1 and 2 Kings - Lesson 9

Dr. John Oswalt
1 & 2 Kings
th630-09
Order Emerges From Chaos
Lesson Transcript

Okay, we are rolling.

We have been seeing how the early relations between Judah and Israel are being shaped. We saw how Jeroboam set the trend for the next 200 years in his establishment of idolatrous worship of Yahweh at Bethel and Dan in his establishment of non-Levitical priests in his alteration of the pattern of the festivals.

We also saw how there was continual warfare between Judah and Israel, as especially they attempted to establish the border between them about six miles north of Jerusalem.

We also saw that after Rehoboam and his son Abijah, we had the 41-year reign of Asa, a man who is described as having a whole heart for God. His son Jehoshaphat, whom we have not looked at in any detail yet, followed that pattern. And so you had some 65 years of stable God-fearing rule in Judah.

By contrast in the northern kingdom you had a period of incredible instability and upheaval. There are a couple of relatively lengthy reigns, Jeroboam's some 25 years and Baasha some 25 years, but surrounding them all kinds of upheaval.

So that as we look at chapter 16, which ends the first subdivision of the second division of the book from the division to Ahab, as we look at chapter 16, we see what I would describe as order emerging from chaos in the northern kingdom.

We saw at the end of the last lecture how Jeroboam's dynasty was brought to a brutal end in the murder of Jeroboam's son Nadab by the usurper Baasha. Again, as we've talked about this whole issue of dating, chapter 15, verse 25 says, Nadab reigned two years. But in fact, when you put the correlation together with Judah, it's almost certain that he probably only reigned about six months. That is he reigned in parts of two years, a month here and five months there or something of that sort. So a very, very brief reign before Baasha brings it to an end.

In the PowerPoint slide, you will see red arrows indicating murder or in one case suicide and only one case, a green arrow. And that is where Elah, the son of Baasha, followed him for a brief time just as Nadab followed Jeroboam for a brief time.

But what you have is a whole series of coup d'état, of usurpation, of assassination, of murder. So while in the south you have this period of great stability, in the north you have the period of great instability.

As we look at these stories of each of the kings and as we see the set formula with the accession formula and then the death formula at the end, you will notice the repetition of you can look for other information, and as we have here in the new international version you can look in the annals of the king.

The Hebrew is a little more full than that. You can look in the book of the events of the days of the King. These pretty clearly were court chronicles probably somewhat like the log on a ship or the records that a general keeps, a kind of a diary, not really analysis, but simply a report. This happened, this happened, this happened. The king did this. The king said this. So over and over again in this formula, in the death formula, it will be said, if you want more information, you can go to the book of the events of the days of the king.

So what this tells us again is that the narrators, the editors, the authors are using sources as they compile these statements. But I want to say again, this is not a history in our sense where we're trying to compile in the fullest sense everything that happened. No. It is an analysis of how this king functioned in regards to the covenant. Did this king keep the covenant in any sense or did he break the covenant? And here is the measure then of his success or his failure, keeping the covenant or breaking the covenant.

If we go back to chapter 15, we see that Nadab followed in the ways of his father. This is verse 26. "He followed in the ways of his father committing the same sins his father had caused Israel to commit." So here's the first step down that road of the Jeroboam trend. His son did the very same things. His son confirmed the actions of his father and he then was killed by Baasha.

Baasha seems to have been a relatively powerful king. He ruled for 28 years we are told. 24 years, excuse me. But here again, the immediate statement is the one you find with every one of the northern kings. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the ways of Jeroboam, committing the same sin Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit.

And I want to emphasize again what I said in the previous lecture, what's the big deal with idolatry? Well, the big deal is that you have taken God from being transcendent, from being other than the creation and have wedded him to the creation, made him part of the creation and thus capable supposedly of being manipulated through the creation. That's the problem with idolatry. Idolatry is not so much the idea of making little statues of a God. Idolatry is the attempt to manipulate the world of nature for my own benefit. And in that sense, we in America are as idolatrous as any other nation on the face of the earth. As we try to manipulate the world to serve ourselves, we are idolatrous.

So it's in that sense that Jeroboam sets the path upon which the entire northern kingdom walked for 200 years. So Baasha ruled for 24 years. If we look then at chapter 16, the first verse we see the word of the Lord came to Jehu, son of Hanani concerning Baasha. Here's another of these prophets that God is giving to the northern kingdom in his love for them, in his attempt to try to draw them back to the path of life.

"I lifted you up from the dust and appointed you ruler over my people Israel. But you followed the ways of Jeroboam." This is beginning to become a bit boring, isn't it? "You followed the ways of Jeroboam and caused my people Israel to sin and to arouse my anger by their sins, so I'm about to wipe out Baasha and his house. I will make your house." Remember what we talked about several lectures ago about the house of David, the family. God is not so concerned about a building as he is about people. "I'm about to wipe out Baasha and his house. I will make your house like that of Jeroboam. You committed the sins of Jeroboam. Your house is going to become like the house of Jeroboam." And here's that phrase that we saw there in Jeroboam. We'll see it again in Ahab. "Dogs will eat those belonging to Baasha who die in the city. Vultures will feed on those who die in the country."

"As for the other events," here comes this death formula. "As for the other events of Baasha's reign, what he did and his achievements, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel," the book of the events of the days of the kings of Israel. Baasha rested with his ancestors and was buried in Tirzah, and Elah, his son succeeded him as king.

Now I want to say a word about Tirzah. When Jeroboam first became king, in his concern for security, he had his capital over here on the eastern side of the Jordan, as far away from Jerusalem as he could get at that place Peniel, the place where Jacob had wrestled with God. But then he moved it to Tirzah.

Now we talked again about this central ridge that runs up through the land of Israel from southwest to northeast. Shechem is located about here between the two mountains of Ebal and Gerizim. And then there is a canyon that runs down here, a very narrow canyon, and Tirzah is located at the foot of it. So it is very well defended from the south. Any army attempting to attack Tirzah from the south is going to have a very difficult time getting through that narrow canyon. Otherwise, they're going to have to come up the Jordan and come up this valley, which is a fairly broad valley, but still relatively easily defended. So Tirzah is clearly chosen for its defensive value, especially from the south.

That's where Jeroboam established himself. And then Baasha has done the same thing. We'll see how that changes in a few moments.

So in the 26th year of Asa, this is chapter 16, verse 8, "In the 26th year of Asa, king of Judah, Elah, son of Baasha became king of Israel and he reigned in Tirzah two years." Again when we worked the correlation out, it was probably not much more than six or eight months before he in turn is murdered by Zimri.

Now Zimri is the captain of half of the chariots of the Israelite armies. That makes him sort of a colonel. And as a colonel, he has evidently been left behind in Tirzah to probably protect the king while the army is down here at Gibbethon. We talked about that yesterday or we talked about that in the previous lecture.

It's on the border between Israel and the Philistines, and it seems to have been a flashpoint through the years. Who is going to control Gibbethon? Again, it relates to the great highway and control of the highway. So here it is again. And we'll see it yet a third time in its historical significance for Israel. But the army, the rest of the army is down here, besieging Gibbethon and the general is a man named Omri.

So here is Zimri with half of the chariots, presumably the other half of the chariots are down here with Omri, and Zimri slaughters his king, Elah. Zimri came in, struck him down and killed him in the 27th year of Asa, king of Judah.

Now again, notice Elah became king in the 26th year of Asa, and he dies in the 27th year of Asa and he ruled two years. But there again, he ruled in parts of two years and probably for not more than six or eight months.

Interestingly, he is getting drunk in the home of the palace administrator. I'll talk a little more about that as we go along. People are not quite sure what the duties of the palace administrator may have been. Some think it's simply the chief steward of the palace. I think not. I think as I look at the data that in fact this is the prime minister, this is the leading servant of the king in terms of the administration of the country. So Elah's getting drunk in the house of his prime minister and Zimri comes in and kills him.

Again, the reader is invited to think, "What in the world is he thinking? Is he really thinking that as a colonel he is going to become the king when the general is someplace else? Does he really think the general is going to serve him?" But how often pride, hubris somehow disconnects our brain?

So when the word reached Omri down at Gibbethon, his soldiers immediately proclaimed him king. And it's evident that the army then conducted a forced march up that 35 or 40 miles between Gibbethon and Tirzah and arrived, and Zimri knew the game was up. And so he burned down the palace with himself in it. He ruled a week.

So here is the third dynasty to rule the northern Kingdom, Jeroboam and his son Nadab, Baasha and his son Elah. Now Zimri, and Omri is the fourth dynasty. But notice what is said there about Omri. This is chapter 16, verse 21. "Then the people of Israel were split into two factions, half supported Tibni, son of Ginath for king and the other half supported Omri. So Zimri has killed Elah. Zimri has killed himself a week later. Omri and Tibni have been declared king.

Verse 22 of chapter 16, "But Omri's followers proved stronger than those of Tibni, son of Ginath, so Tibni died." Died of a broken heart? No, I think much more likely died violently in some way and Omri became king.

Now it appears from the correlation with the years of Asa that this civil war may have gone on for as long as four years. We know nothing about it. We don't know where Tibni established himself. We don't know how that all worked. Omri's total years are 12. So it looks as though four years were consumed by that civil war with Tibni and then eight years by himself.

Chaos, chaos, stability in Judah, chaos in the north. So if you count Tibni, we've had five dynasties ruling in the north in about 50 years. Omri is the crucial figure. Omri is the one who establishes order, mishpat, if you will, in that northern kingdom. He must have been a remarkable man because in fact, in 12 years he accomplishes more politically speaking than Jeroboam and Baasha did in some 50 years.

One of the things he did was to move the capitol to Samaria. And this is such a symbolic move from that small, secret, defensive capital to one right out here on the other side of the ridge facing down toward the great highway. I will always remember when I took a group of students to Israel. We were riding on a bus and our guide was saying, "You'll notice how gentle this valley is up to Samaria, how easy the access is down to the coast." And our bus driver, who was an Arab said, "Yes, you'll notice I don't even have to shift down to get up this road."

Israel is now taking its place in the world. Israel is now positioning itself in the international realm, in the realm of international politics, international business. Things have changed. They also changed not merely physically, but politically.

How expensive that continual war with Judah must have been. Omri somehow brings it to an end. Now we don't know all the details here. What we do know is that Omri's granddaughter, Ahab's daughter Athaliah, is married to Jehoshaphat's son. That marriage alliance signifies a political alliance between Judah and Israel.

I have imagined these situations a good deal. It's interesting that Asa does not permit his son Jehoshaphat to be married to a daughter of Omri. It has to go down a generation. So I suspect, cannot prove this, it's totally speculative, but I suspect that Asa was too wily to enter into a one-to-one relationship with Omri. But it's clear that he was willing to make some level of peace with Omri and to stop the war. We know for certain that Omri made an alliance with the king of Tyre because he married his son Ahab to the king of Tyre's daughter Jezebel. So there's an alliance there between Israel and Phoenicia.

There was conquest of Moab down on the east side of the Dead Sea. It's pretty clear that there was an alliance of some sort with Syria, although the relations between Israel and Syria were always contentious. But what he's able to do is he's able to get rid of the expense of the perpetual conflict with all his neighbors. He's able to create an alliance with them.

One mark of how significant Omri was is 100 years later, long after the dynasty of Omri is gone, the Assyrians refer to Israel as the house of Omri. Now, it may be that they first met Israel in their move from your perspective, in their move westward toward Egypt. Perhaps they first met Israel in the time of Omri and that fixed it in their minds. But once again, this tells us that in this very short period, a period of 12 years, Omri has been able to establish himself in ways that made a mark on the world.

However, the biblical account is quite brief. In the 31st year of Asa King of Judah, Omri became king of Israel. He reigned 12 years, 6 of them in Tirzah. So it looks to me like after he finally defeated Tibni took two years to get things organized and then to make the move to the new capital. And this is rather like David with Jerusalem. This is Omri's capital. It's not anybody else's capital. It's a brand new city that he has created for his own capital. Six years in Samaria.

He bought the hill of Samaria from Shemmer for two talents of silver and built a city on the hill calling it Samaria after Shemmer, the name of the former owner. But Omri did evil in the eyes of the Lord and sinned more than all those before him. He followed completely the ways of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, committing the same sins Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit so that they arouse the anger of the Lord, God of Israel by their worthless idols.

That last phrase suggests to me that what Omri did was to encourage the worship of other gods besides Yahweh. We don't see Jeroboam and Baasha doing that. Now, they may have. Arguments from silence are always risky. But the fact that that particular phrase is emphasized there, when it is said he committed more sins than all the previous ones, that makes me believe that in fact, he was encouraging the worship of other gods along with the idols of Yahweh.

But this is a typical example. Here's a powerful king who accomplished considerably notable things, but he broke the covenant. He did not keep the covenant. What else can you say about the man?

I think about this in regard to our own lives. What have you accomplished? What have I accomplished? And in that regard, we can think about Jesus' words, "lay up treasures in heaven."

Now, he's not talking about up there versus here. There are heavenly treasures that you and I can choose, children who love the Lord, men and women whom we have won to Christ, accomplishments for the name of Jesus. Those are heavenly treasures and they will last when all the rest are gone. Only what's done for Christ will last.

So it is throughout this entire account, we will see it, kings who perhaps from a worldly perspective were not very effective. But in terms of their covenant keeping, yes. Others like Omri were very effective, very powerful. But in the final analysis were failures.

What Omri accomplished was to make it possible for his son to be very successful. And that introduces us to Ahab. In the 38th year of Asa, king of Judah, Ahab, son of Omri became king of Israel and he reigned in Samaria over Israel 22 years, 22 very important years, 22 years of turbulence, but also 22 years of, from a worldly perspective, considerable accomplishment.

Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. Jeroboam, Baasha, Zimri, Omri, Ahab outclass them all. He also married Jezebel, daughter of Ithobaal, king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him.

Now again, this suggests to me that the previous kings all, at least on paper, on the surface, worshiped Yahweh. They may as perhaps I suggested in the case of Omri, sponsored the worship of other gods, but for themselves they were Yahweh worshipers.

Baal comes right out flatfooted and is a Baal worshiper. Now he worshiped Yahweh as well as we'll see. But what's happening is this sort of like the old video game of Pac-Man, the world is steadily eating into Israel and its relationship with God. He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria, in his capital city. There's no indication that there was a temple of Yahweh in the city of Samaria. There may have been, argument from silence again, but specifically there was a temple of Baal in Samaria, and Ahab built an altar for Baal in that place.

He also set up an Asherah pole. We talked before about Asherah, the goddess of fertility of the Canaanites. So he is establishing Canaanite fertility religion right in the capital city. He did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.

Then there is an interesting comment. In Ahab's time, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. Now, if you remember, a curse was put on Jericho. It was not to be rebuilt. And in terms of the curse, it was said, if it is rebuilt, then the firstborn of that builder will be sacrificed. Here it is.

I said several lectures ago that the building of the temple signified a turning point. There was an era from Exodus up to that moment of wilderness wandering, of settlement, of conquest, of establishment. Now that period is complete and we're entering unto a new period. I think this also signifies a new period.

The Canaanites were defeated and put down. The world was put down there in the conquest of Jericho. Now here, the world is reasserting itself in the time of Ahab. This is a crisis moment in every sense of the word. The stage is set for real conflict. Is Baal going to replace Yahweh as the God of Israel? Oh, probably not wipe him out, but Baal will be the primary God and Yahweh will be somewhere down the list. Is that what's going to happen? That's the question that we are forced to ask as we come to the end of chapter 16.

But in a very sudden manner, chapter 17 begins. Now, Elijah, the Tishbite from Tishbe in Gilead said to Ahab, "As the Lord, the God of Israel lives whom I serve, there will be neither do, nor reign in the next few years except at my word."

A what? Yes, we've not only come to the end of an era and entered a new era. We've also entered a new section of the book. This is what I've called subdivision B of that second main division. Main division remember being from the division to the fall of Israel, 1 Kings 12 to 2 Kings 17. We've seen part A from the division to Ahab, chapters 12 to 16 of 1 Kings. Now we come to part B, the Elijah-Elisha narrative, which extends from 1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 13, a matter of about a total of 90 years. The ministry was about 60 years, but a total of 90 years and 19 chapters of the Book of Kings is given to this account. How important is this? Of greatest importance.

Now, as we look at this material, especially from chapter 17 here to 2 Kings 10, we see a collection of stories about these two men, Elijah and Elisha and their ministries. We have suspended for the moment, this pattern that we've fallen into. So-and-so became king in the so-and-so year of the king of the other country, and he ruled for ... As we saw with Omri, verses 21 to 28, there it is. Now that's been suspended, and we're going to talk about all of these prophetic narratives.

I think it's pretty clear that the narrator has taken a literary block that has existed on its own and has imported it into what he's doing here. We're going to see that again with Hezekiah. But he's utilizing, he's simply picking up this account of Elijah-Elisha and putting it into his larger account here.

It is a single ministry. It's not the ministry of Elijah and then the ministry of Elisha. It is the Elijah-Elisha ministry because it has a single purpose. And that single purpose is to annihilate Baal worship in Israel and to make it very, very clear that Yahweh is the God of Israel. He was the God of Israel. He is the God of Israel. And he will be the God of Israel. And their combined ministry has that purpose. It achieves that purpose. And in that sense is highly successful.

But we could wish that it would have had more success. We could wish that it had succeeded in wiping out those Baal idols at Bethel and Dan. It did not. But its primary ministry, annihilating the worship of Baal was extremely successful.

So we see then in chapter 17, Elijah. And what we see here is in fact the same thing that's going to occur with much more visibility in chapter 18. In chapter 18, there's going to be a direct face off between Baal and Yahweh. And Yahweh is going to be the victor. But in fact, in 17 more subtly, the same kind of face off is occurring and it occurs right there at the outset.

Baal is the God of the storm. Baal is the God who brings the rains upon which fertility depends so totally in the land of Canaan. There are no large rivers that can be used for irrigation. If the rains do not come in off the Mediterranean in the fall, and again in the early spring, there's going to be no crops. And Baal is the one who brings this rain. No, he isn't. Elijah. And again, just boom. There he is from out of nowhere, except that it says, well, he came from Gad across the Jordan River, Gilead. And he arrives and he says, "Hi king. It's not going to rain here any more till I say." "Oh my goodness. Who is this?"

And then God says, "Okay, you're going to need to get out of here. You're going to need to get away from this king. Go down to this brook that feeds into the Jordan. There'll be some water in that brook for a while. And the ravens ... " Now ravens are carrion eaters. "The ravens will feed you."

Who is the God who produces life from the air? Yahweh. And he'll do it through vultures of all things. And then the little brook dries up and God says, "Go to Zarephath." Where is Zarephath? In the region of Tyre and Sidon, Baal's country. "And you'll find there a lifeless woman, a widow, and in Baal's home country, Yahweh will feed you."

"I don't have any bread. I got a handful of flour. I got a little bit of oil. We're just going to make a last meal and we're going to die." No, you're not. Yahweh will give life. And a little later, after he does that, after he fills all of those vessels with oil, enough oil that she can sell and buy more flour, her son gets ill.

And it's so interesting to me, again, these little touches that characterize powerful narrative. She says, "So why'd you come here anyway? Did you come here to expose my sins and kill my son?" "No. No. I came to give you life. Life when you thought you were going to starve to death. And now life, when you think your son is going to die." Who gives life? Yahweh.

And so she says in the last words, "Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth." What a powerful statement.

The speaking God and the God who speaks what is reliable, what is so, what is true, that's our God, our God who can be dependent upon, our God who does not live in lonely isolation, but who longs to communicate with us, to be in relationship with us in such a way that our lives are changed. The man of God. You're not just a mouthpiece. You're a godly man. And what you say from God is true. That's a great testimony.

Could you contrast the worship of the gods and the nations around Israel and the way that happened with Gods that were capricious and not really knowable very well to living in covenant? Why is that such a big contrast?

I have said to students for many years, there are really only two worldviews, the biblical one and the other one. The other one says this psycho-socio-physical cosmos is all there is. If there is God, if there is deity, it is intrinsic in this world. And therefore in this world, if we figure it out, we can control the spiritual forces that are behind everything. We can control them by our actions. That's the non-biblical worldview.

The biblical worldview says deity is not part of this cosmos. Oh, he is everywhere present in it, but he's not part of it. He is other than this cosmos. So you cannot control him through this cosmic world. All you can do is surrender to him and trust him. Well, that's terrifying.

So we like the other religion better, the other religion where we can somehow control spiritual power. And that's paganism. That's what that's all about. And tragically, sometimes our, how shall I say it, Christian faith becomes like that.

Faith is a transaction in which we do something for the deity. And if we do enough of it and do it right, then the deity is compelled to do what we want. Biblical religion says, no, no, you can't force God to do anything. But this God is a person. In the paganism basically we have forces wearing masks. They're not real persons. But this God is a full orbed person and he wants personal relations with us, personal relations that will transform us. That religion is transactional. True biblical religion is transformational. He wants a relationship with us that will transform us from self-serving to self-giving.

That is not going to happen unless we surrender our self-serving and learn what he is like. And we learn what he is like when we keep the covenant. The covenant is not a tyrannical God saying, "All right, here's what you'd better do. Do this and do this and do this and do this. And if you don't do it, I'm going to smash you." That's the reason I like the Jewish word Torah, the Hebrew word Torah. Torah means instructions. God says, "Here's how you were meant to live, John, and if you'll do this and this and this and this, you will become what you were created to be."

So that's the difference, transformation or transaction. And the tragedy is when we try to do the transactional thing with God. Okay, God, I'll go to church if you'll give me a raise. Okay, God, I'll read the Bible if you'll solve the problems in my family. Okay, God, I'll do this. Oh, no, no, no, no, I'll do this because you've died for me. I'll do this because you love me. I'll do this because doing this, I become who I was meant to be.

So you mentioned that Omri set up a capital at Samaria to try to be part of the political power system. And when you look at the promise of Abraham, how Israel's supposed to be a blessing to all nations, how does their location enter into that and what were they trying to do?

Yes, yes. We tend to look at a world map and look at little Israel and think, "What was God doing putting people there?" Well, as I said earlier, Israel is the funnel between actually three continents, Asia, Europe, and Africa. And particularly in the context of the ancient near eastern world, Israel is the choke point on the great world trade routes between Mesopotamia over here in the east and Egypt in the south, between Arabia and Europe. All of the trade of the world is focused right here so that Israel has an immense opportunity to influence what's happening compared to Assyria or Babylon or Egypt or later Alexander.

What is this little country? Well, geographically it's not much, but geopolitically it is tremendously significant. Here is the highway of the world. God has put them right in the middle of the highway, which is a good place to get run over, but it's also a place to have this amazing impact. We saw it in the Solomonic narrative with the Queen of Sheba. All the way from far south in the Arabian Peninsula she's come. What's going on here? This king, this king has control of my trade.

So here is the opportunity. Can we be in the world but not of the world? This was the opportunity Solomon had with his power, with his wealth, with his influence. He could have evangelized the whole region.

Now, of course you say evangelized? Christ hadn't come in. That's right. That's right. But he could have set them up. He could have shown them the nature and character of God. He could have drawn them into the biblical revelation, which is leading to Christ. But he didn't do it. He failed. And because he failed, then most of his successors either in the south or the north, failed as well. Israel in particular, controlled, still controlled both those roads, especially in the early years. Judah tended not to be. Judah tended not to have the power and the wealth and the agricultural wealth that Israel had, but Israel was right there.

And so we see how, in a real sense, by moving Samaria there, Omri could have had some of that influence that Solomon forfeited, but he didn't want to. He didn't want to be in the world. He wanted to be of the world. So the opportunity that God gave was forfeited first by Solomon and then again, and again, and again by the northern kings.