May 29, 2013 – 2 Kings 21

Well, that didn’t take long.  As soon as we lose Hezakiah, his son is the worse ruler that we may have seen so far.  When you think about where Hezakiah ended, as I mentioned, he ended in a very selfish way, maybe it isn’t surprising.  You wonder how much influence he had in his sons life.  He was only 12 when his dad died, so maybe he didn’t have much influence and the influence he did have was the selfish king looking out for number 1.  It may also be that the 12 year old was guided leaders that didn’t have God in mind or maybe even didn’t like the way Hezikiah had ruled with God in mind and shaped this young king the way they wanted.  We see that this bad king influences his son to be the same.

You wonder where the prophet was and why he didn’t take this young 12 year old king under his wing and guide him through those first and very influential years.  Image the kingdom if they had a good king for 55 years following Hezikiah.