God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible (24 page)

The two kings decided the best route for attack was via the Desert Edom, but after seven days of marching, the men and horses were out of water and near death. Facing one of the biggest military blunders in Biblical history, the king of Judah cried out:

Now, I find this absolutely comical. I can’t help but imagine two kings on horseback surrounded by thousands of their finest soldiers suffering from severe dehydration and the only course of action is the sitcom-like first aid call of, “Help! Is there a prophet in the house?” Until now the Kings of Israel had always had a direct line to God but now only a messenger would suffice. Now, that’s funny!

The cry was heard and Elisha was summoned to the general’s tent. The two kings asked for some two-way communication with God to save them from their seemingly inevitable plight. Elisha replied that he would not speak until a harpist was playing him some tunes. I swear I am not making this up. Whilst the harpist played a catchy little number, Elisha said:

Sure enough, the next morning, water began flowing and the land filled with water. The soldiers and animals replenished themselves and prepared once more for battle. However, the Moabites had assembled a powerful army and were ready to attack the Israelites at their camp. The Moabites had received false intelligence that the Israelites, being divided into two houses of Judah and Israel respectively, had begun turning on each other and thus the Moab attack was sounded. But the Israelites were unified and with God’s help they slaughtered the Moabites in their thousands and just as Elisha had telegraphed the Israelites did not cease their plundering until every Moab crop was covered in stone and every tree uprooted. The few remaining Moabites surrendered and returned to far off distant lands to never be heard of again.

Failed king after failed king followed for Israel for the next several hundred years, the only highlight from God’s perspective being the violent death of the wicked Jezebel, who was thrown from a tall building with her blood splattering across the footpath. Her set upon by the Israelites, leaving her skull and her hands as the only remains. Additionally, God was pleased that the ministers of the pagan god Baal were all slaughtered by Jehu, the king of Israel at that time, who led a platoon of soldiers to hack them to death with machetes. Jehu ordered:

The Israelite soldiers hurled their butchered remains into the street, and then proceeded to destroy every artifice of the Baal temple and shrine, before burning the site to the ground. The god of Baal had been defeated by God’s chosen warriors.

Joash then followed as king of Israel, his single achievement being the repair of the Temple in Jerusalem, by money raised by offerings and tithes, which took more than fifteen years of labor.

Inheriting a failed legacy from his forebears, Hosea was the final king of Israel, but God had had enough. His disappointment of the Israelites and frustration that the kings could not lead the chosen people away from worshipping other Gods to total observance of the commandments was eventually too much for the heavenly father to take. And he allowed Assyria to invade and conquer Israel, because his people had provoked his anger.

Henceforth, all the people of Israel were taken from the Promised Land into exile. The Northern Kingdom (Israel), was taken into Assyria’s captivity in 722 BC and one hundred and thirty six years later the Southern Kingdom (Judah) into Babylon’s control.

The two Israelite kingdoms remained in exile for the next forty to fifty years.

The king of Babylon was Nebuchadnezzar and upon marching triumphantly into the city of Jerusalem to glorify his defeat of the Southern Kingdom he chose the destruction of the Jewish temple to be his victory signature. He set the temple ablaze raising it to the ground. The Babylonians looted anything of value such as the bronze pillars and all the bronze articles used in ceremonial service. The city itself was also totally destroyed, with every house set alight and the city walls pulled down. God had punished his chosen people good and proper.

Kings 2 Count: 20,000

God inflicts a seven year famine on the Israelites as punishment for disobedience = 20,000.

Accumulative Count: 31,769,532

George Carlin

Thankfully, we won’t spend much time dissecting this book as it doesn’t really offer much that we haven’t heard already in the respective books of Samuel and Kings. It is just a recount of those stories adding some crudely constructed genealogy to help make certain events come out right. For purpose of brevity Chronicles may be summarized into its four components:

Chapters 1-10 of Chronicles 1 refers in most part to genealogy, concluding with the House of Saul and Saul’s rejection by God, which sets the stage for the rise of David.

Chapters 11-29 of Chronicles 1 present a history of David’s reign.

Chapters 1-9 of Chronicles 2 provide a history of the reign of King Solomon, son of David.

Chapters 10-36 of Chronicles 2 is an account of the kings of Judah to the time of the Babylonian exile and concluding with the call by Cyrus the Great for the exiles to return to their land.

Whilst we don’t really learn anything new in this book, what is interesting is the flagrant contradictions this book makes in attempting to reconcile the stories of the preceding books. Here are but a few examples.

King David asked Joab to count his fighting men that could be made ready for battle. In the Book of Samuel:

Whereas Chronicles adds a further 300,000 to the number, it reads:

In the Book of Samuel, God threatens David, via a prophet, with the prospect of famine for failing to keep his people on the path of worship:

Whereas Chronicles shows a four year differential:

There is some corroboration to the heinous end of this story, however, with both books claiming that God killed seventy thousand men of Israel with a plague as a result of his ill-temper.

When David triumphantly brought the Ark back to Jerusalem, the respective authors of Samuel and Chronicles offer opposite claims. With Samuel writing that the Ark was returned to the city after the Philistines had been defeated, whereas Chronicles chapters 13 and 14 records that the Ark was brought back to the city before the battle against the old foe.

The life of King Ahaziah is contradicted between the Book of Kings and Chronicles. Kings claim that Ahaziah took reign over Jerusalem at the youthful age of twenty-two, whereas Chronicles writes:

These accounts may seem picky but a careful inspection of the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings laid down side by side against Chronicles highlights dozens of numerical discrepancies. Discrepancies that further prove the fallibility of the Bible.

William Sunday

These two books tell of one of the most important events in Jewish history, the return to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon in 536 B.C

It is also of historical importance that this moment in history marked the first time whereby the Israelites no longer referred to themselves as such anymore, instead adopting the name ‘The Jews’. Signalling the end of the divided houses of Israel and Judah.

The period covered by both books is approximately 100 years, starting with the compassionate decision of the king of Persia, Cyrus to release the Jews back to their homeland after seventy years in captivity. Although the Bible claims that the Lord persuaded the Persian king to do so.

The author numbers the Jews of all returning tribes, with the total being 42,360 men, women and children. Not including 7,337 slaves, 737 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels and 6,720 donkeys.

It is important to note that whilst the Jews were freed, they were still ruled by Persia, but were given authority to rebuild their society and culture in peace.

When the Jews returned to Jerusalem they each contributed gold and silver proportionately to their respective wealth, to help lay the foundations to make Israel a strong nation once more. A larger percentage of this fund was to be used to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem that the Babylonian’s had destroyed more than seventy years prior.

The rebuilding of the Temple took twenty years and its completion marked celebrations of enormous nationalistic proportions. The Jews were united, their temple now finished and God was pleased. And thus the best way the Jews, through past experience, knew to please God, was through blood sacrifice:

That’s a lot of dead animals!

Ezra, although not technically a prophet according to the Jews, was known as a man of God, but more specifically as a man well versed in God’s laws. His God mission was to restore national identity and to right the wrongs of all the failed kings of Judah and Israel. The Bible describes him as such:

Ezra’s power to lead the Jews was ratified by the Persian king Artaxerxes, who wrote:

Ezra believed that the purity of Jewish blood had been polluted by inter-marriages between Jews and non-Jews, i.e. racist bastard! This multiculturalism, he stated, had led the Jews away from God, during the seven hundred year period of the kings, towards pagan god worshipping et cetera. Ezra believed the best way for the Jewish people to start over again, so as to regain God’s trust and favor, was to eradicate all husbands or wives not of pure Jewish blood. Hello, ethnic cleansing. In his address to tribal elders at the Temple, Ezra spoke: