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Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. Welcome to day 176. We are in Second Kings. We're going to be looking at two kings, chapters 15 through 17. So we got three chapters of the Bible today. Chapter 15, chapter 16, chapter 17. Reading this content can feel like a whirlwind. Lots of names, lots of places, lots of dates, lots of geography. But my goal is to help simplify it and make it palatable as possible. If you've done the reading for the day, then shout out to you, let's go. Know everything that I'm going to say is going to make tons of sense because you have context. If you haven't done the reading, then you want to make sure that you actually get the Bible reading plan and get the reading. It's day 176. Let's dive in. All right, so just to get you oriented, right, for these three chapters for today, we needed to read two kings, chapters 15, 16, 17, and just these three, three chapters alone. There are nine. Nine kings mentioned, okay? Just in these three chapters alone. So I kind of want to help you out and obviously give you context clues, okay? This is the whole point of this first section is to give you context clues so that you just feel oriented so that you get situated now of those nine kings, chapter 15 by itself, okay? So just the first chapter in Today's reading, chapter 15 alone, there are seven kings discussed, okay? Those seven kings, okay, all found in second kings, chapter 15 is going to be Azariah, whose other name is Uzziah. Okay? So this is the time that Isaiah is going to be prophesying, right? If you remember Isaiah, chapter six, in the year that Uzziah died, I saw the king high and lifted up. So we're getting into Elisha has died. So Elijah and Elisha are going to start like this Ministry of the Prophets. And now that Elisha has died, we're now going to see prophets like Amos, Jonah, Isaiah. They're going to get named, okay? And so all the way at the end of the book, you're going to get people like Jeremiah, but now the prophets are going to really start to, like, fit in to these slots that we have that this timeline that the Book of Kings is creating for us. Okay, so in chapter 15 alone, just chapter 15, seven kings are going to be discussed. That's going to be Azariah, AKA Uzziah in Judah, Zechariah in Israel, Shallum in Israel, Menahem in Israel, Pekahiah in Israel, Pekah in Israel, Jotham in Judah. Now I want you to see right there, just what do you notice? You notice two Kings of Judah and five Kings of Israel, which means that there's more stability in Judah than there is in Israel. I also want you to get out of maybe your Western democratic there's a different president every four years mentality. And know that in the ancient world, a King Reigning for 40, 50, 60 years doesn't have the negative connotations that it has for us today. Today we would look at that as like a dictator, but for them it means political stability. When there are new leaders in place, that's times of upheaval for us. The peaceful transfer of power, four years, every four years actually signifies something for us that people in the ancient world would be bewildered by. Okay, so we can't bring our cultural context into this equation. We have to adopt the cultural context of the people that we're actually reading about. Okay, so stability in the south, instability in the north. Here's some more just, you know, context clues in the north. Okay? The reason that there's all this upheaval is cause these guys keep assassinating each other, okay, Violently killing each other. Okay, so that would be Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem and Pekahia. There's one verse that says, yeah, and one of these guys reigned for six months, you know, and it's just their reign comes to a violent end. Now what you may not realize is that the reason that they are killing each other and assassinating each other is actually because of one political issue. Are we pro Assyria or anti Assyria? Pro Assyria and anti Assyria. So what begins to happen is that an anti Assyrian leader is going to assassinate a pro Assyrian king and then they're going to try to flip the country to be anti Assyrian Assyria. Okay, first of all, Assyria is coming. And Assyria is going to deport and exile the northern king of Israel. But Assyria is one of the first like empires. Okay, Egypt was always a strong country, but it wasn't an empire. Assyria is going to build the first world empire. And there's a lot of leaders that are going to say we can't beat them, we should join them, we should just become a part of the Assyrian Empire and call it a day. And then there are going to be leaders that are going to say, no, we need to stay true to what God has said. Okay, so although anti Assyrian leaders don't mean that people are religiously, you know, aligned with Yahweh, it just means that politically they're anti Assyria or pro assyria.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
Chapter 16 is going to be all about King Ahaz or Ahaz in Judah. And then chapter 17 is going to be all about King Hoshea of Israel.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
So chapter 15, we're going to get seven kings. I mean, the, the scenes are moving really, really fast. And then we get to chapter 16 and it's really going to focus on King Ahaz or Ahaz. And you can just remember, like Ahab and Ahaz, some of the worst kings that have existed in Israel. And so Ahab Ahaz is going to be terrible. And then chapter 17, you're going to get King Hoshea of Israel, who's going to be the last and final king. Because by the time we get to chapter 17, we're out of there. Okay? The Assyrians are going to come and they're going to completely deport the people of God. So let's kind of go through some nerdy nuggets. Now that we got context, let's get some nerdy nuggets.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
Actually, yeah, I've got some nerdy nuggets from chapter 15, or maybe this is even context clues. The big character that's, I mean, a big deal outside of the Bible, but is going to get mentioned two times in this section is a man by the name of Tiglath Pileser iii.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
Tiglath Pileser iii. Big, big, big, big deal. It would be like saying Alexander the Great or Nebuchadnezzar or Julius Caesar or Augustus Caesar. Augustus, okay? These are people who are huge deals outside of the Bible. And actually there was an archeological find a couple years ago, and there was a stel. The word stele is S T E L E. And it actually has King Ahaz in the stele paying tribute or bowing down to Tiglath Pileser iii. And so I need you to know this. There's never been an archeological dig or find that disproves anything in the Bible.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
And the Middle east is full of archeological stuff that we haven't dug up yet, we haven't discovered. But there's never been any archeological find that's disproved the stuff that we have, the Bible. So the Bible is really, really reliable. And I know you know that. But you may need some ammo for why you think that, especially as you dialogue with people who don't find the Bible reliable or, or. Or who are not Christian. Okay? Manahem is going to pay heavy tribute, exacting the silver from the wealthier Israelites.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
This marked the increasing threat of Assyria over Israel, which would eventually lead to Israel's fall. And then in chapter 15, we're gonna get the deportation of Israelites by Tiglath. Pileser marks the beginning of the Assyrian exile, which would culminate in the fall of Samaria. This passage foreshadows the eventual destruction of the northern kingdom due to its persistent idolatry and disobedience. So two chapters before the official exile of Israel, there's already deportation that's taking place. And what nations like Assyria and Babylon would do is they would just go get the wealthy people and deport them. They would get people who are valuable, people who could actually get jobs in the Assyrian empire or in Nineveh. Nineveh is the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Babylon is the capital of the Babylonian empire. All right, so those are a lot of the nerdy nuggets that I have. This may be a little too nerdy, but I'm going to go. I'm going to do this anyway, and then we'll kind of get into the. The actual fall of Israel.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
The, the exile, by the way, the exile is a massive, massive, massive deal. A lot of scholars will say this. It took the exodus to get Israel out of Egypt. It's going to take the exile to get Egypt out of Israel.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
So the thing that they learn while they're in Egypt is idol worship, okay? And they do not ever learn how to not practice idolatry on. Until they get exiled. They get. Obviously, the northern tribes are going to get exiled by Assyria in 722 B.C. and then the southern tribe of Judah is going to get exiled by Babylon in 586 B.C. and once they get exiled, exile is terrible. I mean, I could talk about it now. This is a nerdy nugget.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
So for most people in the ancient world, they've never traveled more than 10 miles from their home. Never. Let's just think about that. For most people in the ancient world, you've never gone 10, maybe 50 miles max from your home, from your hometown, from your village, from your country, from your nation. What happened in exile is that Tiglath Pileser is gonna. Yeah, Tiglath Pileser is gonna come in. He is going to. I mean, he's going to put a hook in people's mouth. He's going to take them off as slaves, and he's going to scatter them across the Assyrian empire. So this would be like taking a snow globe and shaking it up, but for human beings. People have not left 10 to 50 miles. There's no airplanes, there are no buses, there's no cars, there's no vehicles.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
Everywhere that you're going, you're going on foot. So most people have not gone 10 to 15 miles from their house. Tiglath Pileser, his form of exiling people, let's say he collected 100,000 Israelites. He would drop 10,000 Israelites off a hundred miles away, then he would go another 50 miles, drop another hundred thousand Israelites off, then another ten thousand miles, drop another hundred thousand Israelites. So you could be. You could get deported or exiled 300 to 400 miles away from Israel. Even if you ever got free, you don't know how to get back home. Okay, it's a wrap. And he's done this with 50 other groups. So now the city that you're deported to, there's Hittites there, there's Egyptians there, there's Arameans there. There's all types of people. And what the Assyrian Empire does is for the first time in human history, they've created a melting pot of cultures. The first time in history, this is the first time since Babel, that people are speaking different languages to each other.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
Is this is the carnage of the Assyrian Empire. So not only do the people of Israel get deported all over the Assyrian Empire, they just get scattered, but people from all these other conquered groups get scattered into Israel. Okay? And this is going to create what we are going to know of as the Samaritans. So the capital of Israel all the way since the kingdom split is Samaria. And the Assyrians are just going to take that city, Samaria, and call the whole region Samaria. And Samaritans are people, Jewish people that are left behind. But now they're neighbors with people of all different ethnicities, all different religions, all different languages, and they have to intermarry with them. There's no option. These are the only people around. And what happens when you start to intermarry is that you're no longer a pure, bodily blood Jewish person. And because you're not pure blood, you're going to get called a Samaritan. This is going to be a massive deal in the New Testament.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
So when, when people talk about Samaritans, you Can go right back to 2 Kings, chapter 17. So Tiglath Pileser, a big, big deal. There's a couple things that Tiglath Pileser is going to do. He's going to monopolize iron as opposed to bronze. Bronze breaks really easily. Can't really shields, swords and stuff like that. Can't really make that stuff out of bronze, but you can make weapons out of iron. And so Tiglath Palis is going to make weapons out of iron. There is no iron in Mesopotamia. The Assyrian empire is really in Mesopotamia. So he's actually going to move north to take control of all the iron so that he can create weapons. The other thing that he's going to do, he's going to be one of the first people in history to say, let's have an actual army. Prior to this, armies are really farmers who are just like, we want to defend our crops. And so Sargon the First is actually going to be one of the first people who builds the Akkadian Empire. Tiglaf Pileser loves Sargon. And he's gonna say, hey, like, I wanna do the same thing Sargon did. Instead of having farmers defend themselves, I wanna build an actual standing army. How do you convince people to not farm but to, like, dedicate their life to learning how to fight? Well, you tell them that we're gonna go pillage people, and you get to take plunder, you get to rape as many women as you want, and you get to take as much plunder as you want. You'll make more money fighting for me than you would as a farmer. And we're gonna build walls around the cities that we're from so the farmers are all protected so that we can all eat.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay.
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Dr. Manny Arango
This is a revolutionary idea in history. And Tiglath Palisa is kind of like the guy to do it. And why take over other people? To tax them and to get food from their farms and to collect humans for your army from their population. The third thing that Tiglath Palis is gonna do is actually gonna create these siege ramps. He's the first person. Sieging a city is dangerous stuff. I mean, people that live inside the city would often boil their feces and dump it over the wall. They would light the people on fire who are trying to siege their city. Sieging people is very, very dangerous until Tiglath Palisa learns a way to create these leather siege ramps that can't be burned. Anyway, so tech, he's gonna create technology that's gonna actually make it possible to siege a city. And that's exactly what's gonna happen to Samaria. And that's eventually what's gonna happen to Jerusalem, is these cities are gonna get sieged. Next, he's gonna train advanced archers, and he's gonna use scare test tactics.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
The Assyrian Empire is brutal. I mean, they are going to torture people publicly. They're going to skin people and then use the skin on their shields. They are gonna. They're essentially gonna. They're gonna behead people and then wear the skulls. And, like, they are essentially going to communicate, you don't want to mess with us.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay?
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Dr. Manny Arango
They're going to use Tiglath Piles is one of the first people that's really, really, really going to use, like, fear tactics and scare tactics to get people to bend to his will. And then the deportation is. Is the first of its kind. It's so brutal that when the Babylonians take over, the Assyrians, the Babylonians are like, we're not going to do it this way. We'll deport the wealthy people to Babylon. We'll leave everybody else intact. And. And then when the Persians take over, they are just like, send everybody home and let people live wherever they want to live. But the Assyrian route was, we don't want you to love us. We don't need you to like us. We need you to be scared of us. And we will divide and conquer. The Babylonian route was more separate, educate, and then send back.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay? So.
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Dr. Manny Arango
And this is what's going to happen with Meshach, Shadrach, Abednego and Daniel. They're gonna get sent. They're wealthy, so they're gonna get sent off to Babylon to get brainwashed with the Babylonian system. And then the hope would be to be sent back because Babylonians would offend the people in Judah or in Israel. And the Babylonians don't actually want uprisings. They figured if we can get kids when they're 10, 11, 12 years old, bring them to Babylon, brainwash them, make them loyal to Babylon, then send them back. They'll be the best rulers over their own people, but they'll be loyal to Babylon. Assyria didn't do that. Assyria just said, if you mess with us, we will skin you alive. We will burn your body. We will publicly torture you. We're going to scare you into submission. So just differences between Babylonians and Assyrians. First melting pot in human history. The Assyrian Empire is going to last from 745 B.C. to 612 B.C. this is important because there are some huge things that are going to happen in around 612 B.C. with the southern kingdom of Judah being attacked, the first wave of deportation is going to hit the southern kingdom of Judah a couple chapters from now. So let's get into chapter 17.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
Okay.
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Dr. Manny Arango
Tiglath pileser is actually going this world. One of the most famous leaders, dictators, emperors in history is gonna come knocking on Samaria's door. It ain't gonna be pretty.
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Dr. Manny Arango
King Hoshea is the last king of Israel. He rebels against Assyria by seeking an alliance with Egypt. His refusal to pay tribute to Assyria prompted Shalamanza IV to lay siege to Samaria. The siege and fall of Samaria is outlined in 2 Kings 17. Samaria fell after a three year siege by Assyria and its people were exiled to various regions of the Assyrian Empire. This exile marked the end of the northern kingdom of Israel and the beginning of the so called lost tribes of Israel. So all those 10 tribes, because they're going to get intermixed with all bunch of, they're just going to get put in a blender with all bunch of other people. They are going to be considered the lost tribes of Israel. Israel. After the fall of Israel, the Assyrians resettled the land with people from various nations, creating a mixed population. These people brought their own gods in practice, leading to a synchronistic form of worship that combined Yahweh worship with pagan worship. You can actually see in 2 Kings 17, God is going to send lions to just eat people who are doing this. And then the emperor has to go find some Jewish priests to go back to teach these foreigners how to actually worship the God of that land.
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Co-host or Guest Speaker
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Dr. Manny Arango
He doesn't even acknowledge that he's the God of the universe. He's just the God of that land. I need you to know this, that Assyria's conquest of Israel was not just a geopolitical event, but also an instrument of divine judgment. This is God. This is God's judgment on his people for being idolatrous. God used Assyria to fulfill his warnings of exile for the people's continued disobedience, demonstrating his sovereignty over the nations. The big thing that I wanna focus on, we can go to 2 Kings chapter 17 and there's a verse here, 2 Kings chapter 17 is actually like the heart of the book. I don't know if you remember back in when we started 1 Kings and we started 2 Kings, I told you that these books are being written during exile. So they're written as Israel is out of the land mourning the fact that they have been taken away from their land. And the number one thing that they're asking is, why did this happen? Why did this happen? Even though they know they've been disobedient, the author is now going to make a case for why this is not Yahweh's fault, but this is the people of Israel's fault. So chapter 17, starting in verse 7, going all the way to verse 23, is the key passage to the whole book. It's going to outline exactly why God is letting this happen. And if there's a section that you want to emphasize and you want to read again, it should be chapter 17, verses 7 to 23. And right in chapter 15. Sorry, verse 15. Chapter 17, verse 15. It says these words since our timeless truth for the day. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. I need that to sink in. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. This is chapter 17 of 2 Kings, verse 15. What happens? Is that your value, this Artemis truth? It was true then, it's true today. Your value can never exceed that which you worship, okay? When you worship a football team, your value will never exceed that football team. If you worship money, your value will never exceed money. Whatever you worship, that is what your value will be. Which is why we worship the one in whose image we've been made. We worship the God of the universe. Because the only way for me to unlock my worth and my value as a person is based on the image of the one I reflect. When I decide the words in Hebrew for image and idol are actually the same word. So when I decide I don't want to be an image bearer, I don't want to be an image of God. I want to rely on these things made in the images of gods to do my job for me. I essentially say, I don't want to be the statue. I want to create a statue. This is the foundation of why we're made in the image of God. You and I are made in the image of God because Nebuchadnezzar would make something in his image, okay? As. As the thing that signifies his power. And in the same way God made you and I in his image, you and I are images. And when we say instead of imaging God, we want to go find things that image other gods, we essentially abdicate our responsibilities and we become worthless. So the consequence of following worthless idols is that you lose your worth, you lose your value. Now, is that permanent? No. There's always restoration. There's always an ability to get your worth back and get your value back. But to think that the thing that makes me valuable, can never be hurt. It can never be harmed. Is not wise. That is not a wise way to live life. It is not wise to think, no, I just have intrinsic value and I'm always valuable. No, there is a way to decrease your worth and it is by worshiping that which is worthless. Because you can never exceed the value of whatever it is that you worship. And this is one of the most heartbreaking verses in the entire Bible. 2 Kings 17:15. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless beyond redemption. Absolutely not. But right now, worthless. Absolutely. And that is sobering and that is heartbreaking. And that is our Thomas truth for the Day family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books a Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy. Ted Day. All right, back to the episode. Hey, I want to see you right here for day 177. Tomorrow we are going to dive into two kings, chapter 18 and we're going to read all the way up to 21. I'll have context clues and nerdy nuggets and timeless truths for you. Love you guys. So proud of you. I'll see you right here for day 177. Can't wait to see you tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.