Kings II: Chapters 1 to 5

Last time Kings I ended.  Now for the next book:

CHAPTER 1

The Bible has a weird break for kings – it comes in the middle of talking about the Judean King Ahaziah. 

We begin with him injuring himself, and wanted to pray to the god Baalzebub to see if he’ll get better. Wait?  Praying to another God?  Yeah, this isn’t going to tell well.  Eljiah finds out and gets involved. 

Ahaziah sends 50 men to bring Elijah to him.  When the come Elijah says that if he’s really a man of God, may fire rain down from heaven and consume all 50 men.  So that’s what happens in the next sentence.  Ahaziah sends another 50 men and it’s rinse, lather and repeat – 50 more barbecued people. 

Ahaziah, clearly a slower learner, sends a third grouping of 50.  However, while he might be stupid, the head of the 50 is.  This captain approaches Elijah all obsequiously, begging not to be killed.  Elijah is cool with this and agrees to go.  When he arrives, he just tells the king that he’s doomed for going against God.  Naturally, the king then dies, and a new king, Joram, replaces him.

Elijah comes off like a jerk here.  He has 100 men killed.  In his defense, he’s not sure why the men are coming for him, and he knows the king isn’t going with God.  It’s also in character, as he was an arrogant (if hilarious) man in the big altar sacrifice showdown.

CHAPTER 2

So long, Elijah.  He’s a major prophet, but he really doesn’t appear much in the Bible. He’s the main figure of just five Biblical chapters (17-19 in Kings I, 1-2 in Kings II) and makes a brief cameo in Chapter 21 of Kings I, but that’s it.

Somehow, someway – the Bible doesn’t say – Elijah knows he’ll be taken up to heaven.  Everyone around him knows this, too.  I guess God told him and he told everyone else.  Eljiah and Elisha go to Jericho, with Elijah causing the Jordan River’s waters to part on the way.  Neat – he does the Joshua at the same place Joshua himself did.  Before Elijah goes up, he asks Elisha if he wants anything.  The kid says he wants a double portion of Elijah’s spirit.  Elijah says that if you see me go up to heaven, that means you’ve got it.

Well, the famous fiery chariot with the fiery horses comes down, and take Eljiah up to heaven.  He thus enters the heavens without having to die, part of his big claim to fame. 

The chapter goes on, but let’s pause here.  What am I to make of Eljiah?  His stories remind me more of the things from Judges than what we read about in Samuels.  There are some really heavy duty miracle workings going on here, and that makes it a throwback.  Also, while a memorable Biblical character, we don’t learn much about him beyond what we need to for the plot.  It’s not that we don’t have as good a read on him as a person as we do on David or Samuel or Saul.  It’s that we don’t even have as good a read on him as we have on Gideon of Samson. 

Elijah shows up without any introduction.  The only biographical feature we know of him is that he’s “Elijah the Tishbite” – and we have no idea what that means.  Hell, even with the Judges we knew what tribe they were supposed to be from.  Elijah is the most enigmatic and mysterious of the Biblical leaders.

And his stories don’t really fit in too well with the other stories around here.  For instance, in the Elijah stories we’re told that Ahab and Jezebel have killed all the prophets of the Lord, all except Elijah.  But everyone else there are prophets’a’plenty.  They even have their own guild.  In fact, the prophets even talk to Ahab, the man the Elijah stories say is trying to kill them all.

Clearly the Kings books are being assembled from different sources.  That isn’t too surprising.  (In the Samuels there is clear evidence of two different versions of the story of David and Saul being combined).  But what makes this different is that it’s the story of a prophet instead of stories of kings. Elijah is from the northern kingdom, so I assume the stories came from there.  The Bible was written in the southern kingdom long after the northern kingdom collapsed, which helps account for the blurriness of what’s going on.

Really, there is narrative blurriness in general.  One very real thing happening is that record keeping for posterity apparently took a series hit after the division of the kingdom.  Taking things back to Elijah, I can only assume there was such a prophet, but that over time stories about him became grander and grander.  Or stories of different prophets were combined into one.  It made it easier to turn him into myth given the worsening record keeping of the era combined with the fact that he came from the fallen northern kingdom.  So he becomes the first mythic figure in the Bible since Samson.  (As important as David was, he really wasn’t anything mythic, as nothing he did was actively miraculous).  And Elijah is the last mythic figure of the Old Testament.  From then on, events are coming too close to the days when the Bible was written. 

Wait – check that.  David and Jonus are mythic, too.  Damnit.

Anyhow, the chapter doesn’t end with Elijah’s departure.  Instead, we’re treated to one of the most ghastly and memorably macabre moments in the entire Bible.  Elisha crosses the river (re-Joshua-ing it, just as Eliza had done.  Nice way to symbolize the passing of the prophetic torch). 

He goes to the town of Bethel when it happens.  Some kids see the apparently bald Elisha pass and the mock him.  “God away, baldy!  Go away!”  Livid, he turns to them and curses them in the name of the Lord.  So far, this is like something that happens everyday to someone somewhere in the world.  But Elisha is a prophet, and he just cursed these kids in the name of the Lord.  Upshot: “two she-bears came out of the wood and tore forty-two of the children to pieces.”  GAAAHHHHH!!!  It’s a junior high Holocaust! 

WHAT?  THE? HELL?

I’ve read two comments on this incident that stick with me.  David Plotz makes a good point in “The Good Book” on this incident.  This is what happens when the power of being a prophet is first given to Elisha.  He’s got to learn what he’s doing.  He’s probably yelled at kids before and it means nothing – but this is his first time with the power.  So be careful with what you got.

In “The Cartoon History of the Universe” Larry Gonick makes a hilarious comment about it.  After saying what happened, Gonick has Elisha tell the scribe standing next to him, When you write my story down, make sure you leave out all the times kids mocked me and bears didn’t come.  Heh. 

I think Plotz has it right.  I’ll just at that saying 42 died is an extra nice detail.  Not some big round number – 42.  Sounds more precise.  Also, how slow moving were these children?  I get that bears move fast, but there are only two bears and once they come after the kids you’d think they run in all directions away from each other as fast as possible.

 

He leave the bear massacre behind and goes to Mount Carmel – sight of Elijah’s greatest triumph.

CHAPTER 3

Time for some war stories.  Earlier I noted that the narrative here often seems hazier than it was in the Kings books.  That’s very true of some of these war chapters where I can’t quite tell what exactly is going on – and I’m not really sure why much of it matters.  Normally the Bible writer is clear in what’s going on, but he sure has problems around here.  I guess the sources he’s compiling from are worse.

In one of these chapters a footnote says that the oral tradition would just say King of Israel without giving a name, so the Bible was often guessing on who the king is.  It’s a pain in the ass.

At any rate, Joram rules Israel and Moab rebels against him.  Joram gets the kings of Judea and Edom to fight with him.  They run out of water on the march and – wait.  Hold on.  That’s bad.  Whoever is charge of logistics on this march is a moron.  The Bible says they took a roundabout route, but that’s no excuse.  It ain’t like they’re going to China.  This is inept on someone’s part.

Needing help, they call on Elisha, who says he’ll only come because he respects the king of Judea, not that jerk running Israel.  Well, they Judea-Israel-Edom forces win the battle and it looks like they can’t be stopped.  But Moab’s leader has a trick up his sleeve.  He takes his first-born son and offers him as a burnt offering to his god.  And that turns the tide.

Whoah!  OK, several disturbing things here.  First, it’s human sacrifice – of a man’s own son, at that.  Second, the human sacrifice seems to work!  That’s something.  This indicates that there are in fact other gods, and at least one responds to this sort of thing.  After all, once the burnt offering is done the Bible says, “The wrath against Israel was so great that they gave up the siege.”  Whose wrath?  Not God’s wrath.  He doesn’t go for human sacrifice.  The wrath of the defenders shouldn’t make any difference – they can’t seem to win.  Any other God?  Just disturbing all around.  That part about wrath just plain isn’t explained.

CHAPTER 4

Back to Elisha, as he commits a bunch of miracles.  Earlier I said that Elijah is the last mythic character.  Well, his successor is another.  It’s just that hardly anyone remembers much of what Elisha did – because it’s mostly the same as what Elijah did. 

The chapter starts off with the bottomless jug of oil trick that Elijah did in Chapter 17 of Kings I.  Then Elisha brings a dead boy back to life – just as Elijah did in that same Chapter 17.  In between, Elisha does one thing unique.  He lets an elderly lady become pregnant.  (It’s her eventual son he brings back to life).

You have to wonder here.  We got two prophets with almost the same identical names, doing almost the same identical miracles – are these really stories about two different people or just stories of one guy that have been separated?  My best hunch is that there were all these stories of the Great Prophet up north, and all the things he did.  But the stories stretch over the reigns of maybe too many kings. And as the stories were told orally, the prophet’s name was slightly changed in some retellings but not another.  Thus you end up with two very similar traditions by the time the writer put it in the Bible. 

Well, Elisha does a few more things.  He turns poison stew into edible stew.  He also has a bottomless offering of barley.  I should also note, when he brings the child back from the dead, the mother asks him for help on Mount Carmel.  That place keeps coming up in the Elijah/Elisha stories.

CHAPTER 5

Elisha performs another miracle – he heels a man of leprosy.  The man he heels isn’t from Judea or Israel.  It’s the army king from Aram.  We’re getting blurry as to who is in the club and who isn’t.  Just next chapter Aram will attack Israel. 

The story has some humor.  The military man is Naaman and when he goes to Elisha for help with his leprosy, Elisha doesn’t see him, just has one of his hangers-on tell Naaman to bath in the Jordan River seven times and he’ll be cured. Naaman is infuriated.  The guy didn’t see me and he gave me generic advice?  Bah!

We can relate, right?  When you go to the doctor, you often feel robbed if you’re not given some sort of pill or answer.  And can you imagine if he doesn’t even bother see you, but just reads the symptoms and has his office staff give you his feedback?  In college I saw – or “saw” a doctor for bronchitis and he just wrote out a prescription for penicillin and had the nurse give it to me.  I never saw him. 

At any rate, it works.  (Just as my penicillin did, actually).  Naaman flatly says he now knows that God is the only god.  OK, after a hint of polytheism in Chapter 3, we’re back to monotheism. 

But there is a weird coda.  Gehazi, an assistant to Elisha, isn’t happy that Naaman wasn’t charged and takes off on his own to tell Naaman – no, sorry, you owe us some silver after all.  Then Gehazi pockets the silver. 

This is dumb. Of course Elisha immediately knows about it.  Of course he isn’t happy.  And of course Gehazi is punished.  He is immediately stricken with leprosy.  That’s some swift poetic justice.

Click here for Kings II: Chapters 6 to 11.

Kings II: Main Page

Chapters 1 to 5
Chapters 6 to 11
Chapters 12 to 17
Chapters 18 to 25

Kings I: Chapters 17 to 22

The last bunch looked at the divided kingdom years - now for the days of Elijah

CHAPTER 17

“Elijah” is the first word in this chapter.  It’s an abrupt way to start, as we haven’t been introduced to him yet.  But here he suddenly is – Elijah the Tishbite (no one knows what Tishbite is/was).  And Elijah (whose named means “Behold, Yahweh is my God”) begins to talk smack to King Ahab of Israel.  That’s his grand Biblical entrance.

Elijah declares a drought, saying there will be no rain unless it’s by the word of Elijah (given to him by the power of God).  This is to punish Ahab for his ways, of course.

With the drought on, ravens feed Elijah as he lives in the wilderness.  This continues until the area is out of water.  After that, the Lord directs him to a town, where Elijah comes across a widow.  She is making food for herself and her son.  She must be badly off, because she tells Elijah that when she’s done with it, they’ll die.  Yikes. 

Elijah comes off like a dick here, frankly.  He tells her to make him some grub.  And even after he sob story, he still tells her to get him some grub.  OK, so I assume he knows what’ll happen next, but it’s still a cold start.  She makes food for him and – BOOM – it’s a bottomless jar of flour and bottomless jug of oil. I guess the moral is that if you’re kind to those passing through, you’ll get your reward.  (And telling her in advance would ruin the point of the reward).

But it’s not all well and good.  Her son gets sick and dies.  But it’s cool – Elijah brings the son back to life.  That’s a pretty impressive miracle.  Even Moses never did that.  Also, please note that this makes two straight miracles that Christ will later replicate – extra food and resurrection.  Elijah makes quite a debut for himself.

CHAPTER 18

And now for one of the great kick ass chapters in the entire Bible – of the entire fucking Bible.

Actually, it gets off to a bit of an awkward start.  Apparently, Ahab and wife Jezebel have been killing all the prophets of the Lord, and their servant Obadiah tried to hide some in caves, but was found out.  At any rate, Elijah, now the last prophet left, appears before Obadiah and says he wants to see Ahab.  Obadiah thinks he’ll be killed for this – he’s already on thin ice for the cave thing.  But eventually Elijah and Ahab do meet.  Like I said, this part is all more confusingly written than it needs to be.

But then the chapter starts kicking it into gear.  Elijah is calling out Ahab and all his prophets of Baal.  Let’s have a holy throw down – my God (THE God) versus your puny Baal or whatever you call him.  Thunderdome is still nearly 3,000 years in the future, so Elijah proposes this showdown for deities (and their prophets).  Your guys versus me – bring two bulls, put them up on a mountain with two altars, like any sacrifice.  But this sacrifice showdown has a wrinkle.  Any old jerk with a match can start a fire.  But what happens if we let the gods set them.  You take all your hundreds of prophets of Baal and appeal to this Baal character to send a thunderbolt or lighting or Godzilla or whatever from the sky and spontaneously light a fire for your sacrifice.  Then I’ll ask my god – THE God – to do the same. 

It’s Elijah versus 450 prophets of Baal (and 400 prophets of Asherah, whoever that is). It’s up on Mount Carmel, apparently a big ass height. No pay-per-view – let all Israel come out to see what happens.  Even King Ahab will be there.  It’s the original Super Bowl. 

Note – not only is this a nice little challenge, but it also clearly indicates that only one of these gods is real.  Throughout the Bible there have been indications that the ancient Hebrew weren’t initially monotheists so much as they believed that their God was the most powerful God and had signed a special agreement with them.  In terms of God’s attitude, he was generally a pretty parochial god, just like most gods of the era were.  He only cared about his people (which frankly doesn’t make much sense if he’s the only God and God of all).  Here in Kings I, we’re getting a newer sense of God emerging, one more in keeping with modern thoughts.  First Solomon opened the door to everyone for God in his Temple dedication speech, and now Elijah is implying God is the only deity.

But enough side notes, we’ve got a holy smack down to get to.  Everyone shows up – Elijah, the 450 prophets of Baal, the pair of unlucky oxen, King Ahab, the people of Israel, Bob Costas, Jim Nantz – everyone.  The prophets of Baal go first.

And it doesn’t go well for them.  The ask Baal to start the fire.  Nothing.  They pray.  They implore.  They plead.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.  They start cutting themselves with knives and puncturing themselves with spears to get their attention.  Big lotta nothing. This ain’t going well at all.

And Elijah decides to take this occasion to invent trash talking.  He becomes the Holy Heckler, mocking them and their puny false god Baal. Hey, maybe your God is on vacation!  Maybe he’s sleeping!  Maybe he’s on the toilet!  (Seriously – the Bible says “Call louder, for he is a go; he may be busy doing his business” – and in the ancient Hebrew the way it’s written indicates that Baal is on the toilet).  Oh my, Elijah is having a blast.

This goes on for hours and is an abject failure for Team Baal.  Then it’s Elijah’s turn.  What does he do?  What does a prophet of God do when he’s got to have the Lord spontaneously ignite a sacrificial offering?  I’ll tell you what he does – he pours water all over the altar and offerings.  He has four jars of water filled up three times (12 jug-fuls in all – one for each of the tribes) and completely drenches the sacrificial area.  Yeah, that’s right.  He’s so damn confident he can pull this off that he soaks it, which should make sacrifice impossible.  Because he’s so incredibly a prophet of the Lord like that.  This is like Satchel Paige ordering his fielders to sit down after he walked the bases loaded just so he can strike out the side with a maximum factor of awesome.

So Elijah asks God to light his fire, and – BOOM!  Yeah, that didn’t take long.  Suddenly it’s all incinerated.  “Look at that fire!” Bob Costas probably shouted – “I haven’t seen anything like it since the days of Mickey Mantle!”  The people all bow down. Surely the Lord is the only Lord for them.  (Yeah, but this won’t take at all, now will it)?  Oh, and then Elijah commands the drought to end, and a downpour happens. Remember – he has the power of God’s word to end the drought.

It’s a really fun smack down, but it gets a little ugly.  Elijah has all the 450 Baal prophets killed.  The way the Bible is written it sounds as if Elijah himself might be doing the killing, but then again maybe not.

CHAPTER 19

As awesome as Chapter 18 was, Chapter 19 is arguably just as fascinating, though in a completely different way.  This doesn’t have a great showdown like Chapter 18, but it’s theologically fascinating and in its own quiet way maybe even more important.

Some background.  In the fall of 1993 I was a first semester freshman taking western civilization at Knox College.  Prof. Penny Gold wants us to attend a guest lecturer one night – a Biblical scholar named Richard Elliot Friedman.  He’d previously written a book called “Who Wrote the Bible” on the Old Testament, but tonight he was going to talk about his new research.  (He joked he was glad to be able to discuss something different.  He’d been asked so many times who wrote the Bible that his stock answer was now “James Michner.”  And then he told everyone, “And you wouldn’t believe how many people think they are original when they say, `No, then it would’ve been longer.’” 

Anyhow, his talk was about a book he was finishing up about what he saw as the main theme of the Old Testament: the disappearance of God.  Early on, God is everywhere.  But he gradually makes his appearances less and less frequent.  The last time he appears in the Jewish Bible (which isn’t organized the same as the Christian) is the whirlwind in Joab.  The last miracle is a sundial going back for a minute in Isaiah.  Oh, and the last great miracle of the Bible is Elijah versus the priests of Baal – the part from Chapter 18.

Then Friedman pointed out Chapter 19, what happens immediately after the big showdown.  Elijah flees for his life, fearing retribution from Jezebel and Ahab.  He goes to Mt. Horeb, which is what the Book of Deuteronomy called Mt. Sinai.  He’s in the holiest place on the landscape – the place where Moses got the 10 commandments.  The place where the Hebrew are for nearly half of the Torah. (Elijah walked for 40 days to get there – of course it’s the number 40).  He goes to this most holy of places, and God asks Elijah, What are you doing here.

Then things get even more interesting.  First a strong wind happens.  This is a sign of God’s power, right? No, the Bible then clearly states the Lord isn’t in the wind.  Then an earthquake happens.  Why surely this must be a sign from the Lord, right? No, because then the Bible says “the Lord was not in the earthquake.”  Next came a fire.  Why, the Lord has been doing the fire thing for a long time now – the burning bush with Moses, the pillar of fire for the fleeing Hebrew, and just last chapter in the big showdown.  Now this has to be the Lord in the fire ….right?  Wrong.  He’s not there either.

Then comes an interesting phrase.  We’re told that after all these things, there is just “a light silent sound.”  And that voice that is the light silent sound says, “Why are you here, Elijah?” 

This is fascinating, though I can’t fully wrap my brain around it.  My thinking of it has been forever influenced by Friedman.  This is a key moment in the disappearance of God (at least in the Old Testament). 

There are other ways of viewing it – namely that God is upset at Elijah for fleeing there instead of staying back in Israel.  His job as prophet is to be there and do God’s work, so he should trust in God.  And his departure is a bit odd.  He was the ultimately cocky motherfucker back there, but then he immediately gets scared.  What did he think was going to happen from his showdown? 

Well, God tells Elijah to anoint some people – Jehu as Israel’s king, Hazael as king of Aram (who are the Aram and why does God care who is their king?  That’s never explained).  Oh, and find Elisha and name him your successor, Elijah.  The footnotes tell me that Elijah only does one of the three (getting Elisha) and that Elisha will do a second one and have a follower to a third). 

Well Eliza does find Elisha and it’s an oddly charming scene.  Elisha destroys his oxen and plowing equipment.  He won’t need that any more in his new job!  Oh, and he asks if he can say good-bye to his parents. 

One last thing. Early on, when Elijah is on the run to Mt. Horeb, he pauses in the desert and prays for God to take his life.  Then “a messenger” wakes him and shows him some cake and a jug of water to keep Elijah going.  The messenger is apparently an angel, though he’s never called that.

CHAPTER 20

OK, so much for Elijah for the time being.  Now back to Ahab.  This is a long and not terribly interesting chapter – but with a weird coda at the end. 

The upshot is that Ahab wins a few battles over the king of Aram.  What’s weird is that there is a prophet (unnamed) of the Lord helping Ahab, saying that God will deliver Aram to his hands to show the power of the Lord.  Why would God do that for Ahab?  We’ve been told previously that Ahab is the worst king of all and worships Baal. Wouldn’t a victory for him be a sign for Baal?  For that matter, what is Ahab doing hanging out with prophets? Just a few chapters ago we were told he’d had them all killed except for Elijah. This doesn’t make much sense.

Ahab wins one battle, but the Aram guys aren’t impressed.  They figure that Ahab’s god is a mountain god, so fight on the plains instead.  This angers God.  And you don’t want to anger God.  So God has Ahab not only win the second battle, but kill 100,000 Aram guys in it.  Ouch.

However, Ahab lets the Aram king survive.  He has him trapped in a city with a sliver of his previous force, and God wants the king dead.  The unnamed prophet had made that clear.  But Ahab lets the man live and signs a pact with him.  God is infuriated and has a prophet tell Ahab, “Because you have set free the man I put under the ban, your life shall pay for his life.”  OK, we saw something similar with Saul, but this is even worse – the punishment will be death.  And I realize why I don’t like this story of the Samuel-Saul confrontation.  In both cases, God will punish someone for showing mercy.  That’s fucked up. 

But the weird part is how God gets the message to Ahab.  A prophet tells his companion to strike him with a sword.  (The goal is to look wounded, tell the king you got the wound in a battle, and then once you have Ahab’s attention, give him the bad news).  But the companion doesn’t quite like feel like stabbing a guy with a sword for no apparent reason, and so refuses.  Once he refuses, the prophet decrees that for disobeying the word of the Lord, a lion will come up and attack you.  Well, in the next sentence, that’s exactly what happens.  The fuck?  Then the prophet tells a second man to stab man, and this guy does it.  

Yeah, that’s weird.  I guess the moral is ALWAYS obey the Lord, no matter how weird or pointless the command might sound.  Also, the prophet is called “one of the guild prophets.”  Wait – the prophets have a guild?  That just sounds so strange.

I told you the chapter has a weird ending.

CHAPTER 21

Ahab and Jezebel act like dicks. Ahab wants the vineyard of his next door neighbor, and to be fair he makes a nice offer.  Give it to me and I’ll give you money or better land.  But the guy isn’t interesting.  This offer violates Hebrew communal landholding laws of the Torah.  So Ahab doesn’t get it. 

He’s upset and stewing about it, and wife Jezebel notices it.  When she learns of the problem she tells him she has a plan to get it.  (Well, first she mocks him for acting so un-kingly, but then she has a plan).  She has Vineyard Guy sit at a feast between two scoundrels, with the scoundrels paid to say that Captain Vineyard had denounced the king and Lord.  The punishment for that is stoning. This all goes off without a hitch, and Ahab gets his vineyard.   Ahab himself had nothing to do with the killing, but when he learns about it, he has no problem with it or the result. 

Elijah shows up to denounce Ahab now, saying that the dogs will lick up your blood when you die.  Bummer.  Ahab freaks out and repents.  God backs off a bit, saying that he’ll let Ahab’s son rule before wiping out his line. For the life of me I can’t see why God is letting Ahab get away with so much.

CHAPTER 22

Sure enough, Ahab dies.  But he isn’t overthrown, but dies from a wound in battle.  His body is washed in a pool, where we’re told dogs lick up his blood and prostitutes bath in it.  Yikes! 

Before the battle Ahab teams up with the King of Judea.  They ask all kinds of prophets for advice, and they all tell Ahab what he wants to hear.  King Jehosaphat of Judea asks if that’s all the prophets.  Well, there’s this other guy, but he always gives me bad news.  Heh – Ahab intentionally surrounds himself with yes-men. Jeshoaphat insists on seeing Gloomy Gus anyway (actual name: Micaiah), and sure enough it’s all doom and gloom.  Ahab turns to Jehoshaphat and says, do you see why I don’t like calling on this guy?  That gave me a chuckle – it’s like a quip from a movie.

After Ahab dies, we hear that Jehoshaphat did a nice job running Judea, though he kept the altars in high places.  He also dies and his son Jehoram becomes king. Meanwhile, Ahab’s son Ahaziah rules Israel, and is horrible.

Kings I ends in the middle of a section talking about Ahaziah.  It’s an odd place for a break between books.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Kings I is frequently fascinating, especially the bits on Solomon and Elijah.  Solomon is an overrated king but his temple speech is a thing of beauty.  Between the inclusive nature of his speech and the refutation of Baal as any sort of God in Elijah’s story, we get the emergence of a more modern God. 

He’s the only God and everyone has a chance to pray to him.

Click here to begin Kings II.

Psalms 99 to 111

Here is the last psalm dump.  Now for this one:

PSALM 99

This is a short and frankly forgettable psalm.  It’s yet another one that is just praising God.  He’s praised for being powerful, for being righteous, and for helping the Hebrew in the past.  There, that’s the psalm.

PSALM 100

This is one of the shortest psalms in the Bible – just five verses.  It’s just a processional hymn – its title is, in fact, “Processional Hymn” – and it’s just a psalm praising God.  Yawn.

PSALM 101

This one also praises God, but I found it a bit confusing.  The speaker is a man of power who claims to have quite a few notable nice characteristics.  He hates false pretense, is someone of integrity, etc.  I got confused if this psalm is supposed to be from the point of view of God or not.  Apparently not.  It’s a psalm attributed to David, and he did have an ego.  But David talking about how great he is makes it sound like he’s God.  Oops. 

That just brings an unexpected irony to the line, “Haughty eyes and arrogant hearts I cannot endure.”  You can’t endure arrogance?  Well, hearing you talk about yourself made me wonder if you thought you were God, so that should qualify as arrogantly haughty. 

PSALM 102

This is a longer psalm, but it’s a good psalm.  It’s one of the “man in distress reaches out to God” psalms and those are generally among my favorites.  It’s that yearning, human emotion that gets me. 

Here, though, what I find memorable is another part of the psalm.  It’s like the guy is bargaining with God.  He’s a man who is distraught.  A man who is desperate and down.  He’s appealing to God because it’s the only place he has to turn to – but he thinks God has abandoned him.  He doesn’t have much faith in the Lord’s forgiveness at this point.  But he turns there anywhere, because what else is there for him.

Well, if you were turning to God and expecting to be rebuffed, how would you handle it?  Simple – you try making an offer.  God, if you help me, just think how great that would make you look.  He writes at one point: “Let this be written for the next generation, for a people not yet born, that they may praise the Lord: `The Lord looked down from the holy heights, viewed the earth from heaven, to attend the groaning of the prisoners, to release those doomed to die.’”

And when I read those words, I thought of the Albert Brooks movie Lost in America.  You know the scene where he’s negotiating with the Las Vegas casino?  His wife has just lost their life savings, and he’s negotiating to get it back.  “Give us our money back and you’ll look like the casino who cares!”  This psalm reminded me of that scene. 

So that’s a unique reaction to a psalm.

PSALM 103

This is a psalm praising God.  By and large, this is my least favorite type of psalm, but this one I liked.  It’s probably my favorite “praise the Lord” type psalm so far. 

Mostly, I really like the image of God presented here.  He’s not praised so much of his power or his might or his fury or his ability to kill your enemies.  This isn’t an angry God at all.  Instead, the words used to describe him are: heals, pardons, redeems, brings justice to the oppressed, merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in mercy, compassion, salvation – this is a very, very nice God.  This is the image of God that is easy to appreciate and to love.  So of course this is the sort of god you praise! 

He’s nice to people because, “For he knows how we are formed, remembers that we are dust.”  That’s a very nice line.  He’s a God who has been around – and he has – and recognizes people for what they are, and loves them anyway, despite all their many faults.  He’s a God who roots for people, so people should root for God.

These praise God poems usually leave me cold, but this one left me warming and smiling.  This is one of the best psalms there, because it took the motif I’m least interesting in and had me really enjoying it.  Hurrah for Psalm 103! 

PSALM 104

Right now we’re in the midst of a series of unusually long psalms.  This one is 35 verses and over a page long.  It’s another psalm that praises God, but it’s one of the better ones.  If you’re going to praise God, you may as well make it a longer psalm, because that allows you to go into some detail.  It’s the shorter praise God psalms that really do nothing.

While this one is a psalm praising God, it’s not about the heavens above at all.  It’s about the world we live in.  The psalm is called “Praise of God the Creator” and the praise comes from creating all of the wonders of the world we live in.  By wonders, I don’t mean those rare sights of beauty like the Grand Canyon, but the typical wonders that are part of day-to-day life – the mountains, the fields, the trees, the moon, the sun, the seasons, the night and day.  All of these things are part of the fabric of life and might be easy to take for granted, but all are majestic.  And God created them, so this speaks really well of him.

In praising all the various ways that the world is wonderful (and therefore God is wonderful), the Bible contains one especially memorable line.  As part of the catalogue of all the things God created to make life better, the psalmist states, “wine to gladden their hearts.”  Heh. It’s like an old Benjamin Franklin line – alcohol is proof that God is benevolent and wants us to be happy. And here it is, right in the Bible. 

PSALM 105

This is another long psalm – 45 verses in all.  It’s also a historical psalm.  It recounts the Israeli experience with the Lord, tracing the course of the Torah.  You get Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the plagues, the pillar of fire, the rock that gave water, and the Promised Land. 

It’s a nice poem, but I already know the story.  The thrust of the poem is to praise God for what he has done.  Praise God because he kept his word.  Clearly, this wasn’t one of the psalms from Babylon, or it would need one massive rider at the end. 

PSALM 106

Every psalm from 102 to 107 is unusually long, but this is the longest of all, weighing in at 48 verses.  Like Psalm 105, it’s a history lesson.  The Israelis and God in the Torah.  Apparently God is great but the Israelis could use some work.

The point is that God kept forgiving them and was willing to try it all over again with them then, so he must be a good God worthy of praise.  However, this psalm is apparently written during the Babylonian Captivity, and the writer would really like God to go back to forgiving them.  He admits the transgressions and wrongdoing of his people in the divided kingdom era, and acknowledges that they worshipped other gods – but could you get on with the forgiveness already?  (Well, he isn’t that demanding in his plea, but he’d clearly like forgiveness). 

Actually, this psalm brings up an idea I hadn’t previously thought of.  If it wasn’t for all the misbehavior and atonement in the Torah, the religion might never have survived the Babylon era.  After all, those stories tell of the Hebrew screwing up, God getting angry, but ultimately things working out.  If that wasn’t there, they might not have faith that God would be there for them in Babylon.  He forgave us before, so he might forgive us again.  But if he never forgave us before, that means there’s no real hope for forgiveness now.

PSALM 107

This begins the fifth and final book of psalms.  Thank God!  (No pun intended).

This is a pretty good one, all things considered.  This tells a series of stories of types of people who go wrong, and how they pray to God to help, and God answers their prayers and they are delivered.  Then they all can thank God for his mercy.  It’s people lost in deserts while traveling, those who are darkness and gloom for rebelling against God, those who have fallen ill, those stuck in storms at sea.  God helps them all.

They are nice stories and the wording it nice, but it all rings a bit hollow to me.  If your life is on the outs, all you have to do is sincerely believe in God and ask for his help and you’ll be fine.  Really?  This is where Christianity has the edge.  You’ll be rewarded in the next world, not this one.  Because there is no guarantee about getting the reward in this world. 

It’s a nice psalm, but I am skeptical of its main thrust.

PSALM 108

For the first time in a while, it’s a short psalm – just 14 verses.  It’s called “Prayer for Victory” and it praises God for being merciful and faithful, and then talks of military glory.  There are some memorable lines, as it says, "Moab is my washbowl; upon Edom I cast my sandal.  I will shout in triumph over Philistia.”  It’s a typical psalm calling for triumph over enemies of the Hebrew.

PSALM 109

This is a psalm attributed to David called, “Prayer of a Person Falsely Accused,” and that’s a subject David knows something about, given how Saul kept trying to kill him.  This psalm begins with the speaker feeling persecuted by people who want to destroy him because, well, just ‘cuz, I guess.  Like many David psalms, this divides the world neatly up into good guys and bad guys and there is no need to understand the motives of bad guys.  They’re just against God, that’s all.

The heart of this psalm is a prayer for bad guys to be hurt and hurt bad.  May my accuser: 1) die soon, 2) have his children bear no kids, 3) get caught up in debt, 4) be treated with any mercy by anyone, 5) have anyone treat his children with any pity, 6) have his posterity be destroyed, 7) have his guilt brought before the Lord, and later on 8) “May cursing clothe him like a robe, may it enter his belly like water.”  This should happen to him because: 1) he’s guilty before the Lord, 2) he didn’t show mercy to people, 3) he hounded the wretched poor.

Boy, sounds like David is really cheesed at someone. 

The last stanza turns more positive and he asks God for help, and notes his own sorry state.

It’s a well-written psalm.  The last part is very enjoyable and the main part is very well done.  But that main party is just nasty.  I can see this as David just venting and blowing off steam.  If it’s Saul he’s thinking of, David doesn’t really want all the descendents treated without pity.  David himself treats Saul’s heirs as good as he can. 

But ultimately, while well done, it isn’t a very pleasant psalm.

PSALM 110

This is a God of Wrath psalm dividing up people into good and evil.  God “crushes kings on the day of his wrath” and “judges nations, heaps up corpses, crushes heads across the wide earth.”  Jeepers.  Is this the Bible or a Slayer song? 

It also has the memorable line, “Sit at my right hand, while I make your enemies your footstool.”  Yeah, that’s a sign of domination – you put your feet on someone who used to be powerful in his own right.  Sometimes this would literally happen to defeated kings back in the day.  I think it even happened to a Roman Emperor captured by the Parthian Empire. 

All this in just seven verses!

PSALM 111

It’s another psalm praising God.  And, as always, short psalms praising God are the ones that do the least for me.  It’s fairly standard stuff, except for verse 10, which starts off with a thought that struck me funny: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” 

Really? Not the love of the Lord?  Not respect for the Lord?  Not the mercy or grace of the Lord?  Yeah, it’s statements like this that cause me to leave the Old Testament feeling a bit cold.

Click here for the next batch of psalms.