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by David Plotz


  CHAPTER 5

  This chapter marks the start of a long, complicated war pitting Israel, Judah, Aram, and Assyria against one another in various combinations. Brief geography lesson. Aram is the kingdom just north and east of Israel—around modern-day Damascus. Assyria is a larger empire north and east of Aram. The Aramean commander Naaman is a leper, and at the beginning of 2 Kings 11 he hears of the healing powers of Elisha. So, Naaman writes a letter to the Israelite king asking for a consultation with Elisha. The king assumes this is a trap, designed to provoke a war. (Imagine Kim Jong-il making an appointment at the Mayo Clinic.) But Elisha, who has apparently taken the prophets’ equivalent of the Hippocratic oath, has no problem prescribing treatment for the enemy: He says that seven baths in the Jordan River will clear up the skin problem. Naaman follows the advice and is healed. This persuades him that the Lord is God. He promises never to worship any other god, but begs Elisha for one free pass. He says that when the Aramean king forces him to go to the temple of Rimmon, the Aramean god, he will bow down in order to save his life and his job. Elisha says that’s OK. This is the first recorded example of “passing.” Naaman is the forerunner of the Marrano Jews, worshipping God in his heart but avowing another religion publicly. I always wondered about the biblical justification for this kind of deception, and here it is.

  CHAPTERS 6-7

  Elisha shows off to his disciples by making a metal ax float on water. This prompts a question: why can the prophets do so few tricks? They multiply food, they raise the dead, they purify foul or poisoned liquids, they manipulate water (walk on it, part it, have something float on it). That’s it. And all of them seem to have roughly the same talents. Why aren’t the prophets more like the Justice League or the X-Men, with a diversity of God-given abilities? It would be more exciting if one prophet could stop time, another fly like a bird, another turn men into stone, another shoot fire out of his eyes, etc.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Aramean king Ben-Hadad falls ill, and Elisha, again a doctor without borders, travels to Damascus to help him. While he’s there, Elisha has a conference with Hazael, the Aramean heir apparent. Elisha weeps during the meeting, because, as he tells the Aramean, he knows that Hazael will be an even worse king than Ben-Hadad, inflicting horrific agonies on the Israelites: “dash[ing] in pieces their little ones, and rip[ing] up their pregnant women.” This prophecy cheers up Hazael, who promptly returns to the palace, suffocates Ben-Hadad, and takes the throne.

  CHAPTERS 9-10

  The first of several fiendishly complicated, soap-operatic chapters detailing the shenanigans of various Israelite and Judahite kings. One high point: the return of Jezebel. I’ve missed that hussy! A would-be king of Israel, Jehu, rebels against the current king, Joram, Jezebel’s son. They meet in the vineyard of Naboth, the land stolen by Ahab and Jezebel in 1 Kings. When Joram sees Jehu, he asks timidly, “Is it peace, Jehu?” Jehu shouts back, “What peace can there be, so long as the many whoredoms and sorceries of your mother Jezebel continue?”

  That’s a “your mother” insult no loyal son would countenance, but cowardly Joram flees. Jehu shoots an arrow into his back, then chucks his corpse onto Naboth’s property. For good measure, Jehu also murders visiting King Ahaziah of Judah, making this a two-regicide day! (This is not the same Ahaziah as the equally unfortunate monarch who fell down in 2 Kings 1.) Jehu then marches to Jezebel’s palace. Jezebel, hearing of his approach, slathers on makeup. (She’s the first biblical character to wear makeup, and it is implicitly linked to her evilness. To this day, some American Christians associate makeup with wickedness and harlotry because of Jezebel.) Jehu stands beneath Jezebel’s window and yells, “Who is on my side? Who?” Jezebel’s eunuchs hear him and toss her out the window, where her corpse is trampled by horses, then eaten by dogs. This is why you don’t name your daughter Jezebel.

  In a sublime act of cunning—one our wit-loving God must have appreciated—Jehu announces that he’s going to worship Baal instead of the Lord. Jehu invites all Baal’s followers to a grand temple consecration. Once they’re assembled in the hall, Jehu orders his eighty guards, who have been waiting outside, to murder them. Creepy! Finally, Jehu’s men topple the temple and turn it into a latrine.

  CHAPTER 12

  How’s this for confusion? A little boy named Joash seems to have become King Jehoash of Judah, but he is also sometimes called King Joash. Meanwhile, the Israelites anoint a new king called Jehoahaz. When Jehoahaz dies, his son, also named Jehoash, becomes king. So, there are “Joash-Jehoash,” “Jehoahaz,” and another “Jehoash.” And the high priest is named Jehoiada. (On the other hand, there are four David Plotzes in my family, so I’m no one to talk.)

  Still, let’s not let a few confusing names distract us from the real significance of this chapter, which marks the official invention of fund-raising. The Temple is in disrepair, so Jehoash-Joash orders the priests to earmark certain sacred fees for fixing it. (The first building fund.) As you’d expect in a world without auditors or capital improvement budget committees, none of the repairs actually gets done. The priests spend the money elsewhere. (Versace sheets? Vacation homes?) So Jehoash tries an experiment: He places a box with a hole in the lid next to the altar, and the temple guards deposit all donations in it. When enough cash accumulates, the high priest counts the money and hires a contractor to do repairs. Invented in one short chapter are the building fund, the in-house auditor, and the collection box—all institutions that are still with us today.

  CHAPTERS 14-16

  Second Kings is the same story over and over again. A king does “what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” Then he loses a war and is assassinated. Another king, who’s slightly less bad, replaces him and shatters idols erected by his predecessor. Then there’s another war, and another bad king, and so on.

  Let’s take just 2 Kings 15 as an example. One king catches leprosy and dies. Another is assassinated and succeeded by his assassin. A month later, this new king is assassinated and succeeded by his assassin. He dies, and his heir is promptly assassinated and succeeded by his assassin. Then this king is also assassinated and succeeded by his assassin.

  As the Israelites busy themselves with regicide, the Assyrians exploit the chaos. It’s very World War I. Anticipating an Assyrian invasion, the Israelites ally themselves with their old enemies the Arameans, who are also being harried by the Assyrians. The kingdom of Judah, in turn, signs a peace treaty with the Assyrians, swearing fealty to them. So Judah and Israel, the Lord’s two kingdoms, have become mortal enemies. Of course they’ve brought their misfortune on themselves by worshipping idols, abandoning the Lord, and selecting wicked kings. The alliance of Judah and Assyria—the southernmost and northern-most kingdoms—squeezes Aram and Israel in the middle. The Assyrians quickly conquer Aram and sack Damascus.

  Having conquered Aram and forced Judah into vassalage, the Assyrians prepare for the destruction of Israel.

  CHAPTERS 17-19

  Reading these last few chapters of 2 Kings is like reading a history of Germany in the 1930s. A terrible ending waits just around the corner, and you hope that it’s somehow going to be averted, that God will somehow redeem the situation. But He doesn’t. Chapter 17 brings the first blow: the Assyrians conquer Israel and deport all the Israelites to Assyria. This marks the end of the ten northern tribes of Israel. The Israelites deported to Assyria vanish from history. They are the “lost tribes.” Now only the people of Judah and its capital, Jerusalem, survive. They will endure to become the Jews of today.

  After the Assyrian conquest of the north, life briefly improves in Judah. King Hezekiah eradicates pagan shrines and demolishes the bronze serpent that saved the Israelites from the plague of snakes in Numbers. (Too many Judahites were worshipping the serpent as an idol rather than recognizing it as a tool of the Lord.) The Assyrians turn on their old allies in Judah. They march against Jerusalem. Hezekiah temporarily buys peace by paying a huge bribe. The Assyrians besiege the city again, and this
time the Lord afflicts 185,000 enemy soldiers with a mysterious plague. The Assyrians withdraw, and aren’t heard from again. But Judah is not safe. A worse fate awaits it.

  CHAPTER 20

  On his deathbed, King Hezekiah weepingly begs the Lord to grant him a reprieve. The Lord listens and sends the prophet Isaiah to heal him. Hezekiah has a terrible rash, so Isaiah prescribes a fig paste, and the king heals right away. Is there any medical foundation for this figgery? Does the fig contain some powerful medicine, some kind of figgy steroid? I doubt it, though the Fig Newton is a divinely good cookie.

  Hezekiah shows off his city and palace to a delegation from Babylon. This turns out to be a huge mistake, like introducing your hot girlfriend to George Clooney—your chance of keeping her immediately drops to zero. The Babylonians see Jerusalem, covet it, and start making plans to take it.

  CHAPTERS 22-23

  Judah makes one last, desperate attempt to save itself. The new king, Josiah, and his priests suddenly discover the “scroll of the Teaching” in the Temple. I cheated a little and checked the commentary on this, and there’s general agreement that this scroll is the book of Deuteronomy. (Some scholars believe Josiah had Deuteronomy written and then claimed to discover it; more literal-minded readers believe he actually rediscovered it.) Josiah reads Deuteronomy, and it hits him like a ton of bricks. He realizes his people are doomed unless they mend their ways. They are breaking every law on the scroll. No wonder the Lord is so furious at them. A woman prophet, Huldah, says the Lord has doomed Judah—the land will become “a desolation and a curse.” Josiah rends his clothes in sorrow.

  Still, Josiah tries to change God’s mind. He reads the whole scroll out loud to the Judahites, then topples all the idols (again), knocks down the temples of the male prostitutes, destroys the pagan monuments built by Solomon, unearths pagan cemeteries, and even restores Passover. Josiah is like no king before or after—so faithful that he’s almost a second coming of Moses—but it’s too little, too late. “The Lord did not turn away from His awesome wrath.”

  This seems very unfair of God. Josiah does everything possible to restore his people to God’s good graces. He follows all of God’s orders. By the time of Josiah’s death, the Judahites are as holy as they have ever been. Even so, God doesn’t forgive! It seems oddly merciless. If He won’t save the faithful, what’s the point of believing?

  CHAPTERS 24-25

  The end. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon invades and makes quick work of Judah. His army takes the king prisoner, deports all able-bodied men to Babylon, sacks the Temple, and executes the priests. Jerusalem is turned into a ghost town, with only its poorest inhabitants left to till the fields. The hope and opportunity presented in the first five books of the Bible have been squandered. Ten tribes have been wiped off the Earth by the Assyrians, and the few remaining Jews have been packed off to exile in Babylon. Yet this turns out to be Judaism’s finest hour. On the brink of annihilation, Jews sustain their faith. The survivors believed so deeply that they wrote down holy books—the very books we read today—preserving the memory of God’s love through the exile to come.

  The book of 2 Kings ends with a heartbreaking vignette. After the conquest of Judah, the new king of Babylon—the delightfully named Evil-Merodach—releases the deposed king Jehoiakim from prison and keeps him as a courtier in Babylon. King Evil lets Judah’s former monarch eat at his table and gives him an allowance. The last king of Judah is a pet, a domesticated animal, serving a pagan master. This is the fate of God’s Chosen People.

  TWELVE

  Digging the Bible

  In which I search for the Bible in Israel.

  As I’ve been reading the Bible, I have been feeling an overwhelming urge to see it. I don’t mean I want to go spelunking in caves in search of the lost ark of the covenant or that I expect to discover the remains of Noah’s boat, but I want to stand where the Temple stood, and walk where David walked. I don’t exactly know what I would get out of being in the land of the Bible. Would I suddenly believe it all when I see where it happened? Could I get closer to the truth of the Bible by visiting the Promised Land? I’m not sure, but I want to go, so I hop a flight to Israel.

  The morning I arrive, I take a walk through Jerusalem and stumble on the Monastery of the Cross, a 1,500-year-old Eastern Orthodox chapel in a scrubby valley about a mile from the Old City. In a doorway of the monastery, I come across an extraordinary sign. It tells the following story. After Lot committed incest with his two daughters in Genesis, the sign says, he asked Abraham how he could absolve himself of the sin. Abraham owned three staffs, gifts from the angels who visited him to announce the coming of Isaac. (Those angels were, in fact, the Trinity.) Abraham handed the three staffs to Lot, and told him to plant them in this valley and irrigate them with water from the Jordan River. (The Jordan is thirty miles across searing desert from this valley, you protest? Just be quiet and enjoy the story!) Lot did as he was told. Though the devil himself tried to stop him, Lot eventually coaxed the staffs to blossom. They wound themselves around each other and became a single tree of three woods: pine, cedar, and cypress. Some 1,800 years later, that tree was chopped down and fashioned into the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

  Needless to say, I don’t believe a word of the sign, and I can’t imagine how anyone could. (It’s not a story mentioned anywhere in the Bible.) But I soon realize that wishful thinking is the foundation of Bible tourism. From the very beginning, travelers have been coming to Israel to see the Holy Land, and they discover what they want to find.

  I’m hardly the first person to come to Jerusalem with a Bible jones. In the early fourth century after Christ, Saint Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, came here for some biblical investigation. She is said to have discovered the site of the crucifixion of Jesus, the remains of the true cross, and possibly the tomb of Adam; and she built a church that still stands today. Not a bad month’s work. And what were the Crusades if not a very long, ill-planned Bible tour, complete with surly innkeepers, overpriced food, and an unrealistic itinerary? With the dawn of scientific biblical scholarship in the nineteenth century, explorers returned to the Holy Land to prove the Good Book by finding archaeological evidence. Some of their discoveries were spurious; some were real. Explorers found several Mount Sinais and several Mount Ararats. On the other hand, explorers on the Dead Sea located Masada, the site of the famous Jewish mass suicide, which had been lost to history for 1,400 years. And some findings were unfalsifiable. There’s a “valley of Elah” in Israel, but is it the place where the future King David defeated a giant named Goliath? Who knows? But you can visit it today, and collect five smooth stones from the streambed, just as David might have.

  I make a date with Ian Stern, an American-born Israeli in his early fifties who operates Dig for a Day, probably the biggest archaeology outreach program in the world. Every year, Stern’s dig is visited by 30,000 to 50,000 tourists—most of them American Jews. They do spadework for Stern’s academic research, get a hands-on crash course in archaeology, and explore their own history in the dirt.

  We drive an hour south from Jerusalem to the Maresha–Beit Guvrin national park, where Stern runs a huge archaeological dig. As we approach the park, even my rookie eyes can spot where an ancient town once stood. There’s a hill that doesn’t have the smooth roundish top that Mother Nature would specify. Instead, it’s squared off, like a military haircut, as a result of centuries of human building. That is Tel Maresha, the oldest site in the area, where a Judean town stood 2,800 years ago. Ian gives me a quick history of the site. Almost 3,000 years ago, Solomon’s son King Rehoboam of Judah fortified Maresha and neighboring towns as a bulwark against the Philistines. A century later, in the eighth century BC, the Assyrians conquered the region during the invasion that wiped out the ten northern “lost” tribes of Israel. And a century after that, the Babylonians conquered Maresha; probably, that conquest was doomsday for the town’s Jewish population. Maresha rebounded and reached its heyday a coupl
e of hundred years before the birth of Christ. By then dominated by Idumeans (“Edomites” in the Bible)—although perhaps with a Jewish minority—the town opposed the Jewish Maccabean rebellion against Israel’s Hellenistic rulers. The Maccabeans won, and took their revenge. Around 112 BC, King John Hyrcanus, the nephew of Judah Maccabee, ordered the non-Jews of Maresha to convert, leave, or be killed. (Here the Old Testament intersects with the New. Among those who chose to convert were the grandparents of Herod, the king who, in the gospels, ordered the slaughter of the innocents. Herod himself was probably born at Maresha.)

  What makes Maresha extraordinary is what’s under our feet. Starting around 800 BC, Mareshans began digging into the soft limestone bedrock to quarry rock for their homes. This digging left bell-shaped underground caverns. According to Ian, who has been excavating here for twenty years, we are standing on a honeycomb: There are 170 cave systems in the area, comprising 3,000 to 5,000 underground rooms. These caverns, protected from the desert heat, proved to be perfect workshops and storage spaces—an underground city. Ian has found enormous olive presses, cisterns for water storage, and columbaria for raising turtledoves. He shows me the jaw-dropping Bell Caves, which have ceilings sixty feet high. (True cinephiles may know that Sylvester Stallone rappelled down into them during Rambo III.) When early European explorers came to Maresha, they believed the Bell Caves verified the stories about giants told in Numbers and Deuteronomy. (Now we know that the caves were dug by ordinary men, and not till hundreds of years after those biblical events supposedly would have taken place.)

 

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