This is the Bible Book Club.

I'm Heather and I'm Susan.

And we're in the book of first kings.

Welcome to the club.

Last episode in chapters 14 through 16, we began in the southern kingdom of Judah with four kings.

Rehaboam, son of Solomon, is the first king.

He reigned 17 years, but he and Judah did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

And Egypt attacked and carried off all the gold in the temple and the palace.

Rehoboam was succeeded by Abidja, but he too was a bad king. His heart was not devoted as his

grandfather Davids had been. However, Abijah has a son named Asa who succeeds him. He reigns for

41 years. He is a good king. He expels the idols and the shrine prostitutes. Asa, king of Judah, and Ba'ashah, king of Israel,

have a war. Asa makes a treaty with Ben Haddad, king of Aram. Aram creates problems for Ba'ashah

of Israel, and he has to leave Asa and Judah alone. King Asa of Judah is succeeded by his son Jehoshaphat.

So King Asa is having this very long reign, but meanwhile, back in the north of Israel,

all of the kings that were raining over there were all evil. King Nadab, son of Jerobom,

reamed just two years. Ba'ashah from the tribe of Ishikar killed him and then

took over. He reigned for 24 years. Ba'ashah's son Ila succeeded him for just two years. Zimri, one of his

officials, killed him and his family. And then Zimri reigned for just seven days. Amri, the commander of the army, killed him. And I will say that I was

curious about a statistic. And I wanted to know, like, how many of these kings were good and how many

were evil. Just 12% of the kings were good. Only eight. Yeah. All the rest were evil. So there's a lot of

evil going on in Israel.

A lot of evil.

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