Hey guys, I'm back to make fun of- er no, I mean explain some Bible stories to you. Hey, what's this? Have I actually finished an entire book of the Bible in a single month? Wow, it's starting to feel like Feb. 2010 up in here. No, actually no, I finished two books that month, damn. Anyway, yeah we're reaching the end of 2 Kings, and wow what an ending. There's a lot here, so let's get to it.
Elisha's End (The Bones of an Idol):
Let me just start by saying that things are bad for Israel and Judah. Jehu might have killed more Baal Boys than even Elijah had, but he still dabbled in the things that pissed God off. Yeah, Baal's a ponce, but Asherah's hot, God won't be mad if I worship her right? |
| Wow, she is hot. |
So pretty much, from Solomon on, most kings are pretty despicable ... well in the worshiping other gods kinda way, and actually some of them are just straight up despicable. Sure there are some truly righteous kings that show up from time to time, and we'll talk about them, but they're few and far between, and for the most part it's pure detestable activity. As a result Israel starts being whittled away by our good friend Hazael, the new king of Aram. And at this time, God's main man Elisha is on his deathbed, so Jehoash, Jehu's grandson, goes to see the ailing prophet.
So I've complained about this before, but man, the fucking names in the Bible. Okay, the actual words and vocabulary used in the good book make it so anyone can read it, hell even kids. What makes it almost impossible sometimes is the names and the way they decide to phrase things. For example, "In the thirty-seventh year of Joash king of Judah, Jehoash son of Jehoahaz became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned sixteen years (13:10)." Seriously, who the fuck are all these people? I have no clue, I tried to keep up, I did, until every king had practically the same name, sometimes the actual same name. And it would be one thing if we only had to keep up with Israel, but no, we're doing Israel and Judah simultaneously. There are times when I thought I was reading about Jeobrummibrah, the king of Israel, when it would say something like, "Then Jeobrummibrah sent a message to Acriliojemajam the king of Israel." Wait, what? I thought Jeobrummibrah was the king of Israel. Then I'd backtrack only to find that no, he was the king of Judah. And this happened a lot, maybe I'm just dumb, but let me just say, 2 Kings is not easy to read.
Anyway, rant over (For now), Jehoash goes to Elisha's deathbed, weeps over him and cries "My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel (13:14)." What about them? Are they in danger? Are you just really proud of them? Seriously, what kind of thing is that to say at someone's deathbed? Well luckily for you Elisha is insane enough to just roll with it. "Elisha said, 'Get a bow and some arrows,' and he did so. 'Take the bow in your hands,' he said to the king of Israel. When he had taken it, Elisha put his hands on the king's hands (13:15-16)." Oh, hello, are we about to see some bowplay? Maybe some archery roleplaying? The Bible's getting good. Aw nope, even more crazy actually, Elisha tells the king to open a window and fire an arrow out of it. So, the king notches it and fires a damn arrow out the window. "The Lord’s arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram (13:17)," Elisha screams. Wow, reckless endangerment for the win. Seriously man, imagine you went to see your pastor in the hospital and he told you to take a gun and fire it randomly out a window. Would you do it? Fuck no, you'd call in a nurse and say "How much fucking morphine are you giving this guy? And how can I score some?" Now, for all we know, some random dude was going about his business, maybe on his way out to the well, when he's hit in the head with a random arrow for no reason. For no reason other than that Elisha was batshit insane. I mean after he called in two bears to maul a bunch of kids to death, we shouldn't be surprised that he's having people fire arrows out of windows randomly.
The crazy keeps on coming folks, Elisha then tells the king to strike the arrows on the ground. I feel I need to quote exactly what he says here, hang on, yeah he says "Take the arrows," and then, "Strike the ground (13:18)." That's what I thought. So the king takes the arrows and strikes them on the ground three times. This pisses off Elisha, "You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times (13:19)." Wow thanks for telling me that ahead of time asshole. I could've used that information don't you think? Hell, with what you actually said, I would have just hit the ground once. Look Elisha, seriously, I know you're doped up on morphine and the all around crazies, but if you want me to hit the ground with some arrows five to six times then you need to say so. Don't be like this guy:
Well, that's not entirely honest, this next crazy thing happens. See some dudes are busy burying their friend when they see these Moabite raiders crest the hill. "Oh shit," one of them screams, "raiders. We need to get out of here."
"What do we do with Marty's corpse?"
"Fuck if I care, just toss it in somebody else's tomb."
So they heave their friend's corpse into some random ass tomb, nice job guys, real thorough. This happened to be Elisha's tomb, and "When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet (18:21)." Wait, what? So like, Elisha's skeleton was just laying in the middle of his tomb? Or did they go to the trouble of opening his sarcophagus or something? In any case, Elisha is so badass that he's bringing people back to life from beyond the grave. Take that Elijah. So I bet Marty's friends never heard the end of this shit, for the rest of his second life they had to hear about the time they just dumped his body in a random hole. Though this does bring up some questions for me. The first one, if Elisha's bones can bring dudes back to life, then why didn't these guys take them and open a resurrection business? And if Elisha's bones bring people back to life, then why didn't they bring Elisha back to life when he died? They were inside him for christsake, he should've at least gotten a double dose of resurrection juice. Hell, at the very least, it would have been cool if Elisha's skeleton got up too and just started doing "man of God" stuff around Israel. The Bible could do with a walking talking skeleton bombing around Israel, don't you agree?
 |
| Then Elisha created an army of Godly skeletons. |
Or a bunch of skeletons. I can dream can't I? How's that for a suggestion to make the Bible better? More skeletons please. Thanks.
The Once And Future Kings:
After Elisha's death the Bible starts burning through kings again, in truth his death was just plopped into the middle of one of these runs, if you would've blinked you might have missed it ... though I'm not sure why blinking while you're reading would be so troublesome. Anyway, you know the drill, "In the thirty-second year of Banana Pudding, Applesauce became king of Israel. Blah blah blah ... as for the other events of Applesauce's reign and all the badass things he did are they not written the annals of the kings of Israel?" Rinse repeat, rinse repeat. Now, I've made jokes about this before (I use the term "joke" loosely here), but this time it was really starting to irk me. For instance, "As for the other events of the reign of Jehoash, all he did and his achievements, including his war against Amaziah king of Judah, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel? (13:12)" Really? You're going to footnote that shit? A whole war between Israel and Judah? Nah that's not important, let's just skim through that to the next boring king. Thanks Bible ... I'm looking forward to reading this "Annals of the Kings of Israel" sometime, except I doubt it exists anymore. Or how about, "As for the other events of Hezekiah’s reign, all his achievements and how he made the pool and the tunnel by which he brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? (20:20)" Aw man, that one stings the most, you're skipping over Judah's irrigation system? Not cool Bible, not cool. I love irrigation systems, I'm like a brony, except for aqueducts. |
| Ooh yeah, that's the stuff. |
Er, so where was I? Oh right, all them kings. Pretty much all you need to know about these kings was that they were terrible assholes. Pretty much all of them, hell one of them even burned up his own son on an altar. Yeah for real, child burning, guess that was for Molech or somegod, either that or the kid took the car out one night an wrecked it; a reasonable punishment I'd say. But there were a few good kings, a couple of cats that followed God's laws "As David had" according to the Bible. Does that mean they also had some guy killed so they could make it with his wife? Hmm. Anyway, from what I can tell, the only good kings at this point are from Judah, Israel is just plain fucked, but Judah keeps showing hope. Let's talk about a few of these kings. The first up is Joash, he was the son of Ahaziah, you remember, the guy who was murdered for no reason by Jehu last time. Yeah well Joash follows all of God's laws, and has Jewish priests advise him throughout his reign. His claim to fame is that he repaired the temple. I guess it had fallen into some shoddy times, what with all the other gods being worshipped, everyone busy waxing their Asherah poles and their Baal stones, they were too busy to clean up the temple of the one true God of
Let's see, next up is Hezekiah, who reigned in Judah a few generations later. Guess there's no account for rotten kids huh? During Hezekiah's reign the king of Assyria marches up to the gate of Jerusalem and starts talking some serious shit. The gist of which is basically, "Just give up, we're going to fuck your shit up and take you prisoner. Don't think that your god will save you, don't even think that. All these other nations we've captured, including - (Ooh don't want to go there yet), did they not have gods? Did their gods save them? No, we fucked them up, just like we will fuck you up and your puny little god too." So, Hezekiah, being a devout man does what all devout men of the Bible do in this situation: he tore his clothes and wept ... Oh, um is that going to accomplish anything? Apparently it does, the whole ripping of one's clothes and then changing into sack cloth really pleases God, since you're humbling yourself before him and all. Yeah, I know, okay, God's got some serious issues. More importantly though, Hezekiah prays, and his prayer I find quite poetic, here's an excerpt,
It is true, O Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by men’s hands. Now, O Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God. (19:17-19)
Okay, I know what you're thinking: Stop saying "Poetic" so much. Sorry, sorry, let's keep moving. Along with praying, Hezekiah and his men consult with the prophet Isaiah. Yeah I know, he just pops up out of nowhere, no introduction or anything. I figured he was an important dude, but the Bible's great at just throwing dudes in and being like, "Tada! He was here all along." So Isaiah prophesies that God has heard Judah's prayer and that the Assyrian king will be sent packing. And so that night, an angel bombs into the Assyrian camp and kills one hundred and eighty-five thousand men. Seriously, that's 185,000 in numbers just to drive that shit home. I love the way the Bible puts the next part, "When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! (19:35)" Like OMG, look at all these dead bodies. Yeah so they took that as I sign that they should get the fuck out of there. Sounds reasonable to me.
The last good king of Judah was Josiah, who reigned a few generations after Hezekiah. During his reign some archeologists found the Book of the Law in some rubble. So, the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy had been lost I guess? I don't know, anyway, the books are found and brought to Josiah. Josiah reads through them and realizes he's been doing all his shit wrong, and that everyone else has been doing all their shit wrong too. So he tears his clothes and cries and sets out to fix all that is wrong in Judah. So, turns out that Asherah poles and Baal stones and Molech altars and other such nonsense have been put in the temple of the Lord. First thing Josiah does is tear all that shit down. Then he goes out to all the high places to desecrate all the altars of the false gods.
I should probably explain the deal with the "high places." I guess these were mountains or tall hills or something where people built altars to all the other gods. And they would sacrifice stuff on them, including children in some cases, yikes. Well with every king the Bible would mention the high places, like "Such and such did evil in the eyes of the Lord and sacrificed beans on the high places," or "What's his name did right in the eyes of the Lord, the high places however were not removed." Yeah, until now bitches, the high places are about to be removed. How you ask? By desecration of course, I already told you that last paragraph (Stop asking stupid questions, damn). How does one desecrate an altar of a false god? Is it like they did with Baal's temple? Y'know, just pee on it, that'll do the trick. Yeah ... Umm ... No, it's a bit more disturbing than that. Let me just quote it so you know I'm not just making it up: "Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones (23:14)." Umm ... what? "Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it (23:16)." You ... Umm ... What? "Josiah slaughtered all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones on them (23:20)." Seriously man, what the fuck? You just dug up some graves to burn human bones on these altars to defile them? What the fuck? I'm just ... I don't even know what to say here. Isn't burning human bones to defile a false god's altar just as bad as what that false god was up to anyway (If not worse)? Couldn't you just pee on the damn things? Seems like a lot less trouble, just drink a lot of water before you head out there. Maybe I just like peeing on things, it sure as hell beats defiling graves to turn around and defile altars.
How's This For A Twist:
Those were pretty much the only good kings, though I wouldn't call what Josiah did "good" by any means. The rest "did evil in the eyes of the Lord," for generation after generation. Now, you don't think God would just let that shit slide do you? Of course not, but I bet you wouldn't guess what happens to Israel. Yeah, Assyria marches in and takes all of Israel over. Like this isn't just some little scrape like the ones they've had before, nope, the Assyrians take over all their shit, and they capture the remaining Israelites and march them back home to Assyria to live as slaves. That's right, the Assyrians just uprooted most of the promised land and took God's people prisoner. Exiled from the promised land, damn, serious shit folks. The Israelites went from slaves in Egypt to dessert nomads to rulers of the promised land right back to slaves again in a matter of about 700 years. Now okay, I don't think it actually says they're slaves, but I mean come on, shit's not good for them now for sure. They've just been uprooted and abducted by a foreign empire, Lord knows they're at the bottom of the class pole (Or the Asherah pole, yuck yuck yuck).What of Judah then? Well remember earlier how Hezekiah fought off the Assyrians with the power of God? That happened immediately after they took the Israelites home as their play things and resettled that portion of the promised land for themselves. So part of the Assyrian's threat was "Shyeah, you saw how well your God protected Israel didn't you? Come on and just surrender." But still, despite this, Judah was only postponing the inevitable. It wasn't long before they too had enough shit kings to yield the same fate. For Judah though, it was the Babylonians under king Nebuchadnezzar, that marched on them, seized their country, and took the people into captivity. So there you have it, after a few generations of kings, the promised land was taken by new empires for themselves and the people of God were taken captive and exiled. The end.
 |
| Well, that's a bummer. |
What kind of shitty twist ending is that? I can't just leave this entry on such a downer can I? Well yes, but there is a ray of hope, just a little hiding in these pages. Just to show that he doesn't like these new folks who just settled in the promised land, God attacks them with lions. Damn straight, take that Assyrians. Then, 2 Kings basically ends with a story about some of the exiles from Judah rising up and killing the appointed Babylonian governor of their ghetto. A small sign of hope that the people of God will not just roll over, that there's fight in these kids, and the day they get their shit together they'll shake off their new masters and roll right back into the promised land and reclaim it as theirs again. Someday ... well we can dream can't we? Until next time my sexy readers.
No comments:
Post a Comment