Readings:
2 Kings 18
Wisdom 11
John 6:1-21

2 Kings 18

A new king comes to the throne in Judah. Hezekiah becomes king at the age of 25, and is a complete opposite of his father who was the most wicked of all kings of Judah. Hezekiah is the first king since David who is said to have done right as David did. He didn’t just personally stay faithful to God, he also destroyed the high places. That’s something that is mentioned with every good king as something they failed to do. Even Jehoshaphat and Asa didn’t do that.

But Hezekiah is different from all of them, because he is more like David than any other king so far or even any until Jesus takes the title of David’s successor. He even went as far as to destroy The Bronze Serpent that Moses had made in the desert because it had become an idol and was worshiped as a god. All the kings before him had either tacitly accepted or overtly supported the idolatry around them, even the ones considered good kings, but not only did Hezekiah destroy the high places and altars, he even destroyed a relic of Israel’s past to keep the people from worshipping it. This is like a real life example of Jesus telling the people to lop off their hand or gouge out their own eye if they caused them to sin. Of course. Jesus is using hyperbole but Hezekiah really did go to extremes to avoid sin, like we should.

After the Assyrians captured Samaria and deported its inhabitants, replacing them with settlers, they eventually turn their attention to Judah in the south. Hezekiah tries to make peace with Sennacherib, king of Assyria, by sending him all the gold and silver in the city, but this doesn’t work (even though he accepts the gold and silver). Sennacherib sends his field commanders to Jerusalem, and they’re met outside the walls by Hezekiah’s ministers. What takes place here is very reminiscent of the boasting and blasphemy of Goliath, and that’s because as David defeated him through God’s assistance, Hezekiah must now face down a giant too.

This commander tries to sow discord among the people by speaking in their language and reminding them of the suffering that takes place in a city under siege. He simultaneously tells them that their God has abandoned them and been defeated already by Assyria, and that he was sent by God to destroy them as punishment. He questions if their God is even powerful enough to help them and a few other things. He also makes false promises to anyone who’d come out of the city and submit to him, very much like the promise of satan when tempting Christ.

Something he says that stood out to me too is that he says the people who surrender will go abroad to live in a land rich with crops and food, and they’ll “then every one of you will eat of his own vine, and every one of his own fig tree”. This is the first appearance of that phrase in the Bible and may have been an original thought by this commander that was then used by later prophets, or it could’ve been placed in his mouth by God to be a false mirror of the true prophecy that in the age of the messiah each will sit under his own vine and his own fig tree. This prophecy is part of the backstory of why Philip was so impressed with Jesus saying he seen him under the fig tree.

John 6:1-21

John 6 is famous for the bread of life discourse that takes up 2/3 of the chapter, but the beginning of John 6 contains an episode that is the only miracle performed by Jesus that is recorded in all four Gospels (besides his rising from the dead obviously). We see him feed the multitude with a miraculous combo of bread and fish. This second food related miracle of Christ is the perfect segue into the bread of life discourse.

The miracles of the multiplication of the loaves, when the Lord says the blessing, breaks and distributes the loaves through his disciples to feed the multitude, prefigure the superabundance of this unique bread of his Eucharist. The sign of water turned into wine at Cana already announces the Hour of Jesus’ glorification. It makes manifest the fulfillment of the wedding feast in the Father’s kingdom, where the faithful will drink the new wine that has become the Blood of Christ.

CCC 1335

After he feeds them they realize what the scribes and Pharisees had missed. They say surely he is “the prophet” meaning the prophet promised by Moses in Deuteronomy that would be the new and greater Moses. They see the signs and recognize who he is, but his time is not yet ready so he slips away.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
2 Kings 19
Wisdom 12
John 6:22-71