Chronicles opens with nine chapters of family trees. Adam, Seth, Enosh, and on and on, all the way down to the families who came home from Babylon and settled back in their towns. I’ll spare you. The story starts on Mount Gilboa.
The books of Chronicles
@booksofchronicles · 67 posts
The story again, for the ones who came home.
Nobody knows for sure who wrote 1 and 2 Chronicles. Jewish tradition says Ezra the scribe; many think it was someone in his circle, writing after the exile, when the people were back from Babylon and rebuilding. It retells Samuel and Kings from Saul’s death to the day Cyrus let them go home, with its eyes on David’s line, the temple and the people who sang there. The question every reign: did the king seek the LORD or not?
Jerusalem, after the return from BabylonFirst seen 1 Chronicles 1:1
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Replying to @booksofchronicles
One name in all those lists gets two verses of its own. Jabez. His mother called him that because she had him in pain. He prayed: bless me, give me more land, keep your hand on me and keep me from harm, so I’m free of pain. And God gave him what he asked for.
Replying to @booksofchronicles
One more from the lists. Ephraim’s family, son after son after son, and then a daughter: Sheerah. She built Lower and Upper Beth-horon, and a third town, Uzzen-sheerah. It has her name in it.
The day Saul died, told again. And here’s why it happened: he was unfaithful to the LORD. He didn’t do what the LORD said, he went to a medium for guidance, and he never once asked the LORD. So the LORD put him to death and handed the kingdom to David son of Jesse.
The books of Samuel@booksofsamuel · Mount GilboaMount Gilboa. The Philistines kill Jonathan and his brothers. Saul is badly wounded by archers. His armour-bearer is too afraid to kill him, so Saul falls on his own sword. Saul and his three sons die together that day.Day after day more men came to David, until he had a huge army, like the army of God.
Replying to @theisraelites
Every tribe sent fighting men, all of one mind: make David king over all Israel. Issachar sent men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.
All Israel went up to Kiriath-jearim to fetch the ark, celebrating before God with everything they had: songs, harps, lyres, tambourines, cymbals, trumpets. Then they reached the threshing floor of Chidon, and this happened.
The books of Samuel@booksofsamuelThey bring the ark up on a new cart. The oxen stumble, Uzzah reaches out and takes hold of the ark, and God strikes him down there beside it.David was in a robe of fine linen that day, with a linen ephod, the priests’ kind of vest, dressed the same as the Levites carrying the ark and all the singers. All Israel brought it up shouting, with rams’ horns, trumpets, cymbals, harps and lyres.
David@david · JerusalemDanced before the LORD today with everything I’ve got.All that bronze David took from Hadadezer’s towns in his wars? Years later Solomon made the bronze Sea, the pillars and the temple’s bronze things out of it.
Satan stood up against Israel and pushed David into counting the people. All of them, from Beersheba to Dan.
Joab@joabThe king wants every fighting man in Israel counted. Asked him why he’d want that. He insisted. So we’re counting.Replying to @araunah
Chronicles calls him Ornan the Jebusite; 2 Samuel calls him Araunah. Same man, same threshing floor, right where the angel was standing.
He builds an altar there and prays to the LORD. The LORD answers with fire from heaven on the altar. Then the LORD speaks to the angel, and the angel puts his sword back in its sheath.
David is old now, and he’s had a long, full life. He makes Solomon king and gets the Levites organised. Of the 38,000 counted, 4,000 are to praise the LORD on instruments David made for it.
David calls every leader in Israel to Jerusalem: the tribal leaders, the commanders, the officials, his best fighters. The king gets to his feet.
Then he hands Solomon the plans. The porch, the buildings, the storerooms, the inner rooms, the room for the ark’s gold lid. The weight of gold for every lampstand and table, the gold cherubim spreading their wings over the ark. The LORD guided him, he says, and made it all clear to him in writing.
Next day: a thousand bulls, a thousand rams, a thousand lambs, and a feast in the LORD’s presence, everyone eating and drinking and so happy. Solomon is made king a second time, and sits on the LORD’s throne in his father’s place. All David’s sons promise him their loyalty.
David son of Jesse. King over all Israel for forty years: seven in Hebron, thirty-three in Jerusalem. He died at a good old age, after a long life, with wealth and honour.
Replying to @booksofchronicles
The rest of his story, start to finish, is in the records of Samuel the seer, Nathan the prophet and Gad the seer.
David’s son Solomon is firmly on the throne, and the LORD his God is with him. First thing he does: takes every leader in Israel up to Gibeon. That’s where Moses’ old tent from the desert still stands, with the bronze altar Bezalel made. A thousand burnt offerings on it.
Building starts in Solomon’s fourth year, in Jerusalem, on Mount Moriah. On the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite that David got ready, where the LORD appeared to his father.
David@davidThis is it. The house of the LORD God goes here. And the altar for Israel.What’s in it, briefly: 1. Gold on everything. Beams, walls, doors, even the nails. 2. Two gold cherubim in the Most Holy Place, wings stretched from wall to wall. 3. A curtain of blue, purple and crimson with cherubim woven in. 4. Two bronze pillars out front. Solomon named them Jachin and Boaz. 5. The Sea: a huge round bronze tank standing on twelve bronze oxen.
Solomon has had a bronze platform built in the middle of the courtyard, about two and a half metres square and nearly a metre and a half high. He climbs up, kneels in front of everyone, and spreads his hands towards heaven.
Replying to @theisraelites
The priests can’t even go in.
Solomon reigns forty years in Jerusalem over all Israel. He’s buried in the city of his father David, and his son Rehoboam takes the throne.
Rehoboam answers the tribes harshly at Shechem, and the north walks away from David’s family. From here on this book follows Judah: David’s line in Jerusalem, and the temple.
The Israelites@theisraelitesWhat do we owe David? What’s Jesse’s son to us? Everyone home, Israel! David, look after your own family!Once Rehoboam feels secure, he and all Israel with him abandon the Law of the LORD. Year five: Shishak king of Egypt comes up with 1,200 chariots and 60,000 horsemen, takes Judah’s fortified towns and reaches Jerusalem.
Replying to @shemaiah
The king and the leaders humble themselves. The LORD is right, they say.
Replying to @judahs.army
Judah won that day because they relied on the LORD, the God of their ancestors.
Abijah’s son Asa is king now, and the land has ten years of peace. He clears out the foreign altars and the hill shrines, and tells Judah to look to the LORD.
Replying to @king.asa
The LORD defeated the Cushites in front of Asa and Judah, and they ran.
Year thirty-six. Baasha, king of Israel, fortifies Ramah on the border to cut Judah off. So Asa takes silver and gold out of the house of the LORD and the palace, and pays Ben-hadad of Aram in Damascus to break his treaty with Baasha. It works.
Replying to @hanani.seer
Asa is furious with the seer and puts him in prison. Around the same time he starts treating some of the people harshly.
Replying to @news.en.gedi
Jehoshaphat is scared, and he turns to the LORD. He calls a fast across Judah, and people come from every town to ask the LORD for help.
Day four, everyone gathers in a valley to praise the LORD. It’s been called the Valley of Beracah, Blessing Valley, ever since. Then back to Jerusalem with Jehoshaphat at the front, into the house of the LORD with harps, lyres and trumpets.
Jehoshaphat’s son Jehoram is king. He’s married a daughter of Ahab, and he does what the LORD calls evil. Even so, the LORD won’t destroy David’s family, because of his promise to David: a lamp for him and his descendants for ever.
Replying to @elijah.tishbite
After two years of illness he died in terrible pain. His people didn’t light a fire in his honour, the way they had for the kings before him. Nobody was sorry he was gone. They buried him in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.
His son Ahaziah reigns one year and is killed. Ahaziah’s mother Athaliah, from Ahab’s family, seizes the throne and sets out to wipe out David’s royal line.
Year seven of Athaliah. Jehoiada the priest has brought the Levites and the family heads of Judah to Jerusalem, and in the house of God the whole assembly makes a solemn agreement with the king. Which king? He brings out a boy.
Jehoiada makes a binding agreement between himself, the king and the people: they’ll be the LORD’s people. They pull down the temple of Baal. The whole land celebrates, and the city is quiet.
Jehoiada dies at 130, after a long, full life. They bury him with the kings in the City of David, because of the good he did in Israel, for God and for his house.
Replying to @booksofchronicles
Once he’s gone, Judah’s officials come and bow to the king, and he listens to them. They abandon the house of the LORD for Asherah poles and idols. God’s anger comes on Judah and Jerusalem for it.
The Spirit of God comes on Zechariah, Jehoiada’s son, and he stands up in front of the people: why are you breaking the LORD’s commands? You’ve left the LORD, so he’s left you. They plot against him, and on the king’s order they stone him in the courtyard of the house of the LORD. The son of the man who saved Joash’s life. As he’s dying, Zechariah says: may the LORD see this and call you to account.
Replying to @king.jehoash
Amaziah won’t listen. It was from God, because they’d gone after the gods of Edom. Judah is routed at Beth-shemesh, Amaziah is captured, and Jehoash breaks down a long stretch of Jerusalem’s wall.
Uzziah is sixteen when the people of Judah make him king, and he reigns fifty-two years. As long as he seeks the LORD, God gives him success.
Then, once he’s strong, pride. He walks into the LORD’s temple to burn incense on the incense altar himself.
Replying to @azariah.priest
Leprous till the day he died, living in a house on his own, cut off from the house of the LORD. His son Jotham ran the palace. When Uzziah died, people said: he was a leper. They buried him near his ancestors, in a burial field that belonged to the kings.
Ahaz, Uzziah’s grandson, is twenty when he becomes king. Unlike his ancestor David, he doesn’t do what’s right. He makes metal idols of the Baals and burns offerings on every hilltop and under every green tree. So the LORD hands him over to the king of Aram, and to the king of Israel, and both beat him badly.
Replying to @king.ahaz
They were his downfall, and all Israel’s. Ahaz cuts up the things from the house of God, shuts the doors of the house of the LORD, and puts up altars on every street corner in Jerusalem.
When the burnt offering begins, so does the song of the LORD: trumpets, David’s instruments, the singers, the whole crowd bowing in worship until it’s done. Then the Levites sing praise in the words of David and of Asaph the seer.
Asaph@asaphThe king has given us a song of thanks to the LORD. First one he’s handed to me and my brothers to sing. We’re staying here in front of the ark to lead the praise every day.Replying to @pilgrim.ephraim
Hezekiah prayed for them: may the LORD, who is good, forgive everyone who sets their heart on seeking God, even if they’re not clean by the sanctuary’s rules. The LORD heard Hezekiah and healed the people.
Huge joy in Jerusalem. Nothing like it since the days of Solomon son of David.
The Israelites@theisraelitesHe finished praying, and fire came down from the sky and burned up the offerings. The glory of the LORD filled the house. Every one of us went down on the pavement, faces to the ground. He is good. His love lasts for ever.After all this faithfulness, Sennacherib king of Assyria invades Judah and besieges the fortified towns, meaning to take them. He’s coming for Jerusalem.
Replying to @sennacherib
His men shout it up at the people on the wall in Hebrew, to scare them, and he writes letters mocking the LORD. Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz cry out to heaven. The LORD sends an angel who cuts down the fighting men, leaders and commanders in the Assyrian camp, and Sennacherib goes home in disgrace.
It was Hezekiah who blocked the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and channelled the water down to the west side of the City of David.
Hezekiah’s son Manasseh is twelve when he becomes king, and he reigns fifty-five years. He rebuilds the hilltop shrines his father tore down, puts up altars to the Baals, worships the stars and builds altars to them in both courts of the house of the LORD, and sets up a carved idol in the house of God itself. He leads Judah into worse than the nations the LORD drove out.
Replying to @booksofchronicles
The LORD spoke to Manasseh and his people. They wouldn’t listen.
Replying to @king.manasseh
He throws the foreign gods and the idol out of the LORD’s house and dumps the altars outside the city. He restores the LORD’s altar, sacrifices thank offerings on it, and tells Judah to serve the LORD, the God of Israel.
Manasseh’s son Amon lasts two years. Then Josiah is king, at eight. At sixteen, still young, he starts looking for the God of his ancestor David. At twenty he begins clearing Judah and Jerusalem of the hilltop shrines, the Asherah poles and the idols.
Josiah gathers everyone at the house of the LORD, from the most important to the least, and reads them the whole book. Then he stands by the pillar and promises before the LORD to follow him with all his heart and soul. As long as he lives, they don’t turn away.
Then Josiah’s Passover. No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet. None of the kings ever kept one like it.
The books of Chronicles@booksofchroniclesHuge joy in Jerusalem. Nothing like it since the days of Solomon son of David.Replying to @pharaoh.neco
Josiah won’t turn back. He disguises himself and goes to fight on the plain of Megiddo. He doesn’t listen to what God had said through Neco.
Replying to @jeremiah
All Judah and Jerusalem mourned him. The singers, men and women, still sing laments for Josiah to this day.
After Josiah, four kings in about twenty-two years: 1. Jehoahaz. Three months, then Pharaoh Neco takes him off to Egypt. 2. Jehoiakim. Eleven years. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon puts him in bronze shackles to take him to Babylon. 3. Jehoiachin. Three months and ten days, then taken to Babylon. 4. Zedekiah. Eleven years. Won’t humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, and breaks his oath to Nebuchadnezzar.
Again and again the LORD sent his messengers to his people, because he cared about them and about his house. They mocked the messengers, sneered at his words and laughed at his prophets. Until nothing could be done.
What Solomon was warned about. The Babylonians carry off everything from the house of God to Babylon, large and small. They set fire to the house of God, break down Jerusalem’s wall and burn the palaces.
Solomon@solomonHe also said: if you turn away and serve other gods, I’ll uproot Israel and throw this house out of my sight. It’ll be a ruin, and people walking past will ask why the LORD did this. And the answer will be: they left the LORD.Replying to @exile.babylon
Seventy years. The land finally got its Sabbath rests, all the rest years it had missed, just as the LORD said through Jeremiah.
Replying to @cyrus.persia
First year of Cyrus. The LORD moved him to do it, and what the LORD said through Jeremiah came true.