If you are like many others, some years (most?) you skim or skip Chronicles.  So dry.  What are they good for, really?

Well one use is they lend authenticity to the whole Bible.  All peoples, ancient and modern, keep records, especially records of major events and of their rulers.  It would cast doubt on the whole record if it didn’t include, well, records.  So is that all?  We just get a bit of credibility? 

We shouldn’t underestimate the value in the credibility.  After all, miracles are part of the record—favorite targets of skeptics.  So increasing credibility helps to blunt the criticisms.  But I think there’s more.  Here’s a very brief review:

• David started out great, failed badly, recovered and ended great—becoming the standard by which all successors were measured.

• Solomon started out great and later went very, very bad.

• Rehoboam started out young and foolish, got better, then later abandoned God.

• Abijah had a short reign but seemed to start and end faithful.

• Asa was quite good at the start, but later turned bad.

• Jehoshaphat was quite good for the most part, but made a marriage alliance and partnered inappropriately with uber-evil Ahab of the northern kingdom.

• Jehoram was utterly awful, start to finish.

• Ahaziah carried right on in Jehoram’s footsteps.

• [Athaliah (daughter of Ahab, wife of Jehoram, mother of Ahaziah) seized the throne after murdering the whole royal family except the infant Joash.]

• Joash began his reign as a child, and being mentored by Jehoiada the priest, he was very good for quite a while, but went bad at the end.

• Amaziah did right, but not with a whole heart. Then he went very bad.

• Uzziah began very well, failed due to pride, recovered and seems to have ended OK.

• Jotham started and ended well.

• Ahaz started and ended awful.

• Hezekiah was outstanding, measuring up to David. There might have been a spot of weakness due to pride, but David had had weaknesses too.

• Manasseh was evil at the start, and went on to become the very definition of evil. Yet at the end he repented and tried to undo some of the evil.

• Amon had a short reign, evil from start to finish.

• Josiah started very well, got even better, but lost his life due to a lapse – which however didn’t alter the overall assessment that he was good.

• Jehoahaz had an extremely short reign, with no chance to show his spiritual state.

• Jehoiakim was evil start to finish.

• Jehoiachin did evil in his extremely short reign, but may have improved later as a captive in Babylon.

• Zedekiah was weak and vacillating, was given a number of chances but never did the right thing.

So did you read that review or skip it?  Thought so.  Go ahead and scroll back up and read it.  Really, it will only take a minute.

The question is, what use to us are the short records of these guys?  Some VERY short, just a few verses.  Others get bigger chunks, some of them several chapters.  But as national chronicles go, even the longest ones are very abbreviated.

I of course don’t know all of what’s in the mind of the Almighty to preserve these records.  But it strikes me that there is usefulness even in a quick review.  Are they all the same?  Far from it!  Some are similar but each has his own individuality.  You see, these were all real people.  They all had choices to make.  They all faced crises, but they reacted differently from one another.  In the end, their choices could not help but reveal their character.  Isn’t there some real value in having these people as examples, as prototypes of how human beings might act?  Aren’t we all making choices every day?

I believe we’re supposed to actually read the records of these rulers.  In the moment, they might or might not have cared or even considered what God thought of their choices, or what the consequences might be.  God would like us to give thought!  None of us is the ruler of a country, so the specifics of the choices won’t be the same.  But the underlying issues are universal:  we are all faced with crisis, faced with the temptations of abundance, faced with moral choices.  How do we think of ourselves?  Surely we know that we might think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.  The brief records we have of these individuals gives us a variety pack of how people can respond, when facing the choices they did.

Part of the intent in keeping the records short, it seems to me, is that to really get a handle on the story we have to use our imagination.  What was it like to be in that situation?  We can intentionally put ourselves in the scene.  Honestly, how would I act?  Even if I’m not an Ahaz, could I turn out to be an Asa?  Might someone I know turn out to be a Manasseh, really evil for almost all his life, but in the end amazingly finding a way to repent and embrace the one true God?  How does it work out when people are full of pride?  When people celebrate their wealth?  When they decide YHWH is maybe not the only god around?

When we read these records, the intent is that we will think about them!  What pressures were on these people, what feelings were in their hearts?  And what might I learn from the ways the different people responded?  Especially, we might want to pay attention to the examples of people who began well and went bad.  There are several of them, which says to me that this is real problem area, something to be alert to and do something about if we detect it in ourselves.

The Chronicles aren’t there to be dry history.  They are there to provoke serious questions about our faith and our follow-through in how we live.  In their stories we get to see the consequences, the outworking.  We can’t see those things in the moment, when we’re facing choices.  That’s why we have the examples.  And here’s the thing – we have to have absorbed them ahead of time, so that in the moment we can realize we don’t want to end up an Amaziah.  Maybe we can be a Jotham.  Or at the very least an Uzziah, living with consequences but spiritually recovered.

Love, Paul

If you have any feedback, please contact me at: paul.zilmer@gmail.com