still loving how the story is coming together. I have never read the Bible straight through like this before, so I am really seeing how all the pieces fit together.
The start of todays reading shows Solomon being visited by the Queen of Sheba. The Queen had heard about Solomon's wisdom and wanted to test it for herself. She found out that he was as smart as everyone had said. Chapter 11 also talks about the vast kingdom that Solomon had including the treasures, wives and servants.
Unfortunately, Solomon wasn't as strong as he needed to be and allowed his wives to turn him toward idol worship. God punished Solomon for it by splitting the kingdom of Israel into 2 pieces, the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel. God anointed Jeroboam over the kingdom of Israel, but he too turned from God and did evil.
The rest of my reading with through the different kings that were in charge until we get to King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. This means tomorrow I will be reading about Elijah and Elisha (love those stories).
One interesting piece of the reading today was a chapter on an unknown prophet of God (at least I think he was unnamed). This prophet spoke with Jeroboam about his sin and then was told to not eat or drink and to go home a different way. Apparently, another prophet decided to trick him into disobeying God by lying and using the great phrase "God told me to tell you". The unnamed prophet followed the lying prophet and it cost him his life.
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So many questions come up when reading about the kings of Israel and Judah. The biggest being, why couldn't/wouldn't they follow God if they knew that he would bless them for it? I would say we deal with teaching ourselves that same question...
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