40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 1:1-18 (Episode 321)

Episode Date: June 15, 2022

Chad and Daniel begin 2 Kings in this episode. King Ahaziah has an accident and is worried that he may not recover so he sends messengers to inquire of false gods. God sends Elijah to tell him that he will not recover resulting in the King trying to hunt down the Prophet at the expense of 102 lives. Have a listen! HWSS National Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you go to the events page. Registration is now open for the Here We Still Stand National Conference in San Diego, California. You want to come hang out with Chad Bird. You want to hang out with me.

You want to hang out with all the 1517 people and a whole bunch of your friends in October in sunny, gorgeous San Diego, California. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to 1517.org, find that event, and you can register today. Chad, big day, starting, well, new book, kind of. It's in the Bible. It's a new book. It is the second book of Kings, or the second half of Kings is probably a more appropriate way to say it. And it's going to pick up right where the other one left off. This isn't like, you know, when you're reading a series and a book ends and you pick up another book and it starts, you know, by painting some scene and you're waiting for maybe some familiar characters to show up.

um this is just right back into it this this reads like just the next chapter yeah yeah i just like they they got to the end of writing first kings and they were like man this scroll is getting long we're only like halfway i tell you what let's just stop it here grab another scroll and we'll start we'll start writing on it and i mean that it it's actually not uh a caricature that's pretty much probably what happened you know back then these were practical practical concerns these scrolls were big and so once it got to a certain length then you're either going to be dealing with a huge scroll or you just grab another one i'm pretty sure that's why luke and axe are two different volumes because if you try to put it on one

scroll it would have been would have been too big so yeah this is just kind of taking uh taking a practical approach cutting it in half and so we start with uh not what would sound like a the opening of a book, it says in verse 1, after the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against Israel. So we're just going to jump right back into the story. So Ahab, of course, we've heard a lot about over these last few chapters, along with Elijah, who was, of course, his chief nemesis, prophet against king. And in the last chapter of 1 Kings, Ahab dies, and then he is replaced by his son, Ahaziah. Now we're going to hear more about him in just a minute. In fact, he's going to be the focus of this first chapter. But we start out by hearing about Moab. Now,

really nothing is made of this at this point. It's going to be picked up again, I think, in 2 Kings 3. We're going to hear more about the rebellion of Moab, but this helps to kind of position it historically. I know what was going on elsewhere, and there may be some commentators think there may be a hint here that before this moab a gentile nation was controlled and then with the death of ahab this powerful king then the moabites rebelled which of course would not be unusual this happens a lot of times if you have a a vassal kingdom they see that the king who was over them dies will they take advantage of that opportunity to rebel because you got you know you got confusion between uh the death of one king the replacement of another and who knows if

the replacement king is going to be as strong and authoritative and powerful as the one who preceded him. So Moab basically takes advantage of the situation to rebel against Israel and try and achieve their independence. So that's the way it starts out, verse one, and then it immediately shifts to Ahab's son Ahaziah. And we'll find out, number one, what happened to him. Number two, what he tried to do about it, and then number three, how God's prophet Elijah stood in his way. So it starts out, verse two, by telling us about the situation. Ahaziah, we're told, fell through the lattice in his upper chamber in Samaria and lay sick. Probably what happened here is he fell out of a window. The Hebrew here is a little bit ambiguous. The word translated as lattice,

some of the dictionaries put like a window lattice and that kind of makes sense since this was something that happened in his upper chamber in Samaria so he's got a multi-level house for some reason who knows why we're not told he falls through no doubt injures himself in some way and now he's he's sick he's sick in bed so you're sick in bed what are you going to do well probably of course they consulted the physicians but evidently it was bad enough to where they thought they needed to consult a divine oracle to find out what's going to happen. So that's the way the story continues. After he falls through, he's sick, he sends messengers. And here's what he told them. He said, go inquire of Beelzebub or Baalzebub, however you want to

pronounce that. Beelzebub, I guess is the way we say this in English. Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover from this sickness. So we'll talk more about that name and kind of the significance of this in a minute. But one thing that's, I think, worthy of note right away is, you know, the Northern Kingdom, as we've seen throughout First Kings, started out badly. It started out with Jeroboam right away, fearing his people would go to the temple in Jerusalem, rebelled against him, and so he established the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, the northern and southern perimeters of his kingdom, and said, hey, that's where you can go to worship.

So Jeroboam, obviously a bad guy, an idolater. However, Jeroboam, at least when his son became ill, wanted to consult the prophet, and so he makes his wife dress up, disguised herself to go inquire the prophet. of Yahweh. That's the prophet that he was going to. Now here we see a few generations later, Ahaziah is not even worried about finding the true prophet. In fact, he is going to go outside the borders of Israel and consult with a foreign god, the god of Ekron, Ekron being one of the Philistine cities. So he's, I point this out because it's like things have gone from bad to worse in other words uh bad enough with jeroboam and now they're wanting to consult uh someone

outside the borders of israel and a god other than than yahweh isn't that kind of how this works too like if you're in your own life even if you feel like you've uh you're far from god or you've done a bunch of things that have displeased god or you have not been concerned about god and something happens, you will find some other way to find comfort or get an answer. You'd be like, well, me and God are not on speaking terms right now. He's probably very irritated with me. It makes sense that you would, in a moment, what you would like to see is in a moment, in a dire moment, maybe you come back to your senses, right? You do some prodigal son stuff, and you come it could read that he lay sick in his bed and came to his sentences and said

go find a prophet of yahweh and maybe this could be a great thing and that would be better but he doesn't because him and yahweh are are not in relationship yeah that's that's true when you were talking i was thinking back to my own life and some i won't share the the the details but uh yeah sometimes when man i was convinced that uh number one god didn't want anything to do with me and that that i was uh you know i'd made him mad so many times that when it came for answers i wasn't i wasn't talking to him i wasn't i wouldn't look i was not consulting yahweh i was going to the god of ekron yes i was i was going somewhere somewhere else um thankfully in my case uh over over time god brought me to uh the point of repentance and

and seeking him but what you say is very true i mean i think the more you go down the road of idolatry uh and rebellion then the more you tend to inquire of the god of ekron or the god of whatever whatever it might be you know i was uh since we're on this topic uh i was going to bring this up in a minute we can talk about it now um it it is kind of interesting too how kind of the modern modern versions of this too uh both in our individual lives like we've been talking about but also but also in the church you know um in a minute we're going to hear this line from from elijah he says is it because there's no god in israel that you're going to inquire of bells above the God of Ekron. It's like, we, we are always looking for, um, uh, idols, if you will,

people to consult, uh, sometimes when, oftentimes when God has actually given us the answer, you know, so he's, he's told us a, and for whatever reason, we don't like a, and so we go and consult someone to say, you know, find out maybe they're going to say B or C or D, But if God has given us a clear word on something, well, then no more inquiries really need to be made because we have been we've been told exactly what what God wishes us to know. We there is there is kind of this this cultural tendency to want to almost idolize experts, I guess, is what I'm saying. You know, and certainly I'm not downplaying the importance of experts. but if god has told us that which is true that which we should do well then if an expert says something contrary to that well then it's pretty obvious who we should listen to oh and sometimes

we're prone to going and uh finding an expert who we believe is going to tell us the thing that we want to hear yeah yeah yeah so if you if you're wanting a word from a god and you don't you're concerned that maybe the the god of of israel is not going to give you that word maybe you go ask a different god that you like i think this god might and you know what what usually happens in these situations is you'll go and ask the the false god will i recover and he'll say something like you will recover if you do this thing and it's like is there a prescription like you're actually looking for a prescription do i need to do these things do i need to sacrifice 12 you know bulls do i need to what do i need to do what do i need to do to recover from this sickness

and yahweh probably not going to give you that he's probably just going to tell you yes or no yeah yeah well that is the way of all the gods of the world they're all quid pro quo gods right they all they all work with transactionalism that's the way all the idols of the world are if you want something from an idol then the idol demands that you give him something first and And so you give him the gift, he gives you something in return. And I mean, that is the way the world works. No free lunches, right? So you have to, and then we translate that into the theological realm all the time.

And we do this with idols, and we try and do this with God, of course, as well. You know, thinking, if I give up this, then God will love me. Or if I do this, then God will be pleased with me. That's certainly the way that idols work, but that's not the way that God works, because he loved us before we did anything good or good or bad. It's a little Jacob and Esau thing, right? That's the way that God works. He doesn't work with quid pro quo.

Back to the name itself. This is kind of fascinating history here. So the name itself of this god of Ekron, Beelzebub, there's a couple of different ways that this is sometimes explained. I mean, we're all familiar with Baal. We've heard a lot about Baal. This is probably a case where it's kind of a local manifestation of the god Baal. This happened with other gods as well.

So it's Baal, but it's like he was maybe there was supposedly some manifestation of him at Ekron. And so he got this name Beelzebub. So what exactly does it mean? Well, literally, the Zebub part means flies. In fact, this is where they get the title of the famous novel, Lord of the Flies. So Beelzebub means Lord of the Flies. Now, is this meant to be taken literally? Some scholars will argue that, well, he was like a god of the plagues of insects,

or maybe he was represented under the icon of a fly. But that's a minority opinion. And most people think that this is a case like plenty of other cases in the Old Testament where the name was deliberately changed, deliberately altered in order to make fun of the deity. Now, the most common way this happens is names that were originally Baal were changed in Hebrew to Boshet, which means shame. so a person i think was it was it uh saul's son that was named uh ishbaal but most of the time he's called ishboshet so instead of man of baal his name is is changed deliberately making fun of it to uh to man of shame so most scholars think that beelzebub originally was beelzebul z-e-b-u-l which would mean bail the prince so they altered it from z-e-b-u-l zabul to zubub

so instead of it being bail the prince it becomes bail of the flies or lord lord of the flies now what's that's just kind of interesting if you like words uh but i think what what's most interesting to me is how over time when we get to the gospels beelzebub uh really is no longer viewed in light of this background but instead that name is understood as another name for the prince of demons for for satan himself of course you have this famous accusation that the scribes the Pharisees, or whoever it is, level against Jesus. You know, it's by Beelzebub that you're doing what you're doing. Yeah, well, he cast out a demon.

This is in Matthew 10. And Jesus cast out a demon, and the Pharisees say, it is by the power of Beelzebub, or the prince of demons, that he cast out demons. So they use this as an insult, an accusation against Jesus to say, well, the reason the demons listen to you is because you are the prince of demons, or the lord of demons, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So in essence, kind of accusing Jesus of being a modern Ahaziah, right?

Like he's he's just like Ahaziah was going to inquire of Beelzebub. So, well, Jesus is in league with Beelzebub. And so that's the reason he has that's reason he has his power. uh it seems to me what's going on with this transference of of names from a particular philistine deity in the old testament to now being the name of the prince of demons is that the name the name change itself is really not much of a change in this sense that the power behind the reality the dark reality behind all of these idols including beelzebub has always been the devil right it's the same thing that paul says in uh first corinthians where he talks about those who sacrifice to idols they sacrifice to demons so the true power in other words behind

the idols are are the demonic forces and that is evident with this this uh this name being implied later to Satan himself. It also seems very unlikely that Jesus is doing anything by the power of Beelzebub or is Beelzebub when he's about to show up. Yes, right. Yeah, he's about to show up here in 2 Kings chapter 1. Interesting connection then back to Matthew 10, right? Yeah. We have the name, and then all of a sudden Jesus shows up. And then Matthew 10, you have jesus being there and falsely accused with this this particular name so uh verse three is where we have this it says the uh the malak which in esv and almost every english translation is translated as angel but it's messenger the messenger of yahweh said to elide to the

tishbite not to be another occasion not to be confused with a messenger from yahweh yes not to be confused with a messenger but this is the the malak the messenger the one who bears the word of the Father, right? So this is another Christ appearance, another Christophany in the Old Testament. This isn't the first time that Jesus has paid a visit to Elijah. We saw other occasions, especially when he fled from Jezebel. He hightailed it down to Mount Sinai. Jesus met him in the wilderness, took care of him, fed him, and then appeared to him again there at Mount Sinai. Another kind of contrast, I suppose you could say, is that you can't see in the English, and that is that, so Ahaziah sends malakim, he sends messengers, telling them to go

inquire of this Philistine God, but then the messenger of the Lord shows up. So this is, I can't remember the context, we've seen this before though, where a king sends human messengers And then all of a sudden, the messenger of God shows up with the truth. So Jesus says to Elijah, the messenger of Yahweh says to Elijah, the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and say to them, Is it because there is no God in Israel that you're going to inquire of Beelzebub, the god of Ekron? Now, therefore, thus says Yahweh, You shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up,

but you shall surely die. And so Elijah went. So that's the, that's the message basically saying to Ahaziah, you can attempt to consult this, this idol all you want. It's not going to make any difference. He's impotent. Instead, what's going to happen is what Elijah is going to announce to you. You're not recovering. Whatever your illness is, you're not, you're not getting over it. A death sentence has been pronounced upon you. So what happens? They didn't get very far evidently because verse five says the messengers came back they returned to the king and he said to them why have you returned we're not told how long it's like but kind of the impression you get is that uh he sends them and you're like an hour later they get back and he's

like what are you doing here i sent you on this you know mission to ekron to consult of uh this god what are you doing back and they said to him there came a man to meet us and said to us go back to the king who sent you and say to him thus says yahweh is it because there is no god in israel that you're going to inquire of beelzebub the god of ekron therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up but you shall surely die in other words they're telling the king the exact thing that the messenger of Yahweh said for Elijah to say. So Elijah meets them, delivers this message, but at this point they don't know who he is evidently. So the king says, what kind of guy was this? What kind of man was he who came to meet you and told you these

things and they answered him he wore a garment of hair with a belt of leather about his waist and he said and you could almost i could almost hear the exasperation of this in his voice when he was when he replies it's elijah the tishbite it's like i knew it i knew i because of course He knows who Elijah is. His dad has had to deal with him all these years. And so Ahaziah's response is the exact replica of the same kind of response that his that his dad used all the time when Elijah would meet him. You know, it was always frustrating because Elijah only spoke ill concerning him. And he's always, you know, he called him an enemy one time when he when he came up to Elijah. So Ahaziah is now caught in the exact same situation that his situation that his dad had been in.

Yeah, this description of Elijah is important because you get this description of John the Baptist later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you ever wonder why John was dressed so weird, camel's hair by the belt around his waist, it was because he was, you know, Elijah version 2.0. It wasn't, just to clarify, because you probably get asked this question on occasion too, uh i have a number of times you know was was uh john the baptist elijah come back from the dead you know kind of a reincarnation of of elijah well not well not well not back from the dead because you know elijah doesn't die but uh i think it's funny when people ask that question

because the the answer is um if you really want to just like get uh weird with it you just quote jesus and say if you're willing to accept it he is elijah and this is this is how jesus answers this question which doesn't seem that helpful you know so when people a lot john the baptist will say i am not elijah jesus will say but if you're willing to accept it he is like so the answer to the question is john elijah is no but yes and what that means is that like is he actually Elijah back? Did God take Elijah into heaven, which we'll get there, and then send him back as John the Baptist? No. The answer to this is in the spirit of Elijah. So he is a prophet like Elijah. So before John arrives, and you can tell me if you agree with this, Chad, as far as I see

it. So you have an amount of transfiguration even. You have Jesus and Elijah and Moses. And Elijah is sort of considered the chief of all prophets. I mean, he is the prophet that God took to heaven. If nothing else, this sets him apart. He's a different kind of guy. He might not have even been the prophet that did the most amazing things or said the most amazing things, but in the Jewish mind, it seems that he is a premier prophet because he is the prophet

that they are waiting for to potentially return because he never died. They do this at Passover, and they say, maybe Elijah comes back, right? john is that uh yeah is he actually elijah back from heaven no but he is as jesus will say now the greatest prophet that's ever lived so in some ways elijah has been replaced in the hierarchy of prophets by john who has come looking like elijah sometimes sounding like elijah and this is why jesus says if you're willing to accept this fact that that john is elijah in the sense that he holds that position now of greatest prophet i mean jesus will say greatest man who has ever lived yeah so you can almost say elijah did die but only when john died right right yeah yeah

i mean he is uh uh so is he elijah you know come down from heaven and and you know reincarnated no but uh as we read in luke chapter one he comes in the spirit and power of elijah so is he elijah yes in that sense he certainly is you know he is he is the one that malachi spoke of he's the one who would precede the coming of of the messiah and he has that he has that prophetic mantle of elijah which says like i am i am the chief prophet now like there's a there's a new a new king a new chief prophet has been has been established and it's the most unlikely person ever out in the wilderness yeah yeah so i mean you can't really understand uh the old testament elijah apart from john nor can you really understand john apart from the old testament

elijah you've got to look at these guys uh together if you really want to understand what their what their ministry was was all about and i think so that's why john dresses the way that he does yeah and i think jesus words of if you're willing to accept it he is elijah is to say are that this is a difficult thing to understand one but two that if you're willing to accept that this man that just seems like a nobody and and a little bit wild is actually and especially if you're speaking to a bunch of jews saying this is the greatest prophet there's ever been this seems like a tough a tough thing to believe and he's like if you're willing to accept it this is the new elijah yeah yeah this is this is the guy and everything about his ministry

pointed to that of course obviously what he wore but also where he was at right if you and we see this we're going to see this in the next chapter in second kings 2 when elijah's taken up into heaven but where does that take place well it takes place at the jordan so of course that's where the ministry of john the baptist has to take place as well and one of the things that's associated real closely with with elijah and we've seen this already in the uh the mount carmel standoff is fire fire falls from heaven consumes of course the sacrifices the wood the the water everything and um and we'll see in just a few more verses that once more elijah calls down fire from heaven and then he's taken up in the chariot of fire so you can't really think about elijah the

prophet apart from fire in his ministry at a fiery ministry we might say and then of course that same language is echoed by john the baptist as well when he talks about uh fire in his in his messages i think even the stuff that john says where i mean what is what is elijah constantly doing like everything in the worship practices of israel are all crooked but everything is crooked and elijah is attempting to straighten things out right to to put things back in order and this the same kind of thing that john says he comes to do he says he that the messiah he's saying that the promised one is about to arrive and that he is there to make straight the path right so everything is also correct like the religious system it's different than an elijah's day but

it's just as crooked it's every everything is out is out of sorts and john is there to try to make the path straight uh for the arrival of the messiah and this just occurred to me i had never made this connection before. Um, and I thought it before about how, uh, of course, Elijah has his confrontations with, with Ahab and here with, with Ahab's son, uh, just like John the Baptist, of course, rebukes the King for, uh, for his unlawful marriage. I thought of that connection before, but I had not thought of the fact that even more than Ahab being the adversary of Elijah as jezebel and then who ends up actually being responsible for the the death of elijah it's not so much the king it's the king's wife yeah i mean that harry doesn't want to behead john

yeah this is not something he desires to do yeah but uh his wife is one who orchestrates that yes so yet another connection between uh between the two so in other words uh always read about elijah with john in mind and always read about john with i think i think you even see not to just linger on this point but whatever it's our podcast um the i think even like his his elijah's confrontation was sort of the false prophets and a and john the baptist confrontation with the sort of false religious leaders of his day i mean do you hear the kind of words that john says i mean like the pharisees and the scribes come out to to witness what he's doing and of course they're not there to

let's see if we should accept this guy as they're there to try to figure out what's going on and why all these people are going out to this freak out in the wilderness and John is the kind of guy that says Elijah kind of things where he just casts his eyes up there and says you brood of vipers who

warned you to flee from the wrath to come this sort of thing and John is at war with a religious system the same way that Elijah was at war with a religious system and he's taking on the leaders of that system and they don't like it um there's a lot i mean it it's it's be hard to miss all the things that are mirrored between the two and that's helpful too i think for us to understand the the idolatrous nature

of the first century religious system i mean idolatry in the old testament is is blatant it's really easy for us to see i mean we see it here because little little calves made out of gold it's real easy yeah i mean it's like it's it's obvious blatant idolatry you know when you have a golden calf or when you have the king sending messengers to inquire of this philistine god well of course that's kind of idolatry that's unmissable it's a little bit more difficult though when you get into into the first century because of course you don't have sadducees and pharisees and scribes and all them setting up golden calves you don't have the same kind of idolatry taking place in the first century but you have money changes in the temple yeah you can money change into the

simple uh but i mean the point is that that the more subtle the idolatry is uh doesn't in some way subtract from the seriousness of the idolatry no i mean the pharisees obviously made tradition in uh in all of the kind of the their their obsession with with legalism that was their god That was their Beelzebub in the first century. Yeah, I mean, at the very least, what you have is Yahweh is not being represented by the people who are tasked with representing him. These religious leaders are not painting a clear picture of God for the people, and so they've erected something else in its place. This is what John comes to address And then ultimately what Jesus comes to

Fully address and gets him killed But this is the same thing That Elijah's doing I think you can say pretty safely That in Elijah's day Nor in John's day Is Yahweh represented Or delivered to the people

In an accurate way Yeah Yeah so it's all forms of Idolatry it's just some's more blatant Some of them were subtle, but it's the subtle ones that are always, I wouldn't say always, but often more dangerous because they're not as easily seen. We're the same way. If somebody's a member of a different religion, it's easy for us to say, well, obviously, okay, you're worshiping this other god. Okay, clearly, you're not a Christian because you wouldn't even claim to be.

That's not even the Christian god. but it's the same now like legalism is just as much idolatry but it's way sneakier because it looks like it pretends to be righteousness it pretends to be holiness and all these good things but it still obstructs the path to god it's almost like satan uh was was learning as he went along that the best way to disguise himself is as an angel of light yes as the as the god of this world So he was almost theologically evolving, as it were, to understand how best to deceive people. And it's a lot easier to deceive people in subtle ways than by setting up golden calves. Absolutely. Well, I mean, the devil's not God, so he doesn't know all things.

So I assume he learns. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So we find out he—it's Elijah the Tishbite. The king says that. So the king decides—we're at verse 9. And the Kings decides that he's going to just kind of, you know, he's going to take care of the situation. He's just basically going to arrest Elijah. I'm sure that's going to turn out well for him. It's like he did not learn anything from from his father.

So he sends a captain with 50 guys. So here's this here's this military leader. He's got his 50 guys. They go up to Elijah. He's sitting on top of a of a hill. this could also be translated as as mountain uh har is the kind of general word for hills or for or for mountains so he's he's on the top he's almost kind of picture this as a moses moment right he's up on his his hill or he's up on his up on his mountain he's way up high so they have

to go up to him and they go up and they say this feels like just such a weirdo like this reads like Think about this scenario. He gets this word from Elijah, and in my mind, he's like, oh, yeah, well, if I'm going to die, guess who else is going to die? I'm not going out alone. I'm going to take this guy out with me. Take 50 guys. That seems like a lot of guys for one guy.

Take 50 dudes and go find him. And where is Elijah? He's just, like, sitting Indian-style up on a hill or something. That's exactly the picture I had in my head. He's just, like, sitting there, and he's just waiting. waiting for some of his he knows they're coming he's just waiting there not hiding he's just chilling up on top

of this hill he at least didn't run away this time right like he ran to Sinai that time he's just sitting there and they say to him oh man of God the king says come down but Elijah

answered the captain of 50 if I am a man of God oh this is this is so brutal if i am a man of god let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your 50 and no surprise fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his and his 50 play on words by the way here uh in the hebrew uh if if i am an ish of god let ash come down from heaven and consume you so ish is man fire is ash so if i am that you call me a man of god well if i'm a man

of god let me show you what a man of god can do and then it's mount uh not carmel all all over again except this time the fire falls and consumes the guys who came to arrest him uh not not an altar well i know this now you're about to get the definition of insanity that's yeah that's precisely what i was thinking this morning when i was going over this this is this is insanity let's keep repeating the same thing and see if we get different results verse 11 again the king sent to him another captain of 50 men with his 50. How'd you like to be this captain? King calls you, hey, I got a job for you. You know that first guy I sent out with his 50 guys? Well, they got burned up. Elijah barbecued them. So I want you to go and do the exact same thing. Well, this guy,

he's a man who follows orders. He does that. He answered, said to him, oh man of god this is the king's order come down quickly even as an adverb right the other guy that said come down this guy says come down and make haste about it elijah says the same thing well if i am a man of god let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your 50 and it did fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his 50 so now we got uh we have 102 dead guys all killed by fire from heaven. I feel like the second guy added this one part to you where he says this is the king's order.

The initial guy says, the king says, come down. This guy comes up and says, listen, this is the king's order. I got nothing to do with this. You need to come down quickly. Yeah. He was changing things up a little bit, hoping for better results. It didn't happen. Now we have a third guy, Robert Alter.

in his translation and commentary points out this is kind of a this is a often a pattern you've seen in literature where a and b will happen pretty much the same thing and it's c it's the third thing that differs so you'll have two two similar scenarios right after one another and then the third is where things diverge that's what happens here so again the king sent a captain of of uh another 50 guys now this guy is smart he's seen what happens he's learning from other people's mistakes. And so when he comes up, first thing he does, on his knees, falls on his knees before Elijah and doesn't say anything like, hey, this is the king's orders or barking commands. He entreated him and said, oh man of God, please let my life and the life of these 50 servants of yours

be precious in your sight. Behold, fire came down from heaven and consumed the two former captains of 50 men with their 50s now let my life be precious in your sight yeah this is even when he went with the whole passive route he didn't say behold you cast fire down from heaven it's just like fire came down from heaven and killed these other guys uh please be be gracious and uh it was smart move because then jesus shows up again the messenger of yahweh says to elijah go down with him. Don't be afraid of him. So Elijah did. He got up, went down with him to the king, and all of this, all this loss of life, all of this delay, and nothing whatsoever changed, because when Elijah got to the king, here's what he said. Thus says Yahweh, because you have sent messengers to

inquire of Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, is it because there is no god in Israel to inquire of word therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up but you shall surely die you know the implication here is that he might not have died if he had just asked yahweh i mean yeah this is the implication of this yeah this is what i said like i don't no i don't know i don't know for sure what was going to happen but i know for sure what's going to happen now yeah we we've seen this multiple times where people are given a chance to change, to inquire of the Lord, to repent, and yet most of the time they steadfastly refused to do that. So verse 17 says that he died according to the word of the Lord that Elijah had

spoken. And then his brother Jehoram became king in his place in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat. Now here's where we get confusing, because at least for a time we got a king in the north and a king in the south same name so Jehoram is going to Jehoram the the other son of Ahab the brother of of Ahaziah who just died he's going to be the king in the north but there's also going to be a son of Jehoshaphat in the south whose name is also Jehoram but anyway his brother takes over because Ahaziah had no son so he doesn't have an heir and so instead of it passing to somebody else that passes to his his brother and then we're told the rest of the acts of ahaziah that he did are they not written the book the chronicles of the kings of israel

and that takes us through the end of second kings chapter one that's it man and we are out of time but we did manage to get through one chapter with a long you know uh bunny trail not really bunny trail is there the connections are there but we're connecting some john the baptist dots but which was fun all right man next week we will get uh into why people might think john the baptist would be elijah uh because elijah is going to do something that very few people do and that's escape death yeah it's going to be a fun chapter yeah for sure yeah so we will cover that next week chad i'll see you then all right see you then We'll see you next time.