Hank Smith:                      00:00:00             Coming up in this episode on followHIM.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:00:03             I think one of the things that we think so often in the ancient world is that women were always oppressed and they always didn’t have a voice. That is 100% not true. In the ancient world, there are some mighty, mighty women who do a lot of incredible things and who have a lot of influence and power. I think that we have those examples here in the Kings of Judah.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:24             Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with John Bytheway, whose heart is tender. John, that’s absolutely true. No, it really is. You have a tender heart. In fact, you weep more easily than you used to.

John Bytheway:               00:00:42             It’s embarrassing. I have been taking my atorvastatin, so my hardening of the arteries is softening. Just talking about hearts makes me miss President Nelson. I hope to have a tender heart.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:55             Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that, but it’s in 2 Chronicles chapter 34 verse 27 that the Lord is speaking about King Josiah. He says, “Your heart is tender and you did humble yourself before God.” I though, that’s John Bytheway. John, we are privileged today to have with us Sister Heather Farrell. Heather, welcome to followHIM.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:01:15             Thank you for having me. I’m so excited.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:17             We are excited to have you. But John, this is the perfect guest for this lesson. As Heather and I connected, she’s like, “I love this part of the Bible,” which is not an easy person to find who’s like Chronicles that is my favorite. John, when you think of Chronicles, what do you think of?

John Bytheway:               00:01:35             One of the first things I think of is that we didn’t cover this in 2022 four years ago. It wasn’t even in the Come, Follow Me manual. There are some things that repeat in the Kings and the Chronicles and some of the Old Testament books, but how exciting that we get it this time and we get somebody who’s excited about it. I’m looking forward to this.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:57             Yeah, me too.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:01:59             There are some of the most amazing stories of women in Chronicles. There’s a couple really amazing women that get their stories told in Kings, but again, in Chronicles as well. And that just gives you more details. I’m excited to talk about them. And I also am excited because the book is a story of family history. It’s the story of the Davidic line. We get about 20 generations of kings and their stories. I love that because I think it’s so applicable to when we look at our own family histories and how righteousness or covenants are passed down. I’m excited to talk about the idea of passing down covenants to the next generation and how that works and how women are involved in that as well. Like you can see that in the stories of these kings. Their mothers are mentioned almost every time that women have a place in passing down those covenants.

                                           00:02:51             The title is Our Eyes Are Upon Thee. And there’s some amazing stories about people who are up against big odds about things that are hosts of armies, things that they can’t conquer. And it’s all about turning to the Lord and having him fight your battles for you, having him take the reins, and as the Christian song says, steal my show. He steals the show with all these things. And I love these stories because I’ve had times in my life when I’ve felt that, when I’ve felt God step in in impossible situations and work miracles for me. I love those stories as well. So I’m excited to talk about all that.

Hank Smith:                      00:03:27             John, it never ceases to amaze me how I think of a book of the Bible. Almost anything in scripture sometimes I think, “Oh yeah, it’s fine. It’s great.” Then we get the right person and they light it up. It happens so often on this show.

John Bytheway:               00:03:42             We must be getting some help from somewhere, huh? But I think you did find the right person and good job.

Hank Smith:                      00:03:49             It’s incredible. How many times have we walked away going, “Well, now I see that entirely differently.” John, Heather has never been on our show before, so we need to know all about her.

John Bytheway:               00:04:00             My favorite part of Heather’s bio is that when she was 11 years old, she had such a love for the scriptures. She used to use a flashlight, hide under her blankets and read the Old Testament at night. Now, Hank, how often have you ever awakened Sara? I’m afraid our kids are under their covers reading the Old Testament. Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      00:04:22             We’ve got to get down there and see.

John Bytheway:               00:04:24             We got to get down there. This must stop now.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:04:26             My dad actually felt really embarrassed about that part of my bio that I put that in because he’s like, “It makes me sound like I didn’t want you reading scriptures.” But the truth was, is that I thought that it was weird that I was 11 and wanted to read the scriptures. I thought, that’s weird. Nobody wants to do that. So I felt a little bit like I got to hide it. And then I just wanted to stay up late. Anyway, I always tell him, dad, it’s not because you didn’t let me read the scriptures, but it’s because I knew it was weird.

Hank Smith:                      00:04:50             So… It’s like the middle ages when the Bible’s illegal. She’s hiding.

John Bytheway:               00:04:55             Yeah. That is our kind of weird here on followHIM. I want to read my Old Testament under the covers. Also, Heather’s oldest son was born around Christmastime, so she felt a kinship to Mary and started researching other women, hundreds of women in the scriptures that had very little written about them. And then she started sharing what she had learned on her website, which is womeninthescriptures.com. She’s the author of the Walking With the Women in Scripture series. God Comes to Women and the co-author of The Gift of Giving Life: Rediscovering the Divine Nature of Pregnancy and Birth. She has a bachelor’s degree from BYU, a master’s degree in… Wait for this, Hank. The Bible and the Ancient Near East from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She lived in Jerusalem for a couple of years getting this done. They had a wonderful time but are now from Pocatello, Idaho, which is a lot like Jerusalem if you look just right. Heather, we’re glad you’re back and we’re glad to have you. Did you bring your flashlight?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:06:03             I have one on my phone. Thank you. I’m so honored to be here.

Hank Smith:                      00:06:10             Yeah. We are going to have a lot of fun. Let’s start with the Come, Follow Me manual. And then, Heather, John and I are ready to turn it over to you and learn and fill up our scriptures with notes and learn to love these books as much as you do.

John Bytheway:               00:06:25             Hank, I want you, when you read the Come, Follow Me manual today, to use your movie trailer voice, because this sounds like a movie trailer. I’ve heard you do that before when you read Isaiah in the Bible Dictionary, One Man Alone. So here’s another good one right here. Okay.

Hank Smith:                      00:06:40             Okay, this is beautiful. Maybe I’ll use this from now on in my classes. Here we go. The kingdom of Judah was surrounded. Armies from three powerful enemy nations were all advancing at once, prepared for battle. In this desperate moment of need, Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, turned to the King of heaven and earth. Jehoshaphat gathered his people at the temple and prayed. He acknowledged their human weakness and pleaded for deliverance. In response, the Lord promised his protection. Fear not, nor be dismayed. We may not have an invading army at our doorstep threatening to destroy us, but sometimes we do feel surrounded by adversity and evil. Our path to deliverance is the same one Jehoshaphat sought, and our prayer can be like his too. O our God, we have no might against this great company that cometh against us. Neither know we what to do, but our eyes are upon thee. In 2 Chronicles, you will read about Jehoshaphat and other kings of Judah. Consider how their faith-driven reforms, victories, and challenges can apply to your own life. Wonderful. I’m excited to do that. Okay, Heather, how do you want to start?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:07:48             I thought it’d be nice to just start out with a little bit of intro to Chronicles since people aren’t going to be familiar with the book. It’s not one we know a lot about. Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible is actually one book. So it’s not split into 1 and 2 Chronicles. The whole book was written together as one book. But because it’s so long, in the Torah scrolls, it’s two Torah scrolls on different scrolls. So there’s 1 Chronicles on one scroll and then 2 Chronicles on another scroll, which is how we get the division. And it divides pretty much King David’s stories as 1 Chronicles, then his sons and grandsons and all the family history of David comes in the second scroll. The order that we have of our scriptures is a Christian ordering of it, but in the Hebrew Bible, Chronicles is the very last book. So it’s seen as a summary book.

                                           00:08:38             We put them right next to each other, like Kings and then Chronicles. By the time you get to Chronicles, you’re like, “Wait, didn’t I just read all these stories already?” Because you hear a lot of the same ones, but at the end, the author of Chronicles was writing a bit of a summary of the story of David. He has two main themes or ideas that are really important because whoever wrote it, he writes about the Jews going back to Jerusalem after the Persians with Cyrus when he lets them go back. We know that he wrote it quite a ways after. He’s looking back and his main message that he really wants to get across is two things. The importance of the Davidic line, the line of kings that come through David, who ultimately are going to end in the Messiah. That looking forward for the hope of the Messiah and the miracles and the importance of that line and everything that happened to get it to where it is. And then also the hope for the temple. He really wants to focus the people’s eyes towards the temple. Maybe he was writing a time when they were going back to build the temple and he wants people to be focused on the temple. And I think that’s one of the two main themes there is that theme of the Davidic line and the Messiah, and then also a focus on the temple.

Hank Smith:                      00:09:50             Heather, I have two questions. One, you use the term Hebrew Bible. There could be a listener out there who thinks, is my Bible the Hebrew Bible? What do you mean by that?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:10:00             Yes. So literally the Bible in Hebrew. The Jews call it the Tanakh. It has all of the same books as Old Testament, but they’re in different orders than we have in our Old Testament. So if you were to pick up a Bible in Hebrew that was written in Hebrew, the Tanakh, and tried to follow along with your King James version, you would get lost where your books are and where verses are because it’s not the same order. All the content’s the same, but the order is different.

Hank Smith:                      00:10:27             There might be someone out there who doesn’t know that Jews don’t believe in Jesus and this is their Bible. What we call the Old Testament is their Bible. In fact, if I was talking to one of my Jewish friends, I probably wouldn’t call it the Old Testament.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:10:40             Right, you’d call it the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh. Or as people will call it the Torah, but the Torah is only really the first five books of Moses. The Tanakh is all the stories that we have.

Hank Smith:                      00:10:51             So Christians call it the Old Testament.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:10:54             Right.

Hank Smith:                      00:10:55             And then my other question was someone who’s familiar with the Book of Mormon, could they think of the author of Chronicles kind of like Mormon way in the future writing about the past, telling the stories of the past?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:11:07             Yeah. I think that’s a really good way to think about it because he obviously has records that he’s pulling from. He talks about different records of the kings and different records that have been kept. He’s not writing from the time that they happen. He’s writing from a time when he can look back and reflect. Kind of like Mormon puts in his own perception of what happened. The author of Chronicles also gives us his own guidance or opinion on what happened. Why Jerusalem’s destroyed. Why the Jews go into exile. Why they lose the temple. He’s looking back and saying this is what happened.

Hank Smith:                      00:11:38             Kind of a historian and a teacher like Mormon.

John Bytheway:               00:11:42             Hank, thanks for asking that question. So the Torah is the first five books. But add the rest, and that’s the Tanakh. Do those words mean something or is it just a proper name?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:11:54             The Tanakh is abbreviation. So you have the Torah, which is the Ta part. And then you have the na, which is the Neviim, the prophets. And then you have the ka, which is Ketuvim, which is the writings. So they divide it into three different sections. The Torah, which is the book of Moses. Then they have the prophets. So all the different books of the prophets. And then they have the books that are considered the writings, like that’s Psalms and Proverbs and Lamentations and Ruth and Daniel, the stories, those type of stories that aren’t prophets. So it’s divided into those three different ways. And then the word Tanakh is a abbreviation of all three of those.That’s where they get the word tanakh for those three different sections of the book.

Hank Smith:                      00:12:35             John, maybe ours would be bib bom doc pop.

John Bytheway:               00:12:39             It’s exactly what I was just thinking.

Hank Smith:                      00:12:45             We’ll just stick with the quad.

John Bytheway:               00:12:47             We used to call it when I was on my mission, we’d say, “Do you have your sticks?” Like stick of Joseph, stick of Judah. We just started calling it a club, just shortening it. Grab your club.

Hank Smith:                      00:12:56             I’m going to get this to catch on, you guys, the bib bom doc pop. Heather, what do you want to do next?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:13:04             I wanted to share the last verse of Chronicles. If you go to the very end of 2 Chronicles, which is chapter 36, this is the story of Cyrus. He’s the king of Persia. Throughout this, we have Egypt as the world power. And then it moves to the Assyrians are the world power. And then the Babylonians take over the Assyrians and become the world power for a short time for just a little bit of time. And then the Persians conquer the Babylonians so they inherit all of their captives and their people. Cyrus, when he becomes king, he has kind of a different political philosophy than the other civilizations. So Egyptians were very much when they conquered people, they would take people as vassal states. They would extract forced labor and tribute from those areas. The Assyrians were pretty cruel in their conquering and their idea was to come in and to have policies of mass deportations.

                                           00:14:01             They knew that the tribes they were coming into were very tribal and family-based and they wanted to break up that. They didn’t want people to be able to get back together. So they came in not just in Israel, but in other places. That was their political philosophy of how to conquer people, was to come in and cut up groups and take families and split them up so that they couldn’t ever reform and get their power back. The Babylonians were a little bit not as cruel. I mean, they’re still not really nice, but they have a different idea than the Assyrians. Their idea is that they will come in and they want to break up the leadership. They leave all the poor people in wherever they conquer. They’re not really interested in the poor people, but anybody who is skilled or educated or noble or has any type of influence, they take them and they take them to Babylon.

                                           00:14:46             So they will almost make kind of like an enclave of different nations within Babylon to serve or to have the skills, those craftsmen and all that things to help serve the Babylonians in Babylon. And so it’s kind of like when some of the Jews go to Babylon, it’s almost like they made a Chinatown or a little Italy type place, like a group where they could keep their religion preserved and their identity preserved, but they were in Babylon. When Cyrus conquers Babylon and inherits these people, he has this group of Jews that have their language, they have their religion. They preserved their Torah and their Tanakh. He kind of has maybe more of a imperial mindset than some of the other ones did. Maybe something more akin to the Romans or some of the future empires that we think about where he’s okay if other people keep their gods and if they have their different ways of religion. He’s okay if you believe and you practice religion. He just wants you to pay him taxes. So he tells the Jews there, he’s like, I’ll send you back. You can go back to Jerusalem. You can go back home and you can rebuild the temple. He’s a good diplomat and he wants them to be happy. He wants to have these loyal states that are going to pay him taxes. He allows them to go back and rebuild the temple.

Hank Smith:                      00:15:56             I tell my students that King Cyrus had a time machine. He came to our time, got a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. Took it back because he does seem different from everybody else.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:16:08             Yeah, he’s something unique. The very last verse of Chronicles, chapter 36 verse 23 is King Cyrus speaking to the Jews. I just want you to remember that this is the very last verse. This verse has a lot of importance for Jews and it deals with the temple. John, would you like to read that verse?

John Bytheway:               00:16:28             Yeah, sure. 2 Chronicles 36:23, “Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia. All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me. And he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The Lord his God be with him and let him go up.” Wow.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:16:54             Yeah. Powerful that the very last line of the Bible in Hebrew is talking about going up to the temple. It’s focused towards the temple. And that author is ending with that hope and that belief in a Messiah and in a temple being rebuilt. I love that sums up a little bit about the message of this book is really focused towards the Messiah and the temple.

Hank Smith:                      00:17:19             John, I am loving this.

John Bytheway:               00:17:22             I love that that is just a different order, but in the Hebrew Bible, that’s the last verse. Go back to Jerusalem, build the temple. Hank, we’ve talked about this before. Isaiah prophesied of Cyrus by name.

Hank Smith:                      00:17:36             Yeah, they saw him as a type of a Messiah, I believe.

John Bytheway:               00:17:40             A deliverer letting them go back.

Hank Smith:                      00:17:43             Heather, this has been superb so far. What are we going to do next?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:17:47             I mentioned before that the 2 Chronicles is a story of David’s family history. Family history is rarely all nice and beautiful and perfect and clean. It’s very messy if you start to go back and read the stories of your family history. I was just thinking about my own family history and about my great-grandmother. People called her Dolly. She was born in York, England. While she was in York, her family joined the church and she met a missionary from Sugar City, Idaho who was serving in England and they met and he went home and they wrote. And eventually she sailed across the ocean and went to Sugar City, Idaho and married him and was sealed in the temple and had five kids and was active her whole life. And I thought the Chronicler would’ve said she did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

                                           00:18:34             She was a righteous one. And then I think about her mother though, Dolly’s mom, whose name was Mary. Her story was not nice and clean and it’s messy. It’s a messy story. When she was eight, her mom died and her dad and her older brother went off to Australia thinking that they would make money to bring the family, but they gambled all their money and lost it all. She and her siblings basically lived on the streets and took care of themselves. She got a job as a maid. By the time she’s 18, she’d had two illegitimate children. The family history says that they were fathered by her employer, by the husband of her employer. They’re probably not consensual children that she had and she never talked about them. It’s not till years later my grandma found out about them through different circumstances. But she left them in an orphanage.

                                           00:19:19             She goes to London and she marries my great-grandpa who was a good man until he started drinking. And then he was terrible. My great-grandmother writes about how they used to have to hide their shoes so that he wouldn’t sell them for alcohol. Eventually, my great-great-grandmother divorces him and she meets the missionaries in England and she joins the church. Not long after joining the church, she meets another guy. His name was Walt. She gets pregnant with twins, not married. And she gets excommunicated from the church because I guess that’s what they did back then. She ends up marrying this guy and is out of the church for a long time. But during this time, her daughters are still going to church and that’s how they meet the missionaries and her daughters end up doing all these good things. And eventually they send for their mom and her husband and other kids and they come to Sugar City, Idaho.

                                           00:20:12             She goes to the temple. Her husband never joins. She’s righteous the end part of her life. Thought about her story and I thought, how would the Chronicler have labeled her story? Because there’s part of her that did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord. There’s a part of her that did not have the perfect story. But when I look back to the story, she is the first person. The first person in my family to join the church. Because of her and her influence, even though it was so messy and so imperfect and so hard and not perfect, right? That covenant and that choice she made has trickled down to my life and to my children. I feel like as we read these stories about King David’s sons and their families, that we need to kind of keep that same perspective that stories are so messy and people are sometimes trying to do the best that they can in the circumstances that they’re given. Even though the Chronicler might label somebody as they did not walk in the ways of the Lord or they did, I think we can read between the lines a little bit and look at their stories a little diferently. So I just wanted to give that perspective as we jump into these stories to think about them with that human lens.

Hank Smith:                      00:21:22             That is superb.

John Bytheway:               00:21:23             Yeah. I mean, that sounds like an Old Testament story, doesn’t it? I love what you said, Heather. The older I get, the more I think it’s an easier way to live, to just figure everybody’s just doing the best they can and we all mess up and I’ll mess up too, but we’re just going to keep doing the best we can.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:21:41             Yeah. Even though she wasn’t in the church, she still participated in it.

Hank Smith:                      00:21:45             Yeah, she was dealt a rough hand.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:21:47             Yeah, right? It’s really hard. And I feel really grateful. She’s on my wall. I have a family history wall and she’s on there and I think about her a lot.

John Bytheway:               00:21:57             And this is why sometimes we have to read our family histories like under a blanket with a flashlight because they’re messy, you know?

Hank Smith:                      00:22:07             I love what you said there. If by chance she hears this, she’s got to be very grateful and happy about her great-great granddaughter. And what she’s doing and teaching.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:22:18             Yeah, you never know where some good choices will lead, right? You never know where they’ll end up.

Hank Smith:                      00:22:24             I love it. Some of our listeners might be thinking, “Wait, I’m pretty sure I already read some of these stories.” So why do we get the exact same stories in Kings and then Chronicles?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:22:36             That’s a good question. I’m not sure if I know exactly, right? Because we never know exactly why they’re there. But I think that the main difference between Chronicles and Kings is that Chronicles is dealing only with the kings of Judah. So at this point, after Solomon’s son, the kingdom divides into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. This book is only dealing with those kings. In Kings, we get stories of the Israelite kings and the kings of Judah, but this book is solely about the kings of Judah. The Davidic line is again, what he’s interested in. He’s interested in that line of David that is pointing towards the Messiah.

Hank Smith:                      00:23:15             That is really helpful. I’m guessing the author of Kings and the author of Chronicles didn’t know they were going to be in the same book.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:23:22             Yeah, maybe not, right? They didn’t realize they were going to be back to back. They would’ve thought differently about their…

Hank Smith:                      00:23:28             Yeah. About how they were going to tell this story.

John Bytheway:               00:23:31             I think I was watching the Bible Project. They said that they paint David’s stories in particular in a more positive light. Good lessons for the future. If you want to read some of the ups and downs of David, you can in other places, but it kind of paints him in a more positive light so that there’s things we can grasp onto.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:23:53             Yeah. 1 Chronicles makes David look awesome. He has no mistakes in Chronicles. Where in Kings we get the very flawed David. The other thing to know about Kings and Chronicles is that they probably were drawing from the same sources. Just like if we were to write a book about church history, but we’re all drawing from the same Joseph Smith Papers or whatever, we’re going to have similar sources even though we’re writing differently. So they’re coming from the same sources, which is why a lot of the things are the same.

Hank Smith:                      00:24:21             So what do we want to do next? I keep interrupting you with questions.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:24:24             No. No, it’s good. The two things that are really important in this book are the temple and the Davidic line that really gets set up in the beginning of Chronicles with the creation of the temple. It’s interesting because we see in 2 Chronicles in verse two, it says, “And Solomon determined to build a house for the name of the Lord,” the temple. We know that. “And a house for his kingdom.” This is something I think we miss a lot of times when we’re talking about the building of the temple is Solomon built two houses and they’re connected. They happened at the same time. They had the same builder, the same materials. He’s building a house to the Lord and a house for his kingdom, which means he’s building a palace, like the place where the Davidic kings are going to live. I think this is so important because we have to remember there’s two sacred houses that are being built here. In our faith, we oftentimes talk about our temple is the holy place and the place that is next in holiness to that is the home. We see them as being temples. And we see here in, when Solomon builds the house, the Lord is having him build two houses.

John Bytheway:               00:25:31             Now, Heather, where was the verse for he built a temple and a house? That was 2 Chronicles…

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:25:38             Yeah. 2 Chronicles 2:1 is where it talks that he’s building a house for the name of the Lord and a house for his kingdom. But then if you jump down further in that chapter, so 2:12, you’ll see that the builder of the temple, so the man that Solomon has hired to be the head builder of the temple, his name’s Huram. He is talking to Solomon and he says this, “Moreover, blessed be the Lord God of Israel that made heaven and earth who hath given to David the king a wise son, endued with prudence and understanding that might build a house for the Lord and a house for his kingdom.” I think in that verse, we see that it’s not that Solomon is thinking, hey, we have all this extra material. We’re building this house. We might as well build me a palace while we’re at it. I want a big fancy house too. We see that here that the commandment to build a temple also came with a commandment or the Lord’s directive to build a house as well for the king and a home for him.

Hank Smith:                      00:26:36             You know what that reminds me of, both of you? And we don’t have to go on about this, but isn’t it later in the Doctrine and Covenants where they’re building the Nauvoo Temple and the Lord talks about building, I think it’s called the Mansion House. Is that right, John?

John Bytheway:               00:26:50             Yeah, the Mansion House. And then what was across the street from the Mansion House was kind of a place people could stay, right? I mean, if travelers are coming to see the temple, it’s the Motel 6 of Nauvoo in the day or something.

Hank Smith:                      00:27:04             Yeah. Exactly what you said, Heather. This is a commandment. This isn’t a, hey, Joseph Smith also wants a nice house.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:27:12             Yeah, we have a whole section in the Doctrine and Covenants about the mansion house, but it’s a part of building the temple is also, the Lord is like, you build this temple, but then you also build this. And I think that is an ancient pattern. I think temples also have this idea of home along with them. And I think that’s so powerful for Latter-day Saints because we say that often, that the home is next to the temple. To see it here in the scripture is that the Lord sees that that way too.

Hank Smith:                      00:27:39             Oh, Heather, you have totally changed how I’m going to teach that. The Mansion House, Nauvoo Temple section from here on out. John, don’t you love it when someone does that? Where they show you something you’ve, it’s going to change the way you think about something and teach it?

John Bytheway:               00:27:53             Won’t that be fun to say to people, why don’t you open to 2 Chronicles 2?

Hank Smith:                      00:27:58             Right.

John Bytheway:               00:27:58              See if those pages, they could still be stuck together in some scriptures.

Hank Smith:                      00:28:03             They’ll be like, wow, Hank, John, you know so much. We’re like, well, yes, we study. We study the past. This is great. Yeah. This is great, Heather.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:28:13             That’s awesome. Okay, so let’s go to 2 Chronicles 7 now. And this is after the temple has been built and after Solomon has dedicated the temple, which wow, that’s amazing that we have that prayer and we have that preserved of an ancient temple being dedicated. That’s amazing. After he does that in 2 Chronicles 7, it says they had seven days of feasting and on the eighth day they had a solemn assembly. And that night when Solomon is asleep apparently that evening sometime, the Lord appears to him and accepts the dedication of the temple. I don’t know if that happens to all of our prophets, but that’s really powerful that he is coming and he’s accepting Solomon’s dedication. He gives him two promises or two covenants. These covenants have to do with both houses, with the temple and with the palace, with the house of Solomon. The first covenant is in verse 12, chapter 7, verse 12.

Hank Smith:                      00:29:12             I’ll go ahead and do this. Okay. 2 Chronicles 7:12 all the way through 16. “And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer and I have chosen this place to myself for a house of sacrifice. If I shut up heaven and there be no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people, if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now mine eyes shall be open and mine ears attent unto the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and sanctified this house that my name may be there forever and mine eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually.” Wow.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:30:02             Yeah. Powerful, powerful promise. In his dedicatory prayer, Solomon asked the Lord, he said, “If we have famine and the people pray towards the temple, will you hear them? If we are attacked by enemies and the people pray towards the temple, will you hear them? If we go into captivity and we pray towards the land where the temple is, will you hear them?” And here the Lord is saying, “Yes. If they pray towards my temple, I will hear them.” I love verse 15, “Now mine eyes shall be open.” What did we say the title of the lesson is for Come, Follow Me?

Hank Smith:                      00:30:44             Yeah, Our Eyes are Upon Thee.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:30:47             This is about the idea that if we are looking towards God, that he is looking back towards us. He is seeing the people and he’s seeing their trials and he’s seeing their afflictions and he’s hearing their prayers when they’re directed towards a temple.

John Bytheway:               00:31:03             When I was getting ready for this episode, I discovered that there is apparently a very popular song in Christian circles for 2 Chronicles 7:14. It was all over the place. That verse could be maybe one of the most well-known verses in Chronicles is verse 14. And it is beautiful. If my people, which are called by my name, humble themselves, pray, seek my face, in turn, I will hear from heaven. That phrase, I will heal their land. Isn’t that something we all want? If you do a little Googling, you’ll find that song.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:31:41             It’s beautiful because it’s God’s promise that if you seek him, he will be there. This promise has to do with the temple. He’s saying, I have accepted the temple. And verse 14, “If they humble themselves, if they pray, if they seek, if they turn from their wicked ways, my eyes will be opened towards you.” He’s giving that promise of the temple. And this is important for the rest because we see that that’s where he wants them directing their worship and their focus. He wants them turning towards the temple. We see in the stories coming up that they don’t always do that. They’re turning to other things besides the temple. So that’s an important thing to remember. That’s what God wants them to do. That’s what he’s accepted, Solomon’s prayer, that’s what he’s asked them to do.

John Bytheway:               00:32:21             If some of our listeners are out there preparing to teach this to young people, one of the things that I love when I find these in the scriptures and they’re all over the place is kind of an if/then statement. The first time I heard it was a computer programming class I took in high school in the 80s when computers were the size of the school. If my people this, then, then this. And I think the three of us are sitting here today because of an if/then statement. If any of you lack wisdom, then is implied, let him ask of God. And they’re all over the place. What does King Benjamin say, Hank, at the end of Mosiah 2, I would desire you would consider on the blessed and happy state of those which keep the commandments of God for behold they are blessed in all things both temporal and spiritual. And if they hold out faithful to the end, then they are received into heaven that they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. It’s just kind of fun to find those if/then statements. And this is a beautiful one. 2 Chronicles 7:14.

Hank Smith:                      00:33:21             That is.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:33:23             You should turn it into a song.

John Bytheway:               00:33:25             It is one.

Hank Smith:                      00:33:28             Heather, you are killing this here. This is fantastic. Let’s keep going.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:33:33             There’s so much awesome stuff coming up. The next part of a covenant deals with David’s line, with the king, with his house, with his family is what comes next. So this is that personal covenant. We have our covenant with the temple and the people, and this is the personal covenant of Solomon. And it is in verses 17 to 20. Would John read these ones since Hank read the next ones if we read 17 to 20?

John Bytheway:               00:33:58             Still in 2 Chronicles 7.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:34:00             Yes, 2 Chronicles, 17 to 20.

John Bytheway:               00:34:02             Okay. And as for thee if, there’s that if, if thou wilt walk before me as David thy father walked and do according to all that I have commanded thee and shalt observe my statutes and my judgments, then will I establish the throne of thy kingdom according as I have covenanted with David thy father saying there shall not fail thee a man to be ruler in Israel. But if you turn away and forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods and worship then, then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them. And this house which I have sanctified for my name will I cast out of my sight and it will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations. Some more if thens in there.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:34:51             Yeah. He’s very clear on those ones.

Hank Smith:                      00:34:54             And that’s what happens, right, Heather?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:34:56             Yeah, that’s exactly what happens. The temple gets destroyed and it’s prophetic there. The thing that’s so powerful to me about this though is that the covenant here is for, I think scholars would call it like the Davidic kingship, the Davidic covenant that gets passed on. This is a covenant that God is making with Solomon saying that if you will walk in my ways and if your sons and your children will all walk in my ways, this is the promise that I will give them. But it is all dependent, not upon what’s happening in the temple, right? Not necessarily anything having to do with the Levites and all this stuff. This is how they personally in their own life are living the gospel and are keeping his commandments and all their personal worthiness matters. I think this is so beautiful because we see here setting up that God has these two houses.

                                           00:35:43             He cares about how worship happens in both of them. He has the temple, which scholars use this as the official religion. They compare it to the official religion versus household religion. The official religion are things that are public and sanctioned by a bigger group. They usually have lots of rules and they have the priests. That’s the religion of the temple. It’s a very organized… We had all those chapters in Exodus and all about organizing that whole priesthood in that whole order. And there’s that part of it. But then there’s also the household religion, the religion that happens in the home. The vision that happens in your heart with families and people and how you actually live your religion. You can go to the temple or you can go to church and you can do all the things living that part of the religion. But God also cares about how we live it in the home, how we live it in our hearts and with our families.

                                           00:36:37             He’s telling Solomon here that that’s what he cares about as well. He cares about how these kings are going to live their religion and how they’re going to live it day-to-day in their own lives. I feel like the thing that gets me so excited about this is that oftentimes women can feel left out of the official religion, especially where there might not be places for them in the officiating of different ordinances or things that happen in the official religions. This isn’t true just for Latter-day Saints. This is true for all different types of religions. Sometimes official religions are more male-centric, but the household religion is oftentimes female-centric. That oftentimes that’s where the women have the most influence and the most power over religion. And this isn’t just like Latter-day Saints, but this is like for religions throughout history and different things that scholars look at. And that household religion is where women oftentimes have a lot of influence.

                                           00:37:30             We see this in the stories of these Davidic kings. We see the influence of the mothers of the household religion determining the personal worthiness or the way that the king is walking in the ways of the Lord. As I was thinking about this, I was trying to think about what would this look like in our Latter-day Saint lives or the way we organize stuff? So I thought that the official religion would include things like our temple and our sacrament and general conference. Things that are very official and organized where our household religion would be things like personal and family prayer, scripture study, father’s blessings, praying at mealtime. The way you decorate your house with pictures and temples and religious arts. It can also be the way that you celebrate religious traditions like Christmas and Easter. I was just remembering too that Elder Andersen, who gave the talk a couple years ago about encouraging Latter-day Saints to up their celebration of Easter, to encourage us to be better about celebrating Easter.

                                           00:38:30             And I was at my cousin’s house. She has seven kids and I have seven kids, so it was chaos. Immediately, we turned to each other like, oh, we’re thinking traditions. We’re thinking food. We’re thinking like all this stuff about how can we do that? How can we make that happen? What can we do in our families to celebrate Easter better? That is all the household religion. The celebration of Easter happens at church for an hour. The real celebration of Easter happens in the home. And that’s where you really feel it and that’s where you really get the celebration. Same with Christmas. We go to Christmas, maybe we might go to church for a little bit of Christmas, but the most of the celebration is at home and there’s that way that we live it and how we can do it. And women have always had a huge influence in how that household religion happens.

Hank Smith:                      00:39:17             Household religion. I love it.

John Bytheway:               00:39:20             Oh, that is so interesting. I’ve never thought of them that way. Yeah.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:39:26             One of the best stake sacraments I went to was where the visiting general authority, he spent the whole time talking about this. He said, some of you guys might have this invention that I think is from the devil and it’s those fridges that are not magnetic. The ones that you can’t stick anything to the front of. He says, I think that was a move by the devil, because he’s like, those are so important. He’s like, you get yourself a magnetic fridge. He’s like, especially if you have teenage boys, you put on your fridge everything you want them to know. You slap it with scriptures, you slap it with pictures of Jesus, you put everything on there because he said that’s where your teenage boys are going to be. They’re going to be at the fridge.

John Bytheway:               00:39:59             At the fridge.

Hank Smith:                      00:40:00             At the fridge.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:40:01             The other place you get them is at the bathroom. He’s like, you get a little basket or you get a thing on your wall and you stick all your New Eras and all your Ensigns and all your Friends. Stick them right there so when they’re bored, they have something to pull out. And I’ve done that. I have one in my bathroom because of this general authority. My kids do. I’m sure they’re on their phone sometimes, but I do know I can tell that those New Eras get read because they’re right there in the bathroom. I though that was funny advice. It’s that idea of implementing it in your homes.

Hank Smith:                      00:40:28             That’s so great. Do you remember who it was?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:40:31             No, I don’t. I don’t. That would be so fun if I could remember.

Hank Smith:                      00:40:35             Heather, I’ve said this before, but this is amazing. What are we going to do next?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:40:40             Well, the chapters in Come, Follow Me start in chapter 14 with the story of Asa, who is a grandson of Solomon. We have his story, which is awesome. His dad was a man named Abijah. So we’re a couple generations down now with that Davidic lineage. We’ve had some kings who have been righteous and some who haven’t. And actually, we kind of lost it right out the door with Solomon because at the end of his life, his household religion starts to go haywire. He marries foreign wives and those foreign wives introduce the worship of idols to his household. And we see the consequences of that in his son. But here we have Asa and it says that in chapter 14, verse two, it said, “And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. For he took away the altars of the strange gods and the high places and brake down the images and down the groves and commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers and do the law and the commandments.” We have to remember at this time that the temple is still going strong.

                                           00:41:47             The priests are still doing everything they’re supposed to be doing. All the sacrifices are still happening, but there’s these other things that are happening as well. People are worshiping strange gods. There’s these high places. There’s images and there’s groves. So these are other things that are happening, other ways that people are worshiping. They’re still doing the temple, but they’re also doing these other things. And Asa is getting rid of them. The interesting thing about these is that the words in Hebrew refer a lot to Canaanite traditions. So if you remember the Israelites came into the land of Canaan, they didn’t kill all the Canaanites. The Canaanites are still there and they’re living among them and they’re adopting some of their traditions and their cultures and their way of doing things and this culture that they’re living among. One of those is that idea of a high place.

                                           00:42:33             And actually in the scriptures, a high place is not always a bad thing. In Hebrew, the word is Bamah, which literally means an elevation or literally a high place. You’re up higher than other people. At the beginning of Chronicles, we even see that Solomon, before the temple’s built, we have a verse about him when he goes and he sacrifices at a high place because that’s where people, before they had the temple, that’s where they went, was to a high place. A mountain or a place that was elevated or an altar where they would worship. And remember, we had that whole covenant that the Lord wants his focus and the eyes of the people turned towards the temple, right? And they’re still using these high places. Asa, his attempt to get people focusing where they’re supposed to be says, okay, we’re not going to these high places anymore.

                                           00:43:18             He really is trying to bring the twelve tribes together to unify them as worshiping at one place as a unified people, bringing them together to worship God and have their focus on the temple. The other word that’s interesting here is the word that is translated as groves is in Hebrew is the word asherim. These referred to idols that were… We don’t really actually know what they were, to be honest, because they were made out of wood. They were some sort of tree and things that are made out of wood do not last in archeology. They don’t, they don’t exist. We don’t really know what these are, but we know that they were planted, that they could be erected and they could be carved and they could be cut down and they could be burned. The scholars think that perhaps these were living trees that were cut in the figures of women and represented goddesses, like a, you know, like a fertility goddess or that they might have been made out of trees or that they could have been just even a literal tree that people went to.

                                           00:44:14             So they’re not really sure what they were, but the word Asherah refers to the Caananite goddess. She’s the mother goddess of the Caananite Pantheon. Her name is Asherah. She’s married to the God El, and their son is Baal, who we hear a lot about in the Old Testament. He’s the storm god that brings rain. She’s the goddess that you would pray to if you wanted fertility or if you wanted prosperity. We see that there’s still this tradition among the Israelites of adopting this Canaanite culture into their practices.

Hank Smith:                      00:44:46             And Asa is saying, no, we’re not doing that.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:44:49             Yeah. He’s saying that we need to get rid of that. And the interesting part is too, is that this goddess worship is probably a lot of women-led. If there’s a goddess of fertility, that’s going to be a goddess that women are going to want to pray to in the Old Testament. It’s women who sometimes are leading the worship of these goddesses. And I think that’s really erroneous to equate her, our heavenly mother with Asherah, because it’s a little bit like saying that we look at Hera or Aphrodite and saying, oh, we see aspects of a divine feminine in them, and we see aspects of what our heavenly mother must look like. I think that’s erroneous when we look at it that way. I think that there are aspects of divine feminine in all these ancient goddesses, but Asherah is a Canaanite goddess. She’s part of their pantheon, part of their heritage. And the Israelites adopt some of it because they’re living among it. I don’t think it’s innately part of the Israelite religion. You know, I don’t think that’s a name that we could call her.

Hank Smith:                      00:45:45             Yeah. And I have heard that, so that’s very helpful.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:45:47             It’s interesting though, from a Latter-day Saint point here, because we see they’re oftentimes cutting down groves, which wouldn’t be these Asherah trees. But as Latter-day Saints, we believe in high places, sacred places like temples, right? High places, that idea. And then we also believe that groves are sacred. We have a sacred grove in our church. You can go to the sacred grove. So we believe in sacred groves. We believe Joseph Smith found answers in a grove of trees. Jesus, the Garden of Gethsemane is a sacred grove. We have these places that are sacred, that are groves, and I feel like that can get sometimes confusing for people. I don’t know, to be honest, if I can unpack all that or understand everything about it, but I do know that there is a difference here that what they’re doing is not righteous. It’s not directed in the right way.

                                           00:46:35             They know where that the focus should be going and it’s being directed to something else. Then Asa tears down all these things and he tries to get the people to stop doing those things, but he also fills the void by having them follow the law and he fortifies all the cities of Judah. He builds fortifications for the cities of Judah. This is important because pretty soon they get attacked by the Ethiopians. They are going out to battle against them. This is in chapter 14, verse 10. They’re going out to battle against them. Verse 11, Asa gives this prayer to the Lord asking for help.

Hank Smith:                      00:47:10             And Asa cried unto the Lord his God and said, Lord, it is nothing with thee to help. Whether with many or with them that have no power, help us, O Lord, our God, for we rest on thee and in thy name we go against this multitude. O Lord, thou art our God. Let not man prevail against thee.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:47:31             I love that prayer. And especially the ones about Lord, it is nothing with thee to help. Whether with many or with them that have power. The idea that God can step into our lives. Then if we go forward a little bit more into chapter 15, we see that they’re victorious and they conquer the Ethiopians. Then the prophet’s name is Azariah. He comes out and he meets Asa and he tells him, this is chapter 15, verse two. And he says, “The Lord is with you while you be with him. And if you seek him, he will be found. But if you forsake him, he will forsake you.” I have to admit that that really hit me, like, with ouch. I was like, ooh, I don’t know if I really like that verse, if I’m honest. I like the part about seeking God and he will be found.

                                           00:48:20             But I don’t really like the part about forsaking him and he forsakes you. That kind of hit me a little bit because earlier this month I had a really big project I was working on and I kind of needed a miracle for things to work out. I needed people to show up in ways that they were not showing up. I was praying to Heavenly Father, driving my car where I was going and I was praying in my heart. The thought hit me. I was like, I am not actually worthy at the moment to ask for a miracle because I don’t remember the last time I actually said a prayer without falling asleep. It’s been a while. And I haven’t been reading my scriptures and it’s been a while since I got to the temple. And this is a relationship. I’ve been really distant. I’ve been busy in my life and I haven’t been there.

                                           00:48:57             And I thought, I don’t even know if I qualify for a miracle, right? There’s probably all these things you have to do to get a miracle and I am falling short. How do you make sense of that? The idea that there’s a certain point where we know that there’s these things we do. We tell ourselves these things will give us power. These things are going to help the Lord help us. But then it’s also like, if we don’t do them, does he completely abandon us? If we’re not doing all the things exactly right, does that lessen the amount of power that God can put into our life?

John Bytheway:               00:49:24             Where’s the verse? He that honors God, God will honor. I guess maybe we want the God that’s always available to us, whether we really need him or not. Just always be at my beck and call would you please? But it does sound a little bit more just that he’s saying, if you’re going to forsake me, don’t be surprised if I’m a little harder to find.

Hank Smith:                      00:49:49             Maybe it’s, if you forsake me, you won’t have access to the power. I’ve designed this program to work a certain way.

John Bytheway:               00:49:58             Like, what is the natural result of forsaking me?

Hank Smith:                      00:50:01             You don’t have that same power. I work with young adults who do human things. Sometimes they’ll say something like that to me, Heather, like, well, I just don’t think the Lord, I just don’t live the way I’m, I think I’m supposed to. So I don’t think… I think the Lord’s disappointed in me. Or I’ve had even young people say, I think the Lord finds me kind of disgusting. And no, no, no. I usually tell them, be honest. Say, yeah, it’s been a long time since I prayed and yeah, I probably don’t deserve this. And open your heart and say, I would love it though.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:50:38             It’s almost like an electronic or something where it’s… I don’t know. I was just thinking about myself when it’s been having a hard time charging lately. Even if there’s a little bit of charge left in there, like maybe at some point in your life, you were really diligent and you filled up to 100% on everything. That battery can last you a little ways, right? I don’t think the Lord will always be like, hey, just because you’re not doing it right this minute or right this second, then I can’t help you. I feel like we get a reserve of spiritual power that can last with us. I had a friend that she was going through a really hard time and she brought up the story of Joseph in Egypt and about the storehouses. And she said, I’m so glad that I had seven years of filling up my storehouses with spiritual power because she’s like, I’m having seven years of spiritual drought. I’m relying on that storehouses. We can have that reserve.

Hank Smith:                      00:51:25             I think that’s a true idea. John, wouldn’t you say to the… I think the Lord is looking for ways to bless you. I doubt the Lord is looking for reasons to penalize. I just don’t see that.

John Bytheway:               00:51:39             I think it’s never been shared more beautifully than Elder Kearon’s recent talk. His plan is not a plan to keep you out. It’s a plan to bring you home. Like you said, humanizing God and saying, he’s like this really mean professor I had. That’s not the way he is. I was even thinking as we were talking about Amulek that was living beneath his privileges. I knew, but I would not know. I heard, but I would not hear. And God snatched him anyway. So when you think of his character, always available. I want to believe that.

Hank Smith:                      00:52:15             Maybe Azariah’s just in a bad mood.

John Bytheway:               00:52:18             Yeah. I love how much we can learn about what God is like from studying these stories. That there’s a certain justice there, but there’s also a certain mercy just when we need it.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:52:33             He does hold us to a standard. He does expect something from us. It’s not a world where it’s like, oh, do whatever you want and I’ll be there for you. It’s like, hey, if you show up and you’re there, I’ll be there. Kind of like a really good coach. But like, if you show up to practice and you’re invested, I’m going to be there with you. Even if you’re the worst one on the team, I’m going to be there.

Hank Smith:                      00:52:50             Just don’t stop coming to practice because it’s impossible for me to coach you if you’re not there. So maybe that’s what it means. If you don’t come to practice, how can he coach you?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:53:03             Yeah. The next part is that Asa and his people, they really work hard to order their lives correctly and to get things in the right way so that they can have that power flow into their lives and they bring offerings to the Lord and they make a covenant. This is one of those hard Old Testament verses when we have Chronicles 15:13. I’ll read 12. “And they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their hearts and with all their souls.” I was thinking I need that like as my family motto when we walk in. Like here we have, we’re seeking him. We’re not perfect and we’re not always doing it right, but we’re, we’re seeking. We’re in that active process of finding him with all of your heart and with all of your soul. But then this is the hard Old Testament verse 13, that whosoever would not seek the Lord, their God should be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman. And I also kind of want to put that one on my wall for my kids, be like, if you don’t. There’s consequences. I think that’s hard sometimes. The Old Testament with a different world.

Hank Smith:                      00:54:03             They speak differently. We’ve got the same Lord in a different culture. They’re speaking differently. John, do you remember when Ross taught us about idioms? He said, “If you don’t grow up in a culture, it is so hard to learn all the idioms of two birds with one stone and a piece of cake.” He said, “I’m certain with the Old Testament we are missing so many idioms.”

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:54:29             And cultural references to things.

Hank Smith:                      00:54:31             Right. I like what you’re doing here, Heather. You read a verse and you stop and you go, that doesn’t taste right to me. Didn’t Joseph Smith teach that true doctrine tastes good? I think you’re wise to stop and go, Hmm, I’m not quite sure about that.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:54:47             Yeah. Sometimes we get those really hard stories in the Old Testament and we’re like, whoa, what is this? We have to remember that not everything in there is like, you should do this. This is the way to live. This oftentimes like, this was not a good choice. This is not the way to do it. Or this is their culture. This is what they did.

John Bytheway:               00:55:04             Someone taught us a phrase. These are descriptive, not proscriptive. This is just telling you what happened, not telling you you should do this. Which, yeah, there’s a lot of things I’m reading I would rather not do in here. And it’s messy.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:55:21             I want to finish off Asa’s story and then skip back to a little part about his mother. Chapter 16, we end with the end of his story is that there’s another battle that he’s going up to. This time, instead of turning to the Lord first, he turns and he makes an alliance with the King of Syria. In chapter 16 verse seven, this time a different prophet, his name is Hanani, the seer, came to Asa king of Judah, and said, because thou hast relied on the king of Syria and not relied on the Lord, thy God, therefore is the host of the king of Syria escaped out of thy hand. Let’s get down to verse nine. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards him. Herein thou hast done foolishly. Therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.

                                           00:56:06             We see that, those verses about eyes again, right? That’s a theme that we keep seeing coming through all these verses is the eyes, the eyes of the Lord, where our eyes are pointed. I don’t think we can fault Asa here because that just seems like a natural thing. You should probably find an ally to fight somebody. But the lesson here is, where did he turn first? Did he turn first to the Lord and then make the alliance? Like he turned first to the alliance. And I think this is so applicable to our days, especially when we think about where our eyes go first, especially with AI and our phones and how easy it is to get answers. It’s so easy to get our eyes turning first to our phones before we’re turning to the Lord. And I know that I’m guilty of that as much as anyone. It’s a good reminder for me too.

Hank Smith:                      00:56:47             Yeah. I know John is as well. I don’t struggle, but I know John, John does too.

John Bytheway:               00:56:52             I like to tell my students, I can’t keep up with the gens. What are we on? Gen Z? Are we starting over again? Gen AA or are those batteries? I tell my students, my worry for Gen Z is you want Google speed answers to golden questions. Because if you ask Google, Siri, Alexa, Chat, they’ll tell you something immediately. Sometimes the best answers come a little more slowly from God with a little more effort. Don’t go right for the fast answer. It’ll always tell you something.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:57:27             Yeah, God’s answers do require effort. He doesn’t give things usually easily without effort.

Hank Smith:                      00:57:32             Yeah. And he reminds him that he did it in the past. He’s like, don’t you remember? It was just on the previous page. Right.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:57:41             How did you forget already?

John Bytheway:               00:57:44             Rewind the scroll a little bit and you’ll see it.

Hank Smith:                      00:57:46             You did so well back then.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        00:57:48             But that’s one of the beautiful things about these stories is they’re so human. We get such human stories in the Old Testament that we’re like, ooh, I get you. I understand. So you can understand what these guys bring. The verse I want to skip back to is in Chronicles 15. And this is about Asa’s mother. We have Chronicles 15:16. And it says, also concerning Maachah, the mother of Asa the king, he removed her from being queen because she had made an idol in the grove and Asa cut down her idol and stamped it and burnt it in the brook Kidron. Here, if we remember the two houses, we have the queen of the home who is not practicing the religion the way that it should be. And it’s interesting because this word that says that he removed her from being queen, in Hebrew is the word gebirah.

                                           00:58:36             The word gebirah is from the Hebrew root, which means to rule. It means a woman with power. It’s not just a queen. For example, in the different ways that it’s translated, the Septuagint or the Greek translation of the Old Testament translates these words a little differently. So some of the ways that it translates this word gebirah is the feminine strength of the kingdom. The feminine ruler, the elder or the great woman, a female chief, the woman who holds the power. And I love that. This is a position that she has within the household. We know it’s a position because he can remove her from it. He can take her away from it, take her out of it. And this isn’t his wife, this is his mother. She has this position of power within the household. We see this throughout the stories in the Old Testament.

                                           00:59:27             The first time we have the word gebirah used is of Sarah, the matriarch, Abraham’s wife. When we talk about Hagar and Sarah, Sarah is called the gebirah. She’s the woman in charge. She’s the leader. She’s the head of the household, I guess is the best way to say it. Which is also why we see all that tension between the matriarchs like Leah and Rachel all the time, because there’s a position within an ancient household of the head woman, of the gebirah, of the woman that leads the household. She sets a lot of the tone for what happens in the house. And we see here that we have an unrighteous gebirah, an unrighteous leader of the household. The really interesting thing about the queens of Judah is that we see this idea of a gebirah passed down throughout the Davidic lineage. And it starts with Bathsheba.

                                           01:00:13             So we see Solomon, his mother is Bathsheba, we see her act in a way that is really unique. For example, when she comes, when Nathan is wanting, he’s the prophet and he wants to see who’s going to be put on the throne, he’s trying to get Solomon to be on the throne and not David’s other sons. He comes to Bathsheba and he asks her to have influence getting her son on the throne. And she does and she’s aligned with the temple, right? She’s an ally with the priest and getting Solomon put on the throne. Then when she comes into Solomon’s court, he bows down to her and he sits a chair at his right hand for his mother to sit on his right hand. And we see this idea of a woman in the Judean Court that has this position of power and influence who happens to be the mother of the king.

                                           01:01:01             It doesn’t happen so consistently in Chronicles, but in Kings, the pattern is really consistent. Whenever a King of Judah is introduced, it has this pattern. The king’s name is given first, followed by how old the king was when he took the throne, how long he reigned for, the name of the king’s mother, the name of his mother’s father or his mother’s nationality. And then it concludes with the statement that either this king did which was evil or that was right in the sight of the Lord. And in kings, it doesn’t miss a one. In Chronicles, we kind of get them a litle bit more spattered. You’ll see a couple of them here and there, but we have one for every king with that same thing with his mother’s name mentioned. So when it comes to that household religion, that influence that we have here, a woman who has extreme influence over the house of the king, of how things are being practiced, what traditions are happening, who we’re praying to, what’s being said, what is happening.

                                           01:01:54             She has immense influence. And it’s enough that these authors of Kings and Chronicles make sure that that woman’s name gets in there with the statement then did he do what was right or what was wrong? Not that you can go back and blame the mom, but it’s looking back at her and saying, well, what type of influence did this woman have in the king’s household? I don’t think that’s trying to be diminishing to women or anything. I think actually it’s showing the influence that these women had and the power that they had over the kingdom. I think one of the things that we think so often in the ancient world is that women were always oppressed and they always didn’t have a voice. That is 100% not true. In the ancient world, there are some mighty, mighty women who do a lot of incredible things and who have a lot of influence and power.

                                           01:02:39             And I think that we have those examples here in the kings of Judah. The other thing that I think is really interesting from ancient perspective is that in lots of other ancient cultures, the king is considered to be divine. If you think about Pharaoh, he’s literally considered to be a god. The Mesopotamian king also was considered to be like a god. And because the king is a God, that means that his son will also be a God. But to get a son, that power has to transfer through a woman to get there. If that divine power goes from the Pharaoh through the queen to the son, that makes the queen also divine. And we see in Egyptian drawings that the queen mother is always depicted with a vulture headdress, which is the headdress of a goddess, because she’s considered to be divine. She’s the divine transmitter of that power and that kingship.

                                           01:03:34             This is so beautiful because in our own church, we believe something similar. When a couple is sealed in the temple, their children, they make that sealing covenant and that covenant has power not just for them, but also for their children. And that covenantal power transfers through the body of a woman to her children. And I feel like that’s something that we have not as a, I would love to see understood better or to discuss more because I feel like that is such a powerful thing, right? That there’s something that happens with that covenant power that transfers down through a woman to her children.

John Bytheway:               01:04:11             I’m loving this and I’m just wondering if some of the women that we are talking about in Chronicles are in your Walking With the Women in the Scripture series in the Old Testament edition.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        01:04:22             Yes. I couldn’t do all the women in the Old Testament because there are like 350 and the Old Testament actually has the most named women. There’s so many women that have names. So the New Testament and the Book of Mormon, I did all the women, but the Old Testament, I had to choose. But there are some of the Chronicles women because their stories are so awesome.

Hank Smith:                      01:04:40             Yeah, this is fantastic.

John Bytheway:               01:04:42             Where can I get those?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        01:04:44             They’re published by Cedar Fort, but you can get them at Deseret Book. Usually they have them at Costco if it’s the right season. If it’s the Old Testament year or the New Testament year or Book of Mormon year, they usually have a big pile. My dad always likes to send me a picture like, look, that’s at Costco.

John Bytheway:               01:04:58             A pallet full! Yeah.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        01:05:00             If your Costco still has books.

John Bytheway:               01:05:01             Yeah, my wife speaks Costco. They know her on a first name basis there.

Hank Smith:                      01:05:07             She’s here. Big day today. Oh, awesome. Well, let’s keep going, Heather.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        01:05:13             The Judean king was different than other ancient kings because his divine kingship was not hereditary. I mean, it is, right? It’s passed down, but it also has this covenant promise that it’s also dependent on his worthiness. That he’s the king only if he’s worthy to be the king or if he has his power. So this idea of this dynasty, this Davidic dynasty coming down is dependent on their personal worthiness. I think that’s a spot where we really see the gebirah, the mother pass down the covenant to the son and pass down the right ways of worshiping to her son. You can kind of track it through the Old Testament, the ones that do right versus ones that do wrong. And Asa here, Maachah migh actually have been his grandma. The genealogy’s a little weird there, so this might actually have been his grandma. That’s really exciting to me to see that influence of women, especially when it gets a title like the gebirah. I love that when we see these women in positions of power and influence.That’s really exciting.

Hank Smith:                      01:06:12             Now, Heather, I think after Asa comes one of John’s favorite kings. John, is this right?

John Bytheway:               01:06:20             Well, we were talking about that phrase, jumping Jehoshaphat.

Hank Smith:                      01:06:24             Okay. Well, let’s jump to him.

John Bytheway:               01:06:29             Well played.

Hank Smith:                      01:06:30             Heather is putting up with our…

Sis. Heather Farrell:        01:06:32             No it’s wonderful. It’s so good.

Hank Smith:                      01:06:33             Yeah. What we think is funny.

John Bytheway:               01:06:35             I thought this was a scholarly podcast. Come on, guys.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        01:06:38             No, it’s so fun. It’s so fun. So Asa’s son is named Jehoshaphat. We can see in chapter 17 that he is also walking in the ways of the Lord. In verse three, it says, “And the Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the first ways of his father, David, and sought not unto Baalim.”

Hank Smith:                      01:07:02             He walked. He didn’t jump.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        01:07:05             Yeah, that’s true.

Hank Smith:                      01:07:06             Sorry, sorry.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        01:07:07             No jumping. And he walked in the commandments and not after the doings of Israel. He’s walking in the ways of the Lord. He’s keeping that Davidic covenant of following the Lord and living his religion in the correct way. It says in verse six that his heart was lifted up in the ways of the Lord, and he also took away the high places and the groves. So even though Asa did it, we still have the high places and the groves that are still there. Every generation kind of has to fight their own battle over again. Make that commitment to the Lord. You know, I watch my kids, as much as you want to pass on, they have to make that commitment themselves to keeping the covenants that their parents did.

Hank Smith:                      01:07:43             Heather, in verse four, where it says, “He walked in the commandments not after the doings of Israel.” Is that talking about the Northern kingdom now that they’ve split?

Sis. Heather Farrell:        01:07:53             I’m want to say yes. I’m not sure about that, but I think that makes sense. This would be Judah is who we’re talking about, and Israel would be the northern kingdom. Israel is a lot more wicked. We’ve had Ahab and Jezebel and I think we’re actually in Ahab and Jezebel right now in Israel. So right now, they’re a lot more engrossed in the idol worship and the different types of things than Judah is. Jehoshaphat, it says in verse eight that he sends out Levites to the people to teach them the book of the law. The same thing that we saw with Asa, it’s just not enough to get rid of things in your life. You have to fill the void with something else. Here, he’s getting rid of things, but he’s also filling it with the truth. I love that example of making sure that he’s filling his people back up with what’s right, not just taking away.

Hank Smith:                      01:08:36             I like that.

Sis. Heather Farrell:        01:08:37             In chapter 18, there is another war that’s coming again. Jehoshaphat is aligning himself with the king of Israel at this point actually because they’re fighting Samaria. They’re trying to unite together. And this is the infamous Ahab and Jezebel. Before they go out in verse six, Jehoshaphat asks, “Is there a prophet here that we can inquire of the Lord that what we should go do?” I love Ahab’s answer. Would one of you guys read that one? Chapter 18, verse seven, what the King of Israel says.

John Bytheway:               01:09:09             And the King of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, “There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, but I hate him.” Sorry. Okay. Mark that one in red, right?