Readings:
2 Kings 20-21
Wisdom 13
John 7

2 Kings 20-21

Hezekiah is sick and he calls for Isaiah to ask God if he’ll recover. Isaiah asks and the reply is for Hezekiah to get his house in order because he will not recover from this illness. But he doesn’t just take this news lying down, he cries out to God to remember he’s been his faithful servant all these years, and God hears his prayers and tells Isaiah to return and tell him he’s been given another 15 years.

I don’t know about you, but as much as I’d appreciate the reprieve and adding a decent amount of time to his life, I’d rather God was vague on exactly how many years he was giving me. I feel like 14 to 15 would be lots of looking at the calendar. But that’s just me.

We see at the end of this chapter Hezekiah making one of his only mistakes during his long reign. This mistake was more out of naivety than malice, and had no indication that it was sinful, only that it was foolish. An envoy came from Babylon to bring him gifts and wish him well in his recovery, and Hezekiah took them and showed them everything he owned. Isaiah gets sent by God to tell Hezekiah this was foolish and that all the things he showed them will one day be carried off to Babylon including his own sons.

So after Hezekiah died, his son Manasseh takes the throne at 12 years old, and he’s as evil and his father was righteous. He goes through a whole laundry list of things to reverse the reforms his dad had made, and rather than being compared to king David like Hezekiah, he’s compared to king Ahab. Not good.

Of all the things he done, probably the worst was burning his own son as a sacrifice to Moloch. Only two kings of Judah are mentioned to burn their children as sacrifices and he’s one of them. Absolutely evil. It’s because of the evils committed by Manasseh that God decides to have Judah conquered and exiled by the Babylonians.

To put a little bit of a silver lining on his story, and give hope that nobody is beyond redemption, his story doesn’t end here. In 2 Chronicles they give a little more info on his reign and we learn that he is taken as captive to Babylon, fulfilling the prophecy to Hezekiah, and while there he repents and eventually returns home where he throws out the idols and altars he’d set up in the temple, and rededicates himself to the God of his ancestors.

Manasseh’s son Amon takes the throne and even though his father ended up on a high note, his son was as evil as he was in his early days. His reign was short and he was assassinated by men from his court, but the people of Judah didn’t allow these men to enthrone themselves and killed the conspirators, preventing David’s house from being overthrown, and seating his son Josiah on the throne.

John 7

The feast of tabernacles is at hand and some of Jesus’ relatives try to get him to go to Jerusalem with them, because this was one of the pilgrimage feasts where Jews from around the world, but especially in close areas like Galilee, were expected to go to Jerusalem. Jesus let’s the, go and then goes quietly and kind of sneaks into the city. His time hadn’t come yet, and he still had more ministry before his passion, so he didn’t want to antagonize the Jerusalem authorities too much until then.

There’s two ceremonies that took place during this festival, and the serve as a backdrop to the living waters teaching at the end of John 7 and the light of the world statement in John 8. The first is every morning the priests would draw water from the pool of Siloam and make a procession to the temple where it was poured out as a libation offering to God. Remember that the whole point of this festival is to remember the wandering in the desert where the people all lived in tents, and that any water they found was because God led them to an oasis or miraculously brought water from rocks for them. Now they’re sacrificially offering water to God in return. The second thing is the giant seven branch candelabra (menorah) that burned all night in the temple courtyard and it’s lighting ceremonies.

While at the feast he hears murmuring about him, with some for and some against him. He finally goes up to the temple courtyard and begins teaching which inevitably draws a crowd. And he chastised them for being angry with him (back in John 5) when he healed on the sabbath.

Then some begin to wonder out loud if Jesus is the Christ. Some dismiss this thought, but many apparently take it to heart because when he comes on Palm Sunday many come out to see him thinking (rightly) that he is the messiah.

On the last day, Jesus is playing off of the water ceremony and tells the people that he will give them living water, just like he said to the woman at the well. But unlike his conversation with the Samaritan woman, he tells them he’ll not only give them living water, but those who believe will have rivers of this water flow from them. This is a prophecy of the Holy Spirit in the heart of his followers that will allow this water to flow around the world.

The people debate if he is the prophet promised by Moses or even the Christ, but they know he’s from Galilee and some rightly point out that the messiah is to come from the line of David and from Bethlehem. Apparently this part of Jesus’ story wasn’t well known, and maybe that’s because it would’ve made him a target to Herod’s sons that their father failed to kill the child the Magi had come to visit.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
2 Kings 22-23
Wisdom 14
John 8:1-30