We have a God who doesn’t just tell us that things are bad. We could work that out for ourselves. He also tells us why they’re bad, and that’s a mercy that we shouldn’t take for granted. We see it in the passage in front of us. The chapter opens with a famine. But there’s something unusual about the famine […]

We’ve seen rebellion, but ultimately peace. God is still holding the kingdom together. And that’s a good thing. It’s very interesting to notice that this is the third of three stories in fairly quick succession in the Bible about women inflicting head wounds. The first is in Judges 4. There you have a woman called Jael, who welcomes an enemy, […]

It’s possible to be on the right side – but not to be peaceable and faithful. Don’t we see that with Joab? Joab exclaims in verse 20: ‘Far be it from me, that I should swallow up or destroy! That is not true.’ Yet what has Joab just done? He’s just fresh from murdering Amasa. Reaching out and holding his […]