Like Solomon, King Asa of the southern kingdom of Yehudah (Judah) had a godly beginning to his life, but it’s about your character at the end of your life that matters. That’s where Asa went astray.
Category: Discussions
Ya’akob (Jacob) blessed pharaoh of Mitsraim (Egypt) upon arrival there. Ya’akob blessed the sons of Yosef (Joseph), Ephraim and Manasseh, as if they were his own elder sons. As we have noticed in past studies of the account of Yosef in Genesis, there are parallels between the roles of pharaoh, Yosef and Yisra’el (Israel), f.k.a. Ya’akob, and those of the Father, the Son and a people called Yisra’el.
Before delving into Yeshua’s battles with the leadership of the Temple recorded in Luke 20-21, let’s explore the quote from the Hebrew Scriptures in Luke 20:17-18, that God’s true Temple would have at its foundation a Chief Cornerstone that the leadership would reject. A cryptic “hearing but not hearing” message from God in Isaiah 28 about this Stone holds a key to these arguments between Yeshua and the leadership.
The list of the names of the offspring of Yisrael, f.k.a. Ya’akob (Jacob), can be read as a message about the work of the Messiah if the meanings of the names are strung together.
“What did you know, and when did you know it?” That could have been what Yeshua asked the experts in God’s words upon their challenging of His authority to teach as and what He did. Instead, Yeshua reached into their “toolbox” — Torah, Prophets and Writings — and revealed that not only were some of their “tools” rusty from neglect but also neglected maintenance left them in danger of a catastrophic failure of the machinations they created about God’s Anointed One.
We see here that God caused and allowed many bad things to Yosef for the salvation of Yosef’s family, but He caused and allowed even worse things to happen to the Messiah Yeshua for our salvation.
Two accounts of the rise of Abiyam (Abijam) aka Abiyah (Abijah), the grandson on King Shlomo (Solomon), the throne of Yehudah (Judah) are recorded in 2nd Chron. 13:1-22 and 1st Kings 15:1-8. Chronicles portrays Abiyam as a God-fearing king, while 1st Kings portrays him as a king who didn’t love God. These seem to be internal and external perspectives of the man.