BibleProject | One Story That Leads to JesusSample

Familiar settings bring up old memories, and in today’s video, you’ll learn how authors use settings to set your expectations or to disrupt what you expect. Either way, settings are not just backdrops for the narrative. They’re part of the plot.

Take Egypt, for example, where bad things tend to happen when Abraham’s family visits. Often (not always), Egypt as a setting suggests ominous, painful things are about to happen. When Solomon decides to form an Israel-Egypt alliance by marrying Pharaoh’s daughter (2 Chron. 8:11) and importing horses from Egypt (2 Chron. 9:28), all the Egyptian enmeshment feels ominous, like pain is coming.

Sure enough, a few years fly by, and Solomon’s relationship with Egypt sours and then—worse. After Solomon’s death, his son, Rehoboam, inherits the kingdom and promptly runs it into the ground. It takes Rehoboam three short days to lose 10 of the 12 tribes, and he spends the rest of his reign rejecting Yahweh and leading everyone else to do the same.

Under Rehoboam’s watch, Yahweh’s temple gets ransacked by—you guessed it—Egypt. King Shishak invades Jerusalem and strips both the royal palace and the temple bare.

But when Rehoboam humbles himself before Yahweh, God shows mercy to the Southern Kingdom. Despite Rehoboam’s unfaithfulness, God shows mercy and finds some good still in Judah.

Reflection Questions

• Meditate on 2 Chronicles 11:13-17, a new story not found in the Kings scroll. Why do you think the chronicler added material about priests and Levites defecting from the Northern Kingdom to support David’s line?
• Recall that Chronicles was written after the exile to give the Israelites hope for the future. How might the chronicler’s additions to Rehoboam’s history offer hope to Israelites who had experienced the devastating consequences of rejecting Yahweh?