I-II KINGS: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

 I Kings 4:31 This passage states Solomon’s wisdom was greater than that of Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol. Do we know anything else about these people? Are they historically famous for their wisdom? Should we know who they are?

Heman and Ethan are listed as the authors of Psalms 88 and 89, respectively. Their lineage is given as the sons of Zerah in I Chronicles 2:6. This seems to be a contradiction with the I Kings passage, which says they are the “sons of Mahol.” However, the Hebrew phrase can also be translated as “sons of the dance” or “members of the orchestral guild,” either one of which refers to the common use of dance and music in Hebrew worship. (Mordechai Cogan, I Kings, p. 222)

The names Ethan and Heman also appear in I Chronicles 15 as temple singers. There is great deal of uncertainty among scholars as to whether these are the same as the people mentioned in Psalms and I Kings. Cogan says they are purported to be; New Bible Dictionary (p. 394, 519) says they are not the same; and Beth Tanner (The Book of Psalms, p. 675) says we can't be sure.

Regarding Calcol and Darda, we know even less since they aren't mentioned again in Scripture. Cogan (p. 221), however, says that all the names in I Kings 4:31 appear to come from the Arabic tribes in the eastern deserts. This would fit in with the reputation for wisdom that other noted Arab poets such as Agur and Lemuel held (see Proverbs 30-31). We are rightly curious about these people and many others named in the Bible who form that great cloud of witnesses with which we are surrounded and whom we hope to one day meet in person.

I Kings 11:9-10 This says that The Lord appeared to Solomon twice. I don’t recall these appearances. When would they have been?

“These two verses interpret God's appearance to Solomon on two occasions (I Kings 3:5ff and 9:1ff) as a warning that he should not go after other gods.” (G. H. Jones, 1 & 2 Kings, Vol. 1, p. 236)

The first occasion was when God promised the gift of wisdom to Solomon and then ended the blessing in 3:14 with the words “If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments..then I will lengthen your life.” This blessing was conditional and implied that things would not go so well if Solomon departed from God's commands.

God's second appearance to Solomon was after the Temple was completed, and his words this time contained not only a blessing, but also a specific warning to the king: “If you turn aside from following me...but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut Israel off from the land that I have given them...” (I Kings 9:6-7)

One could also add to these two occasions the account in II Chronicles 7:1-3 which describes how God sent fire down from heaven and His glory filled the temple. This occurred right after Solomon had given his dedicatory prayer.

I would like to think that most of us would have listened to God if he appeared only once in our lives and would have said with Job, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” However, perhaps Solomon had gotten to the point later in his life where he had come to rely on his own wisdom and had forgotten that it came from God in the first place. Maybe that is why Paul says, “Consider your own call, brothers: not many of you were wise by human standards...But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise...so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” (I Corinthians 1:26-29)

In case you think that Solomon turning from God was a sudden thing, it actually was a long time coming and stemmed from three pitfalls associated with power, all of them predicted earlier by God:

    Power: see I Samuel 8:16-17 vs. I Kings 5:13-16. Also I Samuel 8:11-12 vs. I Kings 9:22.

    Pleasure: see Deuteronomy 7:3-4,17a vs. I Kings 11:1.

    Plenty: see Deuteronomy 17:17b vs. I Kings 10:14-15,21-22.

I Kings 22:19-23 Does this passage actually teach that God takes part in purposeful lies?

There are actually three other problematic passages that involve God sending a deceiving spirit to cause false prophets to give false testimonies. This happens in the parallel passage in II Chronicles 18:18-22; Deuteronomy 13:1-3; and Ezekiel 14:7-11.

In the first of these passages, a heavenly agent of God (probably an angel) volunteers to lure the evil King Ahab to his death by placing a lying spirit in Ahab's prophets so that they will falsely prophesy success in battle. God agrees to the plan. As in Job 1-2, God is seen to be ultimately responsible for all actions in heaven or on earth, whether we interpret them as good or bad from our perspective. However, much of what we call “evil” falls under God's permissive will accomplished by other parties rather than as a result of His direct will and action.

In the Deuteronomy passage, Moses states that if false prophets tell the people of Israel that they should turn to other gods, they should not listen to them because God is testing their loyalty to Him. The prophets, however, still apparently have control over their own actions since they are to be stoned as punishment. It is uncertain, then, whether God actually enticed them into speaking falsehoods, especially in light of the direct teaching in James 1:13 that “God tempts no man.”

The Ezekiel passage concerns a situation in which people reject the teachings of God's true prophets and seek after false prophets instead. Ezekiel states that God will mislead them even further into speaking falsehoods and that they will be punished along with those who consult them.

All three of these passages are similar to the Exodus story of God's hardening pharaoh's heart after pharaoh had already hardened his own heart in order to show up his disobedience in even stronger contrast before judging him. John Wenham in his book The Enigma of Evil puts it this way: “Language which speaks of God sending lying spirits highlights the fact that God's attitude toward sin is not passive, allowing it to go on undisturbed. God is active; he so orders circumstances that sin is brought out into the open and judged. From the standpoint of those who listened, therefore, the lying spirits are said to have been sent by God, though from the viewpoint of the spirits themselves they were merely allowed to do what they wanted to do.” This same general process is taught in the New Testament in II Thessalonians 2:11-12.

II Kings 17:11 In the Daily Bible section titled "Reason's For Israel's Fall," it says that "at every high place they burned incense, as the nations whom the Lord had driven out before them had done." How come many Christian churches today burn incense when at one time it was considered sacrilegious to do so? Thanks for any insight you might offer.

There are several main points to make in regard to this question. The first one concerns the wording of the NIV translation. Other modern translations render the phrase “burned incense” as “made offerings” (AB), “burned sacrifices” (NEB) or “worshiped” (NRSV). These alternative translations are possible because the Hebrew word for incense comes from the root verb “to go up in smoke.” It can also refer to burnt offerings which may or may not contain incense (Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, Vol. 3, 913-15). So this particular verse may not even refer to burning incense at all.

Secondly, the vast majority of the 60+ unambiguous references to the burning of incense in the Bible are positive in nature and refer to practices described in Leviticus for tabernacle or temple worship of God. In those contexts, burning of incense was not only tolerated by God, but actually specified as part of the worship service. The New Bible Dictionary (p. 561) explains that “incense was a costly offering and a sign essentially of the acknowledgment of deity...Incense is also used in Scripture as a symbol of prayer.”

There is one negative reference to incense in Isaiah 1:13 which is easily misunderstood outside of its context: “Incense is an abomination to me (says the LORD).” In its context, it refers to God's disgust with all of Israel's worship practices, not because there was anything wrong with the practices themselves, but because they were carried out by a sinful people who refused to repent.

In a similar manner, the II Kings passage must be taken in its whole context. Even if the translation “burned incense” is correct, the author is not concerned with incense burning per se any more than he is commenting negatively on the idea of “worship” found in verse 7. The overwhelming emphasis in verses 7-12 is on the people's disobedience to God's commands, setting up idols and worshiping other gods through incense and sacrifices. So the phrase “as the nations whom the LORD had driven out before them had done” in verse 11 does not refer to the practice of incense burning alone, but to the whole paragraph that precedes it. This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that practically the same phrase appears in verse 8. These two similar statements act as brackets to comment on the list of sins in between.

So the only remaining question concerns the use of incense in Christian worship today. It was certainly an accepted part of worship in Old Testament times, but is not mentioned in the New Testament as an integral part of Christian practices. This is perhaps because of its close association with the animal sacrifices associated with the Old Covenant. John is given a heavenly vision of a golden censer with incense mingled with the prayers of the saints, described in Revelation 8:3-4. This is perhaps the “proof-text” used for some high church practices today, which usually associate the burning of incense with prayers.

The important take-away point is that it is not so much the mode in which we worship, but Whom we worship and whether we have the proper attitude during worship.

II Kings 24:13 This verse mentions that the Israelites were instructed to put the sacred ark in the temple of Solomon. The Daily Bible dates this as 621 B.C. Later it mentions that Nebuchadnezzar removed all the treasures from the temple of the Lord and carried them off to the temple of his god in Babylonia. The Daily Bible dates this event to 597 B.C. Is this likely when the ark disappeared from history? Do scholars believe it to be carried off to Babylonia? If so, why was Indiana Jones looking for it in Egypt?

It is true that “no more is heard of it after the destruction of the first temple by the Chaldaeans in 587 B.C. [note the discrepancy with the date above] although legend is more than willing to supply the lack of historical evidence.” (F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, pp. 187-188) If Nebuchadnezzar had taken the ark along with the vessels in the Temple, it is almost certain to have been mentioned in the II Kings passage or its parallel in Daniel 1. So it probably had been removed some time before the Babylonians arrived.

Late in Jeremiah's career but before the fall of Jerusalem, he prophesied of a future time when the people “would no longer say 'The Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh!' It will not enter their minds; they will neither remember it nor miss it, nor will another one ever be made.” (Jeremiah 3:16) This is because Jerusalem will be the throne of God and symbols such as the ark will not be needed anymore. This passage indicates that the ark was no longer in the temple at the time of Jeremiah's prophecy, or that he was referring to the time of the coming exile when the people would be missing the ark.

II Maccabees (2:1) states that Jeremiah hid the ark in a cave on Mt. Nebo before the sacking of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar. The only supporting evidence in favor of this apocryphal account is the fact that Jeremiah came from a priestly family and may have had access to the ark. Others translate this verse differently and come up with the story, in line with rabbinical tradition, that Jeremiah hid the ark on the Temple Mount, possibly in a cave under the Holy of Holies. Excavations in search of the ark there have been halted due to Muslim opposition, but I personally think they would have better luck searching for it in the network of hidden government tunnels located under abandoned Walmart stores.

In another intertestamental book, II Baruch 6:7 states that an angel hid the ark before the Babylonian conquest, and a Samaritan tradition states that the ark was hidden on Mt. Gerizim and will be restored when “the prophet like Moses” comes. Josephus refers to this belief in his Antiquities of the Jews.

Finally, there is a modern-day Indiana Jones, an amateur archaeologist who pops up on many prophecy websites. I won't give his name, but he has claimed to have found the ark of the covenant, Noah's ark and the remains of the cross containing Jesus' blood. In each case, hostile authorities have conspired against him and prevented him from returning to the sites to investigate further. What a shame that he can't then prove his claims!

Why Egypt? The close association of Jeremiah with the ark in the references cited above may have been the catalyst for some to think that the ark is in Egypt since that is where Jeremiah ended up. After the fall of Jerusalem, a group of Jews living in Mizpah forced Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch to accompany them to Egypt to flee the Babylonians (Jeremiah 42-43). The supposition is that Jeremiah knew where the ark was hidden and took it with him.

However, I think that the alternative explanation of my friend, John Murphy, is a good one:

“The movie is premised on Pharaoh Shishak’s invasion into Israel around 925-920 B.C. It presumes Shishak captured the ark at that time and took it back to Tanis in Egypt. However, as noted in the question the Bible clearly details the ark existing in Israel after that time period. I assume they took that position for the movie because the Egyptian monuments and background would make for a more exciting and visually entertaining tale and production. Also, it would have been much easier to film in Egypt at the time vs. modern Iraq or Iran where Babylon used to be. Just another example of Hollywood taking liberties with the truth to make a movie. Don’t ever let the facts stand in the way of a good story!”