Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: 2 Chronicles 34-35 and Augustine's Treatise on Profit of Believing 35-36

2 Chronicles 34 – Josiah is eight when he becomes king, and his reign lasts 31 years. It is a time of renewal and reform. “He did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight and followed the example of his ancestor David. He did not turn away from doing what was right” (34:1). When he is 16 it say he began to seek God, and when he was 20 he “began to purify Judah and Jerusalem, destroying all the pagan shrines, the Asherah poles, and the carved idols and cast images. He ordered that the altars of Baal be demolished and that the incense altars which stood above them be broken down” (34:3-4).  He does the same in other towns too – the towns of Manasseh, Ephraim and Simeon.

Then he restores the Temple. He gets money from all the surrounding countries for Hilkiah, the high priest, to restore it. One day, while they were bringing out the money that had been donated to the workers and overseers, the Hilkiah finds “the Book of the Law of the Lord that was written by Moses” (34:14). He gives the book to Shaphan, the king’s secretary, Shaphan reads it to Josiah.

When the king hears it, he tears his clothes and commands Hilkiah and others to go and “speak to the Lord for me and for all the remnant of Israel and Judah. Inquire about the words written in the scroll that has been found. For the Lord’s great anger has been poured out on us because our ancestors have not obeyed the word of the Lord” (34:21).  

They take the scroll to Huldah, a prophetess who is the wife of Shallum, keeper of the Tempe wardrobe. Huldah tells them that “All the curses written in the scroll . . . will come true” (34:24). But, she also says that because the king’s heart was penitent and he has humbled himself before God, the Lord has heard him (34:27). He will gather the king to his grave in peace. His eyes shall not see the disaster prepared for Jerusalem and its inhabitants.

When the king hears this, he gathers all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem together, they go up to the temple and there in the hearing of the people “he read. . .all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord” (34:30). The king “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 the covenant that were written in this book” (34:31). He “required everyone in Jerusalem and the people of Benjamin to make a similar pledge” (34:32). They do, and “throughout the rest of his lifetime, they did not turn away from the Lord, the God of their ancestors” (34:33).

2 Chronicles 35 – Josiah announces that the Passover of the Lord would be celebrated in Jerusalem. They slaughter the Passover lamb, appoint priests to their offices and encourage them in the service of the Temple. He tells them to put the Ark in the house of the Lord, to serve the Lord and his people. The “no longer need to carry it back and forth” (35:3).

He contributes 30,000 lambs and young goats from his flocks along with 3,000 bulls. The chiefs of the Levites also contribute many offerings. They conduct the sacrifices and all the various servers conduct their parts according to the requirements of the Law. “No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel; none of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah, by the priests and the Levites, by all Judah and Israel who were present, and by the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (35:18).

After all this, King Neco of Egypt leads his army up from Egypt to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates and Josiah marches out against him. Neco sends to him tell him he is not coming against him, and that it is God who has told him to make war. Josiah will not be dissuaded from fighting him, however (35:22). He disguises himself and joins the battle against the Egyptians in the plain of Megiddo. Archers shoot him and he is carried back to Jerusalem, where he dies. All Judah and Jerusalem mourn him. And Jeremiah too utters “a lament for Josiah” (35:25).

Augustine’s Treatise on the Profit of Believing

35 - But any habits whatever have so great power to hold possession of men's minds, that even what [habits] in them are evil, which usually takes place through excess of lusts, we can sooner disapprove of and hate, than desert or change.

Do you think that little has been done for the benefit of man, that not some few very learned men maintain by argument, but also an unlearned crowd of males and females in so many and different nations both believe and set forth, that we are to worship as God nothing of earth, nothing of fire, nothing, lastly, which comes into contact with the senses of the body, but that we are to seek to approach Him by the understanding only? That abstinence is extended even unto the slenderest food of bread and water, and fastings not only for the day, but also continued through several days together; that chastity is carried even unto the contempt of marriage and family; that patience even unto the setting light by crosses and flames; that liberality even unto the distribution of estates unto the poor; that, lastly, the contempt of this whole world even unto the desire of death?

I may be wrong but he seems to be saying that these are all good and amazing fruits of the spread of Catholic Christianity. There are places where he seems inconsistent with what he’s said elsewhere, however: approaching God by “the understanding only” (??); “contempt of this whole world”.

Few do these things, yet fewer do them well and wisely: but whole nations approve, nations hear, nations favor, nations, lastly, love. Nations accuse their own weakness that they cannot do these things, and that not without the mind being carried forward unto God, nor without certain sparks of virtue. This has been brought to pass by the Divine Providence, through the prophecies of the Prophets, through the manhood and teaching of Christ, through the journeys of the Apostles, through the insults, crosses, blood, of the Martyrs, through the praiseworthy life of the Saints, and, in all these, according as times were seasonable, through miracles worthy of so great matters and virtues. The blossoming of the Church has come about through all these things.

When therefore we see so great help of God, so great progress and fruit, shall we doubt to hide ourselves in the bosom of that Church, which even unto the confession of the human race from [the] apostolic chair through successions of Bishops, (heretics in vain lurking around her and being condemned, partly by the judgment of the very people, partly by the weight of councils, partly also by the majesty of miracles,) has held the summit of authority. These are the signs to Augustine of God’s favor.

To be unwilling to grant to her the first place, is either surely the height of impiety, or is headlong arrogance. For, if there be no sure way unto wisdom and health of souls, unless where faith prepare them for reason, what else is it to be ungrateful for the Divine help and aid, than to wish to resist authority furnished with so great labor? And if every system of teaching, however mean and easy, requires, in order to its being received, a teacher or master, what more full of rash pride, than, in the case of books of divine mysteries, both to be unwilling to learn from such as interpret them, and to wish to condemn them unlearned?

36 - Wherefore, if either our reasoning or our discourse has in any way moved you, and if you have, as I believe, a true care for yourself, I would you would listen to me, and with pious faith, lively hope, and simple charity, entrust yourself to good teachers of Catholic Christianity; and cease not to pray unto God Himself, by Whose goodness alone we were created, and suffer punishment by His justice, and are set free by His mercy.

Thus there will be wanting to you neither precepts and treatises of most learned and truly Christian men, nor books, nor calm thoughts themselves, whereby you may easily find what you are seeking. For do you abandon utterly those wordy and wretched men, (for what other milder name can I use?) who, while they seek to excess whence is evil, find nothing but evil. And on this question they often rouse their hearers to inquire; but after that they have been roused, they teach them such lessons as that it were preferable even to sleep for ever, than thus to be awake.

For in place of lethargic they make them frantic, between which diseases, both being usually fatal, there is still this difference, that lethargic persons die without doing violence to others; but the frantic person many who are sound, and specially they who wish to help him, have reason to fear. For neither is God the author of evil, nor has it ever repented Him that He has done anything, nor is He troubled by storm of any passion of soul, nor is a small part of earth His Kingdom: He neither approves nor commands any sins or wickedness, He never lies. For these and such like used to move us, when they used them to make great and threatening assaults, and charged this as being the system of teaching of the Old Testament, which is most false. Thus then I allow that they do right in censuring these. What then have I learned? What think you, save that, when these are censured, the Catholic system of teaching is not censured. Thus what I had learned among them that is true, I hold, what is false that I had thought I reject.

But the Catholic Church has taught me many other things also, which those men of bloodless bodies, but coarse minds, cannot aspire unto; that is to say, that God is not corporeal, that no part of Him can be perceived by corporeal eyes, that nothing of His Substance or Nature can any way suffer violence or change, or is compounded or formed; and if you grant me these, (for we may not think otherwise concerning God,) all their devices are overthrown.

But how it is, that neither God begot or created evil, nor yet is there, or has there been ever, any nature and substance, which God either begot not or created not, and yet that He sets us free from evil, is proved by reasons so necessary, that it cannot at all be matter of doubt; especially to you and such as you; that is, if to a good disposition there be added piety and a certain peace of mind, without which nothing at all can be understood concerning so great matters. And here there is no rumor concerning smoke, and I know not what Persian vain fable, unto which it is enough to lend an ear, and soul not subtle, but absolutely childish.

Far altogether, far otherwise is the truth, than as the Manichees dote. But since this discourse of ours has gone much further than I thought, here let us end the book; in which I wish you to remember, that I have not yet begun to refute the Manichees, and that I have not yet assailed that nonsense; and that neither have I unfolded any thing great concerning the Catholic Church itself, but that I have only wished to root out of you, if I could, a false notion concerning true Christians that was maliciously or ignorantly suggested to us, and to arouse you to learn certain great and divine things. Wherefore let this volume be as it is; but when your soul becomes more calmed, I shall perhaps be more ready in what remains.

Daily Bible Reading: 2 Kings 22-23 and Luke 16

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 18^th 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.