While Judah is enjoying a steady reign under good King Uzziah, Israel is in a whirlwind of kingships! Did you have trouble keeping up? I had to do a little doodling to keep up with the timeline here, and I’m not sure I did a very good job, but here’s what I got:
The lineage of Israel’s king is all kinds of messed up, and everything gets blamed on Jeroboam, the instigator of the whole rebellion way back when, when Solomon was king. I had to look it up, so if you need a refresher, flip back to 1 Kings 11. Since then, Israel has changed “hands” at least six times, as far as I can tell. I think of Jeroboam’s line as Ahab’s line, so I started with him. Then Jehu took over. A few in his family survived and ruled before Shallum got the crown. That’s three. Menahem makes change number four, and Pekah’s rebellion is fifth. Finally, Hoshea took the throne possibly when King Uzziah’s son Jotham was ruling in Judah. A rough timeline of 32 years and seven months is what I came up with as far as the accumulative time that had passed between wars and crown changes. But also, it says at the beginning of the chapter that Uzziah reigned for 52 years, and at the end of the chapter, it says his son Jothan reigned 16 years, so the timelines overlap somewhere. Right now, I’m just pleased that I can wrap my head around any of this at all! I hope my nerdy numbering system helped you as well.
Writing prompt: nerdy numbers
Think about some nerdy habits you have. I do all kinds of weird stuff to help me remember things and understand things better. I was so excited last week at work to have “scored” a half-stack of sticky notes from a meeting room. Write about your quirky habits that get you through each day, or expand on the timeline of Israel and Judah’s kings from this chapter.
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