Yesterday, US President Donald Trump took part in ‘America Reads the Bible,’ a week-long event where the whole Bible is read in public, including by well-known politicians and church leaders. The aim of this movement seems laudable enough:
Just as Ezra read the Word aloud to the people of Israel (Nehemiah 8:1–3), awakening revival and repentance, inspiring them to rebuild the temple, and working with Nehemiah to mobilize the people to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls, America Reads the Bible is a sacred opportunity to call our nation back to its spiritual foundations. Through a public, continuous reading of the entire Bible in our nation’s capital by our national leaders from all spheres of influence, we believe God can spark revival in individual hearts and inspire Americans to carry the Word forward in their lives and communities into the next 250 years of our national story.
And I think if, in the UK, ‘national leaders from all spheres of influence’ committed to a public reading of Scripture here, I would be very excited!
It appeared to be no accident that Donald Trump was asked to read a passage from 2 Chronicles (probably not the best-known book of the Bible) which included this verse:
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land (2 Chron 7:14)
(You can watch him read the passage here.) This verse has been central for those wanting to see America rediscover itself as a ‘Christian nation’.
Tim Stanley, the journalist and commentator who is a Roman Catholic, was asked to comment on Radio 4’s Today programme (you can listen here from 2:40 into the programme), and he chose mostly to focus on the political dimensions of the way this text has been used.
Now this verse has been used in public life in America since at least the Civil War. For example, Eisenhower, when he was inaugurated, had his Bible open to this verse, and it’s really part of the civil religion of America. And you can read the message in an almost in an almost non sectarian way, to say America is a country which is blessed by prosperity, so long as it is good. But if it ceases to be good, then the Republic and all of which it stands will be undone.
But in recent decades, the Christian right have taken the verse and really run with it, and they add a new sort of level to it, if you like, one of which is to say, this is about saying that America must be a Christian nation, because the verse ends with the explicit warning that if you worship other gods, which is what King Solomon went on to do, he allowed other gods to be worshiped in ancient Israel, that’s what will be your undoing. So some on the right say this is about about America being a particularly Christian country.
But you can also read it to say who is Solomon in this? Solomon is like the wisest King, despite what happened to him later on, and he is the man who made Israel as great as it was ever to be. And there is a reading that says that’s Trump, right, that we’re in times of great trouble, it requires a strong man to step in and save the country.
I am not saying not all, all American Christians believe this. I want to stress that, yes, but, but there is a way of reading it to a certain audience that will make sense to them.
I was asked (at short notice!) to talk to Nick Ferrari on LBC about this event, and Nick was much more interested in what the passage means theologically, rather than the way it has been used politically—which in itself is fascinating. The chance to speak about scripture and hermeneutics on national radio!
The passage this verse comes from is the high point of Solomon’s reign. I have just been reading the parallel passages in 1 Kings, and the same point is made: this is the time which is marked by splendour and wealth, the time of God’s clearest blessing of his people Israel.
The story so far has had its ups and downs. After the chaos of Judges, when (without a king) ‘everyone did what is right in their own eyes’ (Judges 21.25) the people then ask for a king of their own, to be like the other nations. This whole narrative is filled with ambiguity, and this central request exemplifies this. On the one hand, this is seen by the prophet Samuel (and God!) as a rejection of God’s reign over them (1 Sam 8.7); but on the other, the role of the king will be to keep the people faithful to God’s commands, and of course this king will become, in the person of David, the central expression of hope for God’s restoration of his people, when he will send another king like David to rule his people perfectly.
Sauls starts off well, but then becomes paranoid about defending his own power, and the kingdom is taken from him, ending in the tragedy not only of his death but also the death of his noble son Jonathan (‘How are the mighty fallen!’ grieves David in 2 Sam 1.27). David then succeeds Saul, and although he is often referred to as ‘a man after God’s own heart’ and someone who ‘kept all the commands of God,’ the narrative is very clear that he does not.
Despite many signs of faithfulness, God giving David victory in battle, establishing him in Jerusalem, and finally giving him ‘rest from all his enemies’ (2 Samuel 7.1), his reign is still beset with division, failure, and sin. Despite the apparent glory of Solomon’s reign, something similar happens, and because of Solomon’s failure, the kingdom is divided into the northern ten tribes (under Jeroboam after a rebellion) and the southern two tribes (under Solomon’s son Rehoboam). The glory of Israel is very short lived, and the narrative leads into a long decline, in both north and south, until Israel is taken into exile by the Assyrians in 722 BC, and Judah by the Babylonians in 586 BC.
What is fascinating about the verse at the centre of Trump’s reading is that it appears to anticipate all this. Despite being God’s words to Solomon at the height of his splendour, it looks to a time when the people will have turned from God and the land will be laid waste: ‘if my people…turn from their wicked ways.’ Something similar happens at the end of Deuteronomy, when Moses sets out the blessings of obedience, and the disaster that will befall the people if (when) they turn from God—as though Moses knew this was what was going to happen!
So what does it mean to be obedient, to turn from what is wrong? There is always a challenge to our reading of narratives and understand from them what God is teaching us—not least because narratives can describe events without evaluative comment, and what they describe is not always what they prescribe. Yet the narratives around Saul, David, and Solomon are fairly clear, and the problems they face cluster around five issues: sex; violence; power; money; and worship.
Lust and sexual infidelity was a central failing of David, so much so that, in the summary of his reign in 1 Kings 15:5 (contrasting him with his successors) this is highlighted:
David had done what was right in the eyes of the LORD and had not failed to keep any of the LORD’s commands all the days of his life—except in the case of Uriah the Hittite.
This is both a hyperbolic and a selective reading of David’s reign—yet even here his failing is picked out. Solomon was the second child of David’s union with Bathsheba (the first child died), so perhaps it is not surprising that this was also a weakness for Solomon. According to 1 Kings 11:3, King Solomon had 700 wives (who were royal princesses) and 300 concubines, totalling 1,000 women—and we are told that this is specifically contrary to the command of God.
The stories here are more ambivalent about violence than we often realise. Though God appears to have achieved his purposes through David by means of victory in warfare, the fact that David has blood on his hands means that he cannot build God’s temple (see 2 Sam 7.11–16, 1 Chronicles 22:8 and 1 Chronicles 28:3). Although God’s penultimate means was through warfare and conflict in what was a violent world, his ultimate concern is peace. And the violence that marked David’s reign was frequently problematic and destructive. Joab, King David’s ruthless nephew and army commander, was a brilliant but violent military leader who frequently defied authority, committing cold-blooded murders in peacetime to consolidate power and avenge family. Despite serving as David’s loyal soldier for 40 years, his excessive violence, including the murders of Abner, Amasa, and Absalom, forced Solomon to execute him. (On understanding the ambivalence about warfare, see the excellent Grove booklet by Philip Jenson The Problem of War in the Old Testament.)
This is closely related to issues around power. From the beginning, Samuel warns the people that a king will exploit and oppress the people (1 Sam 11.11–18), and this is seen all through the narrative. It is Rehoboam’s foolish decision to oppress the people even more than his father Solomon which leads to Jeroboam’s rebellion, the division of the kingdom, and its ultimate fall.
The narrative is similar ambivalent about money and wealth. On the one hand, the tributes paid (literally!) to Solomon by neighbouring rulers testify to the wisdom he has been given by God (see 1 Kings 4.21). And the gold which the Queen of Sheba brings adds up to 666 talents—an ominous number that we will meet again at the end of the Bible! Alongside the claim that wealth and prosperity are a sign of blessing from God, the Old Testament weaves a counter thread—that it is the poor who model trust in God, since they most clearly depend on him.
The final, and clearest, issue is worship, in the specific sense of cultic conformity to God’s will. Solomon’s final failure is to be seduced by his foreign wives into worshipping their gods, but this failure is threaded through the narrative. Saul offers sacrifice unlawfully at Gilgal in 1 Samuel 13:8–14; in 1 Kings 12:26–33 Jeroboam sets up golden calves at Bethel and Dan, appoints non-Levitical priests, creates rival festivals, and builds high places; in 1 Kings 14:22–23 Judah built high places, pillars, and Asherim under the reign of Rehoboam.
We should note, too, that care for the weak is also a theme here, though in these narratives not as prominent as the others. Space is given to the specific case of Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan and grandson of King Saul (2 Sam 9), whom David provides for because he became lame in both feet at the age of five when his nurse dropped him while fleeing in panic after learning of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan in battle. Mephibosheth’s story is often cited as a powerful illustration of grace, representing a person unworthy of favour who is shown extreme kindness, dignity, and restoration by a king.
Reading the narrative as a whole, it is very hard indeed to ignore these issues, or see the way that the narrative interweaves them so that they are all related to one another. And, in theory at least, the America Reads the Bible project should allow for this, if indeed people are reading the text continuous.
As ever, though, the temptation is to select individual verses, and lift them out of their context so that their meaning is limited or distorted.
But here is the striking thing: the issues of sexual morality, violence, power, wealth, and care for the vulnerable are issues that are prominent in the teaching of Jesus. So it should not be difficult for Christians who know and read their Bibles to understand that these are all part and parcel of humbling ourselves, seeking God, and turning from our wicked ways. (It was clear from his stumbling reading that Donal Trump is not actually in the habit of reading the Bible himself, as his avoidance of the question ‘What is your favourite Bible verse’ makes clear.)
And it means that, if the ambition of those behind the reading scheme is to be realised, and America does indeed (in some sense) become once again a ‘Christian nation’, according to 2 Chron 7.14 this will mean changing its attitude to sex (the US is the world centre of the porn industry), renouncing its addiction to violence and guns, rejecting wealth as the measure of all things, and seeking to care for the weakest within and beyond its borders—as it does for any other nation.
To use the Bible as some kind of talisman, thinking you can recite verses from it and somehow manipulate God into blessing you, is exactly the kind of lip service that the Bible itself condemns.
“These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Is 29.13, quoted by Jesus in Matt 15.8)
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven—only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matt 7.21)
Reading the Bible is good; doing the will of God expressed in it is even better.
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I seem to recall that 2 Chronicles 7:14 was used in the ‘Come Together’ musical by Jimmy and Carol Owens back in the early days of the Charismatic movement in the early 1970s. It was out of context but made a point nonetheless.
Well, the verse does indeed make a point! But we cannot fully understand the point without the context.
My point exactly!
If My People was their 1974 musical (Come Together was 1972). The Owenses wrote worship musicals to a standard others can only aspire to.
It was indeed out of context. 2 Chronicles 7:14 applies to a covenant nation, which the USA (or UK) isn’t. Today God is running the church, a grouping of persons who are called out spiritually from their nations while living physically within them. And so the correct application of this verse is:
“If churchgoers in the USA (or UK, etc), who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their church.”
Not sure I agree with that translation.
But the other point I would make is that, according to the NT, Jesus is now the temple of God, as are those who are in him.
It is absolutely brilliant that any President and his entourage should take this attitude and role. We can only be grateful, particularly if it continues in the spirit of the Kirks. What often compromises it significantly is the cultural baggage of American Christianity and Americanism which is far too one dimensional and often in error, as exemplified by the President’s pastor.
There is the minor issue as well that the President himself exhibits all the worst failings of sexual immorality, and addition to power and wealth, that we see in the narrative…
…criticisms which I don’t recall people making about Bill Clinton or JFK despite them being equally applicable. One rule for the Left and one for the Right?
The four human-response verbs in 2 Chr 7.14 (‘humble themselves’, ‘pray’, ‘seek’, ‘turn’) all denote repentance and are key words or leitmotifs in 2 Chr 10-36: these four verbs recur repeatedly in times of national danger and indicate that the promise of 7.14 is being fulfilled. The verse is actually central to the theology of the book and to its artistry. Check out a concordance and you will see what I mean.
Three quick responses to your comments on LBC (which are more about Samuel-Kings than Chronicles):
1. Chronicles says very little about Solomon’s personal failings (it omits the unseemly details of his failings, as it does for David). Why? Because, for the author, the lasting significance of the Davidic-Solomonic dynasty was not these fallible men but the Temple worship they established: David obtained peace and wealth for building, and established the Levitical choirs, Solomon built the Temple and inaugurated the worship. This was the essential mark of hope in the days of Persian (!) hegemony.
2. I can’t find ambivalence about wealth in Chronicles: among the blessings on Chronicles’ ‘faithful kings’ in 2 Chr 10-36 are buildings, large families and successful harvests that overflow to the whole population.
3. You listed many contemporary evils – but omitted any mention of abortion. Who is fighting abortion today in the world? If America isn’t going to be ‘a Christian nation’, no one else is. Or maybe Mother Russia aspires to that role today? It’s been a long time sport of the English (Happy St George’s Day, by the way) to look down on Americans without understanding them. But what has Britain got to crow about today?
Thanks. My problem is that I am reading through Samuel-Kings at the moment!
I am sure you are right about Chronicles and wealth. But you just need to read the rest of the Bible! I was going to say more about that, but the article was long enough. Each issue could do with its own study.
The only reason for not mentioning abortion *here* is that I wanted to read the verse in its narrative context, and that issue is not obviously present.