Judicial Cleansing of the Nation. 2 Kings 8:7-10:36
What we see in these chapters is God executing His vengeance upon His enemies in the northern kingdom of Israel as well as the southern kingdom of Israel. And when we come to think of what the Bible says about vengeance we often wonder just how we can worship a God who is a God of vengeance. To understand now what happens in these chapters we must understand what transpired fourteen or fifteen years earlier in a crucial event in the life of the prophet Elijah. It starts with a prophecy that God gives to Elijah back in 1 Kings 19:15. The context is that the northern kingdom of Israel has just been overwhelmed by the horrible fertility cult, the worship of Baal, and all of the horrible things that went along with that from child sacrifice to all of the sexual immorality that took place in the worship centers. That is the background and the people have come under divine discipline. It is Elijah who is the one who has announced this. After his great victory on Mount Carmel he succumbed to some depression and tried to escape the vendetta of Ahab, and it is in a cave on Mount Horeb that he has a conversation with God about his particular role and purpose and ministry. It is in that context that God gives him certain instructions—1 Kings 19:15-18, nasb "The LORD said to him, 'Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when you have arrived, you shall anoint Hazael king over Aram;
What we see here is the announcement by God fifteen years earlier than our passage of how He is going to execute justice and righteousness on the wicked on the northern kingdom of Israel. But as we have studied in the last eight chapters, what we have focused on in the ministry of Elisha, Elijah's successor, is the emphasis on grace. God's grace always precedes His judgment. But what this also focuses for us is some very important doctrines related to the very essence of God. God is righteous and He is just. Those two words are crucial. In both Hebrew and Greek they come from the same root words and it depends upon the focus as to whether the passage is talking about righteousness as the standard of God's character, that he is absolute righteousness, or whether it is talking about the application of that standard to His creatures, which is justice.
Then we are told in Scripture that God is love. Often theologians have joined righteousness and justice together as representing the holiness of God. What is interesting from Scripture is that God is specifically stated to be holy; He is also stated to be love. But in our modern conceptions of both righteousness and justice, and in our modern conception of love, we often run foul of what the Scriptures teach. We have these very watered-down, diluted ideas of both righteousness and love that we pick up from our culture that when we take them and apply them to what happens in the Scripture we look at what is happening in these chapters and wonder how this can be a God of love. The problem is that we have a distorted view of what love is. What the Scriptures teach us is that love to be real love it has to conform to righteousness. Love that has no righteousness at the core of it has no integrity and in nothing more than silly, superficial sentimentality. Righteousness, on the other hand, that is not tempered by love can just be abusive and tyrannical. In the character of God these attributes fit together in as perfectly consistent whole. So we see these attributes—God's righteousness, His justice and His love—coming together and this forms the essence of God's integrity. God has given us pictures of these various events in the Scripture so that we can have something more than simply a superficial understanding of what righteousness, justice and love actually are.
We come to this section and are going to be introduced to a very bloody series of very bloody scenes that are directed by God. And this is done in love. Heb. 12: "For whom the Lord loves, He chastens." When we are at the discipline end of God's chastening it doesn't feel like God loves us very much! The section begins in 2 Kings 8:7 and the first event that occurs has to do with the violent assassination of king Ben-hadad II of Syria by his trusted assistant or aid Hazael. We don't know his exact role but he is the primary advisor to Ben-hadad and in this set of circumstances we see how God in His sovereignty orchestrates the situation, but it is Hazael who takes advantage of the illness of Ben-hadad and uses that as a cover for his murder. This will then bring Hazael to a position of authority and rulership in Syria, and the core issue here is what Elisha focuses on as he has a vision that is recorded there in vv. 11, 12 as he sees all of the horror and violence that Hazael will bring upon the children of Israel. And this is part of God's discipline on the northern kingdom of Israel for their idolatry.
The second event that occurs has to do with the rise of Jehoram to the throne in the southern kingdom of Israel. Omri was the father of Ahab who was married to Jezebel, the evil queen who came from Syria and introduced Baal worship into the northern kingdom. They had a number of children, the eldest Ahaziah became the king when Ahab died but he did not last more than a year or so and was replaced by his brother Jorum who reigned for twelve years. Then the sister, Athaliah, is married off to Jehoram, the king of the southern kingdom, so through Athaliah this horrible Baal worship gets introduced into the southern kingdom. Jehoram and his son Ahaziah are evil kings in the southern kingdom and so God is going to have to deal with this horrible malignancy of idolatry and Baalism in the kingdom of Israel.
The first king that He is going to deal with is Jehoram in 2 Kings 8. Jehoram is truly an evil king. He reigns for eight years and we are told that he walks in the ways of Israel and the house of Ahab. Remember he is married to Athaliah. Even though Jehoshaphat, his father, was a godly king he made some tragic, devastating decisions, one of which was to enter into an alliance with Ahab which was sealed by the marriage of his son Jehoram to the evil, wicked Athaliah. She was just as evil as her mother. 2 Chronicles tells us that God sends a message to Jehoram via Elijah (it must have been just before Elijah's death) where he is warned that God will bring judgment upon him and that he will die a horrible death. He is being judged because of his association with the house of Ahab.
The key verses that will explain everything we have talked about in these chapters is what is stated to Jehu when Elisha sends his assistant to anoint Jehu. In 2 Kings 9 Jehu is given his orders from the prophet. 2 Kings 9:6 NASB "He arose and went into the house, and he poured the oil on his head and said to him, 'Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'I have anointed you king over the people of the LORD, {even} over Israel. [7] You shall strike the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of My servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the LORD, at the hand of Jezebel. [8] For the whole house of Ahab shall perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every male person both bond and free in Israel.
Jehoram then will be replaced on the throne by his son Ahaziah who is not only evil but is a coward. He only lasts a year and will also be brutally murdered. But as the description goes in the text we go from Jehoram of Judah to Joram of Israel. He has been the king since chapter two of 2 Kings and he follows in the footsteps of his father Ahab. He is also going to be judged and this is the focal point of the ninth chapter. Joram of Israel is going to convince his relative Ahaziah in the south to join him in a battle against the Syrians. They go to battle at Ramoth-Gilead and one of the leading generals is Jehu, who is identified in v. 2 as Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi, and he is going to anoint Jehu to carry out this particular vengeance act of God's justice against the evil house of Ahab. Joram is wounded and has to go back to Jezreel, the city where Jezebel lives. Ahaziah goes to check on his cousin Joram to see how he is doing. All of the guilty parties are suddenly brought together in one place and God is prepared to execute His justice. After Jehu is anointed by the assistant of Elisha he gathers some men around him, makes a plan, and head to Jezreel. As he approaches the watchman sees him coming and warns Joram who sends out a horseman. The horseman goes over to the other side so a second horseman is sent who also goes over to the other side. Now Joram the king of Israel, along with Ahaziah (9;21), goes out to meet Jehu.
2 Kings 9:22 NASB "When Joram saw Jehu, he said, 'Is it peace, Jehu?' And he answered, 'What peace, so long as the harlotries of your mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?' [23] So Joram reined about and fled and said to Ahaziah, '{There is} treachery, O Ahaziah!' [24] And Jehu drew his bow with his full strength and shot Joram between his arms; and the arrow went through his heart and he sank in his chariot." Remember all of this is under the authority of God, so Jehu leads a divinely authorized revolt against Joram in the northern kingdom and personally executes him.
Then we see Ahaziah go into hiding; he is running from Jehu. Jehu sends a contingent of soldiers after him with orders to shoot and kill him, which they do. The Bible says that when he died they brought him back and buried him in Jerusalem, but not with the kings, and no one mourned him. They were glad he was dead. This is how evil a person he was. Then Jehu goes to the next stage in his clean-up operation and heads to Jezreel where Jezebel still lives. She is thrown out of the window, her beaten, bloody body falls to the ground; she is killed in the fall and then her body is trampled under foot by horsemen. In Israel a body was to be treated with respect, but not Jezebel's. Her body is going to be trampled under foot and bloodied, then the dogs are going to come and devour everything except the palms of her hands, and while this is going on Jehu and his men go inside the palace and have a little banquet to celebrate the destruction of Jezebel.
That is not the end of it, it is only the beginning. At this point Jehu sends out messengers throughout Samaria to identify all of the male members of Ahab's family. He sends messengers to the elders and leaders in the northern kingdom to determine whether they are going to appoint one of the other sons of Ahab to be their king or whether they are going to come over to his side. They decide that of two kings can't withstand Jehu then they certainly can't either. So he sends orders and says they have seventy of Ahab's sons and grandsons that they are protecting and if they are really on his side then they need to execute them and give me proof of their execution. These elders then take these seventy sons and grandsons of Ahab and decapitate them and send their heads in baskets to Jehu who builds two skull cairns outside the entry to Jezreel as a sign of God's judgment on the house of Ahab. This must have been a bloody, gory mess but it is not over yet.
Next is the fifth event in the process of this judgment. Ahaziah who is the evil king of Judah, had forty-two brothers—including cousins and others who were within the royal house—and Jehu orders them to be executed. Remember, in Ahaziah in the south we are talking about someone who is in the line of David, the line of the seed. That brings in all of the promises from the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant, that God would never leave the throne of Judah without a descendant of David. But that seed line has been tainted now because of the marriage of Athaliah to Jehoram. So God has to clean house here.
In 2 Kings 10:17 we see the wrap-up statement: NASB "When he came to Samaria, he killed all who remained to Ahab in Samaria, until he had destroyed him, according to the word of the LORD which He spoke to Elijah." Then the dramatic finish, a work of subterfuge and drama. Jehu gathers the people together. [18] "Then Jehu gathered all the people and said to them, 'Ahab served Baal a little; Jehu will serve him much.'" They don't know much about Jehu, he is just one of the generals that Joram had over his army at Ramoth-Gillead. They don't know anything about what he believes, his religious inclinations, and so he comes out and acts as if he is going to now have a great time of worship of Baal. He invites everyone in the northern kingdom to come and worship Baal and there is this temple for Baal's worship and he calls for all of the priests of Baal to now gather together to now worship Baal, and for all of those in the northern kingdom who worship Baal.
2 Kings 10:21 NASB "Then Jehu sent throughout Israel and all the worshipers of Baal came, so that there was not a man left who did not come. And when they went into the house of Baal, the house of Baal was filled from one end to the other. [22] He said to the one who {was} in charge of the wardrobe, 'Bring out garments for all the worshipers of Baal.' So he brought out garments for them." He gathers everybody into the temple and then blocks the doors. He has a designated hit-squad of eighty that he send sin to annihilate every Baal priest and worshipper from the northern kingdom inside of that temple. The northern kingdom is cleansed of the sin of Ahab, cleansed of the sin of Baal. God has brought discipline upon that nation. Why? Because whom the Lord loves He chastens.
The epilogue to this is that Jehu doesn't prove to be a righteous king at all. He is only marginally better than Ahab. 2 Kings 10:29 NASB "However, {as for} the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin, from these Jehu did not depart, {even} the golden calves that {were} at Bethel and that {were} at Dan." This wasn't as bad as Baalism but, nevertheless, it was treason to God who was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He reigns in the north for a while but as the Scripture says: [31] "But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the LORD, the God of Israel, with all his heart; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel sin." So God is using one evil to wipe out another evil, but He is not through with the northern kingdom yet, He is going to bring them to another level of discipline.
2 Kings 10:32 NASB "In those days the LORD began to cut off {portions} from Israel; and Hazael defeated them throughout the territory of Israel." That is what God has promised in the covenant with Moses—five stages of discipline, and if the nation continued in disobedience then God would increase the intensity of the discipline to the point where there would be military conquest and even defeat where the people would be taken out of the land. [33] "from the Jordan eastward, all the land of Gilead, the Gadites and the Reubenites and the Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the valley of the Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan."
Remember that the key verse for all of this is 2 Kings 9:7 NASB "You shall strike the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of My servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the LORD, at the hand of Jezebel." This is a depiction of the justice of God.
What is this concept of vengeance? Vengeance in our normal use and language often carries the connotation of a personal vendetta where somehow we have been personally offended or hurt and so we are just striking back at someone else. But that is not what this word means when it applies to God. This comes from the Hebrew word naqam. In the Theological Word Book of the Old Testament we read in their definition of naqam:
The concept of divine vengeance must be understood in the light of the Old Testament teaching about the holiness and justice of God and its effect on man as a sinner. In terms of the presuppositions of some modern "Christian" theologies, such a God of vengeance will be labeled unchristian and unethical. Understood in the full orb of biblical revelation, balanced as it is by the mercy of God, divine vengeance is seen to be a necessary aspect of the history of redemption.
In the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology two statements are made that are helpful:
In the Old Testament, however, the concept of "vengeance" has a positive connotation, both from a semantic as well as a theological point of view: "vengeance" has to do with lawfulness, justice, and salvation. As such, the theme of "vengeance" takes up an important position in Old Testament theology, particularly in the writings of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel…. Divine vengeance is usually set in the context of lawfulness and war.
God is in a cosmic war that began in eternity past when Satan rebelled against God and human history is just a microcosm of that broad conflict of Satan against God. Within human history Satan is warring against God and against God's people, and the two objectives of Satan in the Old Testament are a) to block the coming of the Messiah, and so he is assaulting the seed promise, and b) the Davidic covenant where God promised to David that his house would not depart from Israel and that he would have an eternal descendant and an eternal throne. Satan knows that he has to stop that seed and he has to wipe out the house of David. We have seen the forty-two brothers of Ahaziah killed, almost the entire Davidic household in the southern kingdom wiped out; and then when Athaliah comes to the throne she is going to kill whoever is left—but one is hidden: Joash. Joash is going to bring a tremendous revival into the southern kingdom. That is the grace of God.
What this writer states is important to give us a context for understanding this. Metaphors like "God is king," God is judge," and "God is warrior" played a great part in the naqam texts—God is king being the overall thought. Vengeance in the Old Testament cane be described as the punitive retribution of God who as the sovereign king, faithful to His covenant, stands up for the vindication of His glorious name in a judging and fighting mode while watching over the maintenance of His justice and acting to save His people. Deuteronomy 32:43 NASB "Rejoice, O nations, {with} His people; For He will avenge the blood of His servants, And will render vengeance on His adversaries, And will atone for His land {and} His people." Isaiah 1:24 NASB "Therefore the Lord GOD of hosts, The Mighty One of Israel, declares, "Ah, I will be relieved of My adversaries And avenge Myself on My foes."
What does all of this have to do with the character of God? It shows us how evil sin is. If God has to wipe it out in this horrific manner it informs us of the wickedness and the consequences of sin. What we see in the microcosm in this horrific judgment that God brings on the house of Ahab is just a microscopic part of the kind of judgment that God had to bring upon sin when he imputed the sin of the human race to Jesus Christ on the cross. Sin had to be dealt with by the justice of God. But the justice of God was not in conflict with His love because God judges sin because He loves the human race and because He puts the focus on the victim and not the one who commits the sin and the evil. So in order to preserve the seed line, to be faithful to His promise to David and His promise to Abraham, and in order to provide a perfect salvation for the entire human race it is necessary for God to wipe out the house of Ahab in order to preserve the nation so that eventually He can bring about that so great salvation that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Illustrations