Day 190: Judah Is Overrun (2026)

On day 190 of the Bible in a Year, Father Mike Schmitz reads the account of Judah’s final collapse—the moment the kingdom is overrun by Babylon and the exile begins. The episode is not just a historical recap; it is a hinge point in the entire reading plan. After tomorrow, the narrative books of Kings and Chronicles end, and the podcast pivots into the prophets. The central argument of this episode is that the exile is not arbitrary divine anger but the direct consequence of sustained unfaithfulness, and that wisdom—the ability to see and value God correctly—is the only thing that could have prevented it.

The Mechanism: Wisdom as Right Priorities

Father Mike uses the day’s reading from Proverbs 8 to frame the entire episode. He defines wisdom not as intelligence or knowledge, but as “the ability to have right priorities” and “to value correctly.” The wise person sees God as the supreme good and orders their life accordingly. The foolish person, by contrast, is “disconnected from God” and values the things of this world improperly. This framework is the lens through which he interprets the historical collapse of Judah. The kings who did evil—Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah—lacked this wisdom. They could not see that their rebellion against Babylon was also a rebellion against the God who was using Babylon as an instrument of judgment. Josiah, the one king who valued th