Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: 2 Chronicles 25 and Augustine's Treatise on Profit of Believing 27

2 Chronicles 25 – Amaziah  is 25 when his reign starts, and he reigns for 29 years. He does what is right, but “not with a true heart” (25:3). He executes the people involved in his father’s death, but not their children. This is praised, for he follows here the dictate of Moses. “Parents must not be put to death for the sins of their children, nor children for the sins of their parents. Those deserving to die must be put to death for their own crimes” (25:4).

He organizes the people militarily, and hires 100,000 mercenary soldiers from Israel. This is not mentioned in the Kings version. A “man of God,” comes to him and rebukes him for doing it, “for the Lord is not with Israel” (25:7). Amaziah asks what he should do about the soldiers; he’s paid them a huge amount of money. The man of God warns him that God will strike him down even with their strength. He needs to act on his own.  So Amaziah dismisses the men and sends them home, but they are furious with him (25:10).

Amaziah leads his people to the Valley of Salt and strikes down 10,000 men of Seir, the “Valley of Salt” (25:11). This has to be Edom according to the story in Kings. Another 10,000 are captured alive and taken up to the top of a cliff, where they are thrown down “dashing them to pieces on the rocks below” (25:12). Meanwhile, the disaffected mercenaries fall on Judean cities from Samaria to Beth-horon, killing 3,000 and taking booty (25:13).

Amaziah messes up by bringing home with him the gods of Seir, setting them up as idols, and making offerings to them (25:14). The Lord sends a prophet to rebuke him. “I know that God has determined to destroy you, because you have done this and have not listened to my advice” (25:16). Amaziah asks the prophet “Who made you the king’s counselor?” (25:16)

Amaziah is feeling uncertain about the role of the prophet. Look at the destruction of northern Judean cities that followed the last time he listened to a man of God! Maybe he thinks he should go his own way this time.

Then comes the part about Amaziah challenging Israel’s king, Joash. He says they should “look one another in the face” (25:17). Joash sends a mysterious reply, “Out in the Lebanon mountains, a thistle sent a message to a might cedar tree: ‘Give your daughter in marriage to my son.’ But just then a wild animal of Lebanon came by and stepped on the thistle, crushing it” (25:18). He sees Amaziah as full of himself, aspiring to too high a place.

Amaziah insists—but the text says it was all God’s doing. God wants to punish Amaziah for importing the Edomite gods. Judah is defeated at Beth-shemesh. Amaziah is taken and brought to Jerusalem. Joash breaks down a good part of the wall. He takes all the treasure from the temple and hostages as well and returns to Samaria. Amaziah outlives Joash by fifteen years. But from the time he turned away from the Lord, a conspiracy against him is hatched in Jerusalem. He flees to Lachish in central Judah, but they send after and kill him there. He is buried in Jerusalem.

Augustine’s Treatise on the Profit of Believing

27 - But now hear, what I trust I shall by this time more easily persuade you of. In a matter of religion, that is, of the worship and knowledge of God, they are less to be followed, who forbid us to believe, making most ready professions of reason. For no one doubts that all men are either fools or wise. But now I call wise, not clever and gifted men, but those, in whom there is, so much as may be in man, the knowledge of man himself and of God most surely received, and a life and manners suitable to that knowledge; but all others, whatever be their skill or want of skill, whatever their manner of life, whether to be approved or disapproved, I would account in the number of fools.

And, this being so, who of moderate understanding but will clearly see, that it is more useful and more healthful for fools to obey the precepts of the wise, than to live by their own judgment? For everything that is done, if it be not rightly done, is a sin, nor can that anyhow be rightly done which proceeds not from right reason. Further, right reason is very virtue. But to whom of men is virtue at hand, save to the mind of the wise? Therefore the wise man alone sins not. Therefore every fool sins, save in those actions, in which he has obeyed a wise man: for all such actions proceed from right reason, and, so to say, the fool is not to be accounted master of his own action, he being, as it were, the instrument and that which ministers to the wise man.

I am hoping here Augustine does no think that “fools” and “uninstructed” or “uneducated” are the same thing. For just going to school or getting an education is not something that will make you wise. These are deep character-matters. And I am not even sure I accept without explanation what he says about “sin” here. I am not convinced that “everything that is done, if it be not rightly done, is a sin” – I think things done wrongly from a good spirit might be salvageable.

Wherefore, if it be better for all men not to sin than to sin; assuredly all fools would live better, if they could be slaves of the wise. And, if no one doubts that this is better in lesser matters, as in buying and selling, and cultivating the ground, in taking a wife, in undertaking and bringing up children, lastly, in the management of household property, much more in religion. For both human matters are more easy to distinguish between, than divine; and in all matters of greater sacredness and excellence, the greater obedience and service we owe them, the more wicked and the more dangerous is it to sin. Therefore you see henceforth that nothing else is left us, so long as we are fools, if our heart be set on an excellent and religious life, but to seek wise men, by obeying whom we may be enabled both to lessen the great feeling of the rule of folly, while it is in us, and at the last to escape from it.

I think I know where he is going here and I am sympathetic. I think it is very fair to say that people have been seeking “wisdom” from the Old Testament writings and narratives for thousands of years, and they have found in the writings a great deal of nourishment.

Daily Bible Reading: 2 Kings 10-11 and Luke 10

2 Kings 10 – Jehu sends letters to the people responsible for overseeing the 70 sons of Ahab (Jerusalem Bible notes 70 is the number indicating “entire” and that sons here means all males heirs, particularly the sons of Joram) asking them to select one of them as king and get ready to “fight for your master’s house” (10:3). But they all respond that if he could beat the two kings he has already beaten – Jehoram and Ahaziah -- there is not much chance they will prevail against him.  He tells them if they really want to cooperate with him, they will send him the heads of Ahab’s sons the next day.  They do it and send him the heads at Jezreel. Jehu heaps the heads at the gate into the city, assembles all the people and announces, “You are innocent. It was I who conspired against my master and killed him; but who struck down all these?. . .So Jehu kills all who were left of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, all his leaders, close friends, and priests; he leaves no survivor” (10:11). It’s like the Hatfields and McCoys here at this time. That must be why they cited Kings in the movie.

                 

Jehu goes to Samaria.  On his way there he meets relatives of King Ahaziah of Judah on their way to visit the “royal princes” (of the house of Ahab or Joram). Jehu kills all 42 of them. Then he meets Jehonadab, son of Rechab (an ardent Yahwist). Jehu asks him to show his loyalty by coming with him to “see [his] zeal for the Lord” (10:16). They go into Samaria where Jehu kills “all who were left to Ahab. . .” (10:17).

He calls together the people and says Ahab offered Baal only small service compared to what he will do.  He calls together all the prophets of Baal, all his worshipers and priests on the pretext that he has a great sacrifice to offer to Baal. When they are all together in the temple of Baal, and Jehu has assured himself that no worshiper of Yahweh is in with them, he orders them all killed.  Afterward, they throw out the pillar that was in the temple and burn it and then make the temple itself into a latrine.  “Thus Jehu wiped out Baal from Israel” (10:28). He does not do away with the calves, however, that Jeroboam set up in Bethel and Dan.  The Lord praises Jehu for doing well in getting rid of Ahab’s house, so he rewards him with a promise of four generations of kings in his line.

                 

One of the problems Israel has during these days was the trimming off of certain parts of the country.  Hazael of Aram picks off Gilead, the Gadites, the Reubenites and the Manassites (all east of the Jordan). After Jehu (842-815 BC), his son Jehoahaz succeeds.

2 Kings 11 – Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother, intends to slaughter all the royal family (why??); but Jehosheba, Joram’s daughter and Ahaziah’s sister—also wife of the chief priest Jehoiada—takes Ahaziah’s baby son, Joash (or Jehoash) and hides him away in the temple. Athaliah rules over the people for six years (843-837). In the 7^th year, Jehoiada summons the captains of the Carites (mercenaries from Asia Minor, the cherithites of David’s guard—1 K 1:38) and the guards and brought them to the king’s son.  He has a plan to protect the young king, using the shifting of the guards that occurs on the sabbath (JB says that on weekdays 2/3rds of the guard is on duty at the palace and on sabbaths 2/3rds are at the temple). He gives them spears and shields that belonged to King David, and when the day comes, he brings forth the boy and crowns him with the protection of the guard (11:12).

                 

When Athaliah sees it, she tears her clothes and cries treason, but Jehoiada has her killed when she leaves the temple.  Jehoiada makes a covenant between the Lord and the king and people “that they should be the Lord’s people” (11:17). They all go to the house of Baal and tear it down [the one in Judah] The priest of Baal, Mattan, is killed. The king is escorted to his palace and the people rejoice (JB says it is mostly the people of the countryside who are behind this renewal. The people of the city are compelled to accept it). Joash is seven years old.

Luke 10:1-24 – Jesus appoints 70 (other accounts say 72) disciples to go out, telling them “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (10:2). He sends them out like “lambs into the midst of wolves” (10:3).  They are to do what he has done—cure the sick and say “The kingdom of God has come near to you” (10:9). If people do not want to hear, they should wipe the dust from their feet “in protest” and Jesus then in a rather harsh tone that sets Luke apart from the other gospels, tells them a judgment hangs over towns that refuse to receive them (10:12): “I assure you that on the Judgment Day God will show more mercy to Sodom than to that town!” (10:12).

                 

When the 72 return, they are full of joy.  Presumably they have met with great success. “Lord, in our name even the demons submit to us!” (10:17) The word they bring has great power, especially over evil.  Jesus says, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning” (10:18) I never really heard this sentence before this reading.  This statement places Jesus with God before the creation of the world according to the Jewish story about the fall of Lucifer. The statement about giving them power to “tread on snakes and scorpions” also brings back the addendum to Mark (16:18), which seems to us moderns so “beneath” the text in a way—that his disciples will “pick up snakes in their hands,” and so on.  But Jesus is simply trying to say that the spiritual power he has bestowed upon them will give them amazing power.  But the power on earth they will have is nothing compared to the fact that their “names are written in heaven” (10:20).

                 

Jesus also adds a word of thanks to his Father that he has seen fit to give knowledge of Him to “infants,” to the simple ones of the earth. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (10:22). This sounds pretty much like the Jesus we meet in John.

                 

Then Jesus says, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it” (10:23-24). All of these passages have great “claims” embedded in them—claims to pre-existence, to power over evil, to participation of the Son in the Father’s being, to fulfillment of ancient prophecies and promises.  How can theologians claim the gospels make no claim to divinity for Jesus??

                 

Luke 10:25-42 - A lawyer in the crowd asks Jesus the same question the man in Mark 10:17 did—“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (10:25) But instead of telling him he must give up everything, Jesus simply affirms the answer he gives, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (10:27). The challenge comes not in pushing self-denial to the point of giving up all possessions, but in realizing that one’s neighbor may include people one has not been taught to love—here the Samaritans. 

The lawyer pushes Jesus by asking him “And who is my neighbor?” (10:29) The parable of the Good Samaritan follows: A man going from Jerusalem to Jericho (a steep road descends 17 miles, providing many opportunities for brigands) falls into the hands of robbers, who beat him and leave him on the road half-dead.  A priest passes by him without doing anything to help him and then a Levite.  Finally a Samaritan comes by and is “moved with pity” (10:33). He helps bandage the man, brings him to an inn and pays the innkeeper to take care of him.  When Jesus asks the lawyer which one of the people in the story was a neighbor to the man, he rightfully answers the “one who showed him mercy” (10:37). Jesus tells him to go and “do likewise.” Again, we see the focus change here from the “ontic” concerns of Mark (concern for the state or spiritual condition of the believer—ascetic, self-denying) to the more practical, service-oriented model of redemption Luke is encouraging.

                 

There follows the story of Mary and Martha, a story not in Mark at all. Mary is the listener in the story, the one who sits at Jesus’ feet and attends to his words.  Martha is the worker, the one who waits on him, gets the food.  When Martha complains that her sister has left her to do all the work, Jesus tells her she is “worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.” (v. 41-42) Mary has “chosen the better part,” he says. This contradicts somewhat what I have said about the “doing” focus of Luke’s gospel, so he is not telling us to only do.  We must put Jesus first and what he teaches us when we attend to him with our whole selves.