Wednesday Bible Study: The priests clean up

Basically, Chapter 31 is about how the people donate immense amounts of loot to the priests, which is of course a good thing in the eyes of the Lord. As usual, the Chronicler is also very interested in lists of names and genealogies, which would seem to be of no interest whatsoever a century or more later when he actually wrote this but we all have our obsessions. BTW the Asherah poles mentioned in the first verse are shrines to a goddess who, according to an account I recently read, scholars believe was originally Yahweh ' s wife or consort. So this history of going back and forth with putting up the Asherah poles and then removing them, which we have seen throughout the Deuteronomistic History as well as Chronicles, would actually reflect a doctrinal dispute as to whether Yahweh is a bachelor who rules alone, or shares god duties with his girlfriend. I don ' t know whether this is a scholarly consensus, but it ' s an interesting idea.31 When all this had ended, the Israelites who were there went out to the towns of Judah, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. They destroyed the high places and the altars throughout Judah and Benjamin and in Ephraim and Manasseh. After they had destroyed all of them, the Israelites returned to their own towns and to their own property.Contributions for Worship2 Hezekiah assigned the priests and Levites to divisions —each of them according to their duties as priests or Levites—to offer burnt offerings an...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs