40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 13:6-25 (Episode 337)

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Joash seeks help from a sick and old Elisha but doesn't strike the ground with arrows enough times. Elisha dies and a nameless man ends up being buried with him and comes back to life. And sometimes it's the faith of others that results in God being merciful to you. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 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 and check out all the other podcasts are living over there along with all the other things that we're doing over there which is a lot of things daily articles there's conference videos there's conferences there's academies there's preaching helps there's so much stuff also we're about to hit a real significant marker on the youtube channel just need a couple more subscribers to really to hit that that number that we've been trying to hit for a while so if you're not subscribed to the youtube channel you should go over there and subscribe to the youtube channel also just because there's a lot of good

stuff on the youtube channel there is a ton of content over there so get over there the youtube channel just look up 1517 in your search bar on youtube and subscribe to that chad we are in second kings chapter 13 we had uh joe ash get assassinated so that wasn't great uh so he he got taken out by his fellow countrymen. We also have the son of Jehu is going to reign, and he's not his dad. This is most certainly true. He's not his dad. Instead, it says he began to reign over Israel and Samaria, and he reigned 17 years, and guess what? Shocker, he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Crazy. I've never heard that before. Yeah, he did what was evil in the side of the Lord. In other words, I'm assuming this has to do with idolatry. This is the thing

that is evil on the side of the Lord. Pretty good assumption. Yeah. And God doesn't like this, so he says, how would you like to have the Assyrians come down and do a little oppression on you and see if this will make you call out to me? And sure enough, it does turn out that way. And I think, you know, as we ended this, one of the things that's interesting about how God operates, you see this in Habakkuk. So one of the things that I love about Habakkuk is God tells Habakkuk, hey, get a rock and start chiseling.

I'm about to tell you something that's going to be worth remembering. And you're like, ooh, what is this? He's like, I'm sending the Assyrians. That's what's going to happen. And you're like, okay, dang, you're going to send the Assyrians. and God sends the Assyrians. And then like the next chapter, God's like, who do these Assyrians think they are oppressing my people?

Yeah, that happens. It happens with some frequency. And that's kind of what happens here where God's like, all right, you're not going to have me as your God. You're going to be an idolater. I'm just going to let the Assyrians have their way with you. And the people cry out and God says, I really don't like the way these Assyrians are oppressing my people.

I'm going to do something about this. yeah that's uh this is a song that's on repeat quite often uh whether it's the syrians or assyrians or babylonians or persians yeah that's that's typically what god will do because ultimately they're an instrument in the hand of the lord but what they what the instrument begins to think is oh i'm just doing all this on my own and of and they always do much more than what god ever wanted them to so god will turn right around and then he'll show favor to his people, just like it says in 2 Kings 13, 4, when they sought the Lord's favor. Well, God was all ears, sees the oppression of Israel, how the king of

Syria oppressed them. And so verse five, which I think is where we left off last time, God gave Israel a savior. So they escaped from the hand of the Syrians and the people of Israel lived in their homes as formerly. I think at the end of the last episode, we talked about who this savior might be. Possibly it was Elisha, possibly a general or somebody else. We're not given a name. But whoever it was, they were the Moshiach,

which is from Yashah, to save, to rescue. So God gave them this Savior. And then we read verse 6. One of these neverthelesses. So God saves them, and you can guarantee that whatever follows the

nevertheless is not going to be good. god saves them nevertheless what did they what did they not do well of course they didn't depart from the sins of the house of jeroboam uh that infamous founder of the northern kingdom which he made israel to sin but walked in them and the asherah also remained at samaria so you got your you got your asherah typically spoken of as the asherah pole some kind of icon of the the goddess who's the consort of that popular god, Baal. So you've got Baal worshipped, you still have Asherah worshipped, you've got the same things going on,

even though God saved them, nevertheless they continued to do just as they had been doing. Yeah, there's a distinction here too, where didn't depart, but you get this little add-on, but walked in them. So weren't neutral. uh it wasn't it wasn't just that like they didn't you know tear them all down return back to fidelity to god or anything like that but actually right after this deliverance they pursued that they

walked they kept down this path right they kept they were there's a direct there's a a you can go two directions here and they went in the wrong one actively i just walked in them feels like an active thing right yeah yeah definitely so i mean this is this is the history of israel right god saves them from from egypt what's the first thing that they do when they have a chance and make a golden calf you know god rescues them from hunger or from thirst or whatever it might be and they turn right around and rebel rebel against i mean that is the characteristic of of the sinner's heart no matter how many it's so frustrating uh for for every christian who's at least honest with himself or herself you know how many times does god do good things for us and then

we turn right around and yeah we're poking our nose in some idolatry or other uh the heart that goes the heart that goes astray so god keeps doing what he always does he calls us back he shows mercy and continues to give us a savior, which is a different savior than here in verse 5. He gives us the ultimate capital S Savior. So that's what he did for them. They walked in those ways. And then verse 7 says,

there was not left to Jehoahaz, an army of more than 50 horsemen and 10 chariots and 10,000 footmen, because the king of Syria, Hazael, he destroyed them and made them, here's your simile like the dust at threshing now i've never threshed but i we we know how threshing floors worked uh you know you threw threw it up in the air and what happens the dust and the chaff they blow away that's an image from psalm 1 right the the the man of the lord

the messiah what does he do he meditates in the law of the lord day and night he's like a tree planted by streams of water but who are the wicked like chaff which the wind drives away so chaff or dust i mean it's all mixed together at threshing so makes them like the the dust or the chaff at threshing destroy them basically and then uh we have this uh concluding verse the rest of the acts of jehovah has and all that he did and his might are they not written in that book that we have not yet got to the chronicles of the kings of israel so Jehoahaz he slept with his father as they bury him in Samaria and Joash his son reigned in his in his place so that wraps up Jehoahaz uh then we'll see what what happens next year

in the 37th year of Joash king of Judah Jehoash again this is the same kind of back and forth here joe ash joe ash some it's written two different ways you know jim and james uh bob and robert same person danny and different spelling danny and dan yeah yeah some people like longer names some people like shorter names and it just so happens here they're just kind of mixed mixed in the same text so joe ash or joe ash uh the son of joe has so the son of the guy who was made like dust at threshing. He starts to reign over Israel, Samaria. He reigns

16 years, and I know, get ready for the surprise, verse 11, he also did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, of course, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel

to sin, and here we have language again, he walked in them. This is like a broken record, man. I don't know how many times we've heard this kind of stuff. Anytime, it's so predictable. Northern king, he didn't depart. He walked in the sins of, and you never have to guess whose name is in the blank. It's always going to be Jeroboam.

I've become convinced as we've worked our way through the Old Testament. Now I've read the Old Testament before. But as you walk through it slowly, you know, discussing each sort of part of it, it seems to me that Jeroboam is now, in my mind, the most famous sinner in all of Scripture. Now, I'm sure that just your average Christian, you said, who's the most famous sinner in Scripture? Who's the sinner in Scripture whose sin is always brought up? They might have a list of people. I bet you Jared Boehm is on it, but I haven't done this math, but I'm almost willing to bet everything I own that no one's sin is brought up more than this dude's.

That's a great point. Yeah, it's so true. I'll have to do a little search here to see how many times the sins of Jeroboam are mentioned in the scriptures. But it's a whole lot more than the sins of Adam or the sins of David or the sins of Judas Iscariot. I mean, whoever you think of is like,

yeah, that guy's the sinner. Well, yeah, but his sin is not mentioned nearly as many times as our friend Jeroboam. Dude, I bet you it's not close. I mean, I'm fairly familiar with the Bible, And I don't know if it's close, man. It seems this guy's sin is brought up all the time. And what was this sin?

Idolatry. Idolatry. He is just like the poster child for the sin that God really can't stand. Idolatry. That's his sin. That was, like, when it says the sin of Jeroboam, it ain't talking about anything else. It's talking about idolatry. And, yeah, bummer for this guy.

I think you're the most read book in the history of the world, and you are the most notorious sinner that's ever lived, apparently. That's why I'm sure you're the same as me. I'm very glad I did not live in biblical times. I don't need that written down. I don't need my sins recorded in the most popular book in human history. Sermons preached against me. Today, our reading is describing the sin of Chad. All of Chad's sons walked in the sins of Chad.

Yeah, let's get into it. We've got all the gory details here. No, I'm kind of glad I lived when I did. Yeah. But it's an interesting point, though, because it does tell you, there's a lot of sinners in the Bible that committed a lot of sins that seem, in our mind, kind of worse or ickier or whatever than Jeroboam, but he's the one that gets brought up over and over and over again.

Oh, yeah. I mean, you ask these people, ask anybody, including Christians today, which is worse, incest or idolatry? Of course, incest is worse. Which is worse, rape or murder, rape and murder or idolatry? Well, of course, all that you could just list the sins, you know, whatever in people's minds. No sins are all in the Bible. And no sins are all in the Bible. Yeah, they're all there. But who is the sinner and what is the sin of that sinner that is on repeat? I'm sure, you know, it's like if the author of 1 and 2 Kings would have been working with a MacBook Air, you know, he would save that whole line about walking in the sins of Jeroboam.

He just pasted it. Yeah, he just pasted it. When he was writing his book, he was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to have to write this again. He's got it, like, memorized. Needs some kind of shorthand for that. Because it comes up over and over and over. So that is the sin that the Bible itself repeatedly puts before us. Because, of course, as we all know, the first commandment is the commandment.

There really is only one commandment. All the other ones are just kind of, you know, footnotes to that. You shall have no other gods. and all the other commandments are nothing more than a an implication and an application of that the the sin is always idolatry yep so uh yeah that's what he that's what he did he walked in them and then same thing again here the rest of the acts of joash and all that he did in the might with which he fought against amaziah king of judah a guy that we're going to hear about in just a minute they are also written in that book of the chronicles of the kings of israel so he

slept with his fathers and then jeroboam sat on his throne this is of course not the jeroboam that we've been talking about this is jeroboam the second so um if any of you are uh out there are expecting a child yeah if jeroboam is on the name list cross it off yeah nah it's up there with Jezebel. Don't ever name your daughter Jezebel. Don't ever name your son Jeroboam. So this guy did. Joash named his son after the founder of the northern kingdom, the guy whose name is mentioned in connection with sin more than anybody else in the whole Bible, Jeroboam. He sits on the throne. Joash is buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel. So, you know, not a whole lot's told us about this guy. And now, the moment that everyone has been waiting for,

That's why you listen to this episode. We get to hear about the last acts, last words of Elisha. And I know, Dan, you've talked about this before. You're probably excited to get to this too. The bones. Yeah. Oh, yeah. This is a guy.

I mean, you know, we might do a lot. We might do a little in whatever amount of life our Lord gives to each of us. but i don't think any of us are going to continue to do things even after we're dead yeah not great and mighty things like uh our friend elisha is is going to do so i don't want to get too far ahead let's uh let's see what happens to our to our buddy here so verse 14 says uh now when elisha had fallen sick with the illness of which he was to die i don't know what this was but serious we don't know how old he was either but uh serious illness he's gonna die from it so his days are numbered and joash goes to see him now this is the same joash that we just uh laid to rest okay

so we talked about earlier so this is kind of a this shows that the bible does not always operate in chronological sequence in fact quite frequently it does not operate in chronical chronological sequence and this is one of those many examples of that so a guy that we've already heard is dead And now we're going to come back to him and see what he does and what Elisha is going to say to him. Kind of have a little symbolic actions taking place here. So Joash goes to see him and wept before him. This is kind of a different side of some of these northern kings. And the Bible will often do this, too, where it'll portray these guys as just, you know, dog ugly with regard to their religion.

And then you'll see this side of them where it's like, well, it's kind of funny. he's like, he's crying. He's weeping before the prophets. So, uh, maybe there's, you know, more to the story than we might've assumed before. So he goes to see him, he's crying and he says, uh, he actually, this is kind of ironic. He quotes Elisha to Elisha. He says, my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. Of course, those are the exact words that elisha used when elijah was taken up in the in the chariot into heaven so this is probably at least from from my reading this is often put forward as kind of a proverbial expression for a leader like this guy who is who is on his deathbed elisha he is kind of the chariots of

Israel and its horsemen. He's a father. He's a father. He's such a powerful figure in Israel that he's like the embodiment of chariots and horses. He's kind of a spiritual patriarch. I don't know, something like that. That's the way it's most of the time explained. So Elisha says to him, here's what I want you to do. Get your bow, get some arrows. So I'm sure the king's like, okay why would i do that but he he does it so he grabs his bow grabs his arrows and uh he said to the that the prophet said to the king now draw the bow so he draws it and elijah laid his hands on the king's hands i guess maybe you know transferring power or something like that whatever's going on he puts his hands on the king's hands while he has the the bow drawn

and then he says uh open the window eastward um yeah hopefully he like opened the window before he drew the bow he's going to release the bow okay draw the bow you only open the window so he opens the window uh and then i guess he draws the bow again and eliza says shoot so he releases the arrow and i this is a kind of a symbolic action of course shooting eastward kind of kind of in the general direction of where there's going to be a battle because here's what the prophet says the lord's arrow of victory uh lord's arrow of of salvation we could also translate that that hebrew word to shua so the lord's arrow of victory or salvation the arrow of victory over syria for you shall fight the syrians in afek until you have made an end of them so of course you know you get

the symbolism just like this arrow went forth out of the window eastward so the lord's arrow of victory of salvation is going to be shot from the bows of the king and his soldiers and they're going to win this great victory over this enemy that we've been hearing so much about the syrians all right well that's good so far right so uh that's that's i mean that's that's all good message for the king. But then he goes on, verse 18. Elisha says, take the arrows. So he takes the arrows. And then he said to the king, strike the ground with them. So beat those arrows on the ground. So he did, but he messed up. He struck three times and then he stopped. Verse 19 says, then the man of God, Elisha, was angry with him and said, you should have struck five or six times.

then you would have struck down syria until you had made an end of them that is like a complete end of them but now you will strike down syria only three times i feel i gotta be honest this feels unfair uh i feel like i thought the same thing when i read that i hit him you didn't tell me how many times yeah it's like the ground i could have hit him once i did it three times like I mean, why are you angry? That's like me being angry with, I don't know, with my daughter because I tell her, hey, take out the trash in the kitchen or whatever, and then she does, and I'm like, you should have taken out the trash

everywhere in the whole house. Wow, you didn't tell me to do that. I have lack of I'm not being disobedient I just don't have all the information here yeah you can't feel a little bit sorry for the king you'd be like I did it three times

not enough should have done it five or six minimum so incomplete you know whether I think it's fair or not I guess if you just said strike those arrows on the ground as many times as you would like to defeat Syria I'd just spend the rest of the day beating these arrows

on the ground i'd have yeah yeah he busted uh into pieces by the time i was done with him so uh you know first part he did good he shot the arrow all right there you go you're gonna get victory second time he didn't beat the arrows on the ground nearly enough should done it twice as much and so now uh only gonna get three victories against syria so good news not so good news maybe elijah's just like cranky he's about to die this is the very next verse is like so elijah died and so you're like so this guy we saw that with samuel samuel got like more and more kind of just a cranky old man he was dealing with saul it's like yeah it's like when the prophets get to a certain age you don't even want to you don't want to mess with them yeah it's probably

not going to be a good word by the what that you're going to hear from elijah's all old and sick and he's like this idiot king only hitting the ground three times i don't want to lose her so uh yeah that's it that those are the closing words uh the the last recorded words of our friend elisha now you will strike down syria only three times and then he died so um yeah verse uh so we're in second kings 13 verse 20 now and now we have a fun story this is a one i referred to earlier so i got something to say about it i know you got something to say about it so here's what happens i'll just read the verses elisha dies and they bury him now bands of moabites see nobody saw this coming when you're reading through the story no one would have liked you know we thought we

were here about the next king but no bands of moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year and as a man was being buried behold a marauding band was seen and the man was thrown into the grave of elisha and as soon as the man touched the bones of elisha he revived and stood on his feet take it away dan well i think this is two of the weirder verses in scripture i remember I talked about this once at a conference, and it was telling people, like, it's only two verses, you don't have to turn there, but you might want to turn there because you might not believe these two verses are in the Bible because there's nothing else like it. There's nothing, there's no context for it. It just feels really strange. Like, why is this in here?

What is going on? Marauding bands of Moabites, like, where did this come from? Like, this is not information that we've ever had before. why is there a guy being buried? Why is Elisha's grave accessible? Or you could just throw him in. The whole thing is just wild. Yeah, the whole thing's strange, yeah.

And so you're wondering, what am I supposed to do with this? Why is this in here? What's happening here? Okay, the story's crazy, first of all. So you have a guy died, and I think this part's important. The lack of details is important. so you have a guy who is he i don't know was he a good guy you don't know is he a bad guy you don't know what's his name i don't know no details about this person it's just a man

who's dead and they're burying him and these marauding moabites show up so they these guys panic and elisha's grave is open still i guess i don't know they're are they burying them together and they dug one grave, and Elisha, they put him in, and they dug another grave, and they haven't filled them both in yet, so they just threw him in there. I don't know what's going on. That's weird enough, but then as soon as he touches the bones of Elisha, which also makes me think, like, did they just bury Elisha,

or has Elisha been buried a long time? Like, I don't know what's going on here. We don't know how long it's been, yeah. Either way, he touches these bones of Elisha and comes back to life. Now, what did this guy go to do after this? I don't know. did he spend the rest of his life proclaiming retelling the story

let me talk about the time I died yeah I have no idea this dude you never hear about this person ever again don't know this guy's name like you would think this guy's name would be known all over the place don't know what this guy's name is what is the point

here I think the point is that you have this prophet like capital P prophet like this is there's prophets out there sons of prophets stuff but then you know Elijah, Elisha, Moses. Do you have guys that appear in Scripture that are like

the spokesmen for the Lord? These are the mouthpieces of God. The one who speaks the Word of God. That's who Elisha is. And this guy just happens to be lucky enough to be buried with the Word

of the Lord. And you know what that'll do? That will guarantee you a resurrection. And I think that that's what's being pictured here. It gets included in there that it doesn't matter who he was. It doesn't matter what he did. It doesn't matter what his name was. None of that stuff matters.

And none of that stuff matters for you and me either. The only thing that matters for this guy is who he was buried with. And this has implications later on for us because we're like, well, who are we buried with? Well, Paul will tell us in baptism that we're buried with Christ. Buried with Christ, yeah. This is better. So this guy probably dies again, I assume. He's buried with the prophet, the one who speaks the word of the Lord.

We're buried with the word made flesh in our baptism, buried to guarantee what? That when we rise again, to guarantee our resurrection, but this resurrection is permanent. And this doesn't matter who you are. Doesn't matter what you've done. Doesn't matter what your name is. None of that stuff matters. all that matters in this life as it pertains to the next life is who is chad bird buried with who is daniel price buried with who is the listener buried with i think that's what's going on here

which is really cool uh but if you do it is really cool if you don't put all that stuff in there it just becomes a crazy story that's fun but you have a hard time understanding what's going on but i think that's what's going on here yeah i like it i like it and it actually uh it uh what i was going to say dovetails with that uh very well so here's the way that uh another direction we can take this to uh and all the preachers out there they can take you i'm sure they may preaching on this once we're finished these verses it's too good it's too good not to preach on so the to give my my explanation uh which again compliments yours we get we got to read on just a couple more verses so after we hear about him reviving and standing on his feet we hear this

Now Hazael, king of Syria, the guy we've heard so much about, he oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. But the Lord was gracious to them and had compassion on them. And he turned toward them because of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them. Nor has he, I'm reading the ESV here, nor has he cast them from his presence until now. okay so the verb for the verb that's used for the the throwing of this dude which is shellac the throwing of the dude into the grave of elisha and the verb that's that's used for god casting them from his presence those are both the same verb i have no idea why translations do this these are like so one's in verse 21 one's in verse 23 they're two verses apart exact same

Berb in Hebrew, and they chose to translate it one place as thrown and one place as cast. They could have translated them both as throw, but they didn't. Anyway, so the guy is thrown into the grave of Elisha. He comes back to life. And then we hear about God, what he's later going to do. He's going to throw the Israelites from his presence. This is exile that's going on. so what so when when these people like the guy who died go into the grave of exile and that is often a picture of of what exile is like you're in you're in death you're in the grave you're cut off from god what hope are you going to have to be drawn from that grave what hope do you have to return from exile in other words to use the kind of the broader biblical imagery what hope

do you have to be brought back to life well your connection with just what you were saying dan your connection with basically the word of god uh that that that elisha embodied like you said he was the prophet he was the word of the lord now another kind of to kind of bring this full circle then uh the the image of standing reviving and standing on his feet which is what happened to the guy that touched the bones of elisha that is that is the language that's used by ezekiel when he saw all the bones in the valley and then they had flesh and then he prophesied to the breath to the the ruach the spirit and they come back to life they are resurrected so you put all of what you said what i said you put all that together and this is a resurrection story

obviously it's an it's a return from exile story it's a restoration story all of those things together but the core of it is that what hope did this guy this anonymous guy have what hope did israel have what hope do we have it's all connected back to the vivifying word of god who you're buried with where that life where that life comes from so a lot of a lot of really cool things that are packed into those uh those couple of verses so it is it's one of the kind of strangest stories in kings but it's also one of the just man richest stories yeah when you see how it's connected with some of the other things yeah it's probably it's probably one of those texts if you were like preaching through this book or something you might run across and be

like how am i going to preach this but the truth is that this is the this is a home run text once you figure it out oh yeah initially you might be like well this is going to be a hard weird one to explain i don't know what's going on here but once you get it and you and you just start realizing that yeah this text is really all about the word of the lord and and that this is where all your hope is uh and this is where all your life is then it becomes like just a powerhouse text of uh of what god does through his word yeah death resurrection baptism the power of the word of god all that all those themes uh converge converge there now i read i read verses 22 through 23 there's a couple of things that are definitely worthy of us thinking about for a second.

So we hear again about Hazael, that Syrian king, he's oppressing Israel, but the Lord was gracious to them. This is the northern kingdom, keep in mind. This is the northern kingdom. This is the kingdom that walked in the sins of Jeroboam, that were constantly rebelling against God, but God was gracious to them and had compassion on them and he turned toward them i love that language they didn't turn toward him he turned toward them yeah this this turn thing here too like this is a repentance language right like you gotta love it when you're a big fat idolater and you're getting some mighty hard oppression which is just the consequence like oh surprise surprise like who's come knocking is if it isn't the consequences of your own actions like you're familiar with this

story like shocker like here here comes consequences and what is god looking at as this is happening he's full of grace and compassion and this would make sense if it says and they cried out to the lord you hear those texts and still even when you cry out to the lord he doesn't have to do anything but he does i mean when people cry out to the lord he he acts but they're not it doesn't say that they did that. It just says that God's viewing this, and He's just filled with grace and compassion, and He repents towards them, right? So I like this because who needs to do the repenting in this situation? Obviously, the Northern Kingdom has, like, lots of repentance. We need to turn to God. The sinners need to turn to God, which isn't untrue. They do need to, yeah.

But God is so good that sometimes when people don't repent and turn to Him, He just turns towards them instead and and i mean all that's fantastic i i love the the next part though why because of his covenant with with now this is surprising we have not heard of this trio if my uh if my my search was correct since deuteronomy like as a trio we heard a lot about abraham isaac and jacob in the torah but man we haven't heard about them in long long time lot of episodes but here they are he does he so he he's gracious he's compassionate he turns toward these unrepentant sinners because of his covenant with the patriarchs yeah and this would not destroy them yeah this attaches to a lot of the stuff we were saying

about the word too so the word is the well the word has all has all the power and this is a good place but your hope the reason that's that's a good place to have all your hope is because you're dealing with a god who doesn't lie and so god is filled with grace and compassion and turns towards these people based on what the covenant which is based on what like the words that he spoke so you can you can look at this and say uh why is god being gracious and compassionate and why is he turning towards people who will not turn to him because he made a promise to these three guys. That's why.

Yeah, it's as simple as that. So, I mean, the whole, the hoister of Israel is kind of condensed here. So why did God not destroy the northern kingdom? Why did he not destroy the southern kingdom? You know, why did he allow

that? Why was he so patient? Why did he turn toward them? Well, not because they were great Israelites, because they weren't, but all because of the word that he had sworn to Abraham. This is going all the way back to Genesis 12, which is nothing more. Genesis 12 is nothing more than a repeat of Genesis 3.15. God says, I'm going to take care of you.

I'm going to send a seed, and he's going to crush the head of the serpent. The serpent's going to inject venom into his heel. So the seed is going to destroy death by death. He's going to destroy the power of the devil and die doing it. And so that promise of that seed to Adam and Eve was then perpetuated. It was given to Abraham, from Abraham to Isaac, from Isaac to Jacob, from Jacob to Judah, on and on. So anyway, that's the word, a promise that all of this divine fidelity is based on. Yeah, what's good about this, too, is it doesn't even talk about how these guys believed that word.

They don't. These are not faithful people. these are not these are idolaters i'm reminded of when jesus uh is teaching in a crowded room and some guys take a paralytic and rip the roof off they lower this guy down and jesus forgives his sins but before that it says has this weird thing it's like kind of it's kind of strange and you're like wait what does that mean it says when jesus saw the faith of his friends he forgave this person's sins you're like well how does that wait a minute now like you can't be like forgiving sins based on somebody else's faith i think this is like that where

god is compassionate and merciful to these people based on not their believing the promise he made but based on abraham isaac and jacob believing in it so it's almost like god look he turns towards to his people and sees the faith of their fathers and says these three these three friends right these three friends like i'm doing it like that's i feel like that's how this works right you don't believe me but your fathers did and because of that i'm going to act yeah and act he does he he didn't he didn't destroy them i mean they were exiled but even then they weren't destroyed right God continues to be faithful, faithful to his people. So, yeah, that's a lot of good stuff there.

So we'll wrap up the chapter. We got just like two verses to left. When Hazael, king of Syria, died, Ben-Hadad, his son, became king in his place. Then Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz, took again from Ben-Hadad, the son of Hazael, the cities that he had taken from Jehoahaz, his father, in war. So basically the king, the Israelite king, is taking back some territory that the Syrians had taken away from his dad. but now here we come back to our our story with the bow and the arrows and all that kind of stuff

because we read three times joash defeated him and recovered the cities of israel now he could have defeated him five or six times but he didn't beat those arrows nearly enough see maybe three is three enough i don't know i don't know i guess it is a good biblical number and uh that yeah that takes us to the end of chapter 13 and we'll pick up uh with amaziah we heard a little bit about him just kind of a notice uh that he was going to rain so we'll pick up with his story uh next week all right sounds good i will see you then chad all right