Daily Bible Reading: 1 Kings 22 and Luke 4:31-44

1 Kings 22 - Israel and Syria (Aram) continue at war. Jehoshaphat of Judah, Asa’s son and another good king, comes to confer with Ahab; he wants their help in reclaiming Ramoth-gilead from the Syrians. JB note says this town was captured by the Syrians (same as Aramaeans) during or before the reign of David and had not been handed back in the Treaty of Aphek (chapter 20).

Jehoshaphat agrees, but wants Ahab first to consult the Lord.  Ahab gathers 400 of the Lord’s prophets together and asks them what the Lord thinks. They all tell him to go ahead and attack.  Jehoshaphat, wanting to be very sure it is God’s will, asks if there is not yet another prophet in Israel they should consult. Ahab says there is - there is Micaiah, son of Imlah – but he adds, “but I hate him, for he never prophesies anything favorable about me, but only disaster” (22:8). They call on him anyway.

                 

Everyone gets together at the threshing floor at the entrance gate to Samaria, and the prophets there are all doing their thing.  Another false prophet, Zedekiah, assures Ahab and Jehoshaphat that they will certainly destroy the Arameans.

The men who get Micaiah – the only prophet who really knows God’s truth - tell him that everyone is predicting success and that he should too; Micaiah says he will rely on the Lord alone.  At first he does tell the king the thing he knows the king wants to hear; but Ahab knows him too well. He says to him, “How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?” (22:16) Another instance where Ahab kind of surprises me. He’s a king who may not always DO what is right, but he has a complex mind. He wants to KNOW what the Lord really thinks. Ahab has a frustrating mix of insight and passiveness when it comes to leading his people. So Micaiah lays it on him: “I can see the army of Israel scattered over the hills like sheep without a shepherd. And the Lord said, ‘These men have no leader; let them go home in peace’” (22:17). When he hears this, Ahab turns to Jehoshaphat and says that this is more like the Micaiah he knows.

Micaiah elaborates: “I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him. . .And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’” (22:20) The angels of the heavenly court argue back and forth until a spirit appears who says he will make Ahab go forth to the battle by putting lying words into the mouths of his prophets. Zedekiah slaps Micaiah for saying this and says, “Since when did the Lord’s spirit leave me and speak to you?” (22:25) Micaiah tells him he will find out one day when he goes into a back room to hide. 

Ahab orders Micaiah taken away and thrown into a prison until he [Ahab] returns safely. Micaiah says to him that if he [Ahab] returns safely from this campaign, then the Lord was indeed NOT speaking through him. The truth is NO ONE knows the true will of God until the fruits of our actions can be seen over time.

                 

They go into battle. Ahab—believing the words of the prophet Micaiah even though they have not pleased him and trying to escape the predicted fate—gives Jehoshaphat his kingly robes and disguises himself so the enemy will kill Jehoshaphat instead of him.  When the enemy sees that the man in the robes is not Ahab, though, they stopped their assault on him. Ahab, on the other hand, despite his disguise is hit by accident and dies. He is returned to Samaria where the dogs do in fact lick his blood from the chariot he was in. This story is in 2 Chronicles 18 too.

                 

As for Jehoshaphat, he reigns over Judah for 25 years. He does what is right except not removing the high places. He makes peace with the king of Israel, Ahaziah, and has ships made to engage in trade, but they are wrecked at Ezion-geber before they can be used. In Israel, Ahaziah, Ahab’s son, succeeds and reigns for two years; but he too does what is evil just as his parents did.

Luke 4:31-44 - Jesus encounters a “demoniac” in Capernaum (also told of in Mark 1:21-26).  As in Mark, we must wonder why it is that demons and evil spirits Jesus encounters are able to recognize Jesus even before the people generally recognize his identity.  In Luke, the spirit says, “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God” (4:34). The same exact words are used in Mark. Jesus rebukes these evil spirits, and people are “amazed” at the power of Jesus’ command, his voice or word.

The different translations of the peoples’ response to what they see here are interesting:

·          The NRSV has them asking “What kind of utterance is this?”

·          The NAB has the fascinating and rich “What is there about his word?”

·          JB has “’What teaching!’”

·          The German has “’Was ist das fur ein Ding?’”

·          The King James also has “word” in the clause. 

Of all these, I like the NAB best. What an interesting question it becomes!  Something in Jesus’ voice demonstrates power.  Not only his voice, but his presence and his touch bring healing, first of all to the man with the unclean spirit and Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, but also to others. Luke has Jesus curing Simon’s mother-in-law before we see Simon’s call to discipleship—the order is better in Matthew.

Reflection:  All of us whom Jesus encounters are blind or ailing in one way or another.  These healings were not isolated instances but the general work he came to do.  Let us see how we are blind or deaf or filled with the evil spirits of this world who, though they can recognize Jesus, cannot be banished entirely from the world.  Help move away every impediment that the world gives to Christ’s work in us or that we bring to our encounter with the living Word.

Daily Bible Reading: 1 Kings 21 and Luke 4:1-30

1 Kings 21 -    Naboth the Jezreelite has a vineyard next to Ahab’s palace.  Ahab wants it for a vegetable garden and tells Naboth he will pay for it; but Naboth does not want to sell it.  It is his family’s ancestral home.  Ahab becomes “resentful and sullen” again over this and will not eat (21:4). Jezebel can’t understand why he doesn’t just take the land. “Do you now govern Israel?” (21:7) So she decides she will handle the matter.  She plans to have Naboth falsely accused of some crime by the city’s elders and nobles—like cursing the king or something.  A Jerusalem Bible note says that the property of traitors reverted automatically to the king. They do it, and in the end Naboth is taken out and stoned – no legal process, simply accusation and death. Jezebel tells Ahab he may now go and take possession of the vineyard.

                 

But “then the Lord said to Elijah, . . . ‘Go to King Ahab of Samaria [and] tell him that I, the Lord, say to him, ‘After murdering the man, are you taking over his property as well?’ Tell him that this is what I [the Lord] say: ‘In the very place that the dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, they will lick up you blood!’” (21:19). He also foresees a terrible end for Jezebel: “The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel” (21:23). Ahab tears his garments and fasts when he hears this, so the Lord relents somewhat, telling Elijah “Since he [Ahab] has done this, I will not bring disaster on him during his lifetime; it will be during his son’s lifetime that I will bring disaster on Ahab’s family” (21:29). Yet another difficult moral framework for modern readers to accept – that somehow God finds an equal justice in punishing the offspring of the real perpetrators.

Luke 4:1-30 - Having had it revealed to Jesus in his baptism that he is God’s “beloved Son” Jesus goes out into the wilderness and is tested.  Of interest in comparing this to Mark’s version, here it says, “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove” – all very public.  In Mark it says, “as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him” (1:10).  The idea of it being a personal opening to Jesus is more likely in the Mark version.  Here there is an attempt to make it look like the vision was there for all to see. 

He goes out into the desert for 40 days, eating nothing.  The devil comes to him and tempts him three times: once suggesting he should command the stones to becomes loaves of bread since he is so hungry; once offering him the glory and authority bestowed on rulers over all the kingdoms of the world; and finally tempting him to put God to the test by hurling himself off the Temple to see if God will protect him as is promised in scripture.  Jesus refuses all of these.

The Spirit of God is with him but he eats nothing for forty days, fasting to attain clarity and self-discipline to discern what it means that he is God’s “beloved Son.”  Does it mean that he will be given miraculous powers to feed the masses and thus win favor by satisfying the material needs of man? Does it mean that he is to have power over all the earthly kingdoms of this world? Does it mean that whatever he wants and needs, he will be able to attain from God because of God’s special love for him.  He learns in turning his back on all these temptations that the true path of the Son of God is not any of these.  It is not clear that the reality of what it does import appeared to Jesus at this time, but there were clearly a number of possibilities that “tempted Jesus” when he considered how he might use his powers.  It is these that he turns his back on.  He meets temptation with obedience and lowliness.  The scriptures he cites show that even for Jesus the ancient Hebrew scriptures were a source of guidance and inspiration, but we must be careful here for the devil too quotes scripture to Jesus.  It is not the words found in scripture but the spirit of discernment applied to them that provides the wisdom.

After concluding his time in the desert, Jesus goes to his own town, Nazareth, and begins to preach in the synagogue. At first people admire him for his “gracious words” (4:22), but they soon turn on him when he compares them with some of the stubborn Jews of old and praises the outsiders in Israel’s past who were more open to God than the people (the Phoenician widow in Elijah’s story, Naaman the Syrian). Jesus adds to the Naaman story a detail that is not obvious from the scriptures – that the prophet Elisha was unable to cure anyone of leprosy in his own land.

I like it here that Jesus is using the book of Kings to teach the people – we need to remember that when we have the urge to throw out or denigrate the sometimes messy stories that come to us in Kings. What Kings teaches here is that often “the stranger,” “the foreigner,” is more open to the healing touch of the prophet than the people God called to him through Abraham and Moses.  Jesus uses this to reproach the people of Nazareth and they “get it” in no uncertain terms.  They are offended by his criticism of their complaisance or their unwillingness to believe in a “prophet” [Jesus] who is altogether too familiar to them to really “see.”  They are like the dutiful son in the prodigal son story.  They cannot see into their father’s depths because they are too used to seeing him with eyes of flesh.  The “living God” is different from the notion of God we create in learning about him as a child.  This is a lesson we too must learn.  We will never see God or hear His voice in us if we cling too tenaciously to the notions we learn of Him before we have experienced Him.  We somehow must be brought to see the great gulf that lies between Him and the familiar comfortable concepts we have of him – in a sense we must all come to him as foreigners, strangers, sinners, outsiders. 

They run him out of town. He goes to Capernaum