Three Evil Kings; The
Faithfulness of God. 2 Kings 24:1
We are going to look at three
evil kings in the kingdom of Judah
and the self-destruction of the nation. We will see how the nation comes under divine
discipline and destroys itself because of their rejection of God. That is the
foundational issue; they violate the first of the Ten Commandments, of keeping
loyalty to the Lord God alone and have become deeply immersed in false religion
and idolatry. From generation to generation we see God’s patience with them as
He constantly in His love seeks to bring them back to Him. We have seen time
and again where
there have been periods where the nation has returned to God and have been led
by leaders who have desired to cleanse the nation of the sins of idolatry only
to be followed by another king who leads the people back into various forms of
perversion and idolatry. We see that through their decision to reject God,
through their exercise of personal responsible volition, they choose against
God, they seek to put their focus, their priorities, their love and affection
in something in the creation, something other than God. So now God is going to
be faithful to His promise in the Mosaic Law to bring judgment on the nation
and to finally remove them from the land of promise,
What we see in this section
of 2 Kings, chapter 23, is a focus on three evil kings. Josiah had two sons
through two different wives. There was Jehoahaz who
will reign for only three months and he once again turns the people back to
idolatry and to evil. He is replaced by his half-brother Jehoiakim
who reigned for eleven years. He continues the policy of spiritual apostasy
from God, rebellion against God. In Israel idolatry was in essence treason because it was a
theocracy and God was the ruler of Israel. Evil against God is always defined as starting with
a rejection of God as the ultimate starting point in the focal point of the
nation’s thinking. He is rejected, something else is put in His place, the
people no longer worship God and put Him as the highest priority and they
worship something else. Jekoiakim continues the
decline and it will be in the midst of his reign in 605 BC that they
will experience the first invasion of the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar.
When he dies he is replaced by his son Jehoiachin
who, again, reigns only three months in 598 BC. This begins to set us up for the destruction of Jerusalem, the fall of the southern kingdom of Judah
and their entrance into the Babylonian captivity.
We see a summary statement in
2 Kings 23:3-4 NASB “The LORD sent against him bands of Chaldeans, bands of Arameans,
bands of Moabites, and bands of Ammonites. So He sent them against Judah to destroy it,
according to the word of the LORD which He had spoken through His servants the prophets. Surely at
the command of the LORD it came upon Judah, to remove {them} from His sight because of
the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done, and also for the
innocent blood which he shed, for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; and
the LORD would not
forgive.” These traditional enemies of Israel now have been
strengthened and they are invading the land. This is part of the fourth cycle
of divine discipline that God had promised in Leviticus chapter twenty-six, the
invasion by foreign powers. God sent them; He is the one who was behind
bringing this suffering and discipline upon the southern kingdom of Judah because they had
rejected Him. So because of the violation of the individual mandates of the
Mosaic Law to execute righteousness and justice, to stand up for the widows,
the orphans, for those who were poor, for those who were dealt injustice, they
are condemned. The shedding of innocent blood is a reference to child sacrifice
and it is all based on their worship of other things than God.
In
640 BC Josiah becomes
the king of Judah. He brings a
restoration of the Law into the land. He replaces two evil kings, Manasseh and Amon, even though at the end of Manasseh’s reign there is a
partial return to the Law he doesn’t live long enough and so there isn’t a
complete restoration in the land. Amon ruled for less
than two years and he is replaced by Josiah. In 633 BC, seven years later, Ashur-bani-pal died, the last
great ruler of the Assyrian empire. From that point on Assyria goes into serious
decline. She is ruled by a series of incompetent rulers and begins to crumble
from the inside. In 630 when Josiah is eighteen years old a copy of the Torah
is rediscovered in the temple. He reads the Torah to the people and they are
rebuked by the Word of God and turn from their idolatry back to God and there
is a cleansing in the nation and it has a period of prosperity which is the
last segment of divine grace before judgment. God always deals with us in grace
before judgment, giving us that last opportunity to turn back to Him in
obedience.
Then in 626 things on the international scene changed. There is an
important principle here and that is that we ought to be aware of what is
happening internationally; not just in terms of the Old Testament and the
nations there but even today, because God is the overlord of history, the one
who is working out His plans and purposes. We may not always understand
precisely how the international dynamics are affected by God’s plan and how
they are going to bring about His ultimate plan but we know that when we see
the massive shifts and movements in history and realignment of power that this
is under the oversight of God. He is bringing about His will so that divine
viewpoint gives us an understanding that God is the one who is in charge, even
though things may look chaotic and as if there is no hope. A principle that we
learn from all of this is that spiritual decisions of a people, of a nation,
affect their economics, their politics, their military; we can’t separate the
physical dynamics of the culture from their spiritual orientation.
So
what happens internationally is that Assyria which has been
the dominant power for over one hundred years begins to crumble. Whenever there
is the crumbling of one empire there is always another power that moves into
that vacuum, and that takes place in 626 when Nabopolassar
executes a rebellion against Assyria and Babylon becomes
independent of Assyria and he begins to attack the Assyrian
army. In 612 the Babylonians destroyed Nineveh and the Assyrians
were forced to move their capital west to Horan. Two years later they are
defeated soundly and finally by the Babylonians. Following that when the
Assyrian army is falling back towards Carchemish
Pharaoh Necho begins to move up from the south to
support Assyria against the Babylonians. At Megiddo he is met by
Josiah. Nobody knows why Josiah became involved. Even though Pharaoh Necho tried to dissuade him, as is described in 2 Chronicles
35:21, 22, Josiah would not turn away from him and was killed at Megiddo.
After
this Pharaoh Necho moves north to Riblah.
But what happens at the death of the king of Judah is that he is
going to be replaced by his son Jehoahaz who is seen
by the people of the southern kingdom of Judah as being a strong
anti-Egyptian leader. Those in Judah make Jehoahaz
the king but this the person that Necho wants to be
king and so Jehoahaz is only going to last for three
months before he will be imprisoned by Pharaoh Necho
and eventually taken to Egypt where he will die in prison. Then we see this
gradual decline and deterioration set in in the house
of David.
After Josiah was shot he is removed from
the battlefield. 2 Chronicles
35:25 NASB “Then Jeremiah chanted a lament for Josiah. And all the
male and female singers speak about Josiah in their lamentations to this day.
And they made them an ordinance in Israel; behold, they are also written in the
Lamentations.” Lamentations is a great picture into
an understanding of how believers should handle crises and disaster that comes
from divine discipline. Even though God brings discipline He is faithful. Lamentations 3:22, 23 NASB “The LORD’S lovingkindnesses
indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. {They}
are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.”
That brings
us up to the description of the next king, Jehoahaz.
2 Kings 23:31 NASB “Jehoahaz was
twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in
Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Hamutal the
daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.” He is basically a
90-day disaster. He reigns only three months. He returns the nation to the
patterns of evil as seen in the reigns of Ahaz and
Manasseh. [32] “He did evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had
done.” He is brought under discipline by God, imprisoned by Pharaoh Necho and taken to Egypt where he will die a horrible death. After
he is imprisoned Pharoah Necho
will impose a tribute on the nation for having put Jehoahaz
in power. [33] “Pharaoh Neco imprisoned him at Riblah in the land of Hamath,
that he might not reign in Jerusalem; and he imposed on the land a fine of one
hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.” A talent was equal to 3000
shekels (Approx. 75-1/2 pounds, about $208,000 in today’s value of silver).
This was back when money actually had value. There are a number of scholars who
believe that somehow there is a textual variant here because in some ancient
translations it is read as either ten talents of gold or 100 talents of gold,
which would be more in keeping they believe with the amount of silver. It would
have been a burdensome fine placed upon the nation.
Riblah is
an area of strategic value, a strategic point and an area where later on Nebuchadnezzar
would form up his armies, a place to which Zedekiah will be taken and his sons
executed before his eyes.
2 Kings 23:34 Pharaoh NASB “Neco made Eliakim the son of
Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz
away and brought {him} to Egypt, and he died there.” He changes his name.
Eliakim means my God established and Jehoiakim means Yahweh
established; a shift from El or the
generic word for God to the first syllable in Yahweh for the personal name of God. The fact that he changes his
name is not of theological significance to the change in name, it is showing
that Pharaoh Necho is exercising his dom9inance over
the southern kingdom of Judah and he has the right not only to put the person he wants in to
power but also to name him.
2 Kings
23:35 NASB “So Jehoiakim gave the silver
and gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land in order to give the money at the
command of Pharaoh. He exacted the silver and gold from the people of the land,
each according to his valuation, to give it to Pharaoh Neco.”
There is an annual tribute that had to be paid to the overlord because Judah is now seen as a vassal or servant nation
to Egypt at the beginning of Jehoiakim’s
rule. Now the wealth of the nation is hemorrhaging as it is taken down to Egypt. The principle we learn here again: Bad
spiritual decisions lead to economic disaster. How we view ultimate reality
affects decisions we make with regard to law, with regard to money and
investments. The decisions that are made in the halls of power reflect the worldview
of the leaders. And the worldview of the leader is no different from the
worldview of the people, and so when the culture or civilization has turned its
back on God, when it has become mired in cultural relativism that paganism
always produces then this always has these negative consequences. The details
of this are spelled out in the book of Leviticus as well as in Deuteronomy.
2 Kings
23:36 NASB “Jehoiakim was twenty-five
years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and
his mother’s name {was} Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah. [37] He did
evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done.” He increases and
continues the evil of his brother Jehoahaz. Initially
at the beginning of his reign he is under the dominion of Egypt and he continues to pay tribute to Egypt, but after 605 as the Babylonians had
defeated the Egyptians at the Battle of Carchemish
then he has to pay tribute to Babylon. After three years of paying tribute to Babylon he recognizes how this is destroying his
country economically and so he attempted to revolt against Nebuchadnezzar,
which just brought on the wrath of the Babylonian empire and Nebuchadnezzar
invaded the country. So God, we are told, intensifies the military invasions.
The other nations surrounding Israel have grown in power and strength but Israel has lost physical power, economic
strength and military strength, because at the core of their culture they have lost
the strength that comes from their relation ship with God. Now God has allowed
this to work itself out in terms of its normal consequences that God has built
into the framework of reality. So the spiritual decisions have physical consequences
in terms of politics, in terms of law, in terms of economics.
Whenever we
leave a righteous external standard, e.g. in monetary things, then what
replaces it is simply some sort of relativistic standard that is grounded only
on the experience of man. The result of that is always injustice. And this is
the real issue that is going on at this time in Israel’s history. The indictment that God brings
against the southern kingdom of Judah is an indictment first because they have left their love for God,
they have violated the first two commandments in the Ten Commandments and they
have committed treason against God, He is not the only focus of their worship.
Secondly, as a result of that unrighteousness or injustice has entered into the
land.
Then we come
to the final statement regarding what God is doing. 2
Kings 23:3-4 NASB “The LORD sent against him bands of Chaldeans,
bands of Arameans, bands of Moabites, and bands of
Ammonites.” As Israel has become weak the enemies began to pick off all of the things
of value in the southern kingdom of Judah. And
yet God is behind it, this is the divine interpretation of history. It is not
just that they became weak and these other nations moved into the vacuum of
power, it is that God is orchestrating these events. There is a spiritual reality
that goes beyond the physical reality. We can’t just measure these things in
terms of empiricism, in terms of the study of economic laws, military laws and
strategy or political laws. There is a spiritual reality that takes place that
is the ultimate causation in human history. If Israel had been positive to God, obedient to God, then that would have
changed the scenario. So God sends these armies against Judah to destroy it and this He has warned about, according to His
servants the prophets.
If we want to understand the dynamics of
the background of this then we should look at Jeremiah chapter twenty-two. By
this time Jeremiah is the primary prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah and
he brings his warning of judgment, his specific divine viewpoint analysis
against the kingdom of Judah, and we read this in Jeremiah 22. It is in this chapter that we
see a summary of the indictment against the son of Josiah.
Jeremiah
22:1 NASB “Thus says the LORD, ‘Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and there speak this
word [2] and say, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, O king of Judah, who sits on David’s throne, you and your servants
and your people who enter these gates.’” So he is addressing the ruler of
Judah, the one who is responsible for the nation before God. [3] “Thus says the
LORD, ‘Do justice and righteousness…” When a nation
is walking with integrity before God then there is justice and
righteousness in the course of law. The people are treated according to the
standards of the Mosaic Law. They are to love their neighbor, remember, as they
love themselves. But once they put themselves above their neighbor then the
neighbors will be the ones who will be the victims of injustice. They will be
treated poorly, they will be treated with injustice within the courts of law,
there will be false witnesses in the courts of law, and this ultimately will
lead to a degradation of justice in the nation. This is what is described in
the following verses. “… and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power
of {his} oppressor. Also do not mistreat {or} do violence to the stranger
[non-Jew living in the land], the orphan, or the widow; and do not shed
innocent blood in this place.” That is, the life of the children that were
offered to idols. So the command to the king is to make sure that justice
prevails in the land and in the courts.
The warning
is given. Jeremiah 22:4 NASB “For if you men will indeed perform
this thing, then kings will enter the gates of this house, sitting in David’s
place on his throne, riding in chariots and on horses, {even the king} himself
and his servants and his people.” In other words, God has promising ongoing
blessing to the house of David if righteousness characterizes their reign. [5] “But
if you will not obey these words, I swear by Myself,”
declares the LORD, “that this
house [dynasty of David] will become a desolation.” [6] For thus says the LORD concerning the house of the king of Judah: ‘You are {like} Gilead to Me, {Like}
the summit of Lebanon; Yet most assuredly I will make you like
a wilderness, {Like} cities which are not inhabited.’” Gilead and Lebanon were two areas that were covered with
forests in the ancient world. He is referring to these as the source of the
wealth that was displayed in the palace of the king. [7] “For I will set apart
destroyers against you, Each with his weapons; And
they will cut down your choicest cedars And throw {them} on the fire. [8] Many
nations will pass by this city; and they will say to one another, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this great city?’” That is
the point. God is not bringing judgment upon the nation for its own sake. What
is at stake is the glory of God and the faithfulness to His Word and to His
promises.
In the Mosaic
Law God said: “If you will obey me I will bless this nation in phenomenal ways,
and all the peoples of the nations will come by and say, ‘What is this nation?
Why is are they so great? Why are they so blessed?’
And the answer will be, “Because of the Lord their God.’” But this is the
reverse of that now because they are under divine discipline and God says that
what will happen now after the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple
people will come by and say, Why has the Lord done this to this great city? Jeremiah
22:9 NASB “Then they will answer, ‘Because they forsook the covenant
of the LORD their God
and bowed down to other gods and served them.’”
What we see
God doing here is taking these events that occurred in history and giving us
the spiritual dimension behind them, and showing that the blessing is to
support His glory and to recognize His grace and goodness and to glorify God,
but the destruction is the result of violating God’s will, the result of
disobeying the law, so that the judgment itself is a sign of God’s
faithfulness, of His righteous character. So righteousness and love produce
both blessing and, when there is a violation of God’s standard, judgment.
Jeremiah 22:10 NASB “Do not weep for the dead
[Josiah] or mourn for him, {But} weep continually for the one who goes away [Jehoahaz]; For he will never
return Or see his native land. [11] For thus says the LORD in regard to Shallum
[Jehoahaz] the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who
became king in the place of Josiah his father, who went forth from this place, ‘He
will never return there; [12] but in the place where they led him captive,
there he will die and not see this land again.’”
The heart of the matter. Jeremiah 22:13 NASB “Woe to him who builds
his house without righteousness…” Woe is always used as a pronouncement of judgment
by God. There is judgment coming to the person who builds his house, his life, the
power base of his dynasty on unrighteousness, i.e. the violation of God’s
absolute standards. “… And his upper rooms without
justice, Who uses his neighbor’s services without pay And does not give him his
wages.” This recognizes the legitimacy of the worker who works for an honest
wage. But when there is inflation that destroys honest money it destroys the
legitimacy of the value of the payment for wages. This legitimizes the fact
that a person has a right to work and earn a just return for his work, and when
a government takes away from that then this is unrighteousness. [14] “Who says, ‘I will build myself a roomy
house With spacious upper rooms, And cut out its
windows, Paneling {it} with cedar and painting {it} bright red.’” This is the
expanse of government at the expense of the people. Because the government is
not a wealth producer, the role of government is to preserve the integrity of
the nation, to protect it from the incursion of foreign enemies, and to protect
it from criminality within. This is the function of government under the divine
viewpoint teaching of Scripture. It is not the role of government to provide
equal results from people’s labor.
Jeremiah 22:15 NASB “Do you become a king
because you are competing in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink And do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him.”
When the law was implemented there was blessing, justice and righteousness, and
it was well with him; he was blessed; the nation was blessed. [16] “He pled the
cause of the afflicted and needy; Then it was well. Is
not that what it means to know Me?” Declares
the LORD.” So justice in the land
is based on an external standard other than just the viewpoint of the majority.
[17] “But your eyes and your heart Are {intent} only upon your own dishonest
gain, And on shedding innocent blood And on practicing
oppression and extortion.” Always the flaw in human government is that
government seeks to aggrandize itself and increase its own power base and to become
the tyrant and the ruler of the people. The true nature of liberty as the
founding fathers understood it, and as we should understand it, is not the
freedom to do what we want to do but it is freedom from government; it is
freedom from the incursion and the
overreaching power of government going beyond its divinely ordained limits. When
the government sets its heart on increasing its own power and size then this
always takes away from the liberty, the freedom, the responsibility of the
people.
What is said
in the Mosaic Law: Leviticus 19:15 NASB “You shall do no injustice
in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but
you are to judge your neighbor fairly.” This is a standard of righteousness.
Just because someone is poor it may make us feel better emotionally to give
them a helping hand but compassion does not have its place in the courtroom.
You don’t take into account the fact that a person is poor, a person is needy;
neither do you take into account the fact that a person is wealthy or a person
has power. This is what true justice is. You weigh each situation on its own
merits and not on the basis of the position of the individual in a society. The
Torah in this one verse does away with the whole concept of social justice that
has as its father Marxist philosophy. This is not what we are to do. We are not
to pay attention to the fact that this is a poor person or that this person
comes from needy circumstances. We are not to take into account either that
they are wealthy. We are to ignore those factors, they
do not have anything to do with the case at hand.
Exodus 23:1 NASB
“You shall not bear a false report; do not join your hand with a wicked man to
be a malicious witness.” The problem is that when we slip away from divine
absolutes we no longer have a sure and certain framework for defining what is
right and what is wrong. Who is it then who defines what is right and what is
wrong? Either it is the creator God who is outside of the system or it is the
people within the system, and once you make the people the final arbiter of
what is right and what is wrong then you’ve laid the foundation for injustice
and moral relativism. This is seen in the next verse.
Exodus 23:2 NASB
“You shall not follow the masses in doing evil, nor shall you testify in a
dispute so as to turn aside after a multitude in order to pervert {justice;}” In other words, don’t make judgments in the
courts according to the majority view of the people. The majority view of the
people do not determine what is right or wrong, what is righteous or what is
unrighteous; there must be an external standard.
But when we
live in a society that has rejected the law, that has rejected as we have in
our world today the external standards of Scripture, then there is nothing left
than to be in the fluid state of always changing what is right and what is
wrong, and then the judges begin to rule on the basis of their personal opinion
and on their personal taste, and this leads us even further into cultural
destruction. Exodus 23:2 recognizes the principle that the multitudes are not
the source of the standards. Just because the emotions of the crowd support one
particular verdict does not mean that that is a righteous verdict. The verdict
must be made on the basis of law, and there have been numerous decisions where
the popular opinion, the politically correct view, has influenced the judge and
the jury and justice has been perverted. This happens more and more.
Exodus 23:3 NASB
“nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his dispute.” Just because he is
poor and lacks anything does not mean that the courtroom is the place to
somehow resolve the fact that he is poor. Partiality to the poor might seem
noble but its result is injustice. Sentimentalism can be as evil as tyranny in
its consequences. We cannot assume that the poor or the rich are necessarily
right; sin is no respecter of persons. When we take into account a person’s
social standing we cannot let some relativistic artificial standard such as
social justice become the standard for governing the decisions of the poor.
Exodus 23:6 NASB
“You shall not pervert the justice {due} to your needy {brother} in his dispute.”
You shall not pay attention to his position, to his own personal economic
standing. [7] “Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent or
the righteous, for I will not acquit the guilty. [8] You shall not take a
bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of the just.
[9] You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of
a stranger, for you {also} were strangers in the land of Egypt.” In other words, in Exodus chapter
twenty-three we have the standards of righteousness. The indictment against Jehoiakim is that they have perverted the standard of
justice in the Mosaic Law and so God is going to bring about the judgment that
He promised in the Mosaic Law.
Leviticus
26:43 NASB “For the land will be abandoned by them, and will make up
for its sabbaths while it is
made desolate without them. They, meanwhile, will be making amends for their
iniquity, because they rejected My ordinances and
their soul abhorred My statutes.” This is the fifth stage of discipline. If the
nation continues in unfaithfulness and unrighteousness to God then God will
remove them from the land that He promised them and that land will be left
desolate because of their guilt. “They rejected my ordinances and their soul abhorred
my statutes.” That is the ultimate issue in our personal lives and it is the
ultimate issue in history. But verse 44 always holds out hope: NASB “Yet
in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject
them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with
them; for I am the LORD their God.” The passage goes on to promise that God will indeed
restore them and that grace is always available. It doesn’t matter how we fail
or what we have done, what matters is that we can always turn to God and His
grace for salvation and for recovery from sin, for God’s grace always holds out
the offer of hope and the offer of recovery.
Illustrations