Day 31, 2 Kings 6-15

I hate to disappoint, but today's reading was mostly garbage: wars, the succession of kings, and not a lot of interesting new material. Although I read ten chapters, I feel like I read the same one over and over again because EVERYONE HAS THE SAME GODDAMN NAME and ALL THE WARS ARE THE SAME.

I was going to do a typical entry and give you guys a summary of everything that went down, while pointing out all instances of cannibalism and incest and so on, but given how convoluted these chapters are, I just don't think it would be particularly fun. In the entry for Day 28 I provided a family tree for the two kingdoms, which I urge you to reference again. Today's reading took us to the reign of Pekah in Israel and Ahaz in Judah.

Basically, these chapters summarized in a few paragraphs the activities of each king, almost all of whom "did wrong in the eyes of the Lord." Military conflicts and internal conspiracies arise continuously, and the tribes have mixed success against their enemies. Of particular note, the increasing dominance of Syria (or Aram) in the region is established. Also, although a handful of Judah's kings actually aren't total fuck-ups in God's eyes, none of them so far have managed to get rid of the shrines.

Rather than actually attempt to summarize all the murders and usurping and begetting that goes on, I think I'll just go through each chapter and share the parts I liked. I hope you don't think I'm being lazy! It's really just kind of dull and I think you can get the general picture from what I've already said.

Chapter 6 concerns a war with Syria, interesting only because a woman tells this story to the king of Israel: "A woman said to me, 'Give up your child for us to eat today, and we will eat mine tomorrow.' So we cooked my son and ate him; but when I said to her the next day, 'Now give up your child for us to eat,' she had hidden him" (2 Kings 6:28-29). Oh man. That's wild!

In chapter 7, four lepers explore the Syrian camp and discover that the armies have fled because God played some sort of crazy trick and scared them away. The lepers convey this news to the people, and the king sends his troops to scope things out. Incidentally Israel is in the midst of a famine, and the day before Elisha had made a creepy prophecy to the king that grain would cost only a shekel at the gate of Samaria, and he would "see it with [his] own eyes, but... not eat any of it" (2 Kings 7:2). This prophecy comes true, as the king is trampled to death by his own subjects as they run to buy food!

Chapter 8 and 9 are rather unremarkable, containing assorted confusing genealogies, conspiracies, and random deaths. Jezebel is killed in chapter 9, and as predicted, her body is eaten by dogs. This all goes down during the reign of Jehu, who usurps the crown from Ahab's family line and spends chapter 10 brutally killing everyone affiliated with Ahab or the Canaanite religion. He actually comes up with a clever ruse to kill all the infidel priests, by pretending to throw a big party for Baal, gathering the prophets, and then sicking his armies on them. However, Jehu is no Pablo Pious himself, since he worships golden calves. By the way, I just made up "Pablo Pious." It's like "Debbie Downer." Pretty good, huh?!!

Chapter 11 takes us through the reigns of even more kings, one of which excited me because the monarch in question, Joash, is only seven years old when he assumes the crown! That's awesome! Chapter 12 details his reign, and he turns out to be a pretty good king.

Chapter 13 is actually kind of interesting, since it describes Elisha's death and gives us two more miracle stories. In the first, Elisha meets with Jehoash, the king of Israel, while on his deathbed. He instructs the king to shoot his arrows out the window, then to shoot them into the ground; this is supposed to help in the constant wars against Syria. Jehoash obeys these instructions but only shoots three arrows into the ground, which APPARENTLY is not good enough, because Elisha gets super pissed and tells him, "You should have struck five or six times;  then you would have defeated Aram utterly; as it is, you will strike Aram three times and no more" (2 Kings 13:19).

How's a guy to know?!

Elisha dies after this and is buried. During war time, people would sometimes inadvertently throw bodies into his grave, and they would be resurrected!

Chapters 14 and 15 resume the parade of uninteresting kings. There's a line where someone "rip[s] open every pregnant woman" (2 Kings 15:16). That's always fun. Not as fun as cannibalism, but pretty fun.

I sincerely hope this entry was not a festering heap of mediocrity. I don't want to speed through things or neglect details, but the details were just so... freaking... useless... To my knowledge, the Book of Chronicles will retell many of these stories in more detail, so we will get to know these charming monarchs better in due time... But for now, I've had a bit of difficulty making sense of things and I don't want to bore you with my puzzlement.

We finish Kings tomorrow. Onward!