2 Chronicles 35:21 has a bit of mystery to it. I look with suspicion on people saying, "God wants me to do this very specific thing, so don't get in our way." And especially when it is Neco, the king of Egypt, whom I would guess does not worship the same God that I do. Nonetheless, it turns out that I would have been as wrong as Josiah was to disregard this message, which really was from the Lord.
Since I have not yet purchased a copy of one of them new fangled study Bibles from a certain publisher about 50 miles from here, I looked the verse up in Kretzmann (online here), which said, "What Necho believed to be the will of the Egyptian god whom he served, that he transferred to Jehovah of Israel, in order to persuade Josiah the more easily." However, I don't think we can untangle this mystery so easily, since the Chronicler in verse 22 says that the words of Neco came from the mouth of God.
As Paul asks, "Who has understood the mind of the Lord?"
btw, if you want to know more about Cyprian than what TDP gives, check out this post.
Also, Weedon has this quote from Cyprian today, and yesterday recommended looking at the additional reading from Nahum.
2nd btw, if you know both Weedon and the Uneasy Priest, make sure to ask the latter for his impression of the former... I'm still giggling after the Mac-store inspired impression on Saturday night.
The 2 Chronicles readign was indeed a puzzler. I had only oen memebr this morning attend Matins with me and she was also rather puzzled. She asked - so Neco worshipped the true God?
ReplyDeletePerhaps it can be seen in th eline of God's use of Cyrus.
yeah, I thought of Cyrus too, but at least there you had the LORD using Isaiah to tell us ahead of time that He would be using Cyrus...
ReplyDelete