Tobit 13 – A song of praise to God:

                                    Blessed be God who lives forever,

                                   for his reign endures throughout all ages!

                                  By turns he punishes and pardons;

                                  he sends men down to the depths of the underworld

                                 and draws them up from supreme…

Tobit 9 – Tobias sends Azariah (Raphael) to Gabael, the cousin of his father with whom he long ago left the silver. He also lives in Media. Tobias wants him to come to the wedding feast that is planned. Azariah goes to Gabael, presents him with the receipt [Tobit’s half] and tells him about the marriage of Tobias and Sarah. The seals to the sacks of silver are “still intact” (9:7). They load the silver on the camels and the next morning set off for the feast together. When Gabael sees…

Tobit 7 – They go to Raguel’s home and are well-received. Raguel learns that Tobias is son of his kinsman, Tobit. Raguel responds warmly to Tobias’ appeal to marry his daughter, and he tells the whole story about the seven husbands. They are given in marriage and Sarah’s mother goes to prepare the place where they will come together.

Tobit 8 – Tobias does as he was instructed and burns the fish’s organs on the incense. This drives the demon to the “remotest…

Tobit 5 – Tobias answers that he will go and try to get the silver his father left in Media some twenty years earlier, but he wonders how he will get the money since the man to whom it was given does not know him. Tobit says that he “set his signature to a note which I cut in two, so that each could keep half of it. I took one piece, and put the other with the silver” (5:3). CLEVER!

Tobias needs to get someone who knows how to get to Media; so he does. He finds the…

Tobit 3 – There follows a lovely ode on his unworthiness and desire for God’s forgiveness – here is some of it:

                                            You are just, O Lord,

                                            And just are all your works,

                                            All your ways are grace and truth,

                                            And you are the Judge of the…

Tobit is not in the Protestant Bible; it is part of what is called the “apocrypha.” My Jerusalem Bible introduction to the books says they were “only recognized by the Church after a certain hesitancy in the patristic period” but they have been “read and quoted from early days and appear in the official canonical lists in the West from the time of the Roman Synod of 382 and, in the East, from 682” (601). All three “belong to the same type of literature”; they all deal with…

2 Kings 24 – King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Jerusalem Bible says Nabu-kudur-usur, founder of the Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean Empire, which succeeded Assyria from 605-562. This expedition to Palestine took place around 602. He defeated Pharaoh at Carchemish in 605. He comes to dominate Judah. Jehoiakim “became his servant for three years,” but then Jehoiakim rebels. “The Lord” sent against them bands of Chaldeans, Arameans, Moabites and Ammonites “to destroy” Judah…

2 Kings 22 – Josiah is just eight years old when he comes to the throne.  He will serve 31 years (640-609), and he will do “what [is] right in the sight of the Lord” (22:2). He begins another restoration of the temple (the last was done by Joash of Judah during his reign about two hundred years earlier). Hilkiah reports that (in the process of restoration?) they have found in the Temple the book of the law. 

This is almost certainly the book of…

2 Kings 20 – Hezekiah becomes sick—he has some kind of boil—and Isaiah comes to tell him he should set his house in order; he is going to die.  He turns “his face to the wall” and prays that the Lord will “remember . . . how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight” (20:3).

As Isaiah is leaving, the Lord comes to him and tells him to go back and say to Hezekiah that He has heard Hezekiah’s…

2 Kings 18 – Hezekiah (715-686 BC), begins his reign in Judah. He is 25. His mother was Abijah, daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord. He removes the high places (finally), breaks down the sacred pillars and cuts down the sacred poles. He breaks the bronze serpent Moses was said to have made in the desert (it was called Nehushtan or “thing of brass”); it had become an idol over the years. It is interesting to ponder the thought that even in…

2 Kings 16 – King Ahaz of Judah is 20 when he becomes king and rules for 16 years (732-715). He does what is not right, walking “in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even sacrifices his own son as a burnt offering, imitating the practices of the ancient Canaanite people of the region (16:3-4). During Ahaz’ reign, the kings of Syria (Rezin) and Israel (Pekah) join in an alliance against him – they are angry that he would not join with them in an alliance against Assyria - but…

2 Kings 14 – In Judah, Amaziah, son of Joash of Judah, begins his reign. He reigns for 29 years (800-783), and does “what was right in the sight of the Lord” (14:3), but not completely. Again, he leaves the “high places” alone. As soon as he is securely in power, he kills the servants of his family that had been involved in the death of his father; but he spares their children. In this he is praised for following the dictate of Moses: “The parents shall not be put to death fort the…

1 Kings 12 – Joash (Jehoash) of Judah reigns 40 years (837-800). His mother is Zibiah of Beer-sheba. He “did what was right in the sight of the Lord all his days, because the priest Jehoiada instructed him” (12:2). They kept the high places, but that appears to have been seen as a shortcoming of a different order than the Baal worship, etc.

Joash set about trying to set up a revenue fund to make repairs on the house of the Lord.  The money from the assessment of…

2 Kings 10 – Jehu sends letters to the people responsible for overseeing the 70 sons of Ahab (Jerusalem Bible notes 70 is the number indicating “entire” and that sons here means all males heirs, particularly the sons of Joram) asking them to select one of them as king and get ready to “fight for your master’s house” (10:3). But they all respond that if he could beat the two kings he has already beaten – Jehoram and Ahaziah -- there is not much chance they will prevail against…

2 Kings 8 – Elisha warns the woman who has provided him with a place to stay for years and whose son he had raised from death that a famine is coming, that they should go and settle elsewhere for a while.  So she goes to the land of the Philistines for seven years.  At the end of this time, she returns and asks the king for her house and land back.  When she approaches the king (King Joram), he is talking to Elisha’s servant Gehazi about all the amazing things Elisha has done, and…

2 Kings 6 – The prophets in Elisha’s company feel crowded and suggest that they go to the Jordan to collect logs for a new dwelling (one log per prophet). He goes with them at their request.  They cut the tree down and one of the men loses an ax head – it falls into the water (6:5). They want to get it since it was borrowed from someone.  Elisha performs a miracle by cutting off a stick and throwing it into the water; this makes the ax head float…

Summer is coming and there will be a few weeks - about three - in late June and July when I will not be able to post daily Bible reading notes. So, in order not to lose my place in the schedule I am following, I will be posting two days of reading each day through June 23rd and then pick up with it again on July 16th.  

2 Kings 4 – The widow of one of the company of prophets comes to Elisha and tells him that a creditor is trying to take her two children…

2 Kings 3 – Joram [or Jehoram in some versions], Ahab’s son, becomes king in Samaria and reigns 12 years [Jerusalem Bible notes says it was really only eight years—849 to 842 BC]. He did what was evil “though not like his father and mother, for he removed the pillar of Baal that his father had made” (3:2). Still, he “clung to the sin of Jeroboam” (3:3). It doesn’t say how – golden calves? high places?  

King Mesha of Moab, a sheep breeder, used to…

2 Kings 2 – The Lord is “about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind” (2:1). They are on their way from Gilgal. Elijah tells Elisha to wait for him, that he has been told to go to Bethel, but Elisha refuses to leave him.  In Bethel, a group of prophets comes out and tells Elisha that Elijah will be taken up.  Elisha says he knows, that they should keep silent.

They go on in the same pattern to Jericho and there they again meet prophets who say the same thing.  Then…

Introduction to 2 Kings: The original scrolls of what we call 1 and 2 Kings did not make any division. Together, they tell the story of the kingdom’s division after Solomon’s death, around 931 BC, and the series of kings who ruled over the northern kingdom (Israel) and the southern kingdom (Judah). 2 Kings picks up the story around 853 BC with the rule of Ahaziah in the north and the continued rule of Jehoshaphat in the south. It will take us to the final…