GRANDDAUGHTER. On Easter Sunday, my oldest grandson asked to hold my “big” camera so he could take a picture of me. Appealing to my ego: smart move for a second grader. My granddaughter heard what he said and jumped onto my lap. We see in the photo a glimpse of the bond between generations. I can’t imagine what it was like for the Jews of Israel and Judah to lose everything they owned to invaders from Iraq—they were called Assyrians and Babylonians back then. Jews lost their lives, families, cities, and nations. Israel and Judah both fell. Survivors were shipped off in captivity to Iraq. The Jewish homeland became someone else’s home. I paraphrased and mapped the story of the fall in 2 Kings.
WE’RE TALKING HISTORY, not current events. But it’s hard to read this history without thinking about what’s going on now—which is the opposite of “erasing Israel from the map.”
I just finished paraphrasing and mapping the stories of 2 Kings. Those stories start off bad with evil Queen Jezebel outliving rotten King Ahab. She went on to serve as her son’s Wicked Queen Mother—until a chariot corps commander murdered the king and had the Queen Mother thrown out of an upstairs window with a crunch and splat that called the dogs.
Israel’s stories pretty much spike from there.
Unchoosing the Chosen
As Bible writers tell it, God gets a divine belly full of his Chosen People. So, he deselects them.
Yeah, it’s a thing.
“Israel isn’t my people anymore and I’m not their God,” Hosea 1:9, Casual English Bible®.
In the flow of these stories in 2 Kings, it felt to me like the Israelite ancestors of today’s Jewish people crossed God’s red line when kings like Manasseh starting sacrificing their sons to idols.
Killing kids. God’s not good with that, whether it’s Jews killing their own kids, killing Palestinian kids, or watching their kids getting killed.
There’s no part of God in any of that if God’s reaction to child sacrifice is a clue.
Did God really order kids killed?
Sure, the earlier stories seem to have God ordering ancestors of the Jewish people to commit genocide, and kill every Canaanite sucking air:
“After you defeat them in battle, wipe them out by killing them all. Don’t make any peace treaty with them. Don’t show them mercy,” Deuteronomy 7:2, Casual English Bible®.
However, that’s Moses talking. Was he speaking for God or simply presuming that the common way of dealing with an enemy in those days was a reasonable way to go? I don’t know. But I can tell you this. The scholars I’ve talked with privately are not cool with massacre—wholesale slaughter of everyone in a town. Even if the Bible writers suggest God ordered it. Something about that feels off to them. Way off.
They’re talking history. Many of us are thinking current events.
Which is okay. Remembering history can help keep us from making the mistakes our ancestors did. Killing everyone seldom works out. Someone gets left. And that soul can sour as they grow up with a vengeance.
“Queen Athaliah of Judah, meet the grandson you forgot to kill when you murdered what you thought was your entire family, so you could become queen. Now that you’ve met, die.”
Which she did (2 Kings 11:16 , Casual English Bible®).
3D Bible maps from 2 Kings
After paraphrasing 2 Kings, I mapped it, one chapter at a time, with 47 maps in all. There’s a lot of geography in 2 Kings.
Here are a few of the maps. They’re in low resolution here because some people like to take them and offer them as their own. Which is one more thing that’s not cool.
Elijah, away in the wind
Elisha raises the dead
A good king dies for a bad reason
Extras, read all about it
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