In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River and in the towns of the Medes. – 2 Kings 17:6

Today's Scripture Reading (June 2, 2026): 2 Kings 17

In 722 B.C.E, Sargon II ascended the throne of Assyria after overthrowing the king, who we believe was also his brother, Shalmaneser V. The caveat that we think Shalmaneser was Sargon's brother is necessary because Sargon II makes a great effort to divorce himself from any concept of the past. The tale that Sargon seems to want the people to believe is that Ashur, the national god of the Assyrians, had called him specifically to be King over the Assyrians. Sargon describes his brother as a crooked and deceitful King who had brought disgrace to Assur, the city of Ashur, and had driven his people into a kind of slavery. As a result, Ashur had placed the responsibility for leading the nation on the shoulders of Sargon.

One of the first things that Sargon did was finish the siege of Samaria, the capital city of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The siege was begun under the leadership of Shalmaneser, but Sargon believed that he was raised to power to end it. Here is how Sargon II describes the decision

The men of Samaria with their king were hostile to me and consorted together not to carry out their vassal obligations and bring tribute to me, so they fought me… I clashed with them and took as booty 27,280 people with their chariots and their gods in whom they trusted. I incorporated 200 chariots into my army. The rest of the people I made to dwell within Assyria. I restored the city of Samaria and made it greater than before (Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud).

The process would not have been pretty. Sargon would have had the inhabitants of Samaria stripped naked; fishhooks would have been inserted into the lower lips of the captives with a series of strings that would tie the Samarians together. And then they would be forced to march hundreds of kilometers to their new home. Only the lowest class of people would be left in the former territory of the Northern Kingdom. Those who were considered smart or talented enough would be retrained to serve the Assyrian Empire, while the rest would be forced into a life of slavery.

The Bible makes it clear that all of this took place because of the sin of Israel and its people. After two hundred years and the nineteen kings who had served Israel since the civil divorce the nation had experienced with Judah and the House of David, the Kingdom came to an end as King Hoshea surrendered his Kingdom to Sargon and the Assyrians. And the Northern Kingdom would fade into the pages of history, never to return.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 29

Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD. – Isaiah 38:2

Today's Scripture Reading (June 1, 2026): Isaiah 38 & 39

In 1716, Christopher Bullock wrote in his comedy play "The Cobbler of Preston," that "'Tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes." It is the reality of life. The two things that we will not escape are death and taxes. They are also the two things we often try to put off. Every year, I make a deal with myself: this year, I am going to do my taxes early, and every year I am sitting at my desk during that last week before the tax deadline, trying to figure out what I owe the government. And death? Well, we simply don't think about that, or we convince ourselves that our deaths are still a long way down the road.

I have had the conversation with a few people who believed that they would never die. Jesus will come and take them away before their expiry date on this earth. And most of those people have already died. Even those who continue to live on this Blue Marble have to confront the idea that even though we believe that we will receive a new body, a perfect body, for that to happen, we have to die.

The author of Hebrews writes this;

Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him (Hebrews 9:27-28).

Isaiah was an advisor to King Hezekiah. Hezekiah was a good king who did what was right. But even that did not save him from the decree that one day he would die.

Hezekiah was a good king, but there was evidence that he was a little unfocused. And while he led the nation through a revival, he also needed a revival for himself. And then Isaiah appeared on his doorstep with the news that the good King was going to die. The problem was that Hezekiah was in his late 30s at the time, and he still had things to do. The Jewish rabbis in the Talmud wrote that there had been an argument taking place behind the scenes. Hezekiah and Isaiah were arguing about who should visit whom. So, when Isaiah comes to King Hezekiah, he may not have been in a stellar mood. King Hezekiah was the opposite of his ancestor, King Solomon. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Hezekiah was 39 and still a confirmed bachelor. He hadn't found a wife, and he hadn't produced an heir. Then Isaiah announced that the King would die, meaning he would never marry or have a son to take over the throne of David.

Hezekiah does exactly what we should do in times of stress and trouble. He turned and cried out to God with his petition. God doesn't always respond the way that we want him to, but we should still turn to him with our questions and desires. For Hezekiah, the petition was, "Do not let it end this way. There are things that I have not done, but if you will give me the gift of time, I promise that I will do them." And God relented. He gave Hezekiah the gift of time he had requested.

Hezekiah did not forget this experience. He became very cognizant of his expiry date. Tradition says that Hezekiah married Hephzibah, the daughter of Isaiah. And together, they had a son and heir named Manasseh. Hezekiah, even though he was a good king, had never really humbled himself before God. But now, he humbled himself. It is an example that we all need to understand and follow throughout the various stages of our lives.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 17

For out of Jerusalem will come a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this. – Isaiah 37:32

Today's Scripture Reading (May 31, 2026): Isaiah 37

Tater Jones grew up in a country house. In front of his house, there was a long, straight dirt road. Tater went everywhere that he needed to go, and sometimes just went to places where he wanted to go, on his bicycle. But what he really wanted was a Moped. Have you ever seen a moped? It is not a scooter. It definitely is not a Harley, which is what most young kids want. A Moped actually has pedals and this little engine that sounds like an angry mosquito.

So, time goes by, and finally Mom says to Tater, "You have proven yourself. For your birthday, your Dad and I are going to buy you a Moped." Tater was on top of the world. He was getting a Moped. And on top of getting the Moped, the same year, the county decided to pave the long, straight dirt road that ran past the front of Tater's house. Tater got his Moped, put on his helmet, climbed aboard, and his mom warned him to be careful. Tater was off down that long, newly paved road on the back of his angry mosquito.

Tater rides down that long, straight road until he reaches the highway. His mother had taught him to look both ways before crossing the highway. So, Tater gets off his moped and steps out toward the highway, looks one way, then the other, and just to make sure, looks one way and then the other again. And while Tater is looking, a brand new, shiny red Maserati drives up beside him. Tater had never seen a Maserati before. Tater walks around the Maserati, touching the hood and fenders, feeling how smooth it is, not realizing you don't touch someone else's Maserati. Tater stuck his head inside the open window. Tater really didn't understand the concept of personal space and said a little too loudly. "Hey, Mister, how much does a car like this cost? This is a pretty nice car, Mister. Do you want to sell your car, Mister? If you ever want to sell your car, give me a call. My name is Tater Jones.

The driver looks at Tater and his brand-new moped, and you know he is thinking, "like this kid will ever be able to afford a car like this!"

Tater oohs and aahs and walks around the car a few more times, leaving his fingerprints everywhere he can, and then he gets on his moped and wheels it over beside the driver's side window and sticks his head in the window one more time. "Nice car, Mister, you remember my name, Tater Jones, if you ever want to sell your car."

But the car's driver has had enough. No sooner does Tater lean outside of the car than the driver steps on the gas. It is a straight road – a long straight road. And the Maserati knows how to go. In no time, the car is doing 100, then 110. The driver looks in the rearview mirror, and Tater keeps getting smaller and smaller. One hundred and forty, then 150, and the driver takes another glance in the rearview mirror. And he is amazed, Tater Jones is not getting smaller, he is getting larger. 160 – 170, and Tater Jones is catching up. Two hundred and Tater Jones on his moped passes the Maserati. And then, all of a sudden, it is Tater Jones who is getting smaller in the lead.

The driver of the Maserati is about to pull over and phone the dealership. You don't buy a Maserati to get beaten in a race by a Moped. Tater spins around and then passes the Maserati going the other way. And then he spins around again, and he begins to catch up. to the Maserati one more time. The driver looks down at his speedometer – 230, 240, 250. The Maserati is quickly reaching its top speed, and Tater and his moped are still gaining. Finally, the driver has had enough. He slams on the brakes and pulls over to phone the dealership. Tater, on the other hand, can't quite negotiate the stop, slams into the rear end of the Maserati, and ends up lying on the roof of the car. The driver gets out and sees Tater on the roof, looking absolutely exhausted.

"Tater, can I do anything for you?"

Tater looks at the driver, "Yeah, if you get a chance, could you unhook my suspenders from the rearview mirror?"

Isaiah knows that trouble is coming. But he also knows that God will do something with those left in the city. If Isaiah knew about Tater Jones, he might have offered this advice: when trouble comes, hook your suspenders to God's rearview mirror and hang on for the ride, because the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 38 & 39

 

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah's reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. – Isaiah 36:1

Today's Scripture Reading (May 30, 2026): Isaiah 36

In the Steven Spielberg movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark," the central premise was that the Hebrew Ark of the Covenant was a physical force capable of overcoming any opposing army. Indiana Jones actually states at one point that an army that carried the Ark with it couldn't be defeated. (Indiana probably should have read 1 Samuel, because the sons of the High Priest Eli thought the same thing, but they got routed and lost the Ark to the opposing Philistines.) But, according to the fictional Professor Jones, lightning would flash from the Ark destroying any force that opposed the army that possessed the Ark. It was because of this 'fiction' that the movie proposes a race that develops between the Nazi scientists of 1940's Germany and Indiana Jones to see who would be the first to find the Ark. If Hitler could find it first, well, maybe the Second World War would have turned out differently. (There is something of a mystery about the probability that Hitler would want to use a Jewish artifact to win the war and exterminate the Jews, but then again, "The Raiders of the Lost Ark" is only a fictional story.) The movie stretches the story of the Ark well beyond the truth.

But the story's central theme fits a central idea about God in our current culture. The idea is this: being a Christian or a God-fearer means that the evil things of the world (in this case, translate evil as anything that opposes your personal purposes) will never be able to touch you. When we carry God into the battle of our lives, things will always go our way. We may not overtly believe that truth, but even in circles that would traditionally look down on what we might call "prosperity theology," when things go wrong, we still wonder what we have done to anger God because we don't feel protected.

The story of Hezekiah illustrates one of the issues we seem to have with religion: sometimes bad things happen even when we are faithful. When bad things happen in life, the appropriate response is to trust God more, not less. Bad circumstances have never been promised not to touch us. The presence of negative circumstances in our lives doesn't mean that God has left the building. God still has a plan, and even during our worst moments, we, like Hezekiah, still have a part to play in his story.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 37

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. – Isaiah 35:5

Today's Scripture Reading (May 29, 2026): Isaiah 35

One of my many favorite Bible Stories is the Story of the Lost Son in Luke 15. The Lost Son is a story about two sons. We sometimes call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but the story isn't really about either a prodigal son or a lost son. Just like the Parable of the lost coin really isn't about the coin, but the persistence of the woman, and the Parable of the lost sheep isn't really about a lost lamb, but the persistence of the Shepherd. The Parable of the Lost Son is more about the persistence of Dad and the arrogance of the older brother.

The Parable spins a tale about a father with two sons. One day, the younger son comes to Dad and tells him to, "Give me my inheritance so that I can go and live my life the way that I want to live it." It was like saying to Dad, "I wish you were dead because I have to wait for my inheritance. You are worth nothing to me."

Surprisingly, Dad does as his youngest son asks and divides up his inheritance between his two sons. And the youngest son (the one we call the prodigal) goes and wastes everything his father has given him. (The word prodigal means wasteful.)

The youngest son loses everything and then has to go and get a job. The only job he can find is feeding the pigs, which is not much of a job for a Jewish boy to whom pigs were unclean. One day, he is out in the pigpen feeding the pigs, and he is so hungry that he wishes he could eat the food he is giving them. In that moment, he comes to this revelation; even hired workers in my dad's house have more than this. And so, he goes back to his father with the plan to ask his dad for a job, putting him on as a hired worker. This is an important point; the young son doesn't ask to be enslaved because an enslaved person, at that time, would have been considered part of the family, and the wasteful son had discarded every expectation of rejoining that community. A hired worker was a level below an enslaved person. Even in tough times, an enslaved person would have work and be fed, while a hired worker would be fired. An enslaved person would be in constant contact with the father, while a hired worker could go days or even weeks without even seeing the father. The father knew the enslaved person's name, but not always the hired worker's.

So, the son goes back to dad, and while he was still a long way off, dad sees his son and runs to him (older men did not normally run), he throws his arms around him, and puts his robe on him and rings on his fingers and bells on his toes, so he could make music wherever he goes (well, maybe not). But what he does is just as surprising; he restores this young son into the family.

However, the elder son isn't happy. He comes back from a hard day working in the field and hears the music of an ongoing party. He asks a family servant what is happening and is told that his younger brother has returned home and Dad is throwing him a party. The older brother refuses to go to the party and goes off into a corner and sulks, thus ending the story.

The whole story is really about how to get Dad's money, and each son has developed a plan to get it. For the younger son, the prescription is to be bad. If I am bad, then Dad will give me the money that I want to get me out of his hair. But the older son has also written a prescription. He wants the same thing, Dad's money, but he chooses a different path. For him, the prescription is to be good. If I am good, I can get Dad's money. I suspect Jesus tells the story because he knows most of his followers are really elder brothers trying to interact with a God who is concerned for the younger brother, and that is a problem. Elder brothers look at the world and say, if I am good, then I will be accepted. If I obey, then I will be part of the family. But inside the church, God turns that upside down and says, "God accepts you, and because you are accepted, I have accepted you as well, regardless of what you believe about yourself." The younger brother of the story never comes to obedience until he realizes beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is accepted.

In the end, the younger brother is restored while the older brother is lost. And maybe even more disturbing to us is that the older brother is damned not despite his good deeds but because of them.

Isaiah says that on the day of victory, the blind will see and the deaf will hear. It will be a day of celebration, but one that will benefit the younger brother. The elder brothers among us will not be saved, not because they don't need saving, but because they don't believe they need to be saved.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 36

 

Desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and wild goats will bleat to each other; there the night creatures will also lie down and find for themselves places of rest. – Isaiah 34:14

Today's Scripture Reading (May 28, 2026): Isaiah 34

Names. Sometimes I think we put too much thought into them, and sometimes maybe not enough. And as strange as our names can be, it might be surprising that there are illegal names, as in you are not allowed to name your baby with these words. In various parts of the United States, you are not allowed to name your child with a title, like King or Queen. While Jesus is permitted, the names Christ and Messiah are also forbidden. You are not allowed to name your child Santa Claus, which is probably a good thing; I can't imagine going to school with that name. You also cannot name your child Adolf Hitler, although I am not sure why I would want to name my child that. Not all of these names are illegal in all states. Adolf Hitler Campbell was born in New Jersey without anyone protesting the choice of name at birth, although there were negative reactions a little later. But no one had the authority to stop them from using that name.

But there are legal names that I also question. Some of them are beautiful, which is probably why our children bear the moniker. But I still wonder if we should have thought through these names a little more. One of those names is Neveah. Neveah is a beautiful name, and I apologize if it is your name or the name of someone close to you. Neveah is the word 'heaven' spelled backward. My question is: Does that mean it is the opposite of heaven? And if it contains that connotation, why would we want to place that name on our little girls?

Another pretty name is Lilith. We choose Lilith because we think the name is pretty. Maybe we choose the name in a spirit of rebellion, after all, the Mythical Lilith is the goddess of rebellion. According to some myths, Lilith was Adam's first wife, but she refused to submit to Adam, so she was cast out and replaced with Eve. For every woman who has struggled with ornery men, Lilith might be an appropriate name.

But Lilith is also the name of a night demon that haunts the desolate places in the dark, especially in the land of Edom. And it is that meaning that we find in Isaiah. The word Isaiah uses, which we have translated as "night creatures," is literally Lillith (or lee-leeth). Isaiah speaks of the land of Edom as empty and desolate. Edom will become a place that is empty of human presence, and is therefore filled with creatures of the night, both animals and demons; a place where Lillith is free to roam and to cause her own brand of mischief.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 35

Personal Note: Happy Birthday to my wife, Nelda.

He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the LORD is the key to this treasure. – Isaiah 33:6

Today's Scripture Reading (May 27, 2026): Isaiah 33

We are probably about as close to the end of the Earth as we have ever been. The Doomsday Clock, a symbol of the likelihood of a human-made global disaster, is set to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to the midnight hour since its inception in 1947. Maybe the caveat here is that it is about a human-made disaster. The Doomsday Clock is not about the likelihood of a rogue comet hitting Earth, an event we have no control over. The Clock explores the danger the human race poses to the planet. War in the Middle East and in Europe, coupled with pollution and global warming, are represented in the evaluation that we are only 85 seconds away from a catastrophe. Maybe the biggest problem we have is that there aren't enough "stable geniuses" in charge of the nuclear powers. When we look at the people in charge of Russia, China, Israel, and even the United States, it isn't a huge leap to see one of them pushing the nuclear button in a bid to end an argument and feel like a winner, when the reality is that as soon as the button is pushed, the whole world is a loser. It is only within the last hundred years that we have had the ability to destroy the Earth. The farthest we have been from the midnight hour was seventeen minutes to midnight in 1991, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union; a time when the future looked positive for a majority of the planet's nations.

Our ability to destroy the Earth might be relatively new, but nations have recognized their own fragility since the beginning of human history. Empires have risen and fallen, maybe something that we need to be reminded of, and nations have been trampled in the process of the rule of the nations. In those moments of defeat, it has felt like the Doomsday Clock, on a smaller scale, was approaching, and even hitting, the midnight hour. Maybe this is an obvious statement, but one that we need to hear. No earthly empire has ever lasted forever. Every military power has an expiration date, and there are things that we can do to hasten or delay that moment. It is a message that I believe especially those of us who live in North America need to hear.

Isaiah is writing in one of those times. For the nation of Judah, the national Doomsday Clock is approaching midnight. Their sister nation, Israel, has been defeated and carried into captivity. Assyria has entered Judah's territory and, one by one, has defeated the cities of the Kingdom. Now the army is gathering around Jerusalem, seeking to defeat Judah.

Isaiah's message? Stay the course; God is still on the throne, and he can be the foundation that the nation needs. Ultimately, he is in charge of the Doomsday clock. And that is true when the Clock is set at seventeen minutes to midnight, and when it is set at just 85 seconds before the time of catastrophe.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 34