A Doubter's Guide to the Bible: Inside History’s Bestseller for Believers and Skeptics by John Dickson

Author:John Dickson [Dickson, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2015-02-02T16:00:00+00:00

FAILURES OF THE KINGS

Quite unlike any national history of antiquity that I know of, the Old Testament writers almost delight in telling you how sinful their nation is and how sinful their heroes and kings are, and yet how merciful God is toward the nation. I have never seen this approach to historical writing in anything I’ve come across in the literature of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, or Rome. But these are the twin themes of the rest of the Old Testament: the failure of even the best of God’s people and the patient love of God himself.

For the next four hundred years — ​the next two hundred pages of the Bible — ​we see the kings of Israel, and the nation itself, flip-flopping between periods of partial obedience and longer periods of disobedience, injustice, neglect of the poor, the worship of idols, and so on.

The spiral of wrongdoing culminates in the tragic downfall of Israel. In 722 BC the north of Israel (usually just called “Israel”) collapses under the Assyrians, and in 586 BC the south (called “Judah”) is conquered by the Babylonians. The biblical perspective is that these are not mere sociopolitical events; they are God’s discipline of his own wayward people. The Old Testament puts this in no uncertain terms. At the close of the royal period (from 1000 BC to 586 BC) we read:

All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They worshiped other gods and followed the practices of the nations the LORD had driven out before them, as well as the practices that the kings of Israel had introduced. . . . The LORD warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and seers: “Turn from your evil ways. Observe my commands and decrees, in accordance with the entire Law that I commanded your ancestors to obey and that I delivered to you through my servants the prophets.”

But they would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their ancestors, who did not trust in the LORD their God. . . .

They forsook all the commands of the LORD their God and made for themselves two idols cast in the shape of calves, and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the starry hosts, and they worshiped Baal. They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire. They practiced divination and sought omens and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the LORD, arousing his anger.

So the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah was left, and even Judah did not keep the commands of the LORD their God. They followed the practices Israel had introduced. Therefore the LORD rejected all the people of Israel; he afflicted them and gave them into the hands of plunderers, until he thrust them from his presence (2 Kings 17:7 – 20).

Four hundred years of royal history in four paragraphs — ​that’s how the Bible describes the demise of Israel.

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