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2 Kings 18 King Hezekiah and Sennacherib’s Threat to Jerusalem

King Hezekiah on a 17th century painting by unknown artist in the choir of *Sankta Maria kyrka* in Åhus, Sweden.

2 Kings 18: 1-8

¹ In the third year of King Hoshea son of Elah of Israel, Hezekiah son of King Ahaz of Judah began to reign. ² He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign; he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi daughter of Zechariah. ³ He did what was right in the sight of the LORD, just as his ancestor David had done. ⁴ He removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan. ⁵ He relied on the LORD, the God of Israel, so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah after him or among those who were before him. ⁶ For he held fast to the LORD; he did not depart from following him but kept the commandments that the LORD had commanded Moses. ⁷ The LORD was with him; wherever he went, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him. ⁸ He attacked the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city.

With the northern kingdom of Samaria (Israel) scattered by the Assyrians the remainder of the book of kings focuses on the kings in Jerusalem. Ultimately over the final eight chapters of 2 Kings it will focus on the two paradigmatically good kings, Hezekiah (chapters 18-20) and Josiah (chapters 22-23), in contrast to the kings ‘who do evil in the sight of the LORD. Hezekiah and Josiah are the only kings who are compared to their father David in faithfulness, and Hezekiah ‘held fast’ to the LORD in contrast to Solomon who in his later years ‘held fast’[1] to his foreign wives. (1 Kings 11:2) Hezekiah is viewed as a king who is faithful to God and whose faithfulness ensures that Jerusalem does not suffer the same fate as Samaria. 2 Chronicles 29-32 and Isaiah 36-39 also relate the events of Hezekiah’s reign in a very positive light.

The narrators of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles view the faithfulness of Hezekiah in his consolidation of worship in the temple in Jerusalem and the elimination of the long-established high places and sacred poles. The high places have failed to be eliminated by previous kings and to the narrator of 2 Kings that has provided a qualification of the faithfulness of any previous king, but now Hezekiah is viewed as an example of the type of king that the LORD expects. Even Nehushtan[2], the bronze serpent on a pole mentioned in Numbers 21, is destroyed to prevent the misuse of this object from the time of Moses. The faithfulness of Hezekiah is also rewarded with success as he both rebels against Assyria and expands his territory into the land of the Philistines. We will explore the impact of this rebellion against Assyria at the end of chapter eighteen and through chapter nineteen, but this introduction to the reign of Hezekiah’s twenty-nine year reign ends on a high note.

2 Kings 18: 9-12

⁹ In the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of King Hoshea son of Elah of Israel, King Shalmaneser of Assyria came up against Samaria, besieged it, ¹⁰ and at the end of three years took it. In the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of King Hoshea of Israel, Samaria was taken. ¹¹ The king of Assyria carried the Israelites away to Assyria and settled them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes, ¹² because they did not obey the voice of the LORD their God but transgressed his covenant—all that Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded; they neither listened nor obeyed.

This brief reminder of the Assyrian conquest of Samaria places the disaster of the northern kingdom in its place between the fourth and sixth year of Hezekiah. Most commentaries will note a struggle with the chronology here and in the following section since Samaria is destroyed in 722/721 BCE and in the following section Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) attacks in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah (believed to be 701 BCE). Ultimately this is a relatively minor instance of numbers not aligning and I do not want to detract from the basic contrast between the kings of the Israelites in the north who did not obey the voice of the LORD their God and Hezekiah who was faithful.

2 Kings 18:13-37

¹³ In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. ¹⁴ King Hezekiah of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong; withdraw from me; whatever you impose on me I will bear.” The king of Assyria demanded of King Hezekiah of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. ¹⁵ Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king’s house. ¹⁶ At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the doorposts that King Hezekiah of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria. ¹⁷ The king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway to the fuller’s field. ¹⁸ When they called for the king, there came out to them Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace, and Shebnah the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder.
¹⁹ The Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you base this reliance of yours? ²⁰ Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? On whom do you now rely, that you have rebelled against me? ²¹ See, you are relying now on Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him. ²² But if you say to me, ‘We rely on the Lord our God,’ is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem’? ²³ Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. ²⁴ How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master’s servants when you rely on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? ²⁵ Moreover, is it without the LORD that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The LORD said to me, ‘Go up against this land, and destroy it.’ ”
²⁶ Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, Shebnah, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in the Aramaic language, for we understand it; do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall.” ²⁷ But the Rabshakeh said to them, “Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you and not to the people sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and to drink their own urine?”
²⁸ Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria: ²⁹ Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand. ³⁰ Do not let Hezekiah make you rely on the LORD by saying, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ ³¹ Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: Make your peace with me and come out to me; then every one of you will eat from your own vine and your own fig tree and drink water from your own cistern, ³² until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and honey, that you may live and not die. Do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’ ³³ Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered its land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? ³⁴ Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? ³⁵ Who among all the gods of the countries have delivered their countries out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?”
³⁶ But the people were silent and answered him not a word, for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.” ³⁷ Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.

This critical moment in the story of Zion is related here and in Isaiah 36. For both 2 Kings and Isaiah the implication of this story is clear, that God protected the city. The faithfulness of the people under Hezekiah leads God to intervene on behalf of the city and the people and Jerusalem, unlike Samaria, will be spared. In a David and Goliath type of moment the small kingdom of Judah resists the seemingly irresistible empire of Assyria.

Alex Israel gives a good summary of the events preceding Assyria’s actions against King Hezekiah and Jerusalem:

The death of an emperor always presented an opportunity for revolt, but the circumstances of Sargon’s death, widely seen as a bad omen for Assyria, exacerbated the unrest. Rebellion broke out at both extremities of the sprawling empire. East of Assyria, in Babylonia, Merodach-baladan (known in Kings as Berodach-baladan) crowned himself as ruler. In the West, Judah allied itself with Philistia and Egypt in rejecting Assyrian power. Since Kings records that Berodach visited Hezekiah in Jerusalem (II Kings 20: 12-13), it is probable that the resistance efforts in the East and the West were coordinated. Israel 289

During the roughly two decades since the destruction of Samaria we know that Hezekiah has been active both in attempting to strengthen the defenses of Jerusalem and has ensured that the city has an adequate water supply by cutting tunnels to carry the waters of the Gihon spring to the Siloam Pool. (Cogan, 1988, p. 221) The Philistine cities Hezekiah attacked in verse eight may have been those loyal to Assyria to secure this Philistine-Egyptian-Judah alliance on the western side of Assyria. Yet, when Assyria under Sennacherib attempts to regain control of the portions of its empire in rebellion it overwhelms the fortified cities of Judah and stands at the gates of Jerusalem where this challenge is issued.

King Hezekiah does attempt to appease the Assyrian king by submitting to a tribute of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold[3] and Hezekiah empties the treasuries and strips the gold from the temple doorposts, yet the empire is not appeased and the troops of Assyria continue from the conquered city of Lachish to Jerusalem.

The Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh are three officials of Sennacherib. Tartan is the viceroy who had the authority to act on behalf of Sennacherib, Rabsaris is literally the “chief eunuch”, and Rabshakeh is the “chief cupbearer.” Rabshakeh is the speaker for the emissaries of Sennacherib to the representatives of King Hezekiah, Eliakim the steward of the palace, Shebnah the secretary and Joah the recorder. Rabshakeh speaks both to these representatives but also to the population watching from the walls to weaken the resolve of the defenders and to have people defect from Hezekiah. At the heart of Rabshakeh’s challenge is on what the people and Hezekiah can trust.[4]

Rabshakeh indicates that Egypt is not trustworthy and that any trust placed in their action to deliver will only wound the one who hoped in this weak and unreliable ally. Then Rabshakeh indicates that the people should not trust in the LORD since, in Rabshakeh’s interpretation, the people have at Hezekiah’s insistence removed the very sites that honored the LORD. Then the Rab-shakeh indicates that the presence of the Assyrian army is because the LORD has sent it, an argument that is echoed in Isaiah 10: 5-11. Finally, the people should not trust in Hezekiah to deliver them or when Hezekiah says to ‘trust in the LORD.’ Despite the efforts of Hezekiah to fortify the city, the Rab-shakeh mocks his ineffectual army which could not field two thousand mounted men if Assyria provided the horses. Rabshakeh also states that the gods of the other nations have not prevented Assyria from conquering them, and even if the LORD had not sent Assyria the God of Israel is powerless to prevent the destruction that the army of Assyria portends.

This crisis for the narrator of 2 Kings and Isaiah is more than a military and humanitarian crisis, it is a crisis of trust. Is the God of Israel trustworthy and is Hezekiah, God’s faithful king, trustworthy or does might make right. Can the emissaries of Sennacherib mock God and Jerusalem with impunity or will God intervene on their behalf. The actions of King Hezekiah and the Prophet Isaiah in the following chapter will give a model of faithfulness for future generations and God’s response will prove God’s trustworthiness.

[1] In both cases the Hebrew word dabaq is used for these kings holding fast to either God or their foreign wives.

[2] Nehustan name suggests both the material nehoset, “bronze” and the image nahas, “serpent. (Cogan, 1988, p. 217)

[3] Assyrian records indicate eight hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. (Cogan, 1988, p. 229)

[4] The Hebrew batahta (trust) and derivative forms which are translated security/reliance permeate Rab-shakeh’s speech.

2 Kings 17 The End of Samaria

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A neo-Assyrian relief of Assyrians in a procession, Photo by Denis Bourez in the Brittish Museum, London. Shared under CC 2.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria#/media/File:Denis_Bourez_-_British_Museum,_London_(8748213226).jpg

2 Kings 17: 1-6 King Hoshea the Last King in Samaria and the End of the Northern Kingdom of Israel

¹ In the twelfth year of King Ahaz of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel; he reigned nine years. ² He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, yet not like the kings of Israel who were before him. ³ King Shalmaneser of Assyria came up against him; Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute. ⁴ But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to King So of Egypt and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year; therefore the king of Assyria confined him and imprisoned him.

⁵ Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. ⁶ In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

The brief description of the reign of King Hoshea of Samaria, the capture of Samaria, and the scattering of the Northern Kingdom of Israel is accomplished in six terse verses. Yet, this major event will prompt a much longer reflection of the why the exile of Israel occurs and the resettlement of the land under the Assyrian king. The dissolution of the Kingdom of Samaria does not end the dream of a reunification of Judah and Israel among the prophetic imagination, but it does mark a significant shift in the narrative of 2 Kings. The bulk of 1 and 2 Kings to this point has focused on the events of the northern kingdom of Israel while it tracks the kings of Judah and the occasional event or interaction with the northern kingdom, but now after this chapter the entire focus of the narrator will orient on the remaining kingdom of Judah. The siege of Samaria, the capture of Israel and the dispersal of the population were traumatic for the people involved and the narrative of the book of Kings is designed to provide a theological rationale for this catastrophic event (and the eventual exile of Judah) among the people of the covenant.

King Hoshea comes to power around 732 BCE and roughly five years into his reign the powerful king Tiglath-pileser III dies and his son Shalmaneser V assumes control of the Assyrian empire. Shalmaneser V only reigns for five years, and it is possible that his replacement Sargon II is not his heir and that he meets a violent end. The transition to Shalmaneser V was likely viewed in the region as an opportunity for nations to extract themselves from Assyrian rule and King Hoshea’s withholding of tribute payments and appeals to King So of Egypt[1] are acts of rebellion that Shalmaneser V responds to violently by besieging Samaria and occupying the land. It is possible that Shalmaneser V dies during the three-year long siege and Sargon II completed it (Assyrian records seem to indicate this) but ultimately the result is the same. The destruction of Samaria, the exile of Israel and the resettlement of the land.

One would expect that the king of Samaria who reigns during the destruction of the nation would receive a harsh judgment, but instead he receives a more favorable judgment than any other northern king. His toned-down judgement is unique among the northern kings. Rabbinical commentators have often indicated that Hoshea paid off the tribute to Assyria by removing the golden statues in Bethel and Dan, and this was viewed favorably by the God of Israel and that Hoshea removed the barriers for people from Israel to worship in Jerusalem.[2] The narrator of the book of Kings also tends to view accommodation with the empire of the day as a sign of unfaithfulness so it the better, if not positive evaluation, may be in part due to the resistance of Hoshea to the king of Assyria.

In the aftermath of the fall of Samaria, 2 Kings describes the exile of the population to two places in modern day Iraq and one in modern day Iran. The Assyrians scattered captured populations to prevent a concentration in one area where they could rise against Assyria, but it also is likely that the entire population of northern Israel is not exiled. Some do apparently migrate to Judah and Alex Israel notes that archeology shows an increase in the population of Judah during this period. (Israel, 2019, p. 269) Other portions of the population likely remained in place and were mixed with the people that Assyrian resettled in the region. The northern tribes of Israel ceased to be a unified people, but that does not stop the prophets of Judah from imagining a future where Judah and Ephraim can be reunited as the people of God.[3]

2 Kings 17: 7-23 Theological Rationale for the Exile of Israel (Samaria)

⁷ This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods ⁸ and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD had driven out before the people of Israel and in the customs that the kings of Israel had introduced. ⁹ The people of Israel did things that were not right against the LORD their God. They built for themselves high places at all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city; ¹⁰ they set up for themselves pillars and sacred poles on every high hill and under every green tree; ¹¹ there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the LORD had carried away before them. They did wicked things, provoking the LORD to anger; ¹² they served idols, of which the LORD had said to them, “You shall not do this.” ¹³ Yet the LORD warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the law that I commanded your ancestors and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.” ¹⁴ They would not listen but were stubborn, as their ancestors had been, who did not believe in the LORD their God. ¹⁵ They despised his statutes and his covenant that he had made with their ancestors and the warnings that he had given them. They went after false idols and became false; they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do as they did. ¹⁶ They rejected all the commandments of the LORD their God and made for themselves cast images of two calves; they made a sacred pole, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. ¹⁷ They made their sons and their daughters pass through fire, used divination and augury, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger. ¹⁸ Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight; none was left but the tribe of Judah alone.
¹⁹ Judah also did not keep the commandments of the LORD their God but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. ²⁰ The LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel; he punished them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had banished them from his presence.
²¹ When he had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king. Jeroboam drove Israel from following the LORD and made them commit great sin. ²² The people of Israel continued in all the sins that Jeroboam committed; they did not depart from them ²³ until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had foretold through all his servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day.

The narrator of the book of Kings is both narrating the history of the kings of Israel and Judah (and by extension the people of both nations) but also looking back from two exilic events (the Assyrian exile of Israel and the Babylonian exile of Judah) and utilizing the historical narrative told through a theological lens to explain how the nation went from its highpoint as a unified kingdom under Solomon to Samaria’s scattering and Judah’s exile. At this first moment of crisis, the narrator steps back from the events to explain why this crisis occurred. The rise of Assyria may form the political background of the story, but through the lens of the narrator Assyria is merely a tool of the LORD because of the multiple sins of the people. The sins of the people of Israel, and Judah, are couched in the language of idolatry, a violation of the central commandment given to the Hebrew people whether in the Ten Commandments[4] or in the Shema[5]. As Choon-Leong Seow can state about this section of chapter seventeen:

The text is ultimately more than a justification of the doom that God brought upon a nation long ago. It is a homily to those of us for whom there is still an opportunity to do what is right. It is a homily about what happens when we violate the first commandment and betray God, from whom no secrets can be kept. (NIB III: 257)

The language of this section is the language of the covenant in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. The people worshipped other gods and adopted the practices of the nations that surrounded them. As people of the covenant, they were intended to be a treasured possession, a priestly nation, and a holy people,[6] but instead they have become indistinguishable from the people the LORD drove out before them in the book of Joshua. The language seems to be hyperbole with the statement of setting up high places in all their towns and sacred poles on every high hill and under every green tree, but the intent of this section is to convey the pervasiveness of the corruption of Israel and Judah. From the Golden Calf during the exodus,[7] to the sins of Jeroboam constructing the golden calves at Bethel and Dan [8], to the practices of Ahab opposed by Elijah, and finally to this moment of exile the people have continued to violate the commandments and statutes of the LORD their God.

The command not to worship other gods or to adopt the practices of the land is one of the most frequently repeated injunctions throughout the law. Deuteronomy 18: 9-11 is a representative example which our text echoes:

“When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead.

The people of Israel and Judah have gone after the false practices of the nations and they have become false. They have worshipped idols who were false instead of worshipping the God who is unseen but real. The word translated false by the NRSVue is the Hebrew word hebel (or hevel) which is famously translated in Ecclesiastes as ‘vanity.’ Hebel is an evanescent word which means wind, vapor, smoke, or mist and is something transitory that cannot be grasped onto.[9] Walter Brueggemann picks up on this when he says of the people, “They worshipped “vapor” and they became vapor”” (Brueggemann, 2000, p. 480)

Even though the narrator of 1 and 2 Kings rarely notes the existence of the prophets who we have in the bible (after Elijah and Elisha), the last several chapters have been times when the biblical books of Amos, Hosea, Micah, and the first section of Isaiah address. There are prophets active in both Israel and Judah, in addition to the seers mentioned which also paint a troubled future with the LORD the God of Israel due to the disobedience of the people. This section which serves as both a summary of the history of disobedience and as a warning for Judah closes the narration of Israel but also points to the reality that this is an intentional action of the LORD the God of Israel. As Brueggemann helpfully summarizes:

The condemning action of Yahweh is summarized in a series of harsh verbs: reject, punish, gave into, banished, removed. The deportation is not an accident. It is not a matter of Assyrian policy. It is the sure and inevitable enactment of covenant curses that have been known from the outset of Sinai. (Brueggemann, 2000, p. 481)

The narrative of Israel has been viewed through the lens of the covenant and the cause of the exile of Israel is not Assyria, but God’s actions in response to their continual pattern of disregarding the covenant and adopting the worship and the practices of the nations of the region.

2 Kings 17: 24-41 The Ressettlement of Samaria by Assyria

²⁴ The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and placed them in the cities of Samaria in place of the people of Israel; they took possession of Samaria and settled in its cities. ²⁵ When they first settled there, they did not worship the LORD; therefore the LORD sent lions among them that killed some of them. ²⁶ So the king of Assyria was told, “The nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the god of the land; therefore he has sent lions among them; they are killing them because they do not know the law of the god of the land.” ²⁷ Then the king of Assyria commanded, “Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there; let him go and live there and teach them the law of the god of the land.” ²⁸ So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel; he taught them how they should worship the LORD.
²⁹ But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the people of Samaria had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived; ³⁰ the people of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, the people of Cuth made Nergal, the people of Hamath made Ashima; ³¹ the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak; the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. ³² They also worshiped the LORD and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places. ³³ So they worshiped the LORD but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away. ³⁴ To this day they continue to practice their former customs.
They do not worship the LORD, and they do not follow the statutes or the ordinances or the law or the commandment that the LORD commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel. ³⁵ The LORD had made a covenant with them and commanded them, “You shall not worship other gods or bow yourselves to them or serve them or sacrifice to them, ³⁶ but you shall worship the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm; you shall bow yourselves to him, and to him you shall sacrifice. ³⁷ The statutes and the ordinances and the law and the commandment that he wrote for you, you shall always be careful to observe. You shall not worship other gods; ³⁸ you shall not forget the covenant that I have made with you. You shall not worship other gods, ³⁹ but you shall worship the LORD your God; he will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.” ⁴⁰ They would not listen, however, but continued to practice their former custom.
⁴¹ So these nations worshiped the LORD but also served their carved images; to this day their children and their children’s children continue to do as their ancestors did.

The Assyrians would resettle captured lands with displaced populations, here the text notes populations from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim (modern day Iraq and Syria). These resettled populations bring their native gods and practices and are tormented by lions in the land. Lions have previously been used by God to deal with prophets who disobeyed God’s instructions,[10] and now become a judgment of the God of the land on these new people who do not know the LORD. Leviticus notes wild animals as one of God’s methods of punishing the disobedience of the people of the land:

I will let loose wild animals against you, and they shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock; they shall make you few in number, and your roads shall be deserted. Leviticus 26:22

Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor note how lions as predators would become more dangerous in the aftermath of wars devastation and depopulation, (Cogan, 1988, p. 210) but for the narrator of 2 Kings this is a part of God’s causing some partial, if incomplete in the view of 2 King’s narrator, worship of the LORD. The king of Assyria dispatched a priest who formerly served at Bethel to teach the people the worship of the LORD, but in the narrators view what emerges is an amalgamation of practices from the worship of the resettled people and the worship of the LORD taught by one of the priests at one of the shrines where the improper worship of the LORD, in the view of the narrator, began. This section becomes an origin story for the Samaritans of later generations who will be viewed with suspicion by their neighbors in Judah.

[1] Historians are unsure which King of Egypt this name is intended to refer to.

[2] 2 Chronicles narrates King Hezekiah of Judah inviting Israel to participate in the Great Passover, and even though most of Israel scorns this invitation a few attend (2 Chronicles 30:11)

[3] For example, Isaiah 11:10-16, Jeremiah 31, and Ezekiel 37 all imagine a reconstituted Israel (comprised of both Judah and Ephraim) under a Davidic king.

[4] Exodus 20: 2-6; Deuteronomy 5: 6-10.

[5] Deuteronomy 6: 4-5.

[6] Exodus 19: 5-6.

[7] Exodus 32.

[8] 1 Kings 12: 25-33.

[9] See a fuller discussion of hebel in my discussion of Ecclesiastes 1.

[10] 1 Kings 13: 24-28; 20:36.

2 Kings 15 The Stability of Judah in Contrast to the Instability of Samaria

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The King Uzziah Stricken with Leprosy, by Rembrandt, 1635.

2 Kings 15: 1-7 King Azariah (Uzziah) of Judah

¹ In the twenty-seventh year of King Jeroboam of Israel, King Azariah son of Amaziah of Judah began to reign. ² He was sixteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jecoliah of Jerusalem. ³ He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, just as his father Amaziah had done. ⁴ Nevertheless, the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. ⁵ The Lord struck the king so that he had a defiling skin disease to the day of his death and lived in a separate house. Jotham the king’s son was in charge of the palace, governing the people of the land. ⁶ Now the rest of the acts of Azariah and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah? ⁷ Azariah slept with his ancestors; they buried him with his ancestors in the city of David; his son Jotham succeeded him.

King Azariah, also known as King Uzziah, has a long and successful reign over Judah. Uzziah and Azariah are used interchangeably in scriptures and even in this chapter and Uzziah was likely the name he assumed as king of Judah. His fifty-two-year reign begins in the middle of the forty-one year reign of Jeroboam II and both kings enjoy a period of military success and national resurgence. Azariah’s long and stable reign contrasts with his two predecessors (Joash and Amaziah) who saw the royal and temple treasuries diminished and in their political or military weakness were ultimately assassinated by those who served them. The stability during the time of Azariah in Judah also contrasts sharply with the instability in Samaria after the death of Jeroboam II.

Although 2 Kings does not spend a lot of time on the reign of Azariah/Uzziah his story is greatly expanded in 2 Chronicles 26. According to 2 Chronicles Azariah/Uzziah is a successful military leader who wins victories over Philistia, Ammon and extends Judah’s trade and military influence over the region. 2 Kings 14:22 gives a small window into the king’s success when it notes, “He rebuilt Elath and restored it to Judah after King Amaziah slept with his ancestors.” This small note indicates a large accomplishment only shared by Solomon, Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah. This gave Judah a port on the Mediterranean but also required them to control not only the port but the wilderness between. Alex Israel notes that he controls both major highways between Egypt and Mesopotamia, a lucrative trade route and source of income for the nation. (Israel, 2019, p. 227) 2 Chronicles also notes that King Uzziah strengthened the city walls of Jerusalem and increased the agricultural output of the land by his improvements and built up the army.

2 Kings’ brief account of this king who did what was right in the sight of the LORD ends with the jarring note that the LORD struck the king with ‘a defiling skin disease.’ This skin disease was traditionally rendered leprosy in most translations although we now believe that Hanson’s disease (which is what we call leprosy today) did not exist in the Middle East during this time. Yet, this affliction was normally associated with a judgment from God, and 2 Chronicles tells of the king entering the temple to offer incense, the job of the priests, and being struck with ‘leprosy’ as a punishment. Ultimately in 2 Chronicles the king is punished for overstepping his responsibility, attempting to fulfill both the kingly and the priestly role and ends his life separated from the palace and his responsibilities were assumed by his son Jotham until he died.

It is interesting that 2 Kings does not go into the success and fall of Azariah/Uzziah in the same manner as 2 Chronicles. Perhaps the narrator of 2 Kings doesn’t want to focus on the military success of Azariah in contrast to the lack of success by Joash and Amaziah who are both evaluated as kings who did what was right in the site of the LORD and at the same time does not want to focus on the act that leads to the king’s affliction. Despite the short narration of Azariah’s lengthy reign it is a consequential time as Judah remains stable as Northern Israel becomes chaotic and is one generation from collapse. This is also a time of prophetic voices and Isaiah (first Isaiah), Amos, Hosea, and Micah all give voice to this time in Israel and Judah.

2 Kings 15: 8-12 The Brief Reign of Zechariah King of Israel and the End of the Jehu Dynasty

⁸ In the thirty-eighth year of King Azariah of Judah, Zechariah son of Jeroboam reigned over Israel in Samaria six months. ⁹ He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as his ancestors had done. He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat that he caused Israel to sin. ¹⁰ Shallum son of Jabesh conspired against him and struck him down in Ibleam and killed him and reigned in place of him. ¹¹ Now the rest of the deeds of Zechariah are written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel. ¹² This was the promise of the Lord that he gave to Jehu, “Your sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation.” And so it happened.

The message of the LORD to Jehu after the destruction of the Omri dynasty indicated that his line would continue for four generations (2 Kings 10:30) and now after the death of Jeroboam II, the fourth generation, the Jehu dynasty collapses six months later. Jehu’s line ruled in Samaria for ninety-two years and it was enjoying a period of success under Jeroboam II, but the public murder of Zechariah ignites a power for struggle that will be violent and ultimately weaken Northern Israel as the Assyrian empire under Tiglath-Pileser III ascends. Zechariah is the first of a group of inconsequential kings in Samaria whose cumulative impact is very consequential in weakening Israel in a dangerous world.

2 Kings 15: 13-31 A Tumultuous Period in Israel

¹³ Shallum son of Jabesh began to reign in the thirty-ninth year of King Uzziah of Judah; he reigned one month in Samaria. ¹⁴ Then Menahem son of Gadi came up from Tirzah and came to Samaria; he struck down Shallum son of Jabesh in Samaria and killed him; he reigned in place of him. ¹⁵ Now the rest of the deeds of Shallum, including the conspiracy that he made, are written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel. ¹⁶ At that time Menahem sacked Tiphsah, all who were in it and its territory from Tirzah on; because they did not open it to him, he sacked it. He ripped open all the pregnant women in it.

¹⁷ In the thirty-ninth year of King Azariah of Judah, Menahem son of Gadi began to reign over Israel; he reigned ten years in Samaria. ¹⁸ He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart all his days from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat that he caused Israel to sin. ¹⁹ King Pul of Assyria came against the land; Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, so that he might help him confirm his hold on the royal power. ²⁰ Menahem exacted the silver from Israel, that is, from all the wealthy, fifty shekels of silver from each one, to give to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria turned back and did not stay there in the land. ²¹ Now the rest of the deeds of Menahem and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel? ²² Menahem slept with his ancestors, and his son Pekahiah succeeded him.

²³ In the fiftieth year of King Azariah of Judah, Pekahiah son of Menahem began to reign over Israel in Samaria; he reigned two years. ²⁴ He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat that he caused Israel to sin. ²⁵ Pekah son of Remaliah, his captain, conspired against him with fifty of the Gileadites and attacked him in Samaria, in the citadel of the palace along with Argob and Arieh; he killed him and reigned in place of him. ²⁶ Now the rest of the deeds of Pekahiah and all that he did are written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel.

²⁷ In the fifty-second year of King Azariah of Judah, Pekah son of Remaliah began to reign over Israel in Samaria; he reigned twenty years. ²⁸ He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat that he caused Israel to sin.
²⁹ In the days of King Pekah of Israel, King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria came and captured Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and he carried the people captive to Assyria. ³⁰ Then Hoshea son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah son of Remaliah, attacked him, and killed him; he reigned in place of him, in the twentieth year of Jotham son of Uzziah. ³¹ Now the rest of the acts of Pekah and all that he did are written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel.

Shallum son of Jabesh, Menahem son of Gadi, Pekahiah son of Menahem and Peka son of Remaliah all struggle for power during the stable reign of Azariah/Uzziah and (during Pekah’s reign in Samaria) the transition to Azariah’s son Jothan. Shallum reigns only for a month before he is overthrown by Menahem. Menahem assumes power in a violent manner and his description of sacking Tiphsah and tearing open the wombs of pregnant women describes him like the worst oppressors of Israel[1] and it is the violent ones who have ascended to power. Menahem may reign for ten years in Samaria but the large tribute payment[2] to Assyria under Tiglath-Pileser III[3] that he extracts from the gibbor hahayil (NRSVue ‘wealthy’)[4] likely means he is ruling with the political and even possibly military support of Assyria. When he dies his son is only to reign for two years. There are likely factions looking to align the nation with Assyria or Egypt as Hosea states:

Ephraim has become like a dove,
silly and without sense;
they call upon Egypt, they go to Assyria. (Hosea 7:11)

This is conjecture, but if Peka son of Remaliah ended the alliance with Assyria it would make sense of Tiglath-Pileser III seizing territory as well as dragging the captured people into exile. Records from Assyria indicate that there was a campaign against Israel in 733-732 BC and they took 13,520 people into exile. (Israel, 2019, p. 238) The Assyrian were known for taking exiles and displacing them to where they are totally dependent on Assyria and forced to blend into the larger Assyrian world. (Cogan, 1988, p. 177) The enemy has been within Samaria with this string of strongmen seizing power but now they face a much larger threat which is penetrating their borders and capturing the people and Israel appears powerless to resist.

2 Kings 15: 32-38 King Jothan of Judah

³² In the second year of King Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel, King Jotham son of Uzziah of Judah began to reign. ³³ He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jerusha daughter of Zadok. ³⁴ He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, just as his father Uzziah had done. ³⁵ Nevertheless, the high places were not removed; the people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. He built the upper gate of the house of the Lord. ³⁶ Now the rest of the acts of Jotham and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah? ³⁷ In those days the Lord began to send King Rezin of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah against Judah. ³⁸ Jotham slept with his ancestors and was buried with his ancestors in the city of David, his ancestor; his son Ahaz succeeded him.

In contrast to the bloody and dangerous instability of Samaria, Judah continues to function under another king of the Davidic line who does what is right in the sight of the LORD. 2 Chronicles 27 indicates that Jothan continues to build up the walls and defenses of Judah, and the king is likely aware of the growing threat to the north in Assyria. Again, 2 Chronicles portrays Jothan as a militarily successful king and in 2 Kings we have indication of both Aram and Samaria/Northern Israel attacking Judah (possibly as agents of Assyria) yet we do not have any indication that Judah is losing territory. Resin and Pekah may be attempting to raid for resources in their own struggles against the rising might of Assyria, but for the moment the threat to stable Judah is significantly less than it appears to be for Northern Israel.

[1] See for example Elisha’s description of what Hazael will do in 2 Kings 8:12, the accusations against Edom in Amos 1:13, or the judgement oracle of Hosea 13:16.

[2] Roughly seventy five thousand pounds of silver.

[3] King Pul is a nickname in late sources for Tiglath-Pileser III, and the use of this title in 2 Kings indicated the familiarity of the narrator with this leader of Assyria. (Israel, 2019, p. 238)

[4] Gibbor hahayil is often rendered mighty ones and often this was assumed to have military connotations. This term is common in the book of Judges, but it also can refer to landowners like Boaz in the book of Ruth. Wealthy may be the proper translation, but with Menahem being a warrior leader, it may also indicate something like warlords who are maintaining power beneath him.

2 Kings 13 The Death of Elisha, The Reigns of Jehoahaz and Jehoash of Israel, and the Conflict with Aram

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The miracle at the grave of Elisha. (Jan Nagel, 1596)

2 Kings 13:1-13 The Reign of Jehoahaz and Jehoash (Joash) of Israel

¹ In the twenty-third year of King Joash son of Ahaziah of Judah, Jehoahaz son of Jehu began to reign over Israel in Samaria; he reigned seventeen years. ² He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and followed the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat that he caused Israel to sin; he did not depart from them. ³ The anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, so he gave them repeatedly into the hand of King Hazael of Aram, then into the hand of Ben-hadad son of Hazael. ⁴ But Jehoahaz entreated the LORD, and the LORD heeded him, for he saw the oppression of Israel, how the king of Aram oppressed them. ⁵ Therefore the LORD gave Israel a savior, so they escaped from the hand of the Arameans, and the people of Israel lived in their homes as formerly. ⁶ Nevertheless, they did not depart from the sins of the house of Jeroboam that he caused Israel to sin but walked in them; the sacred pole also remained in Samaria. ⁷ So Jehoahaz was left with an army of not more than fifty horsemen, ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen, for the king of Aram had destroyed them and made them like the dust at threshing. ⁸ Now the rest of the acts of Jehoahaz and all that he did, including his might, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel? ⁹ So Jehoahaz slept with his ancestors, and they buried him in Samaria; then his son Joash succeeded him.
¹⁰ In the thirty-seventh year of King Joash of Judah, Jehoash son of Jehoahaz began to reign over Israel in Samaria; he reigned sixteen years. ¹¹ He also did what was evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat that he caused Israel to sin, but he walked in them. ¹² Now the rest of the acts of Joash and all that he did, as well as the might with which he fought against King Amaziah of Judah, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel? ¹³ So Joash slept with his ancestors, and Jeroboam sat upon his throne; Joash was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel.

One of the struggles many readers of 2 Kings have in this, and the surrounding chapters is that the names are often reused by different leaders. In this chapter alone we have a King Jehoash/Joash of both Judah and Israel as well as King Hazael naming his son Ben-hadad, the name of the king he murdered in Aram. It is also worth noting briefly that the math for the time period of the reigns of these two kings in Samaria do not add up: If Jehoahaz begins his reign in the twenty-third year of King Joash of Judah and his son King Jehoash begins his reign in the thirty-seventh year of King Joash of Judah he would reign fourteen years, not seventeen as indicated by 2 Kings. There can be reasons, like a co-regency for three years, that can cause the math to work out. I’m not going to dwell on this because it is ultimately not the focus of the narrative, but it is worth noting.

Jehoahaz and Jehoash of Samaria are descendants of Jehu who in his bloody revolution wiped out the worship of Baal in Samaria but, in the view of 2 Kings, Jehu and his descendants did not go far enough to return Northern Israel to the right worship of God. The sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat are the golden calves which the first king of Northern Israel placed in shrines at Bethel and Dan (1 Kings 12: 25-33) to represent the God of Israel and to prevent the people of Northern Israel from returning to Jerusalem to worship in Solomon’s temple. There is also an Asherah (NRSVue sacred pole) in Samaria. The term refers both to the goddess Asherah and the sacred pole utilized in her worship. These worship sites and practices anger the God of Israel and are a cause for the continued victories of Aram over the kings of Israel in the view of the narrator.

Hazael and later his son Ben-hadad of Aram continue to gain territory from Israel and to humiliate the kings of Israel militarily. King Jehoahaz being left with an army of fifty horsemen, ten chariots, and ten thousand footman points to an army whose maneuver units (horsemen and chariots) have been decimated. Ten thousand footmen is a significant force, but they are vulnerable to the much faster moving horse mounted or pulled forces. Likely this transformed the army of Jehoahaz into a defensive force rather than one that has the speed and maneuverability to be an effective raiding and attacking force. Yet, Israel was never to be a military power and Jehoahaz finally appeals to the LORD from the oppression of the people and the LORD hears.

The narration of this flow where the kings did what was evil in the sight of the LORD causing the LORD to be angry with the people but then crying out to the LORD and the LORD providing deliverance is the basic pattern of the book of Judges. Here King Jehoahaz entreats the LORD, the LORD sees the oppression of the people and sends a deliverer/savior. Yet, this narration is unusual because it never identifies the deliverer. As Choon-Leong Seow can state:

Whereas the “savior” is typically named in the analogous depictions from Israel’s early history (it was typically the next ruler), however, he is not explicitly identified here (v.5). Scholars have variously suggested that the allusion is to a third-party aggressor whose pressure on the Arameans brought a reprieve for Israel (such as the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III or even Zakkur of Hamath), another Israelite king like Joash or Jeroboam (II), or Elisha. (NIB III: 236)

Although there are geopolitical events, like the rise of Assyria, which weaken the Arameans I do think that the likely candidates for the text are King Jehoash or the Prophet Elisha (see below) since Jehoash will recapture the land lost to the Arameans after his meeting with the dying Elisha.

2 Kings 13: 14-20 The Death of Elisha

¹⁴ Now when Elisha had fallen sick with the illness of which he was to die, King Joash of Israel went down to him and wept before him, crying, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” ¹⁵ Elisha said to him, “Take a bow and arrows,” so he took a bow and arrows. ¹⁶ Then he said to the king of Israel, “Draw the bow,” and he drew it. Elisha laid his hands on the king’s hands. ¹⁷ Then he said, “Open the window eastward,” and he opened it. Elisha said, “Shoot,” and he shot. Then he said, “The LORD’s arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram! For you shall fight the Arameans in Aphek until you have made an end of them.” ¹⁸ He continued, “Take the arrows,” and he took them. He said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground with them”; he struck three times and stopped. ¹⁹ Then the man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck down Aram until you had made an end of it, but now you will strike down Aram only three times.”
²⁰ So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. ²¹ As a man was being buried, a marauding band was seen and the man was thrown into the grave of Elisha; as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he came to life and stood on his feet.

Elisha’s approximately fifty-year ministry comes to an end as he nears his death, yet the text records two final miraculous actions to the prophet. The first involves the deliverance of Israel from its oppression under the Arameans. King Joash/Jehoash of Israel comes to the prophet’s deathbed mourning. It is conceivable that the king has come to seek the prophet’s guidance as he marches to war with Aram. As Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor note,

Prophets were regularly consulted prior to the departure of the army to battle (cf. e.g. 1 Kgs 22); Elisha even accompanied Jehoram on the Moabite campaign (see above 3:11) Might not Joash have sought the advice of the dying Elisha, just as Israel was setting off to attack Aram? (Cogan, 1988, p. 150)

It is also worth noting that Elisha has been a thorn in the Aramean side before by informing the king of Israel where the Aramean forces would be. (2 Kings 6: 8-23) For the narrator of 2 Kings prophets often have more power than kings to deliver the people.

The phrase, “The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” first appeared at the ascension of Elijah into heaven and its presence here may link Elisha with his famous predecessor. It appears visually in 2 Kings 6: 8-23 when the eyes of the servant of Elisha is opened to see the horses and chariots of fire which surrounded and protected Elisha and the sons of the prophets. Yet here it may also allude to the reality that Israel no longer has horsemen and chariots after their humiliation by the Arameans. Elisha’s presence may be the necessary replacement for the military inadequacy of King Joash/Jehoash of Israel’s forces and now the prophet is on his deathbed.

Elisha does two sign acts with a bow and arrow.[1] First an arrow is drawn and shot out the east facing window which becomes the LORD’s arrow of victory over Aram. Then the king is instructed to take the arrows and strike the ground with them. The prophet is angered that the king only strikes the ground three times which portends three victories over Aram rather than five or six which would have eliminated Aram as a threat, yet in the text the instructions of the prophet do not indicate the expectation of striking the ground multiple times. Yet, the ways of prophets are often inscrutable to those who seek their counsel and the words of the prophet give immediate hope to a beleaguered people and their king.

After Elisha dies and is buried we hear of another conflict involving the Moabites. This may be a story from a later time, but it also may occur in the continued conflict between Aram and Israel where Moabites take advantage of the instability to raid. Ultimately the conflict is not the primary point of the narrative. Rather, the continuing power of the prophet Elisha is whose bones are enough to bring a dead man back to life are the focal point of the story. Elisha had once brought the son of the Shunammite woman back to life and now even in death his bones continue to bring life in a time of death.

2 Kings 13: 22-25 The Conflict Between Israel and Aram

²² Now King Hazael of Aram oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. ²³ But the LORD was gracious to them and had compassion on them; he turned toward them because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and would not destroy them, nor has he banished them from his presence until now.
²⁴ When King Hazael of Aram died, his son Ben-hadad succeeded him. ²⁵ Then Jehoash son of Jehoahaz took again from Ben-hadad son of Hazael the towns that he had taken from his father Jehoahaz in war. Three times Joash defeated him and recovered the towns of Israel.

The narrator of 2 Kings views the occurrences in the story of Israel and Judah through a theological lens where the LORD the God of Israel is responsible for both the good and the bad that occurs to the people. Even with the actions of Israel that cause the LORD to be angry the LORD still responds to their entreaties in a gracious manner because of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The combination of the story of Elisha’s action with the defeat of Aram by Jehoash son of Jehoahaz illustrate the faithfulness and patience of God with the people. Yet, the narrator of 2 Kings knows that this patience of God will not last forever, and the story is told from the perspective of the exile of Northern Israel by Assyria and Judah by Babylon, hence the ominous “until now” in verse 23.

From a historical perspective this is a time where the Aramean threat is tempered by the rise of Assyria. Northern Israel is still a militarily vulnerable kingdom whose practices continue to, from the perspective of 2 Kings, anger the LORD their God. The prophet Elisha who had been a deliverer of the people in many times is now dead and the promised four generations of Jehu on the throne in Samaria has now halfway to its completion. There are storms brewing to the north of Israel and within the kingdom of Samaria that will break forth in the coming years and chapters.

[1] In Ezekiel 21:21 shaking arrows is used by the Babylonians as a means of divination, but with the prophets of Israel and Judah these are sign acts which enhance the prophet’s words.

2 Kings 12 The Reign of King Jehoash/Joash of Judah

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The coronation of Jehoash of Judah (c.1840), by Francesco Hayez

2 Kings 12: 1-3

¹ In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash began to reign; he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beer-sheba. ² Jehoash did what was right in the sight of the LORD all his days because the priest Jehoiada instructed him. ³ Nevertheless, the high places were not taken away; the people continued to sacrifice and make offerings on the high places.

Jehoash, or Joash, is one of the kings of Judah regarded positively but there is a qualification to that assessment and when one looks closely at this narrative and the more critical parallel in 2 Chronicles 24 it leaves some questions about the totality of the reign of this king. The NIV renders the judgment of Jehoash’s reign. ”Joash did what was right in the eyes of the LORD all the years Jehoida the priest instructed him.” The NIV appears to harmonize its translation with the narrative of 2 Chronicles (see below) but even within the narrative of 2 Kings there is enough to give pause. Yes, there is a qualification that the high places are not removed but looking closely at the end of 2 King’s description of Jehoash’s reign there are enough things revealed to indicate there may be some trouble below the surface of the narration.

Jehoash’s mother is named as Zibiah of Beer-sheba. Beer-sheba would be on the southern border of Judah and geographically distant from the influence of Northern Israel which had led to the turmoil of the previous chapter. There are numerous examples of queen mothers exercising significant power in both positive and negative manners. The influence of a Jezebel or Athaliah to corrupt both Israel and Judah are matched by a queen mother like Bathsheba who uses her influence to get Solomon in anointed rather than Adonijah.

2 Kings 12: 4-16

⁴ Jehoash said to the priests, “All the silver offered as sacred donations that is brought into the house of the LORD—the census tax, personal redemption payments, and silver from voluntary offerings brought into the house of the LORD ⁵ let the priests receive from each of the donors, and let them repair the house wherever any need of repairs is discovered.” ⁶ But by the twenty-third year of King Jehoash the priests had made no repairs on the house. ⁷ Therefore King Jehoash summoned the priest Jehoiada with the other priests and said to them, “Why are you not repairing the house? Now therefore do not accept any more silver from your donors but hand it over for the repair of the house.” ⁸ So the priests agreed that they would neither accept more silver from the people nor repair the house.
⁹ Then the priest Jehoiada took a chest, made a hole in its lid, and set it beside the altar on the right side as one entered the house of the LORD; the priests who guarded the threshold put in it all the silver that was brought into the house of the LORD. ¹⁰ Whenever they saw that there was a great deal of silver in the chest, the king’s secretary and the high priest went up, cast the silver that was found in the house of the LORD into ingots, and counted it. ¹¹ They gave the silver that was weighed out into the hands of the workers who had the oversight of the house of the LORD; then they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders who worked on the house of the LORD, ¹² to the masons and the stonecutters, as well as to buy timber and quarried stone for making repairs on the house of the LORD, as well as for any outlay for repairs of the house. ¹³ But for the house of the LORD no basins of silver, snuffers, bowls, trumpets, or any vessels of gold or of silver were made from the silver that was brought into the house of the LORD, ¹⁴ for that was given to the workers who were repairing the house of the LORD with it. ¹⁵ They did not ask an accounting from those into whose hand they delivered the silver to pay out to the workers, for they dealt honestly. ¹⁶ The silver from the guilt offerings and the silver from the sin offerings was not brought into the house of the LORD; it belonged to the priests.

King Jehoash was probably involved in a number of important decisions and moments throughout his forty-year reign, but for 2 Kings the central event of his positively assessed reign is the repair of the temple. I’ve noted earlier that much of the book of Kings could have easily been the book of prophets, but it is also worth noting that the narrative of the book of Kings begins with Solomon’s construction of the temple (1 Kings 5-8) and ends with its destruction (2 Kings 25). In the ancient world the construction and maintenance of the temple and the worship in that temple was an expected part of royal piety, and while we can debate the proper balance between proper worship and faithful execution of the law both have been recently missing in Judah. As Alex Israel notes the temple is one hundred and fifty years old (Israel, 2019, p. 184) and 2 Chronicles makes explicit the damage that Athaliah has done:

⁷ For the children of Athaliah, that wicked woman, had broken into the house of God and had even used all the dedicated things of the house of the LORD for the Baals. 2 Chronicles 24:7

Between the age of the structure and the misuse of the building it was likely in serious need of repair to be a structure worthy of the name of the LORD.

We do not know when in his reign Jehoash commanded that the taxes, payments, and specific offerings would be utilized for the repair of the temple. Jehoash began to reign at age seven and would have been heavily influenced by the priest Jehoida and others who advised him, but in his twenty-third year of his forty-year reign he is thirty years old and confronts Jehoida and the other priests about the lack of progress. There are multiple theories that have nothing to do with corruption that have plausibly explained the lack of progress: from the expectations of the priests to be the fundraisers for these taxes, payments, and offerings and limiting their appeal to their family groups, to inability of the priests to properly determine the scope of the work and effectively carry out the repairs. 2 Kings does not indicate that corruption was a part of the problem, although this is possible, nor does it indicate that the collected funds are not available. It gives Jehoash and Jehoida credit for creating a workable solution. While it is possible that the NRSVue’s translation which indicates that the process included taking the donated items and smelting them into ingots occurred at this time, the Hebrew only indicates they tied it up. The physical structure is the recipient of the repairs rather than creating the implements for the conduct of worship, and in light of the upcoming note on King Jehoash’s reign it is probably an important note. The text on the repair of the temple ends with a note that the priests still had a source of income from the guilt and sin offerings.

2 Kings 12: 17-18

¹⁷ At that time King Hazael of Aram went up, fought against Gath, and took it. But when Hazael set his face to go up against Jerusalem, ¹⁸ King Jehoash of Judah took all the votive gifts that Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah, his ancestors, the kings of Judah, had dedicated, as well as his own votive gifts, all the gold that was found in the treasuries of the house of the LORD and of the king’s house, and sent these to King Hazael of Aram. Then Hazael withdrew from Jerusalem.

King Hazael, first mentioned in chapter eight, captures Gath, one of the Philistine cities and then orients his forces on Jerusalem. Jehoash decides that he does not have adequate forces to resist Hazael’s force and so sets out with the treasures of Jerusalem to make peace. Military conflict in the ancient world is an economic matter and if a leader can gain a significant tribute, like the one mentioned above, without having to expend the cost and trouble of a military siege they will often take it. King Asa (1 Kings 15:18) utilized the temple resources to buy off the forces of Aram under King Ben-hadad (who Hazael later assassinated and assumed his role) and so it is only the gifts given under Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah that remain in the temple.

King Jehoash’s decision to bribe King Hazael not to attack may have been a wise one, but its narration in 2 Kings is ambiguous. The people of Judah were never a great military power but there is no indication that Jehoash seeks God’s will in this decision or that he trusts in God’s deliverance. This decision also probably brings the repair of the temple to an end, at least for a time. Military conflict and siege warfare create problems not just for the king but the entire population, yet many probably viewed this move as a sign of weakness and this may contribute to King Jehoash’s assassination by his servants in the next section.

2 Kings 12: 19-21

¹⁹ Now the rest of the acts of Joash and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah? ²⁰ His servants arose, devised a conspiracy, and killed Joash in the house of Millo, on the way that goes down to Silla. ²¹ It was Jozacar son of Shimeath and Jehozabad son of Shomer, his servants, who struck him down, so that he died. He was buried with his ancestors in the city of David; then his son Amaziah succeeded him.

King Jehoash’s (or Joash) forty-year reign ends with his assassination by two subordinates: Jozacar son of Shimeath and Jehozabad son of Shomer. These men may have been slaves in the household of the king (the word translated servant has the primary meaning of slave) but whether they are servants or slaves it is an indication of a conspiracy[1] in the palace to end the reign of Jehoash. Brueggemann notes that in the 2 Kings narrative it could be a conspiracy by those who were faithful to Baal and the ways of Athaliah (Brueggemann, 2000, p. 423) but the 2 Chronicles 24: 17-22 telling of the end of Jehoash’s reign is very different and leads to the NIV translation noted in the beginning of the chapter:

¹⁷ Now after the death of Jehoiada the officials of Judah came and did obeisance to the king; then the king listened to them. ¹⁸ They abandoned the house of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, and served the sacred poles and the idols. And wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this guilt of theirs. ¹⁹ Yet he sent prophets among them to bring them back to the Lord; they testified against them, but they would not listen.
²⁰ Then the spirit of God took possession of Zechariah son of the priest Jehoiada; he stood above the people and said to them, “Thus says God: Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the Lord, he has also forsaken you.” ²¹ But they conspired against him, and by command of the king they stoned him to death in the court of the house of the Lord. ²² King Joash did not remember the kindness that Jehoiada, Zechariah’s father, had shown him but killed his son. As he was dying, he said, “May the Lord see and avenge!” 2 Chronicles 24: 17-22

If 2 Chronicles is accurate in its narration of the end of Jehoah’s reign it could have been out of loyalty to the LORD and the temple that these servants conspired against their king. It is plausible that 2 Kings wanted to narrate the reign of Jehoash in an overall positive manner without delving into the murky ending that 2 Chronicles narrates. If 2 Chronicles narrative is correct then Jehoash becomes a lesser version of Solomon: Solomon builds the temple and Jehoash repairs the temple, Solomon’s reign begins in wisdom, but later Solomon is led astray by his wives and Jehoash is led away by the officials of Judah. Ultimately, we only have the sources of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles to bear witness to this time in the story of Judah, and we can do our best to place the narratives in the world the inhabited but all of our reconstructions involve some level of educated guessing.

[1] The word translated “conspiracy” here is rendered as treason in 11:14. (Brueggemann, 2000, p. 422)

2 Kings 11 The Overthrow of Athaliah in Judah and the Beginning of the Reign of King Joash

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2 Kings 11

¹ Now when Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother, saw that her son was dead, she set about to destroy all the royal family. ² But Jehosheba, King Joram’s daughter, Ahaziah’s sister, took Joash son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the king’s children who were about to be killed; she put him and his nurse in a bedroom. Thus she hid him from Athaliah, so that he was not killed; ³ he remained with her six years, hidden in the house of the LORD, while Athaliah reigned over the land.

⁴ But in the seventh year Jehoiada summoned the captains of the Carites and of the guards and had them come to him in the house of the LORD. He made a covenant with them and put them under oath in the house of the LORD; then he showed them the king’s son. ⁵ He commanded them, “This is what you are to do: one-third of you, those who go off duty on the Sabbath and guard the king’s house ⁶ (another third being at the gate Sur and a third at the gate behind the guards), shall guard the palace, ⁷ and your two divisions that come on duty in force on the Sabbath and guard the house of the LORD ⁸ shall surround the king, each with weapons in hand, and whoever approaches the ranks is to be killed. Be with the king in his comings and goings.”
⁹ The captains did according to all that the priest Jehoiada commanded; each brought his men who were to go off duty on the Sabbath, with those who were to come on duty on the Sabbath, and came to the priest Jehoiada. ¹⁰ The priest delivered to the captains the spears and shields that had been King David’s, which were in the house of the LORD; ¹¹ the guards stood, every man with his weapons in his hand, from the south side of the house to the north side of the house, around the altar and the house, to guard the king on every side. ¹² Then he brought out the king’s son, put the crown on him, and gave him the covenant; they proclaimed him king and anointed him; they clapped their hands and shouted, “Long live the king!”

¹³ When Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the people, she went into the house of the Lord to the people; ¹⁴ when she looked, there was the king standing by the pillar, according to custom, with the captains and the trumpeters beside the king, and all the people of the land rejoicing and blowing trumpets. Athaliah tore her clothes and cried, “Treason! Treason!” ¹⁵ Then the priest Jehoiada commanded the captains who were set over the army, “Bring her out between the ranks and kill with the sword anyone who follows her.” For the priest said, “Let her not be killed in the house of the Lord.” ¹⁶ So they laid hands on her; she went through the horses’ entrance to the king’s house, and there she was put to death.
¹⁷ Jehoiada made a covenant between the LORD and the king and people, that they should be the LORD’s people; also between the king and the people. ¹⁸ Then all the people of the land went to the house of Baal and tore it down; his altars and his images they broke in pieces, and they killed Mattan, the priest of Baal, in front of the altars. The priest posted guards over the house of the LORD. ¹⁹ He took the captains, the Carites, the guards, and all the people of the land; then they brought the king down from the house of the LORD, marching through the gate of the guards to the king’s house. He took his seat on the throne of the kings. ²⁰ So all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was quiet after Athaliah had been killed with the sword at the king’s house.
²¹ Jehoash was seven years old when he began to reign.

The final remaining figure of the Omri dynasty is not in Israel but in Judah. Jehu’s bloody revolt in Israel has eliminated both the ruling line in Samaria as well as Ahaziah, the king of Judah, who was linked to the line of Ahab by his mother Athaliah. Jehoram, son of king Jehoshaphat, the father of the recently murdered King Ahaziah was married to Athaliah the daughter of Ahab. Athaliah who holds power in Judah for seven years is not listed in the line of Davidic kings because she is not of the Davidic line. Aside from her violent actions the problem with Ahaziah is not primarily that she is a woman but instead that she is of the line of King Ahab and Jezebel and apparently brings the religious and moral practices of Tyre into Jerusalem.

Athaliah seizes power in the aftermath of her sons death attempting to wipe out any other claimants to the throne. As a person with a tenuous grip on power the elimination of potential claimants to the throne is coldly logical in a world where political power is seized in often bloody manners. To use the logic of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones “when you play the game of thrones (power) you either win or you die.” Although Athaliah is not viewed favorably in either 2 Kings or the parallel telling of this story in 2 Chronicles 22, her seizure of power is likely less bloody than Jehu’s in Samaria. Yet, unlike Jehu her seven years on the throne in Jerusalem pull the people further from the worship of the LORD the God of Israel and she ends up being the only woman in the bible, “to be awarded the moniker: “the Wicked”” in 2 Chronicles 24:7. (Israel, 2019, p. 178) And as Choon-Leong Seow states accurately, “Athaliah is to Judah what Jezebel was to Israel…Like the ruthless Jezebel, Athaliah is willing to commit murder in order to have her way.” (NIB III: 228) She is a mother who seizes power by killing the royal family which likely contains her own children and grandchildren.[1]

Yet, Athaliah’s plot to wipe out the line of David is thwarted by her sister Jehosheba who hides young Joash. 2 Chronicles 22: 10-12 states that Jehosheba is the wife of Jehoida the priest that will play a dominant role in the protection of Joash and the elimination of Athaliah. Yet, 2 Kings does not give us Jehosheba’s motive in saving this child, but she like many of the women in Exodus,[2] are responsible for thwarting the murderous intentions of a ruler. Joash will be hidden and raised in the house of the LORD.

The plot to place Joash on the throne begins in the seventh year of Athaliah’s occupying the throne in Jerusalem. The priest Jehoida summons summons the Carites, which may be the Cherethites mentioned elsewhere as body guards and soldiers of David or a different armed group, and the guards to both swear loyalty to the new king and to act as protection for the moment of the revelation of the king to the people. The exact details of the deployment of these troops may be a challenge for translators to render in an exact format but the overall intent is clear. The full complement of soldiers will be armed and ready in key positions on the day when young Joash is anointed publicly and acclaimed as king.

The king is crowned, anointed and either given an insignia or a covenant document. As Walter Brueggemann states of the term that can be rendered emblem/insignia or covenant,

The term here is not very clear. It may refer to insignia of office. Or it might more precisely refer to a scroll, a written charter delineating both the prerogatives and requirements of power, a document that situates royal power in something like a constitutional frame of reference that precludes royal arbitrariness. (Brueggemann, 2000, p. 409)

If it is a covenant, it probably reflects an understanding of the expectations of a king similar to Deuteronomy 17: 14-20.

¹⁴ “When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ ¹⁵ you may indeed set over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community. ¹⁶ Even so, he must not acquire many horses for himself or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You must never return that way again.’ ¹⁷ And he must not acquire many wives for himself or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself. ¹⁸ When he has taken the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. ¹⁹ It shall remain with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes, ²⁰ neither exalting himself above other members of the community nor turning aside from the commandment, either to the right or to the left, so that he and his descendants may reign long over his kingdom in Israel.

This anointed and crowned king now receives the vocal acclamation from the guards and priests, “Long live the king.”

Athaliah hears the commotion and discovers the plot underway. The young king is standing by the pillar, perhaps the pillars at the front of the temple or in the position where Ezekiel envisions the king supervising the offerings. (Ezekiel 48: 2-8)[3] Athaliah echoes the words of Joram, “Treason! Treason!”[4] but like Joram her realization of the plot afoot is too late to save her life. She is brought out of the temple and killed with the sword. Then the covenant is renewed between the LORD, the king, and the people. The people then destroy the house of Baal, possibly built under Athaliah’s instructions, and Mattan the priest of Baal is also killed. The verbs in 2 Kings on the destruction of the temple of Baal echo the instructions of Deuteronomy 12: 2-3:

² “You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods, on the mountain heights, on the hills, and under every leafy tree. ³ Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and cut down the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their places.

In contrast to Jehu’s revolution, the coup enacted by the priest Jehoida is much less violent. Only Athaliah and Mattan are killed and then the city was quiet. As Brueggemann notes about the final phrase about the city being quiet,

The assertion that the “city was quiet” is more important than the simple phrasing might suggest (11:20). The term “quiet” (shaqath) is the same term used in the book of Judges in the recurring phrase “the land had rest” (Judg 3:11, 30; 5:31; 8:28) (Brueggemann, 2000, p. 413)

Joash, or Jehoash, begins his long reign at the age of seven. He is under the influence of Jehoida and yet his reign will be one of the times that 2 Kings views favorably. The covenant between God, the king, and the people is restored, the land has rest, and there is a chance for renewal in Judah after the decline of the house of David over the past two kings.

[1] There were probably other children of Jehoram by wives other than Athaliah as well as others in the line of David.

[2] Exodus 1: 15-2:10

[3] Ezekiel’s words come in the time immediately after the time of the kings and the temple, but his visions are likely informed by his familiarity with the temple practices before its destruction.

[4] 2 Kings 9:23.

2 Kings 10 The Elimination of the Sons of Ahab and the Worshippers of Baal

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Part of the gift-bearing delegation of King Jehu, Black Obelisk, 841–840 BCE.

2 Kings 10: 1-14

¹ Now Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. So Jehu wrote letters and sent them to Samaria, to the rulers of the city, to the elders, and to the guardians of the sons of Ahab, saying, ² “Since your master’s sons are with you and you have at your disposal chariots and horses, a fortified city, and weapons, ³ select the son of your master who is the best qualified, set him on his father’s throne, and fight for your master’s house.” ⁴ But they were utterly terrified and said, “Look, two kings could not withstand him; how then can we stand?” ⁵ So the steward of the palace and the governor of the city, along with the elders and the guardians, sent word to Jehu, “We are your servants; we will do anything you say. We will not make anyone king; do whatever you think right.” ⁶ Then he wrote them a second letter, saying, “If you are on my side and if you are ready to obey me, take the heads of your master’s sons and come to me at Jezreel tomorrow at this time.” Now the king’s sons, seventy persons, were with the leaders of the city, who were charged with their upbringing. ⁷ When the letter reached them, they took the king’s sons and killed them, seventy persons; they put their heads in baskets and sent them to him at Jezreel. ⁸ When the messenger came and told him, “They have brought the heads of the king’s sons,” he said, “Lay them in two heaps at the entrance of the gate until the morning.” ⁹ Then in the morning when he went out, he stood and said to all the people, “You are innocent. It was I who conspired against my master and killed him, but who struck down all these? ¹⁰ Know, then, that there shall fall to the earth nothing of the word of the Lord that the Lord spoke concerning the house of Ahab, for the Lord has done what he said through his servant Elijah.” ¹¹ So Jehu killed all who were left of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, all his leaders, close friends, and priests, until he left him no survivor.
¹² Then he set out and went to Samaria. On the way, when he was at Beth-eked of the Shepherds, ¹³ Jehu met relatives of King Ahaziah of Judah and said, “Who are you?” They answered, “We are kin of Ahaziah; we have come down to visit the royal princes and the sons of the queen mother.” ¹⁴ He said, “Take them alive.” They took them alive and slaughtered them at the pit of Beth-eked, forty-two in all; he spared none of them.

There is no avoiding the violence of this text. Jehu and those around him are blunt instruments removing the cancer of both the Omri dynasty and the cancer of Baalism from Israel. Back when I was working through the book of Esther, I did a short reflection on Violence and the Bible, but I still think most modern readers and interpreters find the bloody transition from the heirs of king Ahab to Jehu disconcerting.

The world of the bible was violent as was the ancient world that it was set within. It may not be quite the grimdark world of some recent fantasy made popular in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, since the world of the bible does assume there is a higher moral power involved in it, but as far as the shocking violence I think this, and the previous chapter, compete with almost anything written by modern authors. There were no bloodless coups in the ancient world. For the necessary transition to happen in both Israel and Judah drastic actions are required (in the view of 2 Kings).

Alex Israel in his writing on Jehu’s overthrown of the Omri dynasty believes that the detail provided is a critique of Jehu’s violence:

Kings is no stranger to military coups, yet not one of these mutinies revel in the explicit gore and detailed descriptions of murder that we find with Jehu. The narrative’s detail communicates Jehu’s barbarism. (Israel, 2019, p. 168)

Although Hosea 1:4 does view Jehu’s violence as excessive, I don’t believe that the narrator of 2 Kings does. Even though the other mention of seventy sons[1] being killed belongs to Abimelech in Judges 9, a story that has several connections with 2 Kings 10, Jehu’s actions are viewed in a positive light in 2 Kings. The violence does not all occur at Jehu’s hands as we will see as the narrative progresses, but Jehu’s evaluation is not tainted by his violent methods in overthrowing the Omri dynasty and the practices of Baal worship but instead that Jehu didn’t go far enough in removing the false worship practices from Northern Israel.

Jehu’s actions at the beginning of this chapter challenge the people with power in Samaria to choose one of the heirs of Ahab to rally behind and to prepare to meet him in battle. Jehu’s rule will never be secure as long as there is another line that can make a claim on the throne, but he does grant the leadership in Samaria the opportunity to make a fight for these heirs of Ahab. We don’t know how the line of Ahab was viewed within Samaria, and the text only mentions the terror of the leaders about this military commander’s ability to conquer whatever resistance they offer. These leaders entreat Jehu for peace and Jehu responds with the command to bring the heads of the seventy sons of Ahab. These leaders of will also have blood on their hands at the conclusion of the coup, but it may not have been necessary for them to directly participate in the bloodshed. As Choon-Leong Seow states on the Hebrew wordplay:

The word “heads” (ra’sim) is ambiguous, for it could refer literally the anatomical heads or figuratively to leaders. The officials assume the literal meaning and decapitate the remaining descendants of Ahab. (NIB III: 223)

There was a time when the leaders could have claimed innocence in this bloody transition since it was Jehu who killed the kings of Israel and Judah as well as Jezebel the queen mother, but now with the seventy heads of the sons of Ahab in baskets they share in this overthrow. Their hands are just as bloody as Jehu’s. Yet, for the narrator of 2 Kings, this bloody event is the fulfillment of the words of Elijah spoken against Jehu in Jezreel. (1 Kings 21)

Finally in this section there is the slaughter of the relatives of Ahaziah. These travelers from Judah seem completely unaware of the situation they walked into as they travel to visit Jezebel and the royal princes of Israel. These kin of Ahaziah are linked by marriage to Ahab’s line and in slaughtering these relatives Jehu weakens the remnants of the house of Ahaziah in Jerusalem. As we will see in the following chapter the remaining child of Ahab, his daughter Athaliah, will violently attempt to hold onto power in Jerusalem.

2 Kings 10: 15-36

¹⁵ When he left there, he met Jehonadab son of Rechab coming to meet him; he greeted him and said to him, “Is your heart as true to mine as mine is to yours?” Jehonadab answered, “It is.” Jehu said, “If it is, give me your hand.” So he gave him his hand. Jehu took him up with him into the chariot. ¹⁶ He said, “Come with me and see my zeal for the Lord.” So he had him ride in his chariot. ¹⁷ When he came to Samaria, he killed all who were left to Ahab in Samaria, until he had wiped them out according to the word of the Lord that he spoke to Elijah.

¹⁸ Then Jehu assembled all the people and said to them, “Ahab offered Baal small service, but Jehu will offer much more. ¹⁹ Now therefore summon to me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and all his priests; let none be missing, for I have a great sacrifice to offer to Baal; whoever is missing shall not live.” But Jehu was acting with cunning in order to destroy the servants of Baal. ²⁰ Jehu decreed, “Sanctify a solemn assembly for Baal.” So they proclaimed it. ²¹ Jehu sent word throughout all Israel; all the servants of Baal came, so that there was no one left who did not come. They entered the temple of Baal until the temple of Baal was filled from wall to wall. ²² He said to the keeper of the wardrobe, “Bring out the vestments for all the servants of Baal.” So he brought out the vestments for them. ²³ Then Jehu entered the temple of Baal with Jehonadab son of Rechab; he said to the servants of Baal, “Search and see that there is no servant of the Lord here among you but only servants of Baal.” ²⁴ Then they proceeded to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings.
Now Jehu had stationed eighty men outside, saying, “Whoever allows any of those to escape whom I deliver into your hands shall forfeit his life.” ²⁵ As soon as he had finished presenting the burnt offering, Jehu said to the guards and to the officers, “Come in and kill them; let no one escape.” So they put them to the sword. The guards and the officers threw them out and then went into the citadel of the temple of Baal. ²⁶ They brought out the pillar that was in the temple of Baal and burned it. ²⁷ Then they demolished the pillar of Baal and destroyed the temple of Baal and made it a latrine to this day.
²⁸ Thus Jehu wiped out Baal from Israel. ²⁹ But Jehu did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat that he caused Israel to commit: the golden calves that were in Bethel and in Dan. ³⁰ The Lord said to Jehu, “Because you have done well in carrying out what I consider right and in accordance with all that was in my heart have dealt with the house of Ahab, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.” ³¹ But Jehu was not careful to follow the law of the Lord the God of Israel with all his heart; he did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam that he caused Israel to commit.

³² In those days the Lord began to trim off parts of Israel. Hazael defeated them throughout the territory of Israel: ³³ from the Jordan eastward, all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, the Reubenites, and the Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the Wadi Arnon, that is, Gilead and Bashan. ³⁴ Now the rest of the acts of Jehu, all that he did, and all his power, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel? ³⁵ So Jehu slept with his ancestors, and they buried him in Samaria. His son Jehoahaz succeeded him. ³⁶ The time that Jehu reigned over Israel in Samaria was twenty-eight years.

Jehu now meets Jehonadab son of Rachab. The two men are loyal to one another but also share a zeal for the LORD. The descendants of Jehonadab son of Rechab will be the Rechabites that the prophet Jeremiah encounters in Jerusalem who do not drink wine or grow vineyards in obedience to their ancestor’s way. (Jeremiah 35) Now this ancestor of the Rechabites and Jehu move with cunning against the entrenched worship of Baal in Samaria.

In the ancient world the political and religious realms are interconnected, and it would not be surprising for a new ruler to pay for a sacrifice to the gods worshipped in the land. Jehu’s religious connections may not be well known in Samaria, and the prospect of having the new king as a patron would be enticing to the cult of Baal in the land. Yet, Jehu is acting with ‘cunning.’[2] Many modern readers may be confused by the dishonesty of Jehu’s actions, but 2 Kings views these actions positively. After attempting to ensure that only worshippers of Baal are present Jehu orders his guards to slaughter those participating and not to allow any to escape. Jehu in this action eliminates the worship of Baal during his reign and in the view of 2 Kings this causes God to grant him the longest running dynasty in the Northern Kingdom.

Yet the final evaluation of Jehu is negative not because of his violence or dishonesty but because he didn’t go far enough. He allowed the shrines at Bethel and Dan to remain. One the one hand it would be difficult for Jehu to remain in control in Samaria if people had to return to Jerusalem to worship, but in the view of the narrator of 2 Kings this is evidence of idolatry. Northern Israel is slowly losing control of its border to Hazael’s forces out of Damascus, but Jehu and his sons will maintain control in Samaria for four generations.

[1] Seventy is one of the ‘representative’ numbers in Hebrew which may be literal or may represent a large number. Typically multiples of three, seven, and twelve have a connotation of completeness in Hebrew thought.

[2] The Hebrew word for cunning is ‘aqob. This is also the name Jacob. Jacob’s original name and his character in Genesis is that of one who acts with cunning. The trickery here by Jehu is not evaluated in a negative light.

2 Kings 8 Transitioning from Prophetic Time to a Major Transition in Royal Time

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Ivory carving found at Arslan Tash, Syria. A cache of ivories found at the Assyrian outpost of Arslan Tash was undoubtedly booty taken from Hazael’s palace in Damascus. The regal figure depicted on this piece is probably Hazael himself. (Louvre Museum, Paris)

2 Kings 8: 1-6

¹ Now Elisha had said to the woman whose son he had restored to life, “Get up and go with your household and settle wherever you can, for the LORD has called for a famine, and it will come on the land for seven years.” ² So the woman got up and did according to the word of the man of God; she went with her household and settled in the land of the Philistines seven years. ³ At the end of the seven years, when the woman returned from the land of the Philistines, she set out to appeal to the king for her house and her land. ⁴ Now the king was talking with Gehazi the servant of the man of God, saying, “Tell me all the great things that Elisha has done.” ⁵ While he was telling the king how Elisha had restored a dead person to life, the woman whose son he had restored to life appealed to the king for her house and her land. Gehazi said, “My lord king, here is the woman, and here is her son whom Elisha restored to life.” ⁶ When the king questioned the woman, she told him. So the king appointed an official for her, saying, “Restore all that was hers, together with all the revenue of the fields from the day that she left the land until now.”

Elisha continues to provide for this woman who showed him hospitality and warns her and her child to flee the coming famine. The husband is not mentioned and is likely dead at this point in their story and this woman acts as a head of household. The seven years of famine matches the seven-year cycle of Genesis 41: 25-30 which causes the sons of Israel to seek food in Egypt, but here the famine is far more localized. Seven is a common biblical number of completion or a long time, and so the actual span of the drought may be longer or shorter than this commonly used number to designate a completed time. The woman makes her temporary home in Philistia, roughly 100 miles away, and avoids the impact of the famine. The famine is not explicitly stated as God’s judgment on the Omri dynasty in Samaria and is likely linked to the famine mentioned in the previous chapter during the siege of Samaria, but the famine as a part of God’s judgment against the Omri dynasty can be implied in the story. The stories of the last several chapters which chronicle the works of Elisha probably exist beyond the twelve years of King Jehoram of Judah (even though Jehoram’s reign brackets these stories). The king who is interested in the works of Elisha is the king of Israel, but likely not Jehoram or any other king of the Omri line.

Gehazi reemerges in the story, and this may either precede his affliction with leprosy/skin disease,[1] after some unmentioned healing of his disease, or he may remain afflicted. Whatever his condition he is able to converse with the king of Israel about the acts of Elisha. As he describes Elisha’s raising of the woman’s son, he points to this woman who has come to “cry out” (NRSVue appeal)[2] for the return of her property. The Torah imagines a world where the property of a family would be held by that family in perpetuity, but the narrative of scripture points to a different reality. It is possible that in her absence a relative or even squatters have come in and taken over her land, or that in her absence it became crown land, but this once well-connected woman now comes to appeal for her property. Her connection to Elisha allows her appeal to be heard by this king who is interested in the acts of Elisha, and her “crying out” is heard by the king who appoints an official[3] to restore not only her land but also the revenue from the land in the time of her absence.

2 Kings 8: 7-15

⁷ Elisha went to Damascus while King Ben-hadad of Aram was ill. When it was told him, “The man of God has come here,” ⁸ the king said to Hazael, “Take a present with you and go to meet the man of God. Inquire of the LORD through him, whether I shall recover from this illness.” ⁹ So Hazael went to meet him, taking a present with him, all kinds of goods of Damascus, forty camel loads. When he entered and stood before him, he said, “Your son King Ben-hadad of Aram has sent me to you, saying, ‘Shall I recover from this illness?’ ” ¹⁰ Elisha said to him, “Go, say to him, ‘You shall certainly recover,’ but the LORD has shown me that he shall certainly die.” ¹¹ He fixed his gaze and stared at him to the point of embarrassment. Then the man of God wept. ¹² Hazael asked, “Why does my lord weep?” He answered, “Because I know the evil that you will do to the people of Israel; you will set their fortresses on fire; you will kill their young men with the sword, dash in pieces their little ones, and rip up their pregnant women.” ¹³ Hazael said, “What is your servant, who is a mere dog, that he should do this great thing?” Elisha answered, “The LORD has shown me that you are to be king over Aram.” ¹⁴ Then he left Elisha and went to his master Ben-hadad, who said to him, “What did Elisha say to you?” And he answered, “He told me that you would certainly recover.” ¹⁵ But the next day he took the bedcover and dipped it in water and spread it over the king’s face, until he died. And Hazael succeeded him.

The prophet Elijah when he was instructed to anoint Elisha to be prophet in his place was also commanded to appoint Hazael as king over Aram and Jehu as king over Israel (1 Kings 19: 15-17). Elijah did call Elisha, but now it is Elisha who is engaged in Hazael’s ascension to power in Damascus. The story is an inversion of the story in 2 Kings 1 where King Ahaziah, king in Samaria, sends to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron. While the king of Israel appeals to the god of Ekron, now a foreign king appeals to the prophet of Israel to inquire of the LORD his God. Yet, this inquiry of Ben-hadad sets in motion his demise despite the affirmative answer of the prophet. The prophetic messenger appoints Hazael to do the work that prophets do not do. The involvement of the prophet in both a lie and the politics of a foreign power has caused discomfort for some readers.

In the scriptures God often works through foreign powers, even if these powers are unaware of their participation in God’s action of judgment or deliverance. Hazael, the servant of Ben-hadad approaches the prophet with a large gift for this emissary of the God of Israel, but unlike Naaman’s large gift we never learn the disposition of the forty camel loads of gifts offered to the prophet. Hazael is informed of his role even though the prophet regrets the damage he will do to the people of Israel. Although Elisha gives Hazael the message that the king will recover from the illness, he also sets in motion a chain of events that lead to King Ben-hadad’s death at the hands of his servant. The prophet Amos views Hazael’s ascension as God’s act as well, but as a judgment on Ben-hadad (Amos 1: 3-4) but in Elisha’s view what is important is Hazael’s actions towards Israel. Following the original commissioning of Elijah to set Hazael over Aram and Jehu over Israel, both Aram and Jehu (and Elisha) are the swords that shall kill many. Many modern readers recoil at the violence of the actions attributed to Hazael in the prophet’s words, but war in the ancient world was violent. War of all times is violent, and innocent people often pay a heavy cost but armies in the ancient world did not act with the same restraint that modern militaries do in attempting to limit the destructiveness of the soldiers unleashed to practice violence on the enemy land and people. Hazael acknowledges that the violence the prophet describes would be a “great thing” and his only protest is that he is too insignificant to be able to accomplish this great thing. God has designated Hazael as a part of God’s plan for Israel, but Hazael is a blunt instrument that will incur a lot of damage in the removal of the Omri dynasty.

Elisha may weep for the future that he sees but he remains faithful to God’s vision. The ways of the Omri dynasty have led the people of Israel away to following other gods and unjust practices. Elisha may have wrestled with his role in being a part of the (ultimately) violent solution to the wicked (in the view of 2 Kings) kings of Israel who have now corrupted even the line of kings in Judah (see below). Many of the stories of Elisha have shown him working with individuals and groups in miraculous ways to help them navigate this world of famines and sieges. Yet, the narrative of 2 Kings attempts to understand how God is at work in the collapse of both Israel and Judah working through Aram, Assyria, and Babylon. Hazael, son of a nobody, as a large basalt statue of Shalmaneser refers to him derogatorily, (Cogan, 1988, p. 90) may not be anointed by Elisha in this story, but Elisha gives him the vision that leads to the suffocation of his ailing master and allows the son of a nobody to grasp power in Aram and to become God’s blunt instrument utilized in the judgment of Israel.

2 Kings 8: 16-29

¹⁶ In the fifth year of King Joram son of Ahab of Israel, Jehoram son of King Jehoshaphat of Judah began to reign. ¹⁷ He was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem. ¹⁸ He walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as the house of Ahab had done, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife. He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD. ¹⁹ Yet the LORD would not destroy Judah, for the sake of his servant David, since he had promised to give a lamp to him and to his descendants forever.
²⁰ In his days Edom revolted against the rule of Judah and set up a king of their own. ²¹ Then Joram crossed over to Zair with all his chariots. He set out by night and attacked the Edomites and their chariot commanders who had surrounded him, but his army fled home. ²² So Edom has been in revolt against the rule of Judah to this day. Libnah also revolted at the same time. ²³ Now the rest of the acts of Joram and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah? ²⁴ So Joram slept with his ancestors and was buried with them in the city of David; his son Ahaziah succeeded him.

²⁵ In the twelfth year of King Joram son of Ahab of Israel, Ahaziah son of King Jehoram of Judah began to reign. ²⁶ Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign; he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah, a granddaughter of King Omri of Israel. ²⁷ He also walked in the way of the house of Ahab, doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD, as the house of Ahab had done, for he was son-in-law to the house of Ahab.
²⁸ He went with Joram son of Ahab to wage war against King Hazael of Aram at Ramoth-gilead, where the Arameans wounded Joram. ²⁹ King Joram returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds that the Arameans had inflicted on him at Ramah, when he fought against King Hazael of Aram. King Ahaziah son of Jehoram of Judah went down to see Joram son of Ahab in Jezreel because he was wounded.

The bulk of the first eight chapters of 2 Kings have broken from the typical construction of the story around the reigns of kings and has focused instead on the end of the prophet Elijah’s story and then multiple stories centered on the prophet Elisha. We will return to Elisha for a few final stories, but the narrator of 2 Kings returns us to the timeline of kings, particularly the kings in Judah. The narration of the book of kings has focused almost entirely on the northern kingdom of Samaria or Israel since the reign of Jehoshaphat in Judah in 1 Kings 22: 41-51. In contrast to his father and grandfather who followed the ways of the LORD, Jehoram[4] the new king of Judah follows the ways of the kings of Israel and is allied with these kings by marriage to Athaliah, a sister of king Joram of Israel. Like Jezebel, king Ahab’s wife, Athaliah is viewed as a corrupting influence upon both Jehoram and her son Ahaziah.

2 Chronicles reports a letter from Elijah to Jehoram:

¹² A letter came to him from the prophet Elijah, saying, “Thus says the LORD, the God of your father David: Because you have not walked in the ways of your father Jehoshaphat or in the ways of King Asa of Judah ¹³ but have walked in the way of the kings of Israel and have led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem into unfaithfulness, as the house of Ahab led Israel into unfaithfulness, and because you also have killed your brothers, members of your father’s house, who were better than you, ¹⁴ see, the LORD will bring a great plague on your people, your children, your wives, and all your possessions,¹⁵ and you yourself will have a severe sickness with a disease of your bowels until your bowels come out, day after day, because of the disease.” 2 Chronicles 21:12-14

Both 2 Chronicles and 2 Kings view the time of Jehoram as a time which corrupted the house of David and jeopardized the enduring line promised to David. God restrains the judgement on these two unfaithful kings of Judah because of God’s loyalty to David, but Judah is in danger of becoming like the north.

Kings in the ancient world[5] are judged by their ability to maintain power and here we see the beginning of a deterioration of Judah’s control of Edom as well as one of its own cities. The narrative sets the infidelity toward the LORD of these two kings of Judah alongside their loss of power over their vassals. Readers can make a judgement about the connection between their inability to project power over their vassals and their unfaithfulness to the LORD (Brueggemann, 2000, p. 375) but the theological perspective of the narrator of 2 Kings would probably view them as connected. Alex Israel suggests that Libnah, as a Levite city, may have been demonstrating against the idolatrous religious orientation of Jehoram (Israel, 2019, p. 159) and while there were likely Levites and other people faithful to the LORD who were distressed about the direction of Judah under Jehoram and Ahaziah it is probably unlikely that one city would simply separate itself from Judah without the intervention of other powers. However, Alex Israel’s description of Judah under Jehoram is pointed and accurate:

we may certainly summarize his dismal eight-year reign as a period of national disintegration: religious deviation, internecine royal infighting, a collapse of regional influence, and failure to defend his country’s borders. Judah is in decline on all fronts. (Israel, 2019, p. 159)

The introduction of Ahaziah’s brief reign over Judah sets the stage for the violent transitions in Samaria and Jerusalem in the next three chapters. King Joram is wounded in battle like his father Ahab (1 Kings 22: 29-40) and Ahaziah goes to visit him at this critical moment where Elisha anoints Jehu which brings about the ending of the Omri dynasty and the violent transition in Jerusalem.

[1] See the discussion on skin disease/leprosy in chapter five.

[2] The Hebrew za’aq as Brueggemann notes is frequently used of those who are abused or oppressed “crying out” to God or someone who can intervene on their behalf. (Brueggemann, 2000, p. 366)

[3] Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor note that saris means ‘eunuch’ based on linguistic evidence. (Cogan, 1988, p. 112)

[4] Both Jehoram and Joram have the same name, they are differentiated in translations to make it easier to refer to these kings in Samaria and Judah which reign concurrently.

[5] The bible, particularly 1&2 Kings, evaluates kings on a completely different set of values, but in general kings in the ancient world were supposed to maintain or increase their territory and wealth. Wealth was primarily generated through land as a producer of agriculture, livestock, and mineral resources.

2 Kings 6:24-7:20 The Siege and Deliverance of Samaria

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Hills Near the Ruins of Samaria By Daniel Ventura – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32449397

2 Kings 6:24-7:2

²⁴ Some time later King Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army; he marched against Samaria and laid siege to it. ²⁵ As the siege continued, famine in Samaria became so great that a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver and one-fourth of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver. ²⁶ Now as the king of Israel was walking on the city wall, a woman cried out to him, “Help, my lord king!” ²⁷ He said, “If the LORD does not help you, where would my help come from? From the threshing floor or from the winepress?” ²⁸ But then the king asked her, “What is your complaint?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son; we will eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ ²⁹ So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son, and we will eat him.’ But she has hidden her son.” ³⁰ When the king heard the words of the woman he tore his clothes—now since he was walking on the city wall, the people could see that he had sackcloth on his body underneath ³¹ and he said, “So may God do to me and more, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat stays on his shoulders today.” ³² So he dispatched a man from his presence.
Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. Before the messenger arrived, Elisha said to the elders, “Are you aware that this murderer has sent someone to take off my head? When the messenger comes, see that you shut the door and hold it closed against him. Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?” ³³ While he was still speaking with them, the king came down to him and said, “This trouble is from the LORD! Why should I hope in the LORD any longer?”

7¹ But Elisha said, “Hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord: Tomorrow about this time a measure of choice meal shall be sold for a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria.” ² Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, “Even if the LORD were to make windows in the sky, could such a thing happen?” But he said, “You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat from it.”

The final seven verses of chapter six are connected to the story that continues through the seventh chapter of 2 Kings. The verses and chapters were added at a later point, and the chapter division highlights the prophecy of Elisha by bookending the seventh chapter, but the narrative which evokes the word of the LORD begins at verse twenty-four. One of the Aramean kings named Ben-hadad[1] lays siege to Samaria creating the severe crisis of the story.

Siege warfare works by denying the encircled city the resources it needs to survive while the surrounding army has access to food from the land and if necessary, brought in from the besieging country. The first to feel the impact of the food shortages are the poor and the vulnerable as the cost of the food necessary to survive climbs as the supply dwindles. In our story the cost of once unpalatable foods has reached a point unreachable to all but the wealthiest households. The ‘dove’s dung’ has a couple possible interpretations. It may be the droppings from birds who are able to eat from the grain fields that the population no longer has access to, and this may form a disgusting but necessary source of nutrition for the captured population. Some translations like the NEB and NJPS follow a linguistic trail to translate this as the “seeds of the (false) carob” which is a plant of limited nutritional value. However one translates the ‘dove’s dung,’ the situation in the city has become desperate to the point where hunger is creating an inhumane situation.

The woman at the wall who calls upon the king of Israel for help is met with a pious sounding answer, “If the LORD does not help you, where would my help come from.” To me this resonates like the empty ‘thoughts and prayers’ of a politician who has no interest in resolving the crisis of the individual who comes to them for help. Yet, in Israel there is a tradition of people coming to their kings to judge difficult and life changing matters and the kings of Israel are supposed to be guardians of the vulnerable. This story resonates with Solomon’s judging between the two women fighting over a child in 1 Kings 3: 16-28, but in this story of famine now the women are fighting over children to be eaten in their starvation. The situation echoes the darkest warnings against disobedience in Deuteronomy 28: 52-57:

⁵² It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout your land; it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout the land that the LORD your God has given you. ⁵³ In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you. ⁵⁴ Even the most refined and gentle of men among you will begrudge food to his own brother, to the wife whom he embraces, and to the last of his remaining children, ⁵⁵ giving to none of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because nothing else remains to him, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in all your towns. ⁵⁶ She who is the most refined and gentle among you, so gentle and refined that she does not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge food to the husband whom she embraces, to her own son, and to her own daughter, ⁵⁷ begrudging even the afterbirth that comes out from between her thighs, and the children that she bears, because she is eating them in secret for lack of anything else, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in your towns.

The woman’s situation in this siege echoes the narration of the later siege of Jerusalem by Babylon in Ezekiel 5:10 and Lamentations 2:20 and 4:10. It is a world where the bond between mother and child has been broken by hunger and people lose their humanity in the horror of the siege. The king who has been sheltered from the worst aspects of the deprivation of the siege is horrified by the woman’s situation and yet still claims no power to alleviate her condition. The stores of grain and wine even for the king are likely depleted and we learn that he is wearing sackcloth, a sign of mourning and repentance, under his clothes which he tears on hearing the woman’s story. In response he rashly declares that he will kill Elisha.

Elisha may be the target of the king’s rage as the representative of the LORD who the king of Israel blames for this unbroken siege, or he may simply be a scapegoat in the king’s powerlessness. Elisha did in the previous chapter deliver into Samaria an Aramean army who he instructed the king to feed and allow them to depart in peace. The peace which Elisha brokered did not endure and the king of Israel may blame the prophet for the situation. It is also possible that the king feels that the prophet, who has provided food miraculously, has not performed a miracle to provide food for the suffering city. If this unnamed king of Israel is Jehoram, as the order of the stories implies, there is a long animosity between the Omri dynasty that Jehoram is a member of and Elijah as well as Elisha. It is possible that the king has never approached the prophet until this point in the siege although it is worth noting that the elders are with the prophet during this scene.

The story becomes a bit confused in verses 32-33 where a messenger arrives and later the king. Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor point to Josephus’ reconstruction of the events as being as sensible as any:

“But you,” (Elisha) said, “when the man arrives who has been given this order be on guard as he is about to enter, and press him back against the door and hold him there, for the king will follow him and come to me, having changed his mind.” So, when the man came who had been sent by the king to make away with Elisha, they did as he had ordered. But Joram, repenting of his wrath against the prophet and fearing that the man who had been ordered to kill him might already be doing so, hastened to prevent the murder and even save the prophet. Antiquities ix, 69-70. (Cogan, 1988, pp. 80-81)

Despite the king’s earlier murderous words, the king, the prophet, and the elders all share in hearing the word of the LORD that Elisha receives declaring that the crisis will end suddenly in roughly twenty-four hours. The immediate availability of cheap food prophesied is unbelievable to the captain of the king, and Elisha adds a final note that this captain will see the prophecy fulfilled but be unable to partake in it.

2 Kings 7:3-20

³ Now there were four men with a defiling skin disease outside the city gate who said to one another, “Why should we sit here until we die? ⁴ If we say, ‘Let us enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there, but if we sit here, we shall also die. Therefore, let us desert to the Aramean camp; if they spare our lives, we shall live, and if they kill us, we shall but die.” ⁵ So they arose at twilight to go to the Aramean camp, but when they came to the edge of the Aramean camp there was no one there at all. ⁶ For the Lord had caused the Aramean army to hear the sound of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another, “The king of Israel has hired the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to fight against us.” ⁷ So they fled away in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, and their donkeys, leaving the camp just as it was, and fled for their lives. ⁸ When these diseased men had come to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent, ate and drank, carried off silver, gold, and clothing, and went and hid them. Then they came back, entered another tent, carried off things from it and went and hid them.
⁹ Then they said to one another, “What we are doing is wrong. This is a day of good news; if we are silent and wait until the morning light, we will be found guilty; therefore let us go and tell the king’s household.” ¹⁰ So they came and called to the gatekeepers of the city and told them, “We went to the Aramean camp, but there was no one to be seen or heard there, nothing but the horses tied, the donkeys tied, and the tents as they were.” ¹¹ Then the gatekeepers called out and proclaimed it to the king’s household. ¹² The king got up in the night and said to his servants, “I will tell you what the Arameans have prepared against us. They know that we are starving, so they left the camp to hide themselves in the open country, thinking, ‘When they come out of the city, we shall take them alive and get into the city.’ ” ¹³ One of his servants said, “Let some men take five of the remaining horses, since those left here will suffer the fate of the whole multitude of Israel that have perished already; let us send and find out.” ¹⁴ So they took two mounted men, and the king sent them after the Aramean army, saying, “Go and find out.” ¹⁵ So they went after them as far as the Jordan; the whole way was littered with garments and equipment that the Arameans had thrown away in their haste. So the messengers returned and told the king.
¹⁶ Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a measure of choice meal was sold for a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the LORD. ¹⁷ Now the king had appointed the captain on whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate; the people trampled him to death in the gate, just as the man of God had said when the king came down to him. ¹⁸ For when the man of God had said to the king, “Two measures of barley shall be sold for a shekel and a measure of choice meal for a shekel, about this time tomorrow in the gate of Samaria,” ¹⁹ the captain had answered the man of God, “Even if the LORD were to make windows in the sky, could such a thing happen?” And he had answered, “You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat from it.” ²⁰ It did indeed happen to him; the people trampled him to death in the gate.

The resolution to the crisis begins in the desperation of four men who are unclean and left outside the city. As mentioned above it is the vulnerable, and these four men with an affliction traditionally translated as leprosy would be vulnerable as they are excluded outside the city’s protective walls. In a situation where staying where they are would lead to death and entering the city would lead to death, they make the choice to surrender to the Arameans because the worst they can do is kill them. This decision to give up to the besieging forces sets in motion the deliverance of Samaria.

I have mixed feelings about the NRSVue decision throughout these texts to translate what is traditionally rendered ‘leprosy’ as a ‘defiling skin disease’ or ‘skin disease.’ On the one hand, what we now categorize as leprosy or Hansen’s disease is probably not what is referred to throughout the bible. But I wonder if the more generic skin disease disconnects the average reader from the severity of this diagnosis in the ancient world of Judaism. It is telling that Leviticus thirteen and fourteen are dedicated to the identification, the exclusion of the infected individuals from the community, and the necessary examination to allow their re-inclusion if the skin disorder clears up. These lepers are ‘unclean’ and unable to participate in the life of the community. Yet these outsiders will provide deliverance for the people trapped inside the city.

Before the four men approach the camp, the Arameans flee in panic because they hear the sound of horses and chariots approaching and fear that the king of Israel has paid Egypt and the Hittites to come and break the siege for them. The horses and chariots echo the appearance of the ‘horses and chariots of Israel’ in the previous story (2 Kings 6:15) and now instead of opening the eyes of the servant the LORD in a different manner opens the ears of the Arameans. The panic of the Arameans in the story is enough that they abandon not only their encampment but also their horses and donkey and leave a trail of discarded items in the path of their retreat. There are resources and wealth to feed and equip an army surrounding the city, much of the food likely taken from Israel’s fields, and there waiting to be discovered by the starving city.

The Jewish sages identified the four men with Gehazi and his sons (Israel, 2019, p. 129) which makes sense with this story being between Gehazi having Naaman’s leprosy cling to him and his family (2 Kings 5:27) and Gehazi’s reemergence talking with the king in the upcoming chapter (2 Kings 8: 4-5). This identification while interesting is not necessary for the story as these four men proceed to the camp, find it empty, ate and drank, pillaged some of the wealth they found, and eventually notify the gatekeepers of the situation. These men excluded as outsiders because of their skin condition still consider themselves a part of the people and have an obligation to those suffering inside the city. They appeal through the gatekeeper to the king’s household.

The king initially views this report from the four men as a trap set by the Aramean army to draw him out, but eventually one of his servants convinces the king to send out scouts with horses to examine the situation, lest the remaining horses perish with the people inside the city. Once the messengers return to the king it sets in motion the availability of food promised by the prophecy of Elisha as well as the death of the captain of the king. As mentioned in the previous section, the current chapter divisions highlight the words of Elisha at the beginning and ending of the chapter to demonstrate their fulfillment. A siege which reduced men and women to inhuman actions is now ended by four men whose humanity is compromised by the unclean disease carried on their skin. The God of Israel’s unseen host is now heard by the Aramean causing them to abandon their siege and to provide the food the city needs. The prophet once blamed by the king for the situation inside the city has now accurately predicted the cities deliverance by the LORD the God of Israel.

[1] Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor note there are at least two and possibly three kings name Ben-Hadad, whose name means the son of (the God) Hadad, “At least two, if not three persons by this name are known: Ben-hadad, contemporary of Baasha (1 Kgs 15:18); Ben-hadad, foe of Abab (1 Kgs 20: 1; he is identical with ^mAdad-idri of Assyrian inscriptions…and Ben-hadad, son of Hazael (2 Kgs 13:3).” (Cogan, 1988, p. 78)

2 Kings 6: 1-23 Floating Iron and Opened Eyes

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‘Elisha makes the Axe Head Swim’ illustration from The story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation (1873)

2 Kings 6: 1-7

¹ Now the company of prophets said to Elisha, “As you see, the place where we live under your charge is too small for us. ² Let us go to the Jordan, and let us collect logs there, one for each of us, and build a place there for us to live.” He answered, “Do so.” ³ Then one of them said, “Please come with your servants.” And he answered, “I will.” ⁴ So he went with them. When they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees. ⁵ But as one was felling a log, his ax head fell into the water; he cried out, “Alas, master! It was borrowed.” ⁶ Then the man of God said, “Where did it fall?” When he showed him the place, he cut off a stick and threw it in there and made the iron float. ⁷ He said, “Pick it up.” So he reached out his hand and took it.

To the modern reader this may seem like a strange story to include among the miracles that are handed on about Elisha. In a world where an ax is a relatively inexpensive tool the loss of an ax head seems like a trivial matter to trouble the prophet Elisha with. But the world of Elisha’s time was very different from our world. At this time iron is a precious resource and smiths in ancient Israel would be rare. This was also a time when Israel is at war with Aram so most iron would be going to create weapons for the military of Israel. Much as the story of Elisha and the widow’s oil (2 Kings 4:1-7), the prophet’s action likely saved this member of the company of prophets from a debt they could not hope to repay. (NIB III: 199) Many of the stories in the previous two chapters have the company of prophets relying on the prophet Elisha to provide food in their want and Gehazi’s foolish (in the eyes of 2 Kings) request for recompense from Naaman (2 Kings 5: 19b-27) is also informed by the group’s poverty. Even if the neighbor who loaned the unfortunate man the ax would not attempt to collect the value of the lost tool, there is a strong concern for neighborly rights among the world envisioned in the Torah.

The story takes place at the Jordan geographically linking it to the previous healing of Naaman. At the Jordan Elisha provided healing for Naaman from his skin disease and relief for this fellow member of the company of prophets with the sunken ax head. Some scholars, both Jewish and Christians, have taken this story and attempted to create a non-miraculous version: the stick was cut to be able to fit into the aperture of the ax head or to have a flat surface for the ax head to rest on as the prophet lifts it out are two examples. Yet, to tell these stories the commenters in their desire to make the story more reasonable have missed the point that the man of God is able to do what others cannot. Elisha who can heal disease or provide adequate food can also through his connection with God make metal float and make an army captive.

2 Kings 6: 8-23

⁸ Once when the king of Aram was at war with Israel, he took counsel with his officers. He said, “At such and such a place shall be my camp.” ⁹ But the man of God sent word to the king of Israel, “Take care not to pass this place, for the Arameans are going down there.” ¹⁰ The king of Israel sent word to the place of which the man of God spoke. More than once or twice he warned a place so that it was on the alert.
¹¹ The mind of the king of Aram was greatly perturbed because of this; he called his officers and said to them, “Now tell me: Who among us is betraying us to the king of Israel?” ¹² Then one of his officers said, “No one, my lord king. It is Elisha, the prophet in Israel, who tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedchamber.” ¹³ He said, “Go and find where he is; I will send and seize him.” He was told, “He is in Dothan.” ¹⁴ So he sent horses and chariots there and a great army; they came by night and surrounded the city.
¹⁵ When an attendant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. His servant said, “Alas, master! What shall we do?” ¹⁶ He replied, “Do not be afraid, for there are more with us than there are with them.” ¹⁷ Then Elisha prayed, “O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the LORD opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw; the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. ¹⁸ When the Arameans came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, “Strike this people, please, with blindness.” So he struck them with blindness as Elisha had asked. ¹⁹ Elisha said to them, “This is not the way, and this is not the city; follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek.” And he led them to Samaria.
²⁰ As soon as they entered Samaria, Elisha said, “O LORD, open the eyes of these men so that they may see.” The Lord opened their eyes, and they saw that they were inside Samaria. ²¹ When the king of Israel saw them he said to Elisha, “Father, shall I strike them? Shall I strike them?” ²² He answered, “No! Would you strike those whom you have taken captive with your sword and with your bow? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink, and let them go to their master.” ²³ So he prepared for them a great feast; after they ate and drank, he sent them on their way, and they went to their master. And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel.

The Arameans are a continual danger to the people of Israel throughout the end of 1 Kings and the beginning of 2 Kings. Yet, Elisha through the previous and following chapter will play a pivotal role in the conflict between the king of Aram and the king of Samaria. Through Naaman, these soldiers who are brought captive by the prophet to Samaria, and the eventual defeat of the siege of Samaria the Arameans will come to know that there is a prophet in Samaria who king Ben-hadad of Aram will eventually consult (2 Kings 8: 7-15). Also reappearing in this story are the ‘horsemen and chariots of Israel’ which are the host of Israel’s God which Elisha first saw at Elijah’s ascension.

The conflict between the king of Aram and the prophet is precipitated by the prophet’s repeated warning of the king of Israel of the movements of Aram’s armies. Convinced that one of his leaders is betraying him, he summons them and asks how this is occurring. One of his officers knows that it is Elisha that is handing on this information, and the king of Aram orders a force sent to seize the prophet from his current location at Dothan. What the king’s men and the prophet’s men are blind to is the ‘horsemen and chariots of Israel’ which are surrounding the prophet and are more numerous than the forces sent by the king of Aram. Apparently, one’s eyes must be opened to be able to see the host of the LORD and that is exactly what Elisha prays for his servant to receive.

Throughout the narrative the movement between blindness and sight plays a critical role. Elisha’s servant may be able to see the forces of Aram, but he is blind to the forces of the LORD who Elisha serves until his eyes are opened. The prophet was able to provide vision for the king of Israel to elude the maneuvers of the king of Aram’s army and so the king of Aram attempts to remove the eyes of Israel by eliminating the prophet. The armies of Aram are struck with blindness by the LORD and led by the prophet to Samaria where the prophet asks for their sight to be restored.

The story ends with the king of Israel asking whether he should strike down this army that has been delivered by the prophet into his city and the prophet opening his eyes to another way. The king of Israel did not capture the Arameans, and their lives are in the prophet’s hands, and the prophet shows a way of peace. The book of Proverbs states, “If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat; and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink.” Proverbs 25:21 The prophet models this way of wisdom for the king who prepares a great feast for his enemies, and this brings at least a pause to the conflicts between Israel and Aram. The story moved from blindness to sight and from conflict to peace. Just like Naaman would discover that there is a prophet in Samaria, now these soldiers of Aram would also know both the power of the prophet’s God and the rescue provided in their desperate situation.

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Searchings: Sacred and Secular

Tag Archives: 2 Kings

2 Kings 18 King Hezekiah and Sennacherib’s Threat to Jerusalem

2 Kings 18: 1-8

2 Kings 18: 9-12

2 Kings 18:13-37

2 Kings 17 The End of Samaria

2 Kings 17: 1-6 King Hoshea the Last King in Samaria and the End of the Northern Kingdom of Israel

2 Kings 17: 7-23 Theological Rationale for the Exile of Israel (Samaria)

2 Kings 17: 24-41 The Ressettlement of Samaria by Assyria

2 Kings 15 The Stability of Judah in Contrast to the Instability of Samaria

2 Kings 15: 1-7 King Azariah (Uzziah) of Judah

2 Kings 15: 8-12 The Brief Reign of Zechariah King of Israel and the End of the Jehu Dynasty

2 Kings 15: 13-31 A Tumultuous Period in Israel

2 Kings 15: 32-38 King Jothan of Judah

2 Kings 13 The Death of Elisha, The Reigns of Jehoahaz and Jehoash of Israel, and the Conflict with Aram

2 Kings 13:1-13 The Reign of Jehoahaz and Jehoash (Joash) of Israel

2 Kings 13: 14-20 The Death of Elisha

2 Kings 13: 22-25 The Conflict Between Israel and Aram

2 Kings 12 The Reign of King Jehoash/Joash of Judah

2 Kings 12: 1-3

2 Kings 12: 4-16

2 Kings 12: 17-18

2 Kings 12: 19-21

2 Kings 11 The Overthrow of Athaliah in Judah and the Beginning of the Reign of King Joash

2 Kings 11

2 Kings 10 The Elimination of the Sons of Ahab and the Worshippers of Baal

2 Kings 10: 1-14

2 Kings 10: 15-36

2 Kings 8 Transitioning from Prophetic Time to a Major Transition in Royal Time

2 Kings 8: 1-6

2 Kings 8: 7-15

2 Kings 8: 16-29

2 Kings 6:24-7:20 The Siege and Deliverance of Samaria

2 Kings 6:24-7:2

2 Kings 7:3-20

2 Kings 6: 1-23 Floating Iron and Opened Eyes

2 Kings 6: 1-7

2 Kings 6: 8-23