The king of Assyria sent his supreme commander, his chief officer, and his field commander, along with a large army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. – 2 Kings 18:17a

Today's Scripture Reading (June 7, 2026): 2 Kings 18

There was a day when Kings went out to war with their troops. They were armed, and while the King was often positioned at the back of the battle formation, the King's purpose on the battlefield was to send out commands to the soldiers under their control in real time. King David is criticized at the beginning of the Bathsheba saga for not being with his troops when they went to war. The warrior King stayed home and sent his commander, Joab, to fight against the Ammonites. Because he was home, he was tempted by the beauty of Bathsheba, something that wouldn't have happened if he had been out in the field, fighting with his men.

The Book of Kings clarifies that King Sennacherib accompanied his men onto the battlefield in Judah. "In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah's reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them" (2 Kings 18:13). What is less clear is whether Sennacherib went to Jerusalem for the siege of Judah's capital city. In fact, it appears he didn't, at least not at the beginning of the blockade against the Judean Capital. Isaiah argues that, as the siege begins, Sennacherib decides to send a field commander with a large army rather than go himself. Maybe Sennacherib understood that the blockade would be long and boring, and he didn't need to be there for all of it. Or maybe Sennacherib had more pressing duties elsewhere.

Whatever the reason, Sennacherib stayed behind, maybe in Lachish. Lachish was an important city thirty miles southwest of Jerusalem. During the First-Temple period, Lachish was Judah's second most important city, second only to Jerusalem. Because of its importance, it appears that Sennacherib led the effort to defeat Lachish and end the conquest in the area, defeating Lachish just before he turned the full force of his military on the Judean Capital.

Archaeologists have discovered a pit dating back to the attack on Lachish by Sennacherib. The pit contained 1,500 casualties from the attack. They also found a carving detailing how the Assyrians had laid siege to the city.

The Siege of Lachish became the launching ground for the attack on Jerusalem. Sennacherib may not have been at Jerusalem at the beginning of the siege of the Capital, either because he was busy cleaning up in Lachish, or because he was called back to Nineveh to deal with problems in the Empire. Wherever Sennacherib was, Lachish was the last victory that Assyria would experience in Judah. Jerusalem would be put under siege, but it would not fall, at least not at the hands of Sennacherib and the Assyrian army. The eventual fall of Jerusalem was still over a century away.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 32

See also Isaiah 36:2

 

Then Isaiah said, "Prepare a poultice of figs." They did so and applied it to the boil, and he recovered. – 2 Kings 20:7

Today's Scripture Reading (June 6, 2026): 2 Kings 20

I recently read an article on the benefits of quitting smoking. Our bodies are made in such a way that we actually start the healing process about twenty minutes after our last puff. So, the idea is that it is never really too late to reap some of the benefits of quitting. And the benefits are amazing. Among others, the article listed better sex, a healthier digestive system, a lower risk of developing arthritis, better, more restful sleep, a stronger heart, and even better-tasting food, all as a result of quitting smoking. And beyond that, we get a chance to be one of those annoying ex-smokers who are telling everyone else to quit smoking (Okay, that might not be a benefit.) And yet, with all of the positives, many of us still don't quit. And that speaks volumes about the addictive qualities of cigarettes. We are hooked, and quitting is hard.

As a result, we often need to ask for help. And there are many aids out there to help us on our new journey. Some have a better track record than others, and yet some of us do not even try these avenues. The excuse that I hear the most is that "right now I am experiencing too much stress to even think about quitting." But that excuse assumes that there are times when we are not experiencing stress, and I just haven't noticed very many of those moments around recently. The bottom line is that to quit smoking, first we have to do something. Stopping the practice of buying cigarettes is one of the first recommended actions. But beyond that step, often we need to change our lifestyle; we have to avoid certain triggers if our new non-smoking behavior is going to take root. We need to avoid the things and the places where we once enjoyed a cigarette. But something has to happen. The change in behavior needs to be paired with a specific action. We need it; it is the way that we are designed.

Hezekiah moves from an illness that will end in death to one that can be cured with traditional medicine very quickly (a poultice made of figs was the approved treatment for a boil in the ancient world). But the reality was that Hezekiah needed to do something if he was going to recover. Sitting back and letting God heal him probably wasn't going to work. However, too often we seem to read instructions like those in this passage and think we have discovered an ancient super cure. I can see the book now instructing us that a poultice of figs will cure everything from acne to cancer. But to make that suggestion misses the point. The focus of this instruction is that God would cure Hezekiah, but God, who created us, knows that, for lasting change to take root in our lives, we need to be involved in the process. And so, a poultice was developed as part of Hezekiah's buy-in into the process. Did God need the poultice to heal Hezekiah? Of course not. However, God knew that Hezekiah needed the poultice to ease his mind, and so he had Isaiah tell him to get one.

The instructions for Hezekiah were to follow the standard medical process of the day. He would use conventional medical wisdom to cure the illness, allowing God the space to move through it. Healing often seems to work this way. We do what we can, we act in support of healing, and allow God to do the rest. Cults that believe that healing is an "only God" enterprise have missed some important biblical instructions. Psychologically, we need to do what we can, feeling like we are part of the process, so that God can move through the rest. 

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 18

See also Isaiah 38:21

 

In addition, they distributed to the males three years old or more whose names were in the genealogical records—all who would enter the temple of the LORD to perform the daily duties of their various tasks, according to their responsibilities and their divisions. – 2 Chronicles 31:16

Today's Scripture Reading (June 5, 2026): 2 Chronicles 31

My eldest granddaughter is working on getting her Learner's Driver's License. Which means she has reached the age appropriate for those licenses, which in the area where I live is fourteen. Thinking about her journey as she begins to drive, I realize she is almost exactly the same age I was when I got my Learner's License. Life is repeating itself.

Back when I got my Learner's License, there was a conversation among the Federal Government Agencies about raising the age to get a Driver's License. I don't know how serious the argument was, but I took it seriously enough to put a little more effort into preparing for the test. Obviously, over the last half-century since I took my first driving test, the age hasn't changed, though some other details of the licensing process have.

Driver's Licenses are part of the "How old do you have to be?" conversation we have in so many different places in our society. The "How old do you have to be to consume alcoholic beverages?" conversation has always been of interest to me. Again, where I live, the age is eighteen. For many other locales, you need to be twenty-one to consume adult beverages. I have had conversations with young adults who have been surprised that they can't go to a liquor store or bar when they are traveling because they were underage there, but not here. It is an extension of the "how old" conversation.

In the church, the conversation continues. How old do you need to be to take communion or to be an active member of the church? How old should you be to play on the Worship Team or sing in the choir? Currently, our worship team features a pair of twelve-year-olds: one on guitar and the other on drums. I am amazed at how talented they are every time they play. What do you think? Where would you draw the line?

As Hezekiah prepares the workers for the Temple, he apparently has to answer the question, "How old?" I find it very interesting where he draws the line. First, working in the Temple is hereditary, so workers must have the right genealogy. Second, workers in the Temple must be male. Neither of these regulations is a surprise or an expectation that we carry into the contemporary church. They are artifacts of a different time, where people lived with a different understanding of what was right. I believe Paul released us from these understandings when he wrote to the Galatian Church, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). But maybe the most surprising requirement is the one on age; every qualified (genealogy) male over the age of three. (Some argue that maybe this is an error and the age should be thirty, but for our purpose, let's accept the age of three.) In God's community, if you are older than three, there should be a task for you in the church.

Can I ask how you are doing? I admit that my church isn't doing as well as it could. But the church is a community where everyone is important, and where even a three-year-old should have an age-appropriate task to undertake for the faith community. It might be challenging to get a three-year-old involved in a meaningful way, but we need to put some effort into the project.

Of course, this passage also puts a twist on Jesus's words;

Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them.

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there (Matthew 13-15).

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 20

The king and his officials and the whole assembly in Jerusalem decided to celebrate the Passover in the second month. – 2 Chronicles 30:2

Today's Scripture Reading (June 4, 2026): 2 Chronicles 30

Christmas always falls on December 25. You can argue that Jesus was not born on December 25, but we know that. You can argue that Christmas is just an extension of pagan rituals in the Northern Hemisphere that celebrate the Winter Solstice, or the longest night of the year, and again, you would be partly right. Christmas, as originally constructed, was about competing with pagan celebrations held in late December. And, by the way, Christmas won the competition throughout most of the world, even though pagan beliefs have infiltrated it, rather than Christian beliefs infiltrating a pagan festival. I am not sure which is better. The truth is that we don’t know when Jesus was born. Arguments could be made that Jesus’s actual birthday was sometime in late April, June, or even September. However, the actual date is unknown. Birth dates weren’t something to remember in ancient times. No one knew the date of their birth, so they couldn't celebrate it. And in a few places in our world, it is still that way. 

Pope Julius I, a fourth-century pope (337-352), decided that we should celebrate Christmas on December 25, even though he knew that Jesus was not born on that day. The Pope felt that the day and the celebration of the birth stories of Jesus found in Matthew and Luke deserved celebration. He also decided that in the grand scheme of things, the date didn’t matter; the celebration did.

King Hezekiah, his advisors and officers, and the leaders in Jerusalem decided to celebrate the Passover during the second month of the Jewish year. Passover celebrates a specific date, and unlike Christmas, where we don’t know the true date, the actual date of the first Passover, the moment when the angel of death “passed over” the houses of the believing Jews during the deaths of the firstborn in Egypt, took place during the first month of the Jewish year. The Mosaic Law specified that the Passover should be celebrated during the first month, not the second.

However, in Judah, fewer and fewer people were actually celebrating the Passover. The nation needed a revival, and the leadership in Jerusalem agreed that this could not wait. They decided that celebrating the Passover was more important than the date. There wasn’t time to make the celebration what it should be in the first month of the year, so, for this year only, they decided to hold it in the second month. After all, didn’t the celebration mean more than the date?

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 31

In the first month of the first year of his reign, he opened the doors of the temple of the LORD and repaired them. – 2 Chronicles 29:3

Today's Scripture Reading (June 3, 2026): 2 Chronicles 29

If you were given the power to change something for just one day, what would you want to change? Often, people running for political office try to tell us what they would do on their first day, as a way of telling us what they would want to do, even if they only held power for just a single day. These first-day aspirations make an interesting list of achievements. Of course, politicians of every stripe often overpromise what they can do on that first day. So, sometimes it is interesting to look back and see what they actually accomplished on Day One of their political term.

For Bill Clinton, Day One was actually Day Two, and one of the most significant things he did was reverse the so-called "Mexico City Policy, a Ronald Reagan-era policy that placed a ban on abortion counseling through federally funded clinics. Clinton also reinstated scientific research on fetal tissue.

It is perhaps not surprising that, during the first week of his presidency, George W. Bush reversed Bill Clinton's Day Two actions, reinstating the "Mexico City Policy." Sometimes, I wonder if this is all presidents do: try to erase the legacy of those who have gone before.

Barack Obama's term also started on Day Two when he reversed the Bush-era policy that restricted public access to presidential records. Of course, one of the most significant things achieved during his time as President of the United States was an attempt at Universal Health Care, often referred to as the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare." Obamacare becomes important because it will become the target of another President's Day One action. On Day One of Donald Trump's first term as President, President Trump instructed his agencies to take down Obamacare to the "maximum extent of the Law." It foreshadowed the extent of the effort that President Trump would spend on erasing President Obama's policies.

Joe Biden came into office during the COVID-19 pandemic, so it is not surprising that on his First Day he signed orders mandating mask wearing and freezing debt collection for federal Student Loans. He also began the process of rejoining the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization, reversing the actions taken by his predecessor, Donald Trump. 

On Day One of President Trump's Second term, he basically reversed everything that Joe Biden had done during his four years in office. The Executive Order that Donald Trump signed on Day One was titled "Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions." The Order reversed 78 Biden-era executive orders, most of which dealt with diversity, equity, and Inclusion and climate change.

We don't know what King Hezekiah did on his first day, but one of the first things he did was begin restoring the Temple, which had been neglected by his father, King Ahaz. And that restoration began with the doors of the Temple, so that people could once more enter the courts and priests could minister before God in His Temple, something that had not been a priority for the past sixteen years, as King Ahaz had led the nation in a different direction.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 30

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