, but, ah, I'll leave the banana peppers.

Nope, there's no substitutions. You can't have the temple without the Levites or the Davidic line without Jerusalem or Jerusalem without, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's, it comes as is. And if you have been in a restaurant like that, that's like, no, no, no, no, no, you're going to eat this meal the way we cook it. There's no substitutions. They present burnt offerings, favorite incense of the Lord. They set out the bread on the ceremony clean table and like lamps on the gold stand, lamp stand every evening. On the gold lamp stand every evening, we are observing the requirements of the Lord, our God. But you have forsaken him. Not you have forsaken the requirements. You have forsaken him. You have forsaken him. God is with us. He is our leader. His priest with their trumpets will sound the battle cry against you. So like, you guys have 800,000 people. We have 400,000, but we got the Levites and we have real leaders and we have the Lord and we have priests. So they're going to blow trumpets at you. Watch, they're going to blow trumpets.

And guess what? It actually does work. It says this in verse 14, Judah turned and saw that they were being attacked at both front and rear. Then they cried out to the Lord. The priests blew their trumpets and the men of Judah raised the battle cry. At the sound of their battle cry, God routed Jeroboam in all Israel before Abijah and Judah. The Israelites fled before Judah and God delivered them into their hands. Abijah in his troops inflicted heavy losses on them so that there were 500,000 casualties among Israel's able men. The Israelites were subdued on that occasion. And the people of Judah were victorious because they relied on the Lord, the God of their ancestors. Now, back when we were looking at kings, we kind of talked about being a suzerain versus a vassal. This thing which came up in the book of Deuteronomy as well. And what all the stories in today's reading are actually going to portray or demonstrate is that God is a good suzerain. And Judah is his vassal, not Israel. And because Judah is a vassal, even when they are outnumbered, the Lord Yahweh, because he's a good suzerain is gonna fight for his vassals on his vassals behalf. That's what a vassal gets as a benefit

of being underneath a suzerain, okay? They get military protection, military help. So the same thing is gonna happen with Asa, Asa, another good king, okay? As soon as Asa takes the throne, we're gonna see this in chapter 14 verses two to five. It says this, Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord is God. and cut down the ashra poles. He commanded Judah to seek the Lord, the God of their ancestors, and to obey his laws and commands. He removed the high places and the incense altars from every town in Judah, and the kingdom was at peace under him. He built up the fortified cities. Building up fortified cities is a sign of wealth and safety. Okay, let us build up these towns. Okay, so that's all the context we need really. That Abhajan Asa are both going to score well, and these are kings of reform. There's already been a king of decline, so now we're in the upward swing of reform. Let's give some context clues, okay? Don't skip, don't skip, hey! If you are in the homestretch of reading your Bible, first of all, I'm so proud of you! Second, you probably know this, but you're my kind of people. I thoroughly enjoy hanging out with Bible nerds.

So, I've got exciting news for you, and it's called the 6% Club. For anyone that has finished their entire Bible in a calendar year, we have exclusive content, newsletters, giveaways, live events. Oh yeah, live events, baby, and more all throughout the year. You can find out about all of that if you go to the bibledepartment.com/club to officially join the 6% Club. Why don't we call the 6% Club? 'Cause only 6% of Christians have actually read their entire Bible cover to cover. And every year, Bible nerds like you finish our Bible reading plan, and we get asked, what's next? Well, we've got an answer, and you don't wanna miss out. So head over to the bibledepartment.com/club or click the link in the description to get access. We'll see you in the club. Let's go! The first context is the Northern Kingdom is treated completely like a foreign power, okay? The Southern Kingdom is Israel. Even though Israel is the name of the Northern Kingdom, as far as like who is God's covenant people, it is definitely all Israel, AKA Judah. One of the things that we are going to begin to see is that there are multiple tribes that are going to actually leave the Northern Kingdoms, okay? The Levites are not gonna be the only ones.

Now, the other thing that we're gonna see is that in chapter 14, under Aces command, okay? The people of Judah are gonna get attacked by Akushite. Now, there's tons of debate on who, like, what is Akushite? But the biggest, like, what I would say is maybe the most convincing argument is that Kushites would actually be Africans, like from Sudan, all right? And so, let's kind of talk about the possibility or even just the options, 'cause there are really two options here, okay? In chapter 14, we are gonna get Zara the Kushite. Now, Kush is identified with two people groups, the most common one being an association with Egypt, okay? Kush, or sometimes Nubia, was what is now the Sudan and was greatly influenced by Egyptian culture. Get this. There are more pyramids in the Sudan than in Egypt, okay? So, this is not just, like, some conspiracy theory. Like, this is 100% real. I think we've talked about this on the podcast before that at various times, the region of Sudan or Nubia was a vassal state of Egypt and even once ruled over Egypt, the so-called Black pharaohs, one of which was called Tirhakah, okay? Mentioned in Isaiah chapter 30 to 31. What is going on here is that given the Egyptian unification and expansion under Shai-Shak,

who was likely Kushite, Nubian, Sudanese, or maybe even Ethiopian himself, was once again a vassal of Egypt. Zara then would have been a Kushite general serving pharaoh. This is not unusual, by the way. Shai-Shak himself was a Libyan general working for Egypt before he became pharaoh. The pharaoh at the time would have been or sorghon, the first. So, this is another Egyptian campaign in the ancient Near Eastern region, like in the Judean-Israelite region, similar to Shai-Shak raiding Reabom, okay? The lesser held view is the association with Kush and the Midianites, okay? This is definitely, you can see this, and if you remember the book of Numbers, Moses marrying a Kushite. Since the Midianites were a nomadic people in what is now Saudi Arabia/Jordan, this could alternatively be an Arab tribal coalition Also, if you remember the story of Moses' Kushite wife, Miriam, Moses' sister has some pretty racist things to say about this sister. And so God turns Miriam's hand leopress white as kind of a contrappasso, kind of a fitting consequence for the crime. So that's a nerdy nugget straight out of chapter 14. So Ace is going to score well, Abijah is going to score well, and this is going to get us into our nerdy nuggets for the day. Chapter 15, Max again to read verse 9. It says this, "Then he assembled all Judah and Benjamin, and people from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon, who had settled among them, for large numbers had come over to him from Israel, when they saw that the Lord, his God, was with him." I was actually mentioning that earlier, that it wasn't as Levites that escaped Israel, the northern came of Israel, and come south to Judah. It's other groups as well, Manasseh, Simeon, and Ephraim. Also, for context, Ephraim is the largest,

strongest tribe in the north. So the fact that Ephraimites are like, we got to get out of here. Like, this is nuts. We want to be loyal to David. We want to be loyal to the temple. We want to be loyal to Jerusalem, aka loyal to Yahweh. Okay? Like, we've got to get out of here. Like, we've got to get to the south, all right? And I feel him, you know, I'm from Boston, Massachusetts, and whoo, I saw the light too. I got down to the south, okay? Like, that's a joke anyway. Anyway, all right. What we're going to see, which leads us right into our Thomas truth, is that Aesah is going to lead religious reforms, okay? Aesah is a great king. Aesah is also going to get delivered from in battle, okay? The same way that his father, Abijah, gets delivered from the northern kingdom. Aesah is going to be in the middle of a massive battle against Zara the Kushite. God is going to come through. Why? Because Yahweh is a suzer, and Judah is his vassal. And if you're a suzer, you are covenantally obligated to rescue your vassal if they get into military trouble. And so the same, like, miraculous level turnaround, okay? It says this. In verse 12 of chapter 14, the Lord struck down the Kushites before Asa in Judah. The Kushites fled, and Asa in his army pursued them as far as Gerar, okay? This is just, it's not literally at no, these two stories, they marry each other. At no point is it like we had the strength of the numbers or the chariots or the horses or anything. It's just God literally just the Lord. The Lord does it. In the first story, Judah blew some trumpets, and then God was like, like he just does it. And then here, the Lord, the Lord just defeats them, okay? Now, moving into chapter 15, Asa goes on a Reformation rampage, okay? It's amazing. And you can kind of hear Ezra's tone or the lessons that Ezra's teaching his audience by what he's saying. Things like they assembled as Jerusalem. That's verse 10, okay? Remember, when Ezra's going to read a lot of everybody during the Feast of Tabernacles and the Book of Nehemiah, everyone's assembled key word. Next, they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord. That's verse 12, then verse 14 of chapter 15. They took an oath, okay? Olds, covenants, assemblies. Like, this is very, very, very priestly language because they have sworn it wholeheartedly. That's verse 15, okay? And then we get to verse, not verse 16, chapter 16. And we're going to see Asa's downfall, which was a curveball. Like, what the heck, dude? Asa had been successful. Like, defeating his enemies, the good old fashioned way. Call on God, God does it. But then, it says this in chapter 16, in the 3060 year of Asa's reign, Bashar, king of Israel. Now, kings is going to tell us all about Bashar, how the world he took control. You see what is happening

here? There's a new king in the north and we don't even know about it. Like, at no point is the text going to give us context. Who Bashar is, what's going on? It's literally an afterthought. It does not matter. These, these kings are not part of the story. They have nothing to do with the temple. Therefore, they have written themselves right out of the story. Asa then took the silver and gold out of the treasuries of the Lord's temple and of his own palace and sent it to bin Hadad, king of Aram. So, so now, instead of trusting in Bad sign, dude. At that time, this is verse 7 of chapter 16. At that time, Hanani, the seer came to ace a king of Judah and said to him, "Because you relied on the king of Aram, and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand, were not the Kushites and Libyans, a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen, yet when you relied on the Lord, he delivered them from your hand." Verse 9, "For your eyes, for the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. You have done a foolish thing, and from now on will be at war." Okay, now, this is the moment for Ace to repent. He's a king that's brought all this reform. He's a good king. You think he's got a repent? No. Ace was angry with the seer because of this. He was so enraged that he put him in prison. At that time, Ace are brutally oppressed some of the people. This is sad, man. So he goes sentos down. He doubles down on just being wicked. And now, I mean, that's just unfortunate. He was a good, good guy, which leads us right into our timeless truth. I've recently started running. So I ran our 10k on Thanksgiving. And then this past week, I was running. And man, I've learned fast that first mile, don't feel like that last mile. And I hit a wall, kind of started walking. One of the guys on our launch team, he said something. His name is Jeremy Fleming. So shout out to Jeremy Fleming. He said, we are at the last mile of the day. He said, this is where it starts PM. This is where it starts. I just started hearing it. Anyone can start. Not everybody can finish. Finishing well takes grace. And asa, unfortunately, started great, but finished poorly. And I don't want to be someone who starts my walk with God. Well, starts my walk with God with zeal, starts the year off with zeal, but don't finish it well, starts a reading plan off with zeal, but doesn't finish it well. Asa started strong, but didn't finish well, didn't see it to the end. And we're out there, you know, on the race. And, well, just on the run, sorry. And it's funny how once I could see the finish line, I had, I could muster up the energy to like will myself to the finish line.

And it's, it's because it was in sight. And I think part of the reason that part of the way, rather, we can finish well is by having a vision of the end. How do you want to finish? What do you want people to say about you when you're 80, 90, 100, 110, 120? What is finishing well look like? What is finishing a season well look like? What is finishing an assignment well look like? What does finishing well look like? Asa started strong, but didn't finish well. And that's not just a timeless truth, or that's not just a time bound truth for Asa or for the next king who were going to study tomorrow named Jehoshaphat or Abijah. That's true for you, and it's true for me. I think it's a timeless truth. It's easy to start strong. It's not easy to finish strong, but I pray that you would be someone who's a finisher, that you would finish strong, that you would finish stronger than you started. That's the prayer that I have for myself, that I would finish stronger than I started. Tomorrow we're in day 360. We're going to be looking at 2nd Chronicles chapters, 17, 18, 19, and 20. I'm really, really excited. I'll be right here same time, same place. Can't wait to hang out with you tomorrow. I'm proud of you. I love you till next time. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. Hey, we're almost there. I bet you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We're towards the end of the year, and I'm so proud of you. If this episode and this year of reading through the Bible was helpful, how about you invite a friend to join you on the journey next year? To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com, and to learn more about the 6% club, make sure you go to thebibledepartment.com/club. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.