Judicial Cleansing of the Nation. 2
Kings 8:7-10:36
What we see in these
chapters is God executing His vengeance upon His enemies in the northern
kingdom of
What we see here is the
announcement by God fifteen years earlier than our passage of how He is going
to execute justice and righteousness on the wicked on the northern kingdom of
Then we are told in
Scripture that God is love. Often theologians have joined righteousness and
justice together as representing the holiness of God. What is interesting from
Scripture is that God is specifically stated to be holy; He is also stated to
be love. But in our modern conceptions of both righteousness and justice, and
in our modern conception of love, we often run foul of what the Scriptures
teach. We have these very watered-down, diluted ideas of both righteousness and
love that we pick up from our culture that when we take them and apply them to
what happens in the Scripture we look at what is happening in these chapters
and wonder how this can be a God of love. The problem is that we have a
distorted view of what love is. What the Scriptures teach us is that love to be
real love it has to conform to righteousness. Love that has no righteousness at
the core of it has no integrity and in nothing more than silly, superficial
sentimentality. Righteousness, on the other hand, that is not tempered by love
can just be abusive and tyrannical. In the character of God these attributes
fit together in as perfectly consistent whole. So we see these attributes—God’s
righteousness, His justice and His love—coming together and this forms the
essence of God’s integrity. God has given us pictures of these various events
in the Scripture so that we can have something more than simply a superficial
understanding of what righteousness, justice and love actually are.
We come to this section
and are going to be introduced to a very bloody series of very bloody scenes
that are directed by God. And this is done in love. Heb. 12: “For whom the Lord
loves, He chastens.” When we are at the discipline end of God’s chastening it
doesn’t feel like God loves us very much! The section begins in 2 Kings 8:7 and
the first event that occurs has to do with the violent assassination of king
Ben-hadad II of Syria by his trusted assistant or aid Hazael. We don’t know his
exact role but he is the primary advisor to Ben-hadad and in this set of
circumstances we see how God in His sovereignty orchestrates the situation, but
it is Hazael who takes advantage of the illness of Ben-hadad and uses that as a
cover for his murder. This will then bring Hazael to a position of authority
and rulership in
The second event that
occurs has to do with the rise of Jehoram to the throne in the southern
The first king that He is
going to deal with is Jehoram in 2 Kings 8. Jehoram is truly an evil king. He
reigns for eight years and we are told that he walks in the ways of
The key verses that will
explain everything we have talked about in these chapters is what is stated to
Jehu when Elisha sends his assistant to anoint Jehu. In 2 Kings 9 Jehu is given
his orders from the prophet. 2 Kings 9:6 NASB “He arose and went
into the house, and he poured the oil on his head and said to him, ‘Thus says
the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘I have anointed you king over the people of the LORD, {even}
over Israel. [7] You shall strike the house of Ahab your master, that I may
avenge the blood of My servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants
of the LORD, at the hand of Jezebel. [8] For the whole house of Ahab shall perish,
and I will cut off from Ahab every male person both bond and free in
Jehoram then will be
replaced on the throne by his son Ahaziah who is not only evil but is a coward.
He only lasts a year and will also be brutally murdered. But as the description
goes in the text we go from Jehoram of Judah to Joram of Israel. He has been
the king since chapter two of 2 Kings and he follows in the footsteps of his
father Ahab. He is also going to be judged and this is the focal point of the
ninth chapter. Joram of Israel is going to convince his relative Ahaziah in the
south to join him in a battle against the Syrians. They go to battle at
Ramoth-Gilead and one of the leading generals is Jehu, who is identified in v.
2 as Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi, and he is going to anoint
Jehu to carry out this particular vengeance act of God’s justice against the
evil house of Ahab. Joram is wounded and has to go back to Jezreel, the city
where Jezebel lives. Ahaziah goes to check on his cousin Joram to see how he is
doing. All of the guilty parties are suddenly brought together in one place and
God is prepared to execute His justice. After Jehu is anointed by the assistant
of Elisha he gathers some men around him, makes a plan, and head to Jezreel. As
he approaches the watchman sees him coming and warns Joram who sends out a
horseman. The horseman goes over to the other side so a second horseman is sent
who also goes over to the other side. Now Joram the king of
2 Kings 9:22 NASB
“When Joram saw Jehu, he said, ‘Is it peace, Jehu?’ And he answered, ‘What
peace, so long as the harlotries of your mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are
so many?’ [23] So Joram reined about and fled and said to Ahaziah, ‘{There is}
treachery, O Ahaziah!’ [24] And Jehu drew his bow with his full strength and
shot Joram between his arms; and the arrow went through his heart and he sank
in his chariot.” Remember all of this is under the authority of God, so Jehu
leads a divinely authorized revolt against Joram in the northern kingdom and
personally executes him.
Then we see Ahaziah go
into hiding; he is running from Jehu. Jehu sends a contingent of soldiers after
him with orders to shoot and kill him, which they do. The Bible says that when
he died they brought him back and buried him in
That is not the end of it,
it is only the beginning. At this point Jehu sends out messengers throughout
Next is the fifth event in
the process of this judgment. Ahaziah who is the evil king of
In 2 Kings 10:17 we see
the wrap-up statement: NASB “When he came to
2 Kings
The epilogue to this is
that Jehu doesn’t prove to be a righteous king at all. He is only marginally
better than Ahab. 2 Kings 10:29 NASB “However, {as for} the sins of
Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin, from these Jehu did not
depart, {even} the golden calves that {were} at Bethel and that {were} at Dan.”
This wasn’t as bad as Baalism but, nevertheless, it was treason to God who was
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He reigns in the north for a while but as
the Scripture says: [31] “But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the LORD, the God of
2 Kings 10:32 NASB
“In those days the LORD began to cut off {portions} from
Remember that the key
verse for all of this is 2 Kings 9:7 NASB “You shall strike the
house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of My servants the
prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the LORD, at the
hand of Jezebel.” This is a depiction of the justice of God.
What is this concept of
vengeance? Vengeance in our normal use and language often carries the
connotation of a personal vendetta where somehow we have been personally
offended or hurt and so we are just striking back at someone else. But that is
not what this word means when it applies to God. This comes from the Hebrew
word naqam. In the Theological Word
Book of the Old Testament we read in their definition of naqam:
The concept of divine vengeance must be understood in the
light of the Old Testament teaching about the holiness and justice of God and
its effect on man as a sinner. In terms of the presuppositions of some modern
“Christian” theologies, such a God of vengeance will be labeled unchristian and
unethical. Understood in the full orb of biblical revelation, balanced as it is
by the mercy of God, divine vengeance is seen to be a necessary aspect of the
history of redemption.
In the New International
Dictionary of Old Testament Theology two statements are made that are helpful:
In the Old Testament, however, the concept of “vengeance”
has a positive connotation, both from a semantic as well as a theological point
of view: “vengeance” has to do with lawfulness, justice, and salvation. As
such, the theme of “vengeance” takes up an important position in Old Testament
theology, particularly in the writings of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and
Ezekiel…. Divine vengeance is usually set in the context of lawfulness and
war.
God is
in a cosmic war that began in eternity past when Satan rebelled against God and
human history is just a microcosm of that broad conflict of Satan against God.
Within human history Satan is warring against God and against God’s people, and
the two objectives of Satan in the Old Testament are a) to block the coming of
the Messiah, and so he is assaulting the seed promise, and b) the Davidic
covenant where God promised to David that his house would not depart from
Israel and that he would have an eternal descendant and an eternal throne.
Satan knows that he has to stop that seed and he has to wipe out the house of
David. We have seen the forty-two brothers of Ahaziah killed, almost the entire
Davidic household in the southern kingdom wiped out; and then when Athaliah
comes to the throne she is going to kill whoever is left—but one is hidden:
Joash. Joash is going to bring a tremendous revival into the southern kingdom.
That is the grace of God.
What this writer states is
important to give us a context for understanding this. Metaphors like “God is
king,” God is judge,” and “God is warrior” played a great part in the naqam texts—God is king being the
overall thought. Vengeance in the Old Testament cane be described as the
punitive retribution of God who as the sovereign king, faithful to His
covenant, stands up for the vindication of His glorious name in a judging and
fighting mode while watching over the maintenance of His justice and acting to
save His people. Deuteronomy 32:43 NASB “Rejoice, O nations, {with}
His people; For He will avenge the blood of His servants, And will render
vengeance on His adversaries, And will atone for His land {and} His people.”
Isaiah
What does all of this have
to do with the character of God? It shows us how evil sin is. If God has to
wipe it out in this horrific manner it informs us of the wickedness and the
consequences of sin. What we see in the microcosm in this horrific judgment
that God brings on the house of Ahab is just a microscopic part of the kind of
judgment that God had to bring upon sin when he imputed the sin of the human
race to Jesus Christ on the cross. Sin had to be dealt with by the justice of
God. But the justice of God was not in conflict with His love because God
judges sin because He loves the human race and because He puts the focus on the
victim and not the one who commits the sin and the evil. So in order to
preserve the seed line, to be faithful to His promise to David and His promise
to Abraham, and in order to provide a perfect salvation for the entire human
race it is necessary for God to wipe out the house of Ahab in order to preserve
the nation so that eventually He can bring about that so great salvation that
we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.