1 and 2 Kings - Lesson 17

Dr. John Oswalt
1 & 2 Kings
th630-17
False Dawn
Lesson Transcript

In these lectures, we are coming to the end of the story, or at least to the end of this part of the story. There are really two periods that we're going to cover in the next lectures. The first period is from 795 until 750. This would be, if I may say it this way, a false dawn when it looks like things are turning up well after the Jehu revolution and his son and his grandson. Now then with the coming of a new day, it looks like things are very hopeful. But, in fact, it's a false dawn. In the second period, from 750 until 722, we see that in fact the promise was a false promise. It was one that was achieved through human instrumentation and not through divine.

We begin looking at Amaziah, the king of Judah. What is said about Amaziah is remarkably interesting. It is said that he did what is right, but not as David his father did. In Chronicles, it says he did what it was right, but not with a whole or perfect heart. This is the opposite of Asa. Asa lived with a heart that was holy for God. He didn't always perform as well as perhaps he might have, but there was no issue as to where his loyalty was. With Amaziah, it seems the opposite is true. He's a good man, he does the right thing, so professionally he keeps the covenant. But in fact, his heart was divided.

I think that is a powerful question for you and me: am I a good moral man but my heart is divided between love for the Lord and care for myself? Am I a man who perhaps in one area or another falls short of ideal performance. But there's no issue. I am God's, I am all God's. And so we have in Amaziah a man who does right, but not with a whole heart for God. He has initial success. Remember that Edom had broken away from Judah, and Amaziah seeks to regain that control. And he does. He wins a signal victory, and this gives him a false confidence. And so he challenges Jehoash, king of Israel, to battle. There's a wonderful little illustration, Jehoash says, "You know, once upon a time the thistle challenged the cedar to a battle. And in the middle of that along came an animal and trampled the thistle into the ground." Just be content with the victory you've gotten, Amaziah. But Amaziah wouldn't, and so Israel scored a great victory over Judah, even to the extent of tearing down part of Jerusalem's wall and capturing Amaziah.

This is in 791. At this point, we have the beginning of what appears to be one of the longer coregencies. If you look at my unprofessional chart here, you'll see a bit of this. Amaziah began to reign in 795. He actually died in 767, but we know nothing about him and his reign during that time. It seems almost certain that his son, Uzziah, who was 16, became king at this point. Amaziah is captured by Israel, taken into captivity there, and for a length of time presumably was captive. He is released at some point, and his life ends running from Jerusalem to Lachish down to the southwest toward Egypt and is killed in Lachish and his body brought back. So we don't know exactly what happened there, but we have a story of initial success and ultimate failure, a man who did what was right but not with a whole heart for God.

That's the beginning of one of the longest coregencies that we have during Judah as Uzziah remained king then through a coregency with his son until his death in 739. In the north, the same thing was happening, a coregency, a coregency between Jehoash and his son, Jeroboam, Jeroboam II. Remember, the very first king of Israel was Jeroboam, Jeroboam the first, and this is Jeroboam II. Again, a remarkably long period of reign, a coregency from 791 or thereabouts until Jehoash death in 781, a 10-year period, and then a long reign until 752. In the case of Azariah and Uzziah, we can explain why a coregency might have occurred because of Amaziah's death and... Excuse me, because of Amaziah's capture and Uzziah then replacing him. With the coregency between Jeroboam and Jehoash, we don't have any explanation for that, and there's really no clear evidence in the Bible that such a thing took place. But in order to make the dates work, that seems to have been the case.

One of the reasons for these coregencies, and I'll talk more about that as we go along, is the pressure of Assyria and parties within the government, pro-Assyrian, anti-Assyrian, "What do we do about this great monster that is threatening us from the northeast?" Jeroboam seems to have been one of the more effective kings that the northern kingdom ever had, and yet, he receives only seven verses in the Bible. Here again, as we've said from the outset, this is not a history in the modern sense. Why would this effective king who ruled some 40 years, why would he receive only seven verses? Because he walked in the ways of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, and did not vary from them. He did not keep the covenant. He broke the covenant, and therefore, all of his apparent successes, all of his apparent achievements were, in fact, worthless in the long haul.

And notice that the text also calls him Azariah. One was probably a personal name and the other was probably a throne name, and we don't know which is which. Kings basically calls him Azariah. Chronicles basically calls him Uzziah. It's the same man. Why did Jeroboam and Uzziah both have such long and apparently effective reigns? The answer is, for reasons that are not obvious in the extra biblical texts, Assyria entered a period of quiescence from about 800 until about... I shouldn't say about... until 745. We know when the period of quiescence ended. But for about 50 years there, we've got a couple of Assyrian emperors who are remarkably passive and non-aggressive.

Can you say Jonah? This is exactly the period of Jonah's ministry and his life. If you read the Book of Jonah, you know that that Assyrian emperor repented. So I think it is probable that the explanation for this period of Assyrian quiescence is Jonah and Jonah's ministry. Of course, the Assyrian literature is not going to say anything about this, and historians of Assyria are not going to say anything about it. But the fact is, for about a 50-year period, Assyria drew back from its conquests, did not press for new conquests. And in that situation, Jeroboam and Uzziah are able to regain control of areas that they had lost.

We're told that Jeroboam extended his kingdom from Mount Herman down across the Jordan Valley into Moab. All the territories that had been lost in previous years, he regained. But again, so what? If not for the greater glory of Yahweh then what good are all these gains? So only seven verses. Uzziah/Azariah gains a bit more, and his description in the Bible is that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord just as his father Amaziah had done. Not just as his father David had done. Again, one has to be careful not to push things too far, but I think that is possibly significant. He's a good man, did the right things, kept the covenant at least for the first part of his reign, but yet not with that passionate, eager, wholehearted walk with God. That is what God is after, what God is longing for, not only from the Uzziahs but from each of us. But a good man.

But in Kings, there's only one further description. Again, that long, long reign, some 50 years, only one more thing said, "The Lord afflicted him with leprosy. And until the day he died, he lived in a separate house. Jotham, the king's son, had charge of the palace and governed the people of the land. Now, Chronicles tells us why this disaster befell Uzziah/Azariah, and the answer is because he attempted to go into the temple and to offer incense in the temple. In other words, like Jeroboam I, he tried to play the part of high priest. You can't do that in Israel. There is only one king, the king, and an earthly king is very clearly separated from the priestly function.

Uzziah insisted and he was struck with leprosy and scurried out of the temple and into that separate house. Once again, what we're seeing here is that from the world's perspective, two reigns, Jeroboam's and Uzziah's, which were very effective, very significant from an earthly perspective, in fact, in the long view of heaven, neither one accomplished anything of lasting significance. "Only what's done for Christ will last," said a plaque that was in my childhood home. But it's true, only what's done for God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, will last. And that's one of the themes that's running through these Books of Kings. What was done for God lasted. What wasn't, didn't last.

That period from 800 to 745 came to a sudden end with the accession of an Assyrian king named Tiglath-Pileser III. That was in 745. But before that event, things began to come apart in the northern kingdom. Jeroboam was succeeded by his son Zechariah, but Zechariah, as in so many of these cases, lasted only a short time, perhaps as long as two years or perhaps a good deal less than that, only serving for a few months in parts of two years. The reason for this assassination is not given, but we've seen twice before where a long reign is succeeded by a very short reign, as though perhaps tensions had been building up and finally after the old king who had power and staying power died, then his successor is killed. We don't know why Shallum killed Zechariah, but it was a very, very short reign. Long enough though for the Bible to tell us that he did wrong in the eyes of the Lord and he didn't diverge from the path of Jeroboam I.

Shallum only lasts one month before he in turn is killed by a man named Menahem. The picture of Menahem is a rather grim one. As he comes to the throne, he then opens what I would call the end for Israel. He comes to the throne about 750, and in the next 30 years Israel is to have only one king succeeding his father. There is to be a host of murders, of assassinations, beginning of course with Shallum murdering Zechariah and then Menahem murdering Shallum a month later.

Menahem is from Tirzah. If you remember, Tirzah had been the original capital of the northern kingdom. And so we wonder if perhaps Menahem had been some sort of a royal official in this secondary city, and perhaps for that reason says, "No, if somebody else other than Zachariah is going to be king, it's going to be me, not him." We're told in Chronicles that on the way to Samaria to murder Shallum, he killed everybody in the village of Tiphsaht. We don't know where Tiphsaht is located, but again, we see a picture of a man who is brutally powerful, who is going to accomplish his purposes whatever blood may be involved in it. In many ways, that's eerily picturesque of what's going to take place along the way.

It appears that at the very hour that Menahem took power, he had a rival across the Jordan, on the east side of the Jordan, a man named Pekah, who took over that part of the kingdom, so that throughout Menahem's reign it was a dual reign. It wasn't a coregency, it was simply in fact an ongoing civil war. In the middle of that, in the middle of Menahem's reign comes Tiglath-Pileser III. The Bible also calls him Pul. Pul may be a personal name. It may also be a mocking name. Mightiest man in the world, yeah, Pul. Tiglath-Pileser instituted the last 100-year rule of Assyria with one more aggressive king than the last, onward and forward, until finally they were able to conquer their ultimate goal, Egypt, in 650.

But this means that the rapacious Assyrian monster is bearing down on these countries on the Mediterranean coast and everything that is happening in them is predicated on what do you do about Assyria? What are we going to do about Assyria? How are we going to meet this thing? What's going to happen to us? So in 745, Tiglath-Pileser came and demanded from Menahem a huge tribute. "If you want to stay on the throne, Menahem, you will produce a great deal of money." I'm in chapter 15 and looking at verse 19, "Pul, king of Assyria, invaded the land and Menahem gave him a thousand talents of silver to gain his support and strengthen his hold on the kingdom." Oh my, every significant person in the kingdom had to produce 50 shekels, 50 shekels, a great deal of money in order to guarantee Menahem's continuation on the throne.

This is very typical of Assyria, a three-step approach. We're going to see how these work out very shortly. First of all, they arrive and demand an alliance, an alliance that involves a great deal of tribute. That's what we're seeing here. Then typically, the client nation revolts because they can't bear that huge tribute. Assyria comes and there is a surrender. And the tribute is increased. Inevitably, the client nation revolts again, and this time Assyria comes and there's no question of surrender. This time the client is destroyed and a military governor is put in place and the tribute is raised again. Three steps. So here we see during the reign of Menahem that first step that is occurring, the first step that is taking place in what will be eventually Assyrian destruction.

As I said, it appears that at the very same time that Menahem is ruling on, from your perspective, the western side of the Jordan, Pekah is ruling from the eastern side. Again, when you sort out the datings and the years, this seems to have been the case. Menahem is then succeeded by his son Pekahiah. In this 30-year period, from 750 until 722, only Pekahiah succeeds his father. Every other king that comes is, in fact, the result of assassination. Pekahiah only rules a short time before Pekah decides he's going to take the whole thing. Pekah assassinates Pekahiah and becomes king for the next 10 years.

Once again, though, he ruled only a short time, notice what is said of Pekahiah, this is chapter 15, verse 24, "Pekahiah did evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit." That last phrase isn't repeated every time the statement is made about a king, but it's often the case. What was Jeroboam's sin? He made Israel commit sin. He led Israel into the commission of sin. It's not merely that he himself sinned by making these idols, by creating a new festival calendar, by putting priests who were not Levites in charge. It's not only that he sinned in doing these things, but he led Israel in these things. All of us have to constantly think that fact. It's not just about your choices, it's about what your choices mean for those for whom you are in some way responsible or accountable to.

Pekahiah rained a short time, two years maximum, but long enough to confirm Israel and the choices that Jeroboam had made for them some 150 years earlier. Pekah then is king on his own for about eight years. As I said a moment ago, he wanted the whole thing, but in fact, by this point, the whole thing doesn't amount to very much. Tiglath-Pileser has taken the eastern side of the Jordan. He's also taken the northern part of Galilee where the tribes of Dan and Naphtali and Issachar and Zebulon and Asher were located, everything north of the valley of Jezreel, so that really all that is left to Pekah at this point is Ephraim, the heart of the nation, and half of the half tribe of Manasseh. That's really all that's left as slowly Assyria is gobbling up more and more territory along the way.

As we see, there is a coregency occurring between Jotham and Ahaz from approximately 735 until 730. Jotham seems to have been a good man. Again, it is said he walked in the ways of his father, Uzziah. That's always a little dangerous. There's usually a decline from one generation to the next. Rarely is there a progress beyond without a remarkable intervention of God. So Uzziah followed in the ways of Amaziah, Jotham followed in the ways of Uzziah. But nevertheless, he's pictured as a good man, but evidently not a particularly effective person. Well, at this point, as the Assyrian juggernaut is bearing down more and more heavily, Pekah, king of Israel and Rezon, king of Damascus, Assyria, decide, "We've got to do something. We've got to take action here. Years ago in 854, a coalition of our nations was able to at least stall the Assyrian onslaught. Maybe we can do it again. So let's form a coalition of these small surviving nations."

Pekah and Rezon, and so they come to Judah and they say, "You will join our alliance." It seems that it is just at this point that Ahaz is, I think, forced upon Jotham. We don't know exactly the interplay here, but in Isaiah, it's Ahaz who is facing this invitation to join the alliance. So I wonder if in fact Jotham had been rather willing to accept the alliance but a party in the government said, "No, no, no, that would be stupid." And they force Ahaz on him, and Ahaz is the one who denies Pekah and Rezon's invitation. Pekah and Rezon say, "You're not going to deny the invitation. We will come, we will capture Jerusalem, and we will put our own man on the throne. Almost certainly a non Davidide."

So we're told in Isaiah that the house of David was terrified and they shook like the leaves of a tree in the forest at this onslaught. It's at that point that Isaiah challenges Ahaz famously to trust God, and Ahaz does not. But here we are with this interplay of political action in the light of what's happening to Assyria. Just at this point, 735, this is what we've got to do, we've got to form this alliance in order to try to stop Assyria.

Now we meet Ahaz. We have had a succession of good kings, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, and I think again of the comparison between Asa and Jehoshaphat who provided a period of stability in Judah while Israel was going through the upheavals of its finally getting established. In a similar way, we have now had a long period of stability in Judah while this upheaval in the north is beginning to take place. I cannot help but wonder what might have been the case if there had not been an Ahaz, suppose Ahaz had at least followed in the ways of his father, Jotham. But he did not. As Jeroboam had a great deal to answer for as he set the trajectory of his nation for the next 200 years, I think Ahaz has a great deal to answer for in what ultimately happens to Judah.

We are told he followed... This is chapter 16, "Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God. He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, even sacrificing his son in the fire, engaging in the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. He offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places, on the hilltops, and under every spreading tree."

Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, no question of being a little deviant from the patterns of David. It is rejecting them wholesale and in every way. That line, "Engaging in the practices of the Canaanites," this again goes right back to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy says, "You must not do those things that cause the Canaanites to be thrown out of this land. Don't mimic them. Don't model yourself on them. Don't marry them." Again, this has implications for you and me.

How are we to be in the world but not of the world? I meet a lot of people as I travel and preach and teach. How often I meet people who say, "Well, can I do this and still be a Christian? Can I do that and still be a Christian? I don't suppose I could do that and still go to heaven, could I?" What are they asking? They're asking, "How far from Jesus can I live and still get His benefits?" How tragic. How tragic. Imagine that we have a couple getting married, and in the middle of the ceremony, the groom says to the pastor, "How many hours a month do I have to spend with her to keep the marriage in force?" He doesn't understand at all, does he. He's going through this rigmarole so that her daddy will not come after him with a shotgun. The question is not, how little time can I spend with her? But now, is it possible I can spend 24 hours a day with her?

The question is not how far from Jesus can I live, but how close can I live? And that it seems to me is the issue. The issue is not, "Well, can I do this?" or "Can I do that?" or "How about this?" The issue is I want Jesus. I want Jesus' ways. I want Jesus' life. I want Jesus' truth. I want to be His. And that then becomes the grid, if you will, whereby we are able to say, "No, I don't think that behavior is going to be pleasing to Jesus. I don't think that activity is going to further my walk with Him." That's the issue. It's not, what can I get away with? The issue is, how can I please Him? How can I love Him? How can I serve Him?

And so that's what you see here with Ahaz. I don't care what he wants, I'm going to do what I want. In that way, he led Judah into ultimate destruction. All the way through here, as my chart indicates, these dates are pretty complicated with a whole succession of coregencies. Especially with Ahaz and Hezekiah, the dates are a little complicated. Normally, the way in which they will handle this, they will say, "This person became king in such and such a year of the other kingdom." And then that will typically be when they began their sole reign. But in the end, they will give the total years that a person reigned. That works out, say in the case of Uzziah, we can sort that out. His soul reign began in this year of Jeroboam, but he reigned 52 years. Here that doesn't work out right. It's very clear from the text that Hezekiah was on the throne before the northern kingdom fell, but his total years seemed to be from the death of Ahaz, which is after the northern kingdom fell in 716. So you've got a problem there.

I mentioned Edwin Tilley's book, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, and he basically throws up his hands on this one. But I think it's quite clear that Hezekiah was coregent with Ahaz. I suspect, again, because of pro and anti-Assyrian parties in the government. If this king is too favorable to the Assyrians, as Ahaz clearly was, we need to get an opposing force in there. And this would argue that Hezekiah is a... I'm going to use the word pawn. I don't think Hezekiah was anybody's pawn, but he was favorable, I think, toward an anti-Assyrian party.

Let's talk a little more about Ahaz here. Ahaz makes a deal with Tiglath-Pileser. Here's that first stage now for Judah. Judah is becoming an ally of the Assyrians. Why? "Well, here come Israel and Syria, and they're going to attack me. What am I going to do? Isaiah says, 'Trust God.' Well, that's stupid. What am I going to do? Who's going to defend me from Israel and Syria, my northern friends? Ah, Assyria." I've said for many years this is like three mice having a fight and one of them hiring the cat.

So Ahaz goes to Damascus to meet Tiglath-Pileser and make an alliance with him and to give him a whole lot of money. From Damascus, Ahaz sends directions to the high priest about some alterations that need to be made in the temple and in the temple furnishings. Commentators argue about the significance of that. I'm perfectly convinced it is to bring the temple into conformity with Assyrian practices.

And here again, we have the temple. As I said back at the beginning of this series of lectures, the significance of the temple is woven through the narrative of the Books of Kings. I wouldn't call it the central theme, but there it is as a recurring theme. We come back to 1 Kings 9 and Yahweh's second appearance to Solomon, "Oh, this is a wonderful building you have built for me. I'm glad to put my name here." God wants to live in the midst of His people. He wants to walk with us. The temple is the symbol of His presence with us and our presence with Him. "But if there comes a day when you and My people diverge from Me, diverge from My path, diverge from My character and nature, I'll burn this thing down in a minute. I don't want a house. I want a house."

And so it is here, and a good deal of space is given to these alterations. We ask ourselves, "Why?" In your Bible study, the law of proportion is a very important law. How much space is given to this? If space is given to it in what is necessarily limited materials, then you can argue that has importance to the writer and ultimately importance to God. So here is these alterations: the altar that was dedicated to God is now pushed aside, and it's going to be used for the king. Notice what is said there, "For the king's burnt offering." The old altar now belongs to the king. Oh, Ahaz, Ahaz, what are you doing? And what are you leading your people into? We'll stop at that point and pick up the final episode in the northern kingdom in the next lecture.