2 Kings 22 – Josiah is just eight years
old when he comes to the throne.
He will serve 31 years (640-609), and he will do “what [is] right in the
sight of the Lord” (22:2).
He begins another restoration of the temple (the last was done by Joash of Judah
during his reign about two hundred years earlier). Hilkiah reports that (in the process of restoration?) they have found in the Temple the book of
the law.
This is almost certainly the
book of Deuteronomy, or at least that part of it that recites the law. It had either been lost or forgotten
during Manasseh’s reign according to The
Jerusalem Bible note. Judging from what is in the narrative, however, it
sounds as if they had been without it for most of the time the monarchy
existed, for about 500 years.
It says they hadn’t celebrated the
Passover since the time of the judges, some 400 years earlier!!!
Shaphan, the
king’s secretary tells Josiah about the find. When he learns of it, the king
“tears his clothes” and commands Hilkiah to inquire of the Lord on behalf of
him and all the people, what they should do. So the king’s men go to Huldah, a prophetess, in the Second Quarter in
Jerusalem; and she declares that the Lord will indeed bring disaster on
Jerusalem as it says in the book they have found, but that “because [the
king’s] heart was penitent, and [he] has humbled [himself] before the Lord. .
.I also have heard you. . .Therefore, I will gather you to your ancestors, and
you shall be gathered to your grave in peace; your eyes shall not see all the
disaster that I will bring on this place” (22:19-20). The fact that it is a “prophetess” who
authenticates this amazing find is very interesting to me – it seems an unusual
role of authority for a woman at this time.
2 Kings 23 – The king gathers all the elders and people, “small and great,” before the
house of the Lord, and there he reads “in their hearing all the words of the
book of the covenant that had been found. . .The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to
follow the Lord, keeping his commandments, his decrees, and his statutes, with
all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were
written in this book. All the people joined in the covenant”
(23:2-3).
After this,
the king goes throughout the land removing all the offensive sites and remnants
of idol worship that have plagued the land: he removes the vessels made for
Baal and Asherah and “all the host of heaven”; he deposes the idolatrous
priests who made offerings on the high places in the cities of Judah and around
Jerusalem; those who made offerings to Baal, the sun, moon and constellations;
he destroys the image of Asherah; breaks down the houses of the male temple
prostitutes that were in the Temple where the women did weaving for Asherah; he
brought the priests out of the towns of Judah and defiled the high places; he
defiles Topheth in the valley of Ben-hinnom “so that no one would make a son or
a daughter pass through fire as an offering to Molech” (23:10). He “removed the
horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance” to
the Temple; burned the chariots of the sun. He took down altars the kings of Judah had made; he defiles
the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Destruction, which
King Solomon had built for Astarte, Chemosh, and Milcom; he burns the sacred
poles and covers the sites with human bones. All the idolatrous worship sites and practices he uproots
and destroys. The Jerusalem
Bible notes that it was Josiah who completely centralized the worship,
eliminating the Yahwist high places entirely.
The king then
commands that all the people begin to keep the Passover. It had not been observed
since the time of the judges in Israel. They begin again in the 18th
year of King Josiah. “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the
Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according
to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him” (23:25). “Still,
the Lord did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath, by which his
anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which
Manasseh had provoked him. . .’I will remove
Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel; and I will reject this
city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name
shall be there’” (23:26-27).
During
Josiah’s reign, Pharaoh Neco went up to the king of Assyria, and King Josiah
went to meet him. The Pharaoh killed Josiah at Megiddo; he is carried back to
Jerusalem and Jehoahaz (609), his son
becomes king. He reigns only three months and does what is evil. The
Pharaoh confines him at Riblah in Hamath and imposes tribute on the land. Then he makes Eliakim, son of Josiah, king and changes his name to Jehoiakim. He
takes Jehoahaz away to Egypt where he dies. Jehoiakim pays tribute to
Pharaoh and taxes the people to pay it. Jehoiakim
reigns eleven years, but he does what is evil.
Luke 16 – Another puzzling
parable—the manager of a rich man’s property is accused of “squandering his
property” (16:1). The master
demands an accounting. The
manager, seeing he will lose his job, ponders how he will live without it. Suddenly
he realizes he may have to depend on the charity of people he knows, so he considers
how he could change his relations with them. He will reduce the debt burden each owes to him and in this
way secure the “friendship” of each one.
The master commends him for his shrewdness.
And Jesus concludes by saying “the children of this world are more
astute in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light” (16:8). The
available translations of Jesus’ next words are all difficult to understand. He
says, “I tell you this: use money,
tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails
you, they will welcome you into the tents of eternity. The man who can be
trusted in little things can be trusted in great; the man who is dishonest in
little things will be dishonest in great. . . No servant can be the slave of
two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or treat the
first with respect and the second with scorn. You cannot be the slave both of
God and of money’” (16:10-13). I’m not
sure I want my politicians to live by this advice!
Reflection: Challenged by this reading every time I
have to tackle it, and doing a little research on it with “google,” it occurred
to me that Jesus is responding to the shrewdness of this servant the same way I
responded to an experience I had in Rome back in the spring of 2000. I had just
arrived in Rome and gotten my first Italian money out of an ATM machine. I
broke one of the large bills to buy a subway token and put the money in a
small, traveler’s purse I wore that hung from a string around my neck and under
a fleece I had, so it would be secure. On the very crowded subway I got onto, I
found myself approached by a woman with a baby, and I – of course -- was
completely attracted to the adorable child for the entire subway ride. When I
got out and later went to get more money out of my purse, I discovered I had
been robbed. While I was distracted, someone had gone under my fleece,
unclipped the purse, unzipped the slot where the money was, taken out ONLY the
large, unbroken bills AND my airline ticket and left the small bills behind.
The purse was zipped, clipped and under my fleece when I finished my ride. My reaction was just like Jesus’ –
wow!! I had to admire the cleverness involved even though I had been robbed. If
we could just be as SMART about spiritual things as we are about worldly
things!
You may be incredibly intelligent and shrewd, but you have to
choose the “master” you serve. You cannot serve both God and money” (16:13).
The Pharisees are said here to be lovers of money and not happy at this
teaching. They look for external and present rewards—not inward, invisible or
eternal things. “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others;
but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination
in the sight of God” (16:15).
On the Law: Jesus
says, “The Law of Moses and the writing of the prophets were in effect up to
the time of John the Baptist; since then the Good News about the Kingdom of God
is being told, and everyone forces their way in. But it is easier for heaven
and earth to disappear than for the smallest detail of the Law to be done away
with” (16:17). Why are
Jesus’ parables uses to teach us SO HARD TO PENETRATE? Is Jesus
saying that the Law is no longer important? Or he is just saying that it’s the
legalistic Pharisaic approach that is outdated? He seems to be saying that the
Law can no more be done away with than “heaven and earth,” but then what is it
that’s changed with the coming of John the Baptist?
Jesus’ teaching on
divorce
is given briefly and without putting it in the context of Genesis as in Mark.
The
parable of the rich man and Lazarus follows: A rich man lives side by
side with a very poor man who lays at his gate “covered with sores” (16: 21).
He “longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even
the dogs would come and lick his sores” (16:21). These lines in the parable
open a little light on the difficult story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman who
also tells him that she will readily live on the crumbs that fall from the
table set for the Jews. She is
like Lazarus too and will get her reward at the heavenly banquet. When they die, however, it is
Lazarus—the poor man—who is at the side of Abraham, not the rich, important man. The rich man is the beggar there,
begging Father Abraham to have mercy on him. Abraham tells him it is Lazarus’ time to be comforted.
“Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want
to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us”
(16:26). The rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers still
alive so that we may warn them. But Abraham says, “’They have Moses and the
prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if
someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they
do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if
someone rises from the dead’” (16:27-30).
Here the lesson of the earlier readings
is extended to the situation where the punitive justice of God is extended not
only to the active evil-doer but the careless and selfish who go through life
seeking or accepting their own material comfort and never thinking about the
needs of their fellow men, especially those in their path whose needs are
visible to them on a daily basis. The overall lesson is that if we want to do
the will of God and plant our lives by the streams of living water, which God
offers us, we must not only avoid doing evil and persecuting the righteous but
we must care for our brothers and sisters in need. Also the scope of blessing and curse
are seen to run beyond death into an eternal dimension we may not reckon with
in our day-to-day calculations.
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