The God of Integrity. 2 Kings 3:11-27
God doesn’t give us the
answers all the time. He gives us the framework for the answers and we have to dig
deeply in order to really come to understand what is going on. We have to think
about them. He doesn’t just hand us the answers on a silver platter so that we
can sort of satisfy our easy curiosity, but the revelation of Himself and His
Word is given in such a way that it constantly pushes us to read and study and
to think more deeply and more profoundly about what is said in Scripture. God
does not let us off the hook with a simple on-the-surface meaning. Having said
that, we are not talking about some kind of mystical hermeneutic, some kind of
secondary spiritual or allegorical meaning; it is simply that we need to study
all of God’s Word, comparing Scripture with Scripture and our understanding of
God in other passages, in such a way that we can truly come to answer the text
and come to understand who God is.
In 2 Kings chapter three we
are faced with a battle where three kings come together. The king of the
northern kingdom, Jehoram, calls upon Jehoshaphat the king of the southern
kingdom of Judah, as well as the king of Edom, to join together in an alliance
to conquer (as a form of discipline) the king of Moab. The king of Moab has exercised his independence and had revolted
against the authority of the northern kingdom of Israel which has held the kingdom of Moab
under their thumb since the time of Omri.
What we see in the early
verses of the chapter is that the core of evil is idolatry. When one rejects
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and substitutes something else for the
worship of God they have committed this root sin of idolatry, this arrogance
against God, and that is the core of all evil. We fall prey to that—lest we
think that we have somehow avoided that because we don’t bow down to statues of
wood or gold or silver—by constructing mental idols. We construct in our minds
ideas of who God is, what He looks like, that doesn’t really conform to what
Scripture says. This is a mental form of idolatry. We see it in various ways in
people’s lives. They have limited views of God, wrong views of God, views of
Jesus that are not formed from the Scripture but are formed by some kind of
independent religious view, as some weak, pasty, wimpy figure who went to cross
and died, as is portrayed in many different pictures of an effeminate figure
that couldn’t quite deal with the issues of life at the time.
Because of idolatry in the
northern kingdom God is not really going to bless the northern kingdom. There
will be times when it appears that he is because He is simply extending grace
to them to give them time to repent or change and to turn back to Him.
Sometimes in our lives God’s grace is extended to us and we mistake that
blessing as approbation from God rather than that God is really giving us the
opportunity to change and to turn back to Him. Jehoram, even though he wasn’t
as bad as his parents, is still considered evil.
2 Kings 3:11 NASB
“But Jehoshaphat said, ‘Is there not a prophet of the LORD here, that
we may inquire of the LORD by him?’ And one of the king of Israel’s servants answered and said, ‘Elisha the son of
Shaphat is here, who used to pour water on the hands of Elijah.’ [12]
Jehoshaphat said, ‘The word of the LORD is with him.’ So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him…. [14] Elisha said, ‘As the LORD of hosts
lives, before whom I stand, were it not that I regard the presence of
Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look at you nor see you.’”
To “regard the presence’ means to look at someone, to be aware of the presence
of someone. It is the same word as used in Psalm 66:18 NASB “If I
regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear.” God sees that
Jehoshaphat is there and so there is going to be a blessing by association. He
is not blessing them because this is a God-ordained mission, His blessing is
there simply because of His plans and purposes for Jehoshaphat, and because
Jehoshaphat is there God is going to provide for their needs. If he were not
there He would ignore them.
2 Kings 3:15 NASB
“‘But now bring me a minstrel.’ And it came about, when the minstrel played,
that the hand of the LORD came upon him.” What in the world is
going on in this verse? We are often surprised by things in the Scripture; we
are surprised by God; God doesn’t fit in our little box that we have developed
in our categories. It’s not that we can’t know Him truly but that we cannot
know Him exhaustively. The role of the prophet was one who represented God and
would bring the Word of God to the people, or would confront or indict the
people because of their disobedience to God. So he is a representative of God.
But we also see the Hebrew word for “prophet” used in some interesting contexts
related to usage. For example, in Exodus 15:20
we read, “Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took the timbrel in her hand,
and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dancing.” Then we
have the song of victory that they sang reflecting upon how God gave the Jews
victory in the battle over their enemies in the exodus. In Judges 4:4 we are
told that Deborah was a prophetess who judged Israel at the time. This is not focusing on prophesy as
preaching; that is not what this means at all. Deborah composed a hymn of
victory. Again we have this relationship of the gift of prophecy with music. 1
Chronicles 25:3 NASB “Of Jeduthun, the sons of Jeduthun: Gedaliah,
Zeri, Jeshaiah, Shimei, Hashabiah and Mattithiah, six, under the direction of
their father Jeduthun with the harp, who prophesied in giving thanks and
praising the LORD.” So we see that part of the role of being a prophet
had to do with giving thanks and praise to God and the writing of psalms, and
that this was set to music so that it would be remembered by the people. This
helps us to understand what is going on here when we are told that Elisha
called for someone to come and to play music.
2 Kings 3:16, 17 NASB “He said, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Make this
valley full of trenches.’ For thus says the LORD, ‘You shall not see wind nor shall you see rain; yet
that valley shall be filled with water, so that you shall drink, both you and
your cattle and your beasts.” The only imperative, the only
command in this whole section is that they are to dig ditches. Then the prophet
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is going to tell them what God will do
as a result of that. But the only thing they are commanded to do is to dig
ditches. [18] “This is but a slight thing
in the sight of the LORD; He will also give the Moabites into your hand.
[19] Then you shall strike every fortified city
and every choice city, and fell every good tree and stop all springs of water,
and mar every good piece of land with stones.” This is really a
key passage in this who section because we have to ask the question: is Elisha
telling them what to do or is he telling them what is going to happen? Most
people will take it that what happens in verse 19 is a command to go and do
these things. But it is very interesting to deal with the Hebrew verbs here
because oftentimes in Hebrew when there are certain tense shifts, and certain
things are going on here and there are imperfect tenses initially and then
there are perfect tenses. What we believe this indicates grammatically is that
there is a shit from the initial command to dog ditches to a description of
what will happen afterwards. A description is not a command. This view is
backed up by the fact that in Deuteronomy 20:19, 20 when God instructed the
Israelites when they were going to engage in holy war as they entered into Canaan,
He said: “When you besiege a city a long time, to make war against it in order
to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by swinging an axe against them;
for you may eat from them, and you shall not cut them down. For is the tree of
the field a man, that it should be besieged by you? Only the trees which you
know are not fruit trees you shall destroy and cut down, that you may construct
siegeworks against the city that is making war with you until it falls.” So
there are two commands that are important in Deuteronomy. One is that the
Israelites were not to oppress or take possession of Moab, and the second direct command was that they were not
supposed to wipe out the fruit trees, destroy the land, stop up the wells, etc.
So if verse 19 is a command from God then it is in contradiction to what was
stated in Deuteronomy. Then, if they are being commanded to attack Moab and take control of it, this also is in violation to
Deuteronomy. So we believe that what is being described in verse 19 is what the
army is going to do, not what God is telling them to do. They are only told to
dog these ditches.
What will happen overnight
is that there will be a rain storm so far away that they don’t even hear the
thunder or see the flashes of lightning, and there will be flash floods and
water will come down and fill up the ditches in the early morning. Then
something remarkable will take place. 2 Kings 3:20 NASB “It happened
in the morning about the time of offering the sacrifice, that behold, water
came by the way of Edom, and the country was filled with water…. [22] “They
rose early in the morning, and the sun shone on the water, and the Moabites saw
the water opposite {them} as red as blood.” God used the sun and
the water to create an optical illusion so that when the Moabites looked at the
water it looked as if it was all blood. They jumped to the conclusion that
there had been a fight, a falling out amongst the Israelites, the Judahites and
the Edomites, and that this was the time to attack. [23] “Then they said, ‘This
is blood; the kings have surely fought together, and they have slain one
another. Now therefore, Moab, to the spoil!’ [24] But when they came to the camp
of Israel, the Israelites arose and struck the Moabites, so
that they fled before them; and they went forward into the land, slaughtering
the Moabites.” Then verse 25 is the fulfillment of what Elisha
said they would do back in verse 19: “they destroyed the cities; and each one
threw a stone on every piece of good land and filled it. So they stopped all
the springs of water and felled all the good trees, until in Kir-hareseth
{only} they left its stones; however, the slingers went about {it} and struck
it.” Remember, they were prohibited from doing that.
They were on the verge of
having victory when we read, verse 27: “Then he [the king of Moab] took his oldest son who was to reign in his place,
and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. And there came great wrath
against Israel, and they departed from him and returned to their own
land.” This display of paganism appalls the Israelites but it is the turning
point in the battle. How are we to understand this. It is really a perplexing
verse because if this offering to the god of Moab seems to give victory and
seems to have inspired the people one view is that the great indignation is on
the part of the Moabites, that they are just roused to anger because the king
has had to sacrifice his own son and are inspired to go out and fight harder.
There is another view that this is Israel’s indignation and that that become so incensed that
they leave, but the text says that there was great indignation against Israel. The third view is that this is God’s wrath. It
doesn’t say it is God’s wrath but there are seven time in the Old Testament
where there is the phrase “great indignation/wrath” and every time it is a
distinct word for “great” and for “wrath” and it is only used of God, except
for one passage where it is used of man. When it is combined with this word for
“great” in those seven instances, including this one, it always refers to the
wrath of God. So God’s wrath is brought against Israel because they are still out of His will. He hasn’t
ordered them to defeat the Moabites; He hasn’t ordered them to go into battle.
God is going to bless them to a point and give them a certain measure of
victory but He is not going to give them a total victory because that would be
a blessing to the house of Ahab that He is about to judge. So this is just one
of those really strange episodes where God just doesn’t act like we think He is
going to act.
The same thing happens in
our life. We think God is doing one thing and then something else happens. When
that happens in many people’s lives they react against God instead of trusting
in God. There are other things that happen in our lives that are unexpected.
Sometimes we have unexpected blessings, sometimes unexpected adversities, and
the issue is: are we going to handle those circumstances on the basis of God’s
Word. What we see in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament is that in
order to face and surmount adversities we have to be oriented to God’s Word.
That is primary. We really have to understand who God is and what His plan is.
This was a failure in this instance. They did not understand, were not applying
Deuteronomy, and so they were engaged in a wrong activity. They did attempt
(and Jehoshaphat sincerely) to seek the Lord but because of a lack of knowledge
of God’s Word they seek the Lord but still engage in a wrong activity.
The point of this passage
is that we dare not fall into the trap of putting God in a box. We dare not be
presumptuous but we must be oriented to His Word. The only way we can know
these things is to truly study the Word and really know it. The Israelites were
doing a wrong thing a wrong way and then were trying to cover it up and
camouflage it with the justification of, Well, we sought the will of God
through the prophet. But the prophet wasn’t telling them what to do, other than
digging of ditches, he was simply describing what they would do.
Illustrations