Bible in a Year: The Royal Kingdom
This section of the bible readings is all about how Kings were put into place to rule the lands and create more order. In this post I will give a synopsis of the following books:
Samuel
Chronicles
Kings
Mark
Ecclesiastes
Hosea
Amos
Jonah
Micah
Samuel
The theme of samuel is the change from theocracy (God ruling) to a kingdom.
King Saul
The first of the three kings to come into power was King Saul. He was a tall and handsome man but his downfall throughout his reign was the sin of vanity. He had an Inordinate preoccupation of what other people think and more importantly He didn’t follow God’s instruction. He lacked the action of obedience of the Lord.
A recognizable story was the one of David and Goliath. David was a sheep herder but he was called to battle against a huge massive man named Goliath that most everyone else was afraid to. AS a small sheep herder with no military experience, DAvid still ran into the battle line to defend the Lords name. He killed Goliath with his slingshot and stones which sank into Goliath’s forehead. People then rallied around David moreso than the King which dismayed King Saul and gave him reason to hate David and want him killed. Saul’s Achilles heel is he thinks too much about what others think about him. So when David was then beloved by all, Saul was jealous and wanted him dead. He schemed ways to kill him and hunted David for YEARS! Saul’s son Jonathan was a virtuous friend to David and kept him alive.
“Out of the wicked comes wickedness’; but my hand shall not be against you” 1 SAMUEL 24:13
David has multiple chances to kill Saul who’s hunting him. He continues to be merciful, faithful and reverent. The Lord was with DAvid which made Saul fear him more. David goes and lives among the Philistine’s for 40 years. Saul consult a medium and the spirit medium conjure up Samuel who tells Saul he will die tomorrow in battle. This is a reminder that medium ship, astrology, horoscopes, tarot cards, etc. are against the Bible and testament or commandment number one.
King David
Eventually Saul was killed (by himself) and Kind David was anointed as the second King. David was a follower of Christ but in the end power eventually corrupted him (as it does today!). A few examples of how he was led astray from his faithfulness:
He took on many wives.
(Deuteronomy 17:17: In instructing how Israel’s kings should live, the law states, "He shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away".
He committed adultery and slept with a married women of He slept with a married woman, one of his great warriors. One of David’s 30 Mighty Men. She became pregnant.
Failed as a father and let his household go astray. He didn’t protect his son.
He didn’t stand up as a leader when his firstborn son, Amnon, became obsessed with his beautiful half-sister, Tamar, raped her and then discarded her.
He stayed behind in Jerusalem and sent his army to fight instead of being with them
2 Samuel 11 - 1 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
He fled Jerusalem
When David was old and before his death, he anointed his son Solomon as the third King. He also repented and gave thanks to God for being merciful and loving even when DAvid did wrong.
King Solomon
When David was old, he listened to God who said Solomon would be the next king and he anointed him before his death.
Chronicles
1 Chronicles
Similar to the book of numbers, Chronicles documents the lineage of the generations descending from Abraham. IT’s a lot of names which isn’t entertaining to read however is important to denote the genealogy of the family tree from Abraham to Jesus.
It also tells the story of David bringing the arc of the covenant to Jerusalem, which became his kingdom.
2 Chronicles
The Second book of Chronicles starts with King Solomon and then covers 400 years of rulers in Judah. It follows along with the book of Kings but in a different perspective. It documents the ups and downs of spirituality and eventually ends with the exile of jewish people as the Babylonians take over Jerusalem and destroy the temple. 70 years later the jewish people will be allowed to go back and rebuild.
Song of Solomon
This was a nice poetic book that was sultry and beautiful about love of a woman, or can be interpreted for the love of Israel and God.
Kings
1st kings
This book starts with the handoff of Kingship from David to his Son Solomon. But first, Absalom, the third son of King David tried to steal the throne and make himself king. The rebellion was for years and motivated by the anger from when his half-brother, Amnon, raped his sister, Tamar, and David failed to administer any punishment. So Absalom kicked off a modern day PR stunt tricking the people to thinking he was kingly which started to work.
But then Bathsheba went to a frail King David to remind him of his oath that their son, Solomon, would succeed him as king. David did make things right and anointed Solomon with grand jestures.
Solomon takes the throne and starts off strong by asking God for wisdom. He then acquires wealth and gold to build the Temple for worship in Jerusalem. He also built his own (much larger) house over a 13 year period. However, his foreign wives (the pharoah’s daughter) lead him into idolatry, breaking his covenant with God.
Solomon’s temple vs the entire city area he erected.
2nd kings
Oh I am ready for this book to end! It’s so dry with so many names, corruptness and generally hard to follow along. Between chronicling all the kings, the families, the barbaric wars and actions, it bounces between regions of Judah, Israel and syria, etc.
Since there were so many kings chronicled throughout this book I asked ChatGPT to help summarize this long book!
Source: ChatGPT
Mark
The Gospel of Mark was a shorter book and very enlightening as its the story of introducing Jesus, the Messiah and his journey of ministry, death and resurrection. Jesus was the son of god who came to the land to preach the gospel, build a following of disciples, performed countless miracles and gained popularity.
His Final Week in Jerusalem is The last supper is documented as sharing passover in a man’s home in a large upstairs room. At this supper, Jesus tells his 12 disciples that one of them will betray him.
"Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me" (Mark 14:18)
It continued to be intense and many questioned who and swore it wasn’t them. But Jesus continued to share bread and say
“It is one of the twelve, who dips with Me in the dish. (Mark 14:20)
Jesus contintued the meal and broke the bread and served it as his body. Shared the wine as his blood. This became the Eucharist as we know it today, at least I did at Catholic mass.
The book ends with how jesus is captured, tortured by carrying the cross that he will be eventually nailed to and hung to die. It’s a well known story but still not easy to read.
Jesus was buried in a tomb with a cloth put over his body and face and entombed with a large heavy rock. On the third day, Mary Magdalene and a few others went to the tomb but it was opened.
✨ He Has Risen! ✨
A fascinating find is this post on Instagram showing what is firmly believed to be the cloth that was on Jesus’ face at the time of his resurrection.
Ecclesiastes
The main theme is the meaningless of life without God. This book is written, in my opinion, in a long string of teachings similar to Confucius or Eckhart Tolle. It’s poetic and profound. It’s centered around the word “vanity” but in this translation its like “Vapor” or nothingness.
The message is a teaching on how to live but the end game is to get to heaven, the natural equalizer of all humanity.
Hosea
Hosea is a minor prophet and a welcomed shorter book. The meaning of the book is to talk about a form of spiritual and physical adultery. At the time of all the kings and corruption the people of Israel looked away from God and turned to forms of idolatry (spiritual adultery). God told Hosea to marry a prostitute, named Gomer, who eventually is unfaithful (shocker) to serve as a physical metaphor for God’s relationship with Israel.
Amos
This book was quite dry but when researching more about it the main themes are about social justice (protecting the vulnerable and poor0 and True Faith. Ever since the land being run by kings the faith in God has waivered and corruption set in just like it does in modern times.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
Jonah
God commands the prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach against its evil but Jonah goes the opposite direction of his divine assignment and boards a ship. God was angry and sent a terrible storm which led the sailors identifying Jonah as a stowaway on the ship and threw him overboard. Jonah was famously swallowed by a “fish” (I will call it a whale) which he lived in its belly for 3 days before getting spit up on dry land.
God commands Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh of which he obeys and preached throughout the city. The people listen, repent and fast so God withholds his wrath and destruction.
Jonah then sits outside the city and watches for the destruction to occur but becomes furious of God’s mercy. God uses a withering plant to teach him a lesson about caring about something he didn’t create.
Micah
Micah was a nice change of pace from Kings. It was written emotionally, with wrath, anger but also out of protection of faith and Justice. Micah is unhappy with idolatry and turning away from God and speaks from the heart of his genuine faith and how he wants it to be. He prohetizes that after total ruin that god will restore jerusalem as a center of peace. And the book also famously predicts the coming of the Messiah, Jesus, from Bethlehem to lead and unite people from all around.
