David to Ahab

“The Old Testament after you’ve read it, not before.”
Here are some thoughts on the last two weeks reading: David-Solomon-Rehoboam and Jeroboam–Ahab and Elijah

• There is an extremely odd pattern of the royal father’s sins not really being punished until  his sons or even his grandsons
• God loves proof.  He is obvious, in your face, blatant.  But only after you’ve been tried, not before.
• Elijah is one of the great prophets of all time.  But it is remarkable how many of the miracles God did for him were only temporary, and then he was left to figure out the next step and to find the next miracle without knowing exactly what was going to happen.  The ravens fed him by the brook, than the brook dried up.
• I wrestled with the story of the man of God in I Kings 13 who was betrayed by a fellow prophet.  He came to deliver a warning to Jeroboam but was ordered to leave fasting, which he did until a local prophet lied to him, at which point he got devoured and the lying local prophet  mourned.  Perplexing.  The obvious message is that you have to get your own inspiration–you can’t just accept what the local prophet tells you.  On the local prophet, my theory is that he thought the man of God was lying and being performative with his fasting so he didn’t mind lying himself to interrupt the supposed performance (and he didn’t pray to confirm this conclusion, failure #1) and then the man of God didn’t pray to confirm (failure #2) but then the local prophet to his horror received a revelation during the dinner that the man of God was legit, which horrified him, so he mourned his death.
• After the tremendous story of Elijah and the Priests of Baal–easily top 10 OT scripture story–Elijah runs down the mountain to beat Ahab to Jezreel.  Why?