40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 8:16-9:13 (Episode 331)
Episode Date: October 5, 2022Three bad kings go to war. Elisha tells one of the sons of the prophets to stop everything and surprise anoint a new king. The new king is Jehu, but will the people accept it? Chad and Daniel discuss ...all of this. Have a listen! HWSS Livestream Signup 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate
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Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament.
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so check that out i'll put a link in the show notes for the live stream sign up chad we had a
guy who elisha meets and is horrified to me because of what kind of person he was this guy doesn't
know how bad of a person he is but elijah tells him that he is indeed going to do a lot of terrible
things and immediately upon leaving elijah's presence he decides to just really lean into that
and own it and just murder his king and take his spot yeah that's pretty much what happened uh
his name is haziel the son of a nobody as one of the uh assyrian documents describes him
yeah he uh he acts quickly after he meets the prophet uh goes home and uh while the king is
sick in bed he dips a cloth and water and suffocates him and then he takes his place so
he arranges for himself to be king and thus begins quite a long, quite a lengthy time where he is
going to do a lot of bad things, both to the northern kingdom as well as to the southern
kingdom. We're going to leave him behind for now, though, sort of, because our focus is going to
shift to the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. And so we are in 2 Kings 8.16, and we are
going to be talking about two guys who basically have the same name. So you may have noticed this
in listening to previous episodes or in reading through the section of Second Kings yourself, but
the name Joram and Jehoram will be used back and forth, and the same guy can be called both
things. So Jehoram is the longer version, Joram is the shorter version, basically the same name.
I guess you could compare it to Bob and Bobby, something like that. You know, one is just an
abbreviated version of the other one. So 16 introduces us to Joram, the son of Ahab, king of
Israel, and to Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. So these guys, one in the north,
one in the south, are reigning at the same time. Now this, I think, is just perfectly fitting
because you've got two kings, one in the north, one in the south, one in Israel, one in Judah,
sharing the same name, and it's fitting for this reason because basically what's been
happening for a long time in the north has now crept into the south through intermarriage so
that the idolatry which was part of the northern kingdom from its inception when you had jeroboam
set up the golden calves and dan and bethel that idolatry that worship of baal as well as a lot of
other deities has now worked its way south to judah as well in fact that's exactly what we're
going to hear in just a minute. So the north and the south are mirror images of one another
theologically with regard to idolatry, and now they have kings who both have basically the same
name. We're told that he became king, he was 32 years old when he became king, he reigned eight
years in Jerusalem, and verse 18, he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel as the house of Ahab
had done. For, we're told, so we're getting to the reason here, for the daughter of Ahab was his
wife. So here's what's happening. You've got Tyre and Sidon, which is a hub of Baal worship,
Asherah worship. Well, then you have a princess of there who marries into the northern kingdom.
That's Jezebel. Jezebel marries Ahab. And now you've got their female descendants marrying
into the southern kingdom. And so you can kind of picture this drift southeasterly from Tyre and
Sidon down into the northern kingdom. Now it's working its way down into Judah as well. And with
this comes idolatry that is going to be the undoing both of the north as well as the south.
Yeah, it's weird how walking in the ways of the kings of Israel is not a good thing.
Not a good thing at all.
Someone, if they didn't know, they might think that that was a compliment.
This guy became king, and he walked in the ways of his fathers.
And you're like, oh, nice.
Not nice.
Yeah, not nice.
It all depends on who your father is, right?
Sometimes it's a good thing to walk in the way of your father or your fathers.
But if your father is Ahab or Omri or the vast majority of the kings of Israel,
yes, or the vast majority of the kings of Israel, then it's not good.
being a kingly kind of person is not good if your regal way of life is reflecting the ways
of the northern kings. So, he did, we're told, what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Yet,
the Lord, we're also told, and this is the important, I think, the most important part of
this. So, despite the fact that he had intermarried with these people that had brought the worship of
Baal into the northern kingdom, despite the fact that he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel.
So despite all of these things that he did that were evil, all evil inside of the Lord,
God was not willing to destroy Judah. Now, he was willing to destroy the northern kingdom. In fact,
he's going to do that in 722 BC. We're not there yet, but we're working our way in that direction.
So the northern kingdom will be destroyed and will really never recover. But God was not
willing to destroy Judah, the south. Why? For the sake of David, his servant, since he promised to
give to David a lamp to him and to his sons forever. Now, this is crucial to understand about
God's ways. Why did God not destroy Judah? Because God had made a promise. Simple as that. God had
made a promise to David, not because of David himself, but because of David's, but because of
God's choice. That was why he made this. God chose, God spoke, God promised. And this promise
was given to David way back, as we've discussed multiple times, way back in the seventh chapter
of 2 Samuel, when David wanted to build a house for God. And God said, thanks, but no thanks. I'm
going to build a house for you. I'm going to build a dynasty for you. And one day, one of your sons
is going to sit upon your throne and reign over an eternal kingdom.
So that's that hugely important messianic promise in 2 Samuel 7.
That's what God promised David.
He promised to give him a lamp, both to him and to his sons forever.
Now, we have discussed that.
It's been a while back, but that image of a lamp or a light in Jerusalem
is found in 1 Kings 11.
It's found in 1 Kings 15.
It's found in 2 Samuel 21, 7, 17.
And most significantly, if you turn to the book of Revelation to, I'll find the reference here,
Revelation 21, 23, you read about the New Jerusalem.
And we're told that the New Jerusalem was a city that had no need of sun or moon to shine on it,
for the glory of God gives it light and its lamp is the Lamb.
so that lamp that god promised to david and to his sons in the city of jerusalem that lamp was
none other than the light of the promise of christ himself and he then is that lamp he is that light
who is giving illumination to to the new jerusalem so why did god not destroy judah well because he
made this promise and this promise was all about the the son that he would send to sin to sit on
on David's throne. And that promise of divine
mercy, of divine gift, is what God
used, the reason that God kept the southern kingdom alive, despite
its sins. Yeah, I mean, you could
read this and be like, yeah, David, God's not going to destroy
Judah because David was so awesome.
But that's not really what it says. It says, for the sake of David
since he had promised him.
So it's the word, the promise of God given to David
that is the cause of this.
It's not David's goodness or righteousness
or anything like that,
but that David, who, except for in the matter of Uriah the Hittite,
was not an idolater.
He was in that particular thing, but repented for that.
Since he was not an idolater,
you have God making a promise to this true worshiper of Yahweh.
Anytime you see this, I don't know how you read this, Chad, but this is how I read it.
Whenever I hear this, and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord,
now, you might be thinking, like, ooh, this guy was out there just doing evil things.
And that's probably true, because that's what people do.
But when I hear that phrase, especially when it comes to a king,
which is where you normally hear it this person did what was evil in the sight of the lord i
always just read that as this man was an idolater simple as that it's as simple as that like
whatever else he was doing like it might be evil it might be bad the big problem here is that this
guy is an idolater it seems like that phrase is saved for that specific thing because that is the
thing over and over again yeah yeah i mean you read through anywhere from first samuel through
the end of 2 Kings. What is the foundation of all evil? It's idolatry. Every single time.
I mean, David does plenty of things that are evil in the sight of the Lord. He just
doesn't do that thing.
Right. That's the bedrock of all the individual evils come from that. They're founded on that.
And so, yeah, I mean, the kings, they did a lot of bad things. David did a lot of bad things.
But when you want to really focus on what the true source of all of this is, it's always turning
one's back on the true God, and then going whoring after other gods.
Yeah, I mean, if you're making a list of good king, bad king,
and you're making that list of all the kings of Israel,
now that bad king list is going to be much longer, of course.
But there's only one question you're asking as you sort them into the different categories,
and it's how big of an idolater was this guy?
Was this guy a renowned idolater?
Then he goes over here.
Was he not?
This is without exception. Good kings are good and described as good because of how they interacted with God.
Did they get rid of idolatry? Did they not engage in idolatry? That is the distinguishing mark.
Yeah, and it's no different today, right? I mean, this is not just isolated to the Old Testament.
It is still the same today. I mean, you look at our lives, I do a lot of bad things, for sure.
and everybody else listening to this do a lot of bad things, think a lot of bad thoughts,
have a lot of bad desires, say a lot of bad words, all of those things.
Well, ultimately, that's not going to condemn us, because if we are in Christ,
there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
Do we repent? Do we confess? Absolutely.
But if we are with the one true God, if our faith is in our Lord Jesus Christ,
then we are we are safe in him it's it's going to be unbelief which is basically idolatry turning
away from the one true god that is what condemns it's not all the individual sins themselves it's
turning our back on the on the one true god so to us as well it's the same thing uh since god has
promised us to give us himself to give us forgiveness in life in christ then uh we will
not be destroyed, as it says here in verse 19, but rather we will be blessed by him and
reckoned one of his children in Jesus Christ. Yeah. So that takes us through 19. Verse 20
introduces us to a military skirmish that takes place. So in his days, that is in the days of
Jehoram, Edom revolted from the rule of Judah and set up a king of their own. So Edom had a puppet
king for a while. They were ruled over by the southern kingdom. Edom, of course, is to the south
of Judah. It's directly below. Their territory was directly below the Dead Sea. The Edomites were
descendants of Esau, so they were historically, anyway, brothers of the Israelites. But of course,
there was fighting, just like there was fighting between Jacob and Esau already in the womb. So
there was fighting between the Israelites and the Edomites off and on throughout their respective
histories. And for a while anyway, Edom was ruled over by Judah. They had a puppet king there, but
now they revolted and they set up a king of their own. And so Joram or Jehoram, again, same guy,
he is going to try and take care of this problem, which is what verse 21 introduces us to. And
there's a bit of confusion here in the Hebrew as to exactly what's being implied here. I'll read
you what the ESV has. It says, then Jehoram passed over to Zair, which is a city to the south of the
Dead Sea. He takes all his chariots, and he rose by night, and he and his chariot commanders struck
the Edomites who had surrounded him, but his army fled home. So the end result of this, whatever
exactly happened, Jehoram goes with his army, and they attack the Edomites, and they strike some of
them, but the end result is that they have to flee. The army of Judah has to go back to their
tents, back to their homes, and Edom, in the end, was able to be successful in this revolt.
So, verse 22 says, Edom revolted from the rule of Judah to this day. So, they were successful
in their initial revolt. They were successful when Jehoram tries to quell that revolt.
And then, even worse, I mean, it's one thing for the Edomites to rebel, nothing unusual there,
but the very end of verse 22 tells us about another revolt that takes place.
And this one, I think, is even more significant.
It's a half verse. It's easy to miss.
It says, then Libna revolted at the same time.
Libna, where's that, or who's that?
That's actually a city of Judah. It's one of the Levitical cities.
it's pretty close to the territory of the philistines and it kind of seems like a throwaway
line but what's important about it is that this is this is a city of judah so this isn't like you
know the edomites or the ammonites or the philistines or anybody else this is a judean city
a levitical city so there's a lot of levites who are living there and they themselves revolt
against the king why because the king was had turned his back on the true god and was engaging
and idolatry, and so this one city decided that they had enough, and so they, as it were, separate
themselves. They revolt against the very country that they're a part of because their king and a
lot of their leadership had gone the way of Baal. So the Edomites revolt, Libna, a city of Judah,
revolts, and then verse 23 and 24 tells us about the death of this king. The rest of the acts of
Joram or Jehoram and all that he did, they're written in the book of the Chronicles of the
Kings of Judah. And Joram slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of
David. And Ahaziah, his son, reigned in his place. So we got one more southern king behind us,
and now we're introduced to his replacement, his son, Ahaziah.
You sort of think that based on what you had before this, that you're going to get some kind
of really long thing but maybe you're gonna get like a lot of details you know about about these
wars and this this guy's life and stuff you don't just no you don't just just just an idolater uh
that caused a lot of problems yeah here's an idolater and then uh one time he tried to quell
this revolt of the edomites and it didn't go so well for him he suffered defeat and then one of
his own cities revolted against him and then he died it's like you're you had this whole biography
of a king that just kind of whittled down into a few verses, which is, you know, it is fitting.
We do hear a lot about the lives of some of these idolaters, but sometimes it's almost
history's way of saying, you know what, this guy, he went the bad way. He went the dark way
of idolatry, and so we're going to tell you about a couple little things that are embarrassing to
him, and then we're going to tell you about his death and his replacement, and we're going to
leave it there. So it's a reminder of kind of the vanity of the life that they led if that life was
all subsumed by leading the nation astray into idolatry. Yeah. So verse 25 introduces us to
a new section and a new king, Ahaziah. So in the 12th year of Joram, the son of Ahab, so in the
12th year of this northern king,
Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram,
king of Judah, began to reign. He's 22
when he begins to reign.
And
you know, this is an ominous
detail. He reigned
a whopping one
year in Jerusalem.
Now, when you're told somebody reigns one year,
you know, you might not
know what's going to happen, but you know it's not
going to be good.
Yeah.
So, his reign...
Well, you know especially it's not going to be good if you started reigning at 22.
Maybe if you inherited the throne, you know, we just had the Queen of England just died.
And, you know, Charles has to take over.
He's like 70-something years old.
You know, if you heard that he took over and didn't reign that long, you'd be like, well, that'll happen if you're old when you take over.
If you're that age, sure.
But if you're 22 and you reign one year, something didn't go right.
Because that's young to take over.
It's very young to end your reign after 12 months.
And we'll find out why in the next chapter.
His mother's name is Athaliah.
She was a granddaughter of Omri, king of Israel.
Now we're also going to hear a lot more about his mom,
but we're going to have to wait for a couple chapters to get there.
Athaliah is going to end up being a very bloodthirsty woman.
and she is also going to end up being a queen of the Southern Kingdom.
So we'll find out more about her when we get to Chapter 11,
but she is not going to be one that we walk away from thinking,
oh, what a nice lady she was.
She was one of these politicians who will do anything necessary,
even if it means wiping out a whole lot of people from your own family
in order to maintain the power herself.
But we'll get to her eventually.
And she is, as we're told, the granddaughter of Omri, king of Israel.
So this is the Omri dynasty that we mentioned before.
You have Omri, you have Ahab, you had one son that died,
and then his brother took over, and that brother just died.
And so now we have Ahaziah who's taking over.
He also, verse 27, he also walked in the way of the house of Ahab,
did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as the house of Ahab had done, for he was son-in-law
to the house of Ahab. So we're already finding out a whole lot of things about him. He's enmeshed
in this same idolatrous family of the northern kingdom. Verse 28 introduces us to the way that
he was involved with the northern kingdom. He went with Joram, the son of Ahab, to make war
against Haziel, king of Syria, at a place called Ramoth-Gilead. So the southern king
who is in the same family as the northern king.
They decide that they're going to band together
and they're going to go against Hazael.
Remember, he's the king killer,
the son of a nobody who's become the king of Syria.
Basically, you got two bad kings of Israel,
one from the north, one from the south,
who are now going to go against this guy
that was so bad he made Elisha cry.
I mean, it's pretty bad when you make Elisha cry
when he sees how evil you are.
That's pretty bad.
It seems like there's no good guys in this particular war.
I mean, so you've got three bad kings just fighting it out.
I mean, if this is a movie, this is a battle, you're like,
I don't think I'm rooting for anybody here.
Yeah, you don't know who to root for because there's really no good guy to root for.
Now, in a minute, we're going to be introduced to, well, he's a good guy, but whoo.
uh the good that he used the good that god uses him to do is not the good that we would expect
i'm talking about yahoo uh we'll get to him in just a second uh but yeah it's kind of like every
you can kind of feel as you're reading through this everything is coming up to so some sort of
conclusion and you get you also get the feeling it's not going to be good you got all these bad
characters gathered together into one place and so something is about to happen and that's
something that's about to happen is indeed big so they're going against Hazael at this place
called Ramoth Gilead which we've heard about before it means the heights of Gilead it's kind
of it's that it's between the boundary of the northern kingdom and then Aram or Syria this is
where Ahab was wounded and died after the battle so we've already got a history there with the
northern king. And sure enough, what happens here is that the Syrians, they wound Joram. So just like
Ahab had been wounded and died, so now Joram, the northern king, is wounded. And he, the king, he
goes back to heal at Jezreel. Jezreel is where he goes to be healed of the wounds that the Syrians
had given him at Ramah when he fought against Haziel, king of Syria. And then Ahaziah, the king
from the south he goes to see joram to see how see how he's doing and that's the way the chapter ends
so you have a battle you got the northern king wounded he goes to jezreel to presumably recover
from his wounds and then his friend from the south his relative like his eye he goes to check
on him so now you definitely have these two guys together you got the northern king you're the
southern king together in a place that also has an infamous past because Jezreel is where you had
the vineyard of Naboth. Naboth who was murdered by Jezebel in order that that vineyard might be
taken away from him and given to her her pouting husband Ahab. So there's a lot of geography that
is connected with events in the past that's going to become significant in just a minute.
both kings together. One's wounded. The other one's there to see how he's doing. They're really
close to this place that's connected with lying and murder and theft in the past of this family.
That's all a setup then for what we're going to read about in 2 Kings chapter 9.
so verse uh one of of second kings nine brings us back to elisha elisha the prophet called one of
his one of his helpers well the sons of the prophet this group of of prophets that were
always around him he calls one of these guys and says to him uh tie for garments so gird up gird
up your loins um maybe maybe in uh what would we say in today's speech turn off your phone
i don't want anything to i don't want anything to distract you so don't be posting any any status
updates don't be you know don't be uh scrolling through social media uh put your phone away
gird up your loins you gotta put that thing on airplane mode yeah there you go uh the model
equivalent the this is not the message translation but if if dan and i come up with our own paraphrase
that's what we'll say that's right put your put your phone on airplane mode gird up your loins
and uh take this flask of oil in your hand and go to ramoth gilead now already we know something's
about to happen if if say we have the bible memorized in hebrew uh we would know that only
one of the time has there been reference to a pak hasheman which is the hebrew phrase for a flask
of oil. And the only other time that this was used was back in 1 Samuel 10, verse 1, where
the prophet Samuel takes a pak ha-shemen, a flask of oil, and with it anoints Saul to be the first
king of Israel. So we know that there's an anointing that's about to take place, and maybe,
just maybe, there's going to be some kind of connection between whoever is going to receive
this anointing oil and King Saul from back in Samuel's day. So take the flask, go to Ramoth
Gilead. He's given him very detailed instructions here. He says, when you get there, I want you to
find this fellow named Yehu, Yehu, Jehu, however you want to say, however you want to say his name
in English. In Hebrew, it is Yehu. So look for Yehu or Yehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, son of
Nimshi. So find him and go in and have him rise from among his fellows. So have him, you know,
he's going to be surrounded by people, by his fellow soldiers. So have him get up and then
lead him to an inner chamber. So I want you to isolate him from everybody else, because what
I want you to do for him in my name is not something that I'm going to want other witnesses
to see. Verse three continues the instructions. Then take this flask of oil and pour it on his
head and say, thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel. Then, I love this, the last
part of the instructions, then open the door and flee. Don't linger. Get out of there. Run as fast
as you can, because after you've done this, you do not want to stick around and see what happens.
what happens next. So this is, we heard about this guy way back in the days of Elijah. Elijah
was supposed to anoint him as king, but Elijah didn't, and so it passed on to Elisha. And we're
going to find out more about what kind of character that Yehu has as we work our way through this.
Now, there's a couple things that are significant about him. To kind of look ahead, he is,
I think this is correct. He is the only king in the north who basically actually does the will
of God. Now, the will of God that he does is a vengeful will. It's a very judgmental and a lot
of bloodshed involved with this. But he is doing what God told him to do. And the second unique
feature of Yehu is that he is the only northern king that is anointed. So he is anointed to be
king by the very well not just the prophet but the the servant that the prophet sends so
we have a kind of a chain here god says to do this elijah says to do this and then elijah's
messenger goes to do this so it's ultimately god doing it but he uses these various people
to accomplish this so that yahoo is now the anointed the messiah king of of israel the thing
that's weird about this whole thing too is that this is going to be like a sneak attack anointing
yeah i mean it's not you would think like if you're gonna make someone king you might just
go and tell them that hey uh elisha says that you were to be anointed king we're gonna we're
gonna do that so you know meet me at this place or he's gonna come over here and whatever or
explain it he's telling him like sneak up behind this guy dump this oil on his head and be like
surprise you're king and then bail like yeah then you gotta get out of there yeah and essentially
that's what he's going to do i mean he's gonna basically go in there and get him to go and do
like hey i got something to tell you and then bam you know oil on your head and the whole thing's
weird it is people that are with them are going to be like yo who is that crazy guy that's
it's very strange it is very strange yeah yeah i mean there are certain parallels it has i mean
david was secretly anointed right and saul anointed uh samuel anointed saul when he was
with us by himself i think that maybe a conversation happened this seems more like
like literally like surprised like i mean like like i don't know if they thought this guy was
gonna protest or what but like too bad you're it now yeah yeah tag it's like if uh someone
nominated you for you know to run for president you didn't know your name was on the ballot and
then like surprise you won yeah you get a call hey good morning mr president hey i didn't even
know i was running you know it's a it's a it's a weird thing it is it's it's very strange yeah
uh so verse four this is all just instructions elisha says here's what i want you to do take
this uh turn your phone off go do this anoint him king take off so verse four tells us in
foreign following tells us that's what he did except a few more details are added so this
young guy the the servant of the prophet he goes up to ramoth gilead and uh when he gets there all
All the top brass in the military, they're in council.
Commanders of the army, they're in council.
Of course, Ramoth Gilead is where the battle is taking place, right?
You've got the Syrians in the north.
They're battling against the Israelite soldiers.
And so they're having this council.
No doubt they're planning what they're supposed to do next.
After all, their king has been wounded.
It's a tricky situation here.
So this kind of a nobody.
I mean, he's just a servant of one of the prophets.
they have no idea who this guy is he just goes in and and he's like you know clears his throat
gets everybody's attention he says uh i've got a word for you oh commander and yahoo's not even
sure which one he's talking to he's like to which of us who are you talking to they're all kind of
there together and he just says i have a word for you oh commander and then he says oh i'm talking
about you to you to you yahoo oh commander so he gets up and uh he goes into the house so he leaves
everybody that he's with and when he gets into the house this young guy i guess just turns to him he
has this flask pops the cork and then he pours the oil on yahoo's head and says thus says the lord
the god of israel i anoint you king over the people of the lord you kind of a unique phrase
there. You king over the people of Yahweh, over Israel. That's basically what Elisha told him to
say, but listen to what follows. So, probably what happened was Elisha gave him a whole bunch
more of instructions. We're just not made privy to that at this point. Now, we're going to hear
the full speech that Elisha gave him to say, which begins with verse 7. You shall strike down
the house of Ahab, your master, so that I may avenge, this is God speaking through the prophets,
so that I may avenge on Jezebel the blood of my servants, the prophets, and the blood of all the
servants of Yahweh. For the whole house of Ahab shall perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every
male, that's our Hebrew phrase, every one who pisseth against the wall, every mosh-tik bakir,
So every mashtin, bakir, every male, bond or free in Israel,
he's going to wipe them all out.
And I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam,
the son of Abot, and like the house of Basha, the son of Abijah.
Both those houses were wiped out, by the way.
And he adds this at the very end.
The dogs shall eat Jezebel in the territory of Jezreel,
and none shall bury her.
So that's the end of his speech.
And what does he do next?
Well, he follows Elisha's instructions down to the T.
The end of verse 10 tells us, then he opened the door and fled.
Okay, so, I mean, you've got to understand how weird this is.
I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but.
No, it's very weird.
Not just you.
You go in, you say, hey, I got a little, I got a message for you.
Come over here.
They go into a room.
I imagine this guy's like, they go in the room.
this guy's turning to shut the door
next thing he knows, shabow
like oil's running down his
back of his neck or whatever
and then this dude's spitting out
all these words
and he's telling him
God's gonna use you to kill everybody
there's gonna be dogs
eating Jezebel in the street
and then just gone
I would think that I had
just been, had an encounter
with someone who was
had more than a few screws loose
like what in the world yeah i think that's what everybody else thought too uh like am i supposed
to take this am i supposed to take this seriously like what is this real like i did ask this
question i would like okay is this real or is it or did i just encounter a total lunatic here
i he probably had some of the same thoughts that hasiel had when he when elisha told him what he
did right yeah he's like could you could you repeat that i mean this is a this is a very kind
of twilight zone moment nothing seems really real at this point it would just be much easier to take
if elisha did it yeah if elisha does it you're like okay but this is just like some guy yeah
this is just an underling who shows up and says hey here's what god says here's what you're gonna
to do. And then no sooner does he end his speech before he turns his back and he just takes off in
a dead run out of the town. Well, verse 11 tells us that we don't know how long, maybe, yeah,
we just kind of stood there for a minute trying to figure out this whole situation, but he does
go back to the servants of his master, kind of an ironic phrase there, by the way, the servants of
his master, that is his fellow soldiers who were serving the king of the north, right? I mean,
they're they're a master so he goes back to uh to his comrades you kind of love you they're like
is everything okay yeah yeah you gotta why did this mad fellow come to you yeah so if he comes
walking out he's got oil running down his face i'm sure he looks super confused uh and they're
just like hey everything all right what is what did that crazy guy tell you
and then he tries to blow him off which i love too he says oh you know you know the fellow in
his talk this is such a guy's speech you know what what in the world did that crazy dude say
to you and what why is your head wet is oh you know this you know the way those guys are it's
it's crazy talk, but they're not buying it. They're like, no, you're lying. That is not true.
What just went down? Tell us now. And, uh, he tells them, he said, thus, and so he spoke to me
saying, thus says the Lord, I anoint you King over Israel. So I don't think he just told him,
I anoint you King over Israel. I think he told him basically every, or at least, uh, kind of a
summary of everything that the guy had just told him. So I anoint you King over Israel for sure.
but he also told me all this other stuff.
Now, this is a moment of decision, right?
Because these other commanders could say,
oh, no, that's not the way things are going to go down.
We're loyal to the king.
Or they could say, all right, we're with you.
So verse 13 tells us what they did.
In haste, they wasted no time.
In haste, every man of them took his garment
and put it under him on the bare steps.
That's a unique Hebrew phrase, by the way.
We don't know exactly what it means, but it could mean like the top of the stairs or something like that.
In modern Hebrew, this is the word used for a stairwell, a gerim.
So they took their garments and put it under him on these steps or something like that.
And then they blow the trumpet.
And you know exactly where their allegiance is now.
They proclaim, Yehu is king.
Yeah, so I wonder if he's probably, it seems like he was a little reluctant to tell them.
Yeah, he didn't know which way they would go with this.
Yeah, I mean, because if you say that, they could be like, this is sedition.
Yeah, absolutely.
They're just off him or something.
But they don't.
They see him, this rings true to them.
And so off with the garments, they're going to make a little red carpet or something for this guy.
Like a little Palm Sunday moment, right?
Yeah, they said this guy is the guy.
He's going to be the king.
It's a wild scene.
I do think that we need to bring back thus and so.
I like that phrase.
That's not one you hear all the time.
Somebody, you know, maybe later today someone will say,
have you talked to Chad?
I did talk to Chad.
He said thus and so, and then explain what you said.
Yeah.
We've come across a lot of little Hebrew phrases
that we should bring back.
You know, next time somebody, you see like a really good fight,
it's like, yeah, man, that guy went there,
he struck him hip and thigh.
hip and thigh yeah hip and thigh like good old good old samson or let not him who takes off his
armor boast like him who straps no let not him who straps on his armor boast like him who takes
it off that's right a good little that's a good one proverbial phrases that we need to bring back
but thus and so we definitely need to add that to to the list and and at that we're gonna have to
we're at the stop here. Uh, you know, get ready for what's coming next. Uh, if, uh, if you don't
like, uh, if you don't like violence, then, uh, yeah, prepare yourself because there's going to
be a whole lot of that coming up in the, uh, the next actually two, two chapters. So we'll see what,
uh, yeah, who the, uh, the new proclaimed King does, uh, in fulfillment of God's, uh, God's long
awaited punishment of this house
which has persecuted his prophets
and led his people
astray.
Alright, well we got a new king
and next episode we will
see how that plays
out. Chad, I'll see you next week.
Alright, see you then.
