This video from the Christian Broad Casting Network highlights discoveries from Israeli archaeologists that are believed to support the Bible’s account of how King Hezekiah delt with idols that were found in the land.
If you tend to be a visual person like me you may really appreciate being able to see the video of some ancient sites to better understand what people have found and learned from over the years. If you are not familiar with the story of Hezekiah, the Bible says a lot about him but below you can read a little bit about the context that these discoveries were associated with.
“Hezekiah, Ahaz’s son, became king of Judah in the third year of Israel’s King Hoshea, Elah’s son. He was 25 years old when he became king, and he ruled twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi; she was Zechariah’s daughter. Hezekiah did what was right in the Lord’s eyes, just as his ancestor David had done. He removed the shrines. He smashed the sacred pillars and cut down the sacred pole. He crushed the bronze snake that Moses made, because up to that point the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (The snake was named Nehushtan.) Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, Israel’s God. There was no one like him among all of Judah’s kings—not before him and not after him. He clung to the Lord and never deviated from him. He kept the commandments that the Lord had commanded Moses.” 2 Kings 18:1-6
Something interesting about this passage that stood out to me was how Hezekiah didn’t simply focus on destroying idolatry from outside sources obviously at odds with the Torah, he also destroyed the snake that Moses made by the command of the God of Israel. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous snake and place it on a pole. Whoever is bitten can look at it and live.” Moses made a bronze snake and placed it on a pole. If a snake bit someone, that person could look at the bronze snake and live.’” Numbers 21:8-9. This is a reminder that it is possible for us to misuse what God as commanded and worship a symbol of what God has done in the past and make an idol of it while neglecting an actual relationship with the God of the Bible in the present. We need to be careful that we do not get so caught up in how God led in a singular instance that it blinds us to God’s direction for us in any other context of life. We need to destroy all idols in our lives, even the ones inspired by the Bible itself and distorted by our personal biases.
