In the course of time, at the end of the second year, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great pain. His people made no funeral fire in his honor, as they had for his predecessors. – 2 Chronicles 21:19

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 21, 2013): 2 Chronicles 21

On the evening of October 18, 1216, King John of England died. The cause of the King’s death was most likely dysentery that John had picked up during his travels around the country. Since his death, John has been labelled the most hated King of the English monarchy. But the veracity of that claim is hard to discern. Most of what we remember of King John, we know from the legend of Robin Hood, in which John becomes the antagonist to his older brother Richard the Lionheart, and the characteristics of John in the story only serve to highlight the best characteristics of Richard.

But we do know a few things. John was at best ambivalent to the message of the Gospel, an extremely serious charge at the time. We know that his reign seemed to be filled with disagreements that he had had with the people of his own country, as well marred by many skirmishes with other powers. We also know that John and such a vehement argument with Pope Innocent III, that John was excommunicated from the Catholic Church, and that later he was forced to return to the Pope on bended knee to regain admission to the church, and act which cost him a extra yearly tax that had to be paid to the Pope and the Church. And it is very likely that King John died a painful death during that October night almost 900 years ago. He was mourned, but no one really knows how sincerely.

Jehoram was the son Jehoshaphat biologically, but it would seem that that is the only way that Jehoram resembled his father. While Jehoram’s father and grandfather both honored their commitments to God, Jehoram did not. And the end result was that while the reigns of Asa and Jehoshaphat were honored by the people, the reality of Jehoram’s death was that no one really cared. This passage stands as a direct testimony against Jehoram – and is probably meant to stand in contrast to 2 Chronicles 16 concerning Jehoram’s grandfather. “They buried him in the tomb that he had cut out for himself in the City of David. They laid on him a bier covered with spices and various blended perfumes, and they made a huge fire in his honor” (2 Chronicles 16:14.) As the story of the death of Jehoram is told, the reality is not that there were no perfumes needed to cover up the stench of the decaying body, but rather that no one in the city could come to respect the body of Jehoram enough to place the perfumes on the body.

For King John, modern historians recognize that while John had some serious deficiencies in his character, he probably was not as bad a king as we think that he was. There is no doubt that John was an unsuccessful monarch, but his evil tendencies were most likely exaggerated by 12^th and 13^th Century scholars. The biblical Scholar does not have the same luxury as they study the life of Jehoram. Jehoram is remembered as an unsuccessful monarch that no one was sorry to see die – and who no one was willing to honor on the day of his death.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Obadiah 1