Category Archives: Enemies

Eliashib “Why is the house of God neglected?”

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Who is Eliashib?  Well, definitely not a top 40 Bible character!  Can’t find him then go to Nehemiah 13.

Eliashib is a priest; well not just a priest he is the High Priest (v. 28) after the 70-year (Sabbath) rest of the land that Jeremiah predicted.  This was because Israel had forgotten about Jubilee and that the land was to get a rest also.

The quick storyline of Nehemiah – Nehemiah, an official of King Artaxerxes, petitions to go to Jerusalem and rebuild the town wall.  He does it in record time but he has opposition Tobiah and Sanballat who hate Israel and Jerusalem.  Nehemiah sets things right and is called back to Artaxerxes.  (We will assume Ezra the priest has died.)

Eliashib who apparently has not read the Book of Moses (or did not care) cleared out the room reserved for the grain offering for the Levites and let Tobiah move in.  This set several things into motion.  The Levites had to go back to their fields because of no more grain offerings.  No Levites, no one to stop merchandise from coming into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Then Nehemiah found that men were marrying foreign women.  These were some of the sins that lead to the destruction of Jerusalem and here they were doing it again.  Who was leading this destructive behavior, the High Priest?  It was so bad the Eliashib had allowed his grandson to marry into Sanballat’s family.  So the boy would have been in line to be the High Priest.

What happened, the people read the Bible and put an end to it and then the man of God shows up and changes the High Priest because he ran Eliashib and his family off.

Point is READ your Bible and Know the Word.

Last point – The people had read Deuteronomy 23:3 that no Moabite should be allowedDavid052 into the assembly of God.  What about David and Solomon?  Their grandmother was Ruth the Moabite.  Did God just overlook His Word?  Look at Ruth 4:9 Boaz as kinsmen-redeemer got Ruth as a wife.  He redeemed Ruth!  I image it was just like Jesus redeeming us, we became new people in the sight of the Law and anything in the past cannot be counted against us.

http://clipart.christiansunite.com/1379673661/Bible_Characters_Clipart/David_Clipart 

Jeremiah 10 and 51

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While reading on lightning in the Bible I noticed that Jeremiah 10: 12 – 16 and 51: 15– 19 are almost exactly the same.  Having the same theme run through a book or even several books is not unusual, after all, God can repeat Himself if He wants.  But if God repeats Himself it is usually to stress a point or confirm what was said, or in the case of the History Books – Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles two different people wrote for two different audiences. (See Kings and Samuel)  The repetition here seems to be for making the point of God’s power and authority to do the acts that were to follow.

In Jeremiah 10:12 -16, the passage is introduced by a statement that false gods did not make the heavens and earth, the NIV has a footnote that it is written in Aramaic.  (Probably for the people of/in Babylon or as a further study has found, it was a common language of the day.)  God is angry because of the idols His people are making and worshiping.  So after the passage, the destruction of Israel and Judah is foretold.  This apparently made people mad because Baruch son of Neriah, his scribe, notes that the people of Anathoth, his hometown, wanted to kill him.  Jeremiah is a member of the priestly class and Anathoth is a city that was set apart for the priest by Joshua and Moses; nothing like making your family mad, especially if they are church leaders.

In Jeremiah 51: 15 -19 the introduction to the verse is the prophesying that Babylon will be filled with men eager to destroy the place, and it is followed by the acts that will happen when the city is destroyed.  The end of this story is chapter 51:59 – 64 where Jeremiah asks Seraiah, Baruch’s brother, to pronounce complete and lasting ruin on Babylon. (Saddam Hussein tried/started rebuilding ancient Babylon before the Gulf War, it came to a stop.)  It is interesting that the last sentence is, “The words of Jeremiah end here.”

The final part of this study is found in Psalm 135: 7.  The passage about the lightning, rain, and wind is also here as it is found in Jeremiah.

He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth; he sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.” (NIV)  In a previous post I compared Psalm 135 and 136 for similar content (see that post).  But the same themes in Jeremiah are here also:

  1. The Lord does what pleases Him. (vs. 6)
  2. The destruction of an enemy is told. (vs.8 – 11)
  3. Idols are worthless pieces of silver and gold. (vs. 15 – 18)
  4. Jacob and Israel are treasured possessions. (vs. 3 – 4)

I can still see David writing Psalm 135 but the prophetic nature of this Psalm now becomes even clearer.  Ok, maybe Jeremiah/Baruch did write it and threw in verses 19 – 21 just to aggravate his kinsmen.

Bible studies are fun, you start with lightning and end up comparing prophesy in Jeremiah.

Tribes of Israel – Manasseh

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Manasseh was the first-born child of Joseph who was put as a “second son” by Jacob. Joseph in naming Manasseh and Ephraim demonstrates that he was perfectly happy with his new life and had no intention of going back. (Genesis 41:51+52) He had the power to send a message back to his family but he did not.

I wonder how these two acted around the rest of the family? They were children of the ruler of the country they lived in and because of being Egyptian possibly had more privileges. From Genesis 48:1 I would wonder if Joseph even allowed them to live around his brothers? Joseph may have had them marry within the family but Manasseh definitely owned slaves and even had a foreign concubine.

1 Chronicles 7:14+15 talks about Manasseh’s two notable descendents: Gilead and Zelophehad.  In Numbers 36 Zelophehad dies in the exodus and leaves only daughters, these girls stand up for themselves and their father’s lineage. The daughters go to Moses and plead their case before God; this leads to a new decree to acknowledge women as heirs. It may not sound like much but that was groundbreaking territory when women were viewed much of the time as second-class people or property.   The other descendent was Gilead who was to lend his name to the area of the east bank of the Jordan River that wasTwelveTribesofIsraelebible the inheritance of the tribes of Manasseh, Rueben and Gad. This is a contrast to Zelophehad’s daughters; Gilead comes from an Aramean concubine and a group of people who were not Israelites (Huppites and Shuppites). Just like Bilhah and Zilpah this concubine was a slave that Manasseh used and was so elevated to a slightly better status in the household. You get the feeling that the children were valued but not the mother (Sarah and Hagar).

In 1 Chronicles 5: 18 -26 it gives two contrasting stories; one of faith and trust in God and the other of unfaithfulness to Him. In verse 20 the East Bank tribes cry out to God for help in the middle of a battle and are helped and overcome their enemies. In verse 25 it tells of the unfaithfulness that gets them taken away by Tiglath-Pileser.habor_river

Actually, Manasseh’s descendents were on par with the other tribes; they did their part in taking the Promise Land and showed up at all the right times and were active during the life time of Saul and David. Lo Debar is in the allotment of land given to Manasseh and it was this area that David went to when he ran from Absalom.

Map from http://www.biblestudytools.com/resources/maps/twelve-tribes-of-israel-map.html and eBibleTeacher.com.

http://bibleatlas.org/full/habor_river.htm  large map,

Tribes of Israel – Simeon

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Simeon is the second son of Jacob and Leah. His name may mean the one who hears because Leah was announcing that God had heard her because she was unloved.

Genesis 49:5 “Simeon and Levi are brothers— their swords are weapons of violence.
6 Let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased.
7 Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel! I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel.

Many of the maps I have seen have Simeon surrounded by Judah in the Southern part of the country. I have never read anything about what they did when the two kingdoms separated but there are Ten Tribes in the Northern Kingdom if you count the east and west tribes of Manasseh as separate tribes. There is the saying “from Dan to Beersheba” that may still be showing there was a separate tribe of Simeon; Dan was the Northern most tribe and Beersheba is in the middle of the land that was allotted to Simeon and was the most important city in southern Israel. Ziklag (where David had a base in 1 Samuel 29) was considered one of their thirteen towns in Joshua 19. In Joshua, Judges and 1 Chronicles Simeon is mentioned several times as doing things with the men of Judah and they appear again in the reforms of some of the kings in 2 Chronicles. So they do appear to have been dispersed in Israel according to the word of Jacob.

They do appear in Ezekiel and Revelations in the list of who gets land and have men among the 144,000; they are on the blessing side in Deuteronomy 27 but are not mentioned in Moses’ blessings in Deuteronomy 33.

A notable accomplishment for the tribe in 1 Chronicles 4:42+43 was that they killed off the remaining Amalekites who were still living in the land of Seir, they were the people who attacked Israel as they were going to the Promise Land. See my Amalekite blog, please.

Map from http://www.biblestudytools.com/resources/maps/twelve-tribes-of-israel-map.html and eBibleTeacher.com.

Hezekiah Part 3

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Hezekiah’s world, like ours, seems to have someone in the Middle East attacking people. For him, it was Assyria, Ahaz his father had made a treaty with them, who had captured and exported the Northern Kingdom of Israel. An interesting way they had of subjugating a conquered people was to export part or all of the population to a new location. Assyria did this in 1 Chronicles 5:26 and in 2 Kings 17:6, 18:11 to Israel; the promise was a nice location and prosperity. This promise was in 2 Kings 18:31 and included a vine (grape), fig tree, and their own water supply. Israel was sent to the Harbor River area.

Samaritans of the New Testament were and are the people that foreign kings brought into the area when the Northern Kingdom was conquered.  They had/have some of the customs of Jews but held onto their own gods. Their story starts in 2 Kings 17:24 and there is still a remnant of them in Israel today. Jesus uses the Good Samaritan and had a period of teaching in Samaria after meeting with the women by the well.

Isaiah the prophet, now an old man, had served four kings and Hezekiah would be his fifth. Isaiah 6, his commission, was with Uzziah (Azariah) who ruled 52 years, there was a co-regency with Jotham who ruled 16 years, Ahaz ruled 16 years and Hezekiah ruled 29 years so he had seen a lot by the time he started helping Hezekiah. The Northern Kingdom had been deported and Assyria had changed rulers at least once; Assyria is mentioned in Isaiah 8 and again in chapter 10 and 14. It comes in again in chapter 36 in Hezekiah’s 14th year. (see My Timeline) It is interesting that Hezekiah’s story ends in chapter 39. Someone pointed out that Isaiah has 66 chapters like the Bible has 66 books and chapter 40 compares to the beginning of the New Testament.  Like the hope that comes with the New Testament chapter 40 starts with “comfort, comfort my people” and ends with mounting on wings of eagles. (see Waiting on God post)

Egypt is still a power at this time and is in conflict with Assyria for who is going to control the world. Judah apparently has gone to them for help in the past and the Lord in several places condemns and warns about that practice through Isaiah in chapter 31.  Josiah in chapter 35 tries to block Egypt when they are going to fight Assyria and he pays for it with his life; Neco of Egypt punishes Judah and its kings for its interference. Egypt’s power is finally broken by Babylon and has never really risen to world power again.

Wikipedia says that the Habor and the Chobar in Ezekiel are the same while these two sources say no, the Chobar is a canal further south.