2 Kings 1:2-8
One day Israel's new king, Ahaziah, fell through the
latticework of an upper room at his palace in Samaria, and he was seriously
injured. So he sent messengers to the temple of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron,
to ask whether he would recover.
But the angel of the Lord told Elijah, who was from Tishbe, "Go and meet the
messengers of the king of Samaria and ask them, 'Why are you going to Baal-zebub,
the god of Ekron, to ask whether the king will get well? Is there no God in
Israel? Now, therefore, this is what the Lord says: You will never leave the
bed on which you are lying, but you will surely die.' " So Elijah went to
deliver the message.
When the messengers returned to the king, he asked them, "Why have you
returned so soon?"
They replied, "A man came up to us and told us to go back to the king with a
message from the Lord. He said, 'Why are you going to Baal-zebub, the god of
Ekron, to ask whether the king will get well? Is there no God in Israel?
Now, since you have done this, you will never leave the bed on which you are
lying, but you will surely die.' "
"Who was this man?" the king demanded. "What did he look like?"
They replied, "He was a hairy man, and he wore a leather belt around his
waist."
"It was Elijah from Tishbe!" the king exclaimed.
Can the ax boast greater power than the person who uses it? Is the saw
greater than the person who saws? Can a whip strike unless a hand is moving
it? Can a cane walk by itself?
Listen now, king of Assyria! Because of all your evil boasting, the Lord,
the Lord Almighty, will send a plague among your proud troops, and a flaming
fire will ignite your glory. The Lord, the Light of Israel and the Holy One,
will be a flaming fire that will destroy them. In a single night he will
burn those thorns and briers, the Assyrians. Isaiah 10:15-17
The events which are to occupy our attention in this
chapter have a peculiar interest, connected as they are with the last
exercise of Elijah's prophetic office. As he had begun, so he terminates his
career--the messenger of wrath--the rebuker of iniquity--"the Prophet of
Fire." Three or four years have elapsed since last we followed his
lightning-track--traced his fiery footsteps in Naboth's vineyard, speaking
God's word before kings, and not being moved. We are again to find him
standing by a kingly couch--bold as a lion--discharging the last arrows in
his quiver at the same presumptuous idolatries against which he had uttered
a lifelong testimony.
Ahaziah, (son and successor of Ahab,) had inherited the
heathen vices and followed the idolatrous practices of his parents. Iniquity
and irreligion are not always hereditary. But yet how often, by a righteous
principle in the divine administration, are moral corruption and impiety,
with their bitter fruits, transmitted to children's children--penalties of
that great natural and divine law enforced and exemplified--"Whatever a man
sows, that shall he also reap." Troubled was the two years' reign of this
unworthy king of Israel, and unhappy and inglorious his sudden and premature
death. From the brief passing notice in the historical narrative, we are not
warranted perhaps to stigmatize him as a coward. But we are led to surmise
that dread of a violent death similar to his father's, had led him to shrink
from the perils and calamities of war–allowing as he did, a daring revolt of
long subject Moab to pass without an effort to repair the disaster.
Exemption, however, from the dangers of battle could not purchase immunity
from the smaller ills of life. He had now shown him that God has other, and
less glorious instruments of death than "the spears of the mighty," and
that, after all, the post of duty (not that of coward self-preservation) is
the real post of safety.
Let us pause for a moment, and read, from the case of
Ahaziah, the impressive lesson, that all our care, forethought, and
caution, cannot ward off accident, calamity, and inexorable death. He
who escaped the Syrian's venturous aim, was laid low by an accidental fall
from the flat roof of his palace in Samaria. He had probably been leaning
against the screen or railing common on the tops of Eastern dwellings--when,
overbalancing himself, the slender rail or lattice-work had given way. He
fell on the tessellated floor below, stunned and mangled, and he was carried
to a couch from which he was never to rise.
Age, character, rank, position, station can afford no
exemption from such casualties, and from the last terminating event of all,
the universal doom of dust. These royal robes encircled a body perishable as
that of the lowest subject of his realm. The hand grasping that ivory
scepter, as well as the brawny arm of the strongest menial in his palace,
must moulder to decay. "Trust not in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom
there is no help. His breath goes forth. He returns to his earth. In that
very day his thoughts perish." Poor and rich--the beggar and the prince--the
slave and his master--Dives with his purple and gold, and Lazarus with his
crumbs and rags, are on a level here. The path of glory and royalty, of
greatness and power, "leads but to the grave." The lattice on which the
strong man leans--the iron balustrade of full health and unbroken
energy--may in a moment give way. Sudden accident or fever may in a few
hours write Ichabod on a giant's strength. The touch of the old slave in the
conqueror's triumphal chariot is never more needful than when we are moving
through life charioted in comforts--wreathed with garlands--regaled with
music--"Remember you are mortal!" None dare boast presumptuously of strong
arm, and healthy cheek, and undimmed eye. It is by the mercy of God each one
of us is preserved from the " "the terrors of the night, and the dangers of
the day, and the plague that stalks in darkness, and the disaster that
strikes at midday!"
And when accident or affliction does overtake us, it is
our comfort to know that it is by His permission. It is He who puts the
arrow on the bowman's string. It is He who loosens the railing in its
sockets. It is He who makes the lightning leap from the clouds on its lethal
errand. It is He who commissions the coral builders to rear the fatal reef.
It is He who guides the roll of that destroying billow, that has swept a
loved one from the deck into a watery grave. It is He who says, (and who can
oppose!) "You shall die, and not live." "As your soul lives, verily there
may be but a step between you and death."
Saddest of all is it, when accident and "sudden death"
overtakes, without due preparation for the great change. Ah, yes, it is easy
for us in health--when the world goes well; when life's cup is
brimming--when the white sails are gleaming on its summer seas, and the
music of its high holiday is resounding in our ears--it is easy then to
repress from thought the urgency of more solemn verities. But wait until the
pillow of pain receives the aching, recumbent head--wait until the curtains
are drawn, and the room darkened, and that music is exchanged for the
muffled bell, and the suppressed whisper, and noiseless footfall--wait until
the solemn apprehension for the first time steals over the spirit, that the
sand-glass is running out, life's grains diminishing, and that dreadful hour
which we have evaded, dreaded, tampered with, shrunk from, has come at
last--how solemn the mockery to try then to give to God the dregs and
remnants of a worn existence and a withered love! How sad then to begin for
the first time to utter the lamentation, "He weakened my strength in the
way, He shortened my days. I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst
of my days!"
How much nobler, wiser, happier to anticipate the
necessities of that inevitable hour, that whether our summons shall come by
the fall from the lattice, or the gradual sinking and wasting of
strength--whether by sudden accident, or by the gradual crumbling of the
earthly framework--we may be ready, in calm composure, to breathe the saving
of the dying patriarch, "I have waited for your salvation, O God."
Ahaziah was thus suddenly prostrated in the very midst of
life--while manhood was yet in its glory. We are not indeed led to infer
from the narrative, that there were at first any dangerous symptoms in his
illness. It was sent and intended as a timely warning--a seasonable
remonstrance. Had he listened to the Divine voice--or, like Manasseh in his
affliction, had he "besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly
before the God of his fathers"--or, like Hezekiah in his severe sickness,
turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the Lord--he might have
been raised up to prove for years a blessing to his people, and a monument
of saving mercy. We almost expect and hope indeed, in reading the opening
words of the story, to find a royal penitent, in the extremity of his
mental anguish, recognizing the chastisement of the God he had long
despised--sending messengers to summon the great Tishbite prophet to his
sick-bed, that he might put forth on his behalf his "effectual, fervent
prayers."
Elijah's name and person and achievements must have been
thoroughly familiar to him when he was yet a boy in the palace of Jezreel.
He could not fail often and again to have seen, or, at all events, to have
heard of that wild, rugged, stern Prophet; nor, despite of his parents'
hatred and scorn, could he be unimpressed with the story of his startling
miracles and hero-deeds--how he had restored a poor woman's son at
Zarephath--brought him back, not from sickness, but from the chambers of
death--how, on the heights of that very Carmel on which he had gazed from
his youth, he had brought down fire from heaven, and defeated the
Baal-priests--and, last of all, he could not have forgotten how awfully
verified had been the uttered judgments of this Herald of omnipotence
regarding his own hapless father! Every time his eye fell on the now
blighted and cursed vineyard of Naboth, would not the figure and demeanor of
the Tishbite be before him--his trumpet-voice sounding in his ears the
solemn lesson, "Who has hardened himself against God, and prospered?"
Alas! how difficult it is, even in the midst of
weightiest judgment, to overcome unbelief and prejudice! Nursed in the
abominable idolatries of Jezebel, he clings to the last to the lie of
heathenism. Messengers are summoned to his bed-side, with instructions to
hasten to a well-known temple of Baal, to ascertain the outcome of his
trouble--whether he would recover of his disease. This oracle was situated
in Ekron, the most northerly of five cities of Philistia. The Sidonian god
was here, under one of his manifold forms, worshiped as Baal-zebub--literally,
"The God of Flies;" the supposed averter of the plague, common in the east,
of swarming insects or gnats. This temple at Ekron was the great rendezvous
of heathen devotees. It was the Delphic oracle, or the Mecca of the
Baal-worshipers. Thousands from the surrounding provinces and countries
congregated at the shrine of the guardian god, to get cured of diseases,
otherwise supposed to be incurable. He was the Phoenician Aesculapius--the
god of medicine--reputed to have power over demoniacs as well as bodily
diseases. Hence the reference in the Pharisees' accusation regarding Christ,
"He casts out devils by Beelzebub."
In a literal sense, the parallel to Ahaziah's folly can
in vain be sought now, in the changed aspects of the Church and the world.
The heathen oracles are mute. The prince of darkness, who seems in former
ages to have wielded, by means of these incantations, a mysterious power,
has now changed his tactics. But yet how many, in another form, have their
Ekron still?--in life as well as in death trusting to some miserable, false
confidences; instead of reposing in simple faith on the Lord God of Elijah,
and on the work finished and consummated on the cross of Calvary. Is it
asked, "What are these?"
There is the Ekron of self-righteousness--the
pride of what they themselves have done--grounding their peace and
confidence, alike for a living and a dying hour, on some miserable
fragmentary virtues of their own--their charities and alms-deeds and moral
lives--the beggar proud of wearing some tinsel on his rags, the bankrupt
proud of paying by farthings a debt which is accumulating by pounds and
talents.
There is the Ekron of proud reason. Men will not
trust the simple word of the living God. The Bible doctrines, or, it may be,
subordinate facts, do not square with their judgments and
presuppositions--their preconceived opinions and prejudices, and they send
their imperious intellectual messengers to this haughty oracle. Instead of
coming to the divinely-authenticated page with the humble spirit of inquiry,
"What do the Scriptures say?" their preliminary question is--'Science, what
do you think? Philosophy, what do you think?' They come to the
well of Sychar, not with the question, "Give me to drink;" but they must
subject the water to chemical analysis; they must cast the Bible into their
own earthly crucible, and subject it to their own earthly tests. Happy they
who stoop down like the beggar at the running stream and quench their
thirst; asking no vain questions; feeling nothing, and caring for nothing,
but the precious adaptation of the water of life to their panting, needy
souls. Happy they, who, spiritually enlightened, are not curious to know the
process of surgery or medicine, but who, gazing on the glorious uncurtained
beauties of the moral world, before hidden from their view, can tell, in the
utterance of a simple faith, "This one thing I know, that whereas once I was
blind, now I see."
Moreover, are there not many who make shipwreck of their
peace and comfort by involving themselves needlessly in speculative
questions--profound transcendental doctrinal enigmas--with which they have
no concern? As Ahaziah seems not to inquire how he was to recover,
but if he was to recover, so how many there are who, like him,
perplex themselves with the same question, in a spiritual sense; 'Am I
ordained to be raised from the death of trespasses and sins? Am I among the
number of the elect? Has God, by a predestined decree, placed me among the
saved? Have I His seal on my forehead?' Vain dreamers! seeking to penetrate
into the mysteries of heaven--"the secret things which belong only to the
Lord our God"--instead of giving themselves to the great practical work of
applying the sovereign remedy of the gospel, already provided and already
offered to them, working out their own salvation with fear and trembling.
But to return to the narrative. The messengers of Ahaziah
are now on their way--speeding along the plain of Esdraelon--charged to
hasten with fleet foot to relieve the feverish anxieties of their lord.
Laden, doubtless, with golden bribes and offerings, they expect to retrace
their steps with a propitious response from the flattering oracle. But who
is this, when the king's message demands such haste, that dares to thwart
them in their mission, and to cross their path? What living oracle can this
be, who seems to arrest in a moment that band of royal delegates, and send
them back trembling and panic-stricken to the couch of their dying king? At
that couch they stand--and the monarch, with startled looks, seeing probably
their trepidation, interrogates them as to the cause of this strange and
speedy return. With the old smouldering passion kindling up in his languid
eye, he demands, as if half guessing the dreaded truth, "Why have you now
come back?" The reason was soon told--a wild, strange, unearthly being--with
hairy cloak, and flowing beard, and leathern belt, had stood in their way;
and, with a voice of thunder, in the name of Jehovah, had exclaimed--"Why
are you going to Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, to ask whether the king will
get well? Is there no God in Israel? Now, since you have done this, you will
never leave the bed on which you are lying, but you will surely die."
We gather from the narrative, that these messengers had
either never personally seen 'the evil genius' of Ahab's house; or, at all
events, they had not recognized the Prophet-messenger of the God of Israel,
in that singular personage, who had met them on their way, like a lion from
the dens of Carmel. But the king does not for a moment hesitate in
recognizing their description. He exclaims, "It is Elijah the Tishbite!" In
his inmost soul, though he may try to conceal his guilty fears, we almost
hear him echoing his father's words, "Have you found me, O my enemy?"
It is yet another of the Prophet's sudden appearances. He
comes upon them like a flash of lightning; utters with thrilling brevity his
solemn message, and then retires; for the description of the dramatic scene
closes with the words, "And Elijah departed." Bold, brave man! Here he was
once more, "jealous for the Lord of hosts." Deeper affront could not have
been offered to the Jehovah before whom he stood, than was perpetrated by
the reigning monarch--in ignoring the God of the Hebrew nation in the eyes
of the heathen--and going down to Egypt for help. It was a base violation of
the fundamental law of the theocracy, "You shall have no other gods before
me." "In Judah is God known; his name is great in Israel. In Salem also is
his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion." "Confounded be all those
who worship engraved images."
As certainly as Saul's wild, heathenish, debasing mission
to the cave of the enchantress at Endor sealed his doom, so does this
impious insult of the son of Ahab seal his. It was doing sinful homage to an
idol-god, in the face of almost unparalleled proofs of Jehovah's
supremacy. Never, since the epoch of the exodus, had wonders and
miracles been more profusely displayed than now, through the instrumentality
of Elijah; and yet this apostate from the faith of his fathers, who had
witnessed God's arm thus made bare, sends, in the very hour of righteous
judgment and rebuke, the officers of his court to consult in his behalf with
the miserable fly-god of Ekron, in Philistia. "Tell it not in Gath, publish
it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines
rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph." "If we have
forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a strange god,
shall not God search this out?"
There is yet one other incident worthy of note in this
passage, before we close the present chapter. It is the appearance of the
majestic messenger--One mightier than Elijah--"Stronger" than "THE
STRONG"--who sends him to meet the servants of the king of Samaria. He is
called here "the Angel of the Lord," or rather, "the Angel, THE
LORD;" "the Angel JEHOVAH." None other can he be than the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself--the great covenant Angel; the same Divine Personage, who,
anticipating as it were the period of His incarnation, had appeared to
Abraham at Mamre, to Jacob at Peniel, and to Gideon at Ophrah. This
idolatrous king of covenant Israel was sending to solicit the intercessions
of heathen Baal--defiling Jehovah's throne--desecrating his country's
altars--like Nadab and Abihu, seeking to offer strange fire. The great
future Intercessor of His Church arrests the messengers on their insulting
errand; and shows, that if He is rejected as strong to save, He will
manifest, in righteous severity, that He is strong to smite!
Terrible thought! to forfeit, by our own incorrigible
sins, the intercessions of Him who alone can save us--to have His rejected
blood pleading, not for us, but against us--oh, while we see
the life of Israel's monarch fast ebbing, as he lies on his royal couch at
Samaria--when we think, moreover, of his own daring impiety, as that which
sealed his doom and hurried him to an early grave--how solemnly do we seem
to listen to the words of that insulted covenant Angel--"Their sorrows shall
be multiplied, who hasten after another god. Their drink-offerings of blood
will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips."
Yet, may we not, also, in this very sentence of death
uttered by the angel Jehovah, derive a comforting reflection? Is it
no solace to think that life and death are in the hands of that Angel-God;
that what appears to us to be the most wayward and capricious of
occurrences--the departure of a human being from this world--is directly
under His sovereign control; that He gives the lease of life; and, when He
sees fit, revokes the grant? He speaks indeed, in the case of Ahaziah, in
righteous wrath; but, to each of His own people, as the divine Savior--the
Brother-man--He says, not in anger or judgment, but in love and
faithfulness--"You shall not come down from that bed on which you are gone
up, but shall surely die."
Death has no terrors when it comes thus as a message from
death's great Conqueror. As He sent Elijah--the minister of flaming
fire--with the tidings of doom to the chamber of the wicked; so does He send
angels--glorious beings, who delight to do His pleasure--to the death-beds
of His saints, to bear their disembodied spirits upward on wings of light
and love to heavenly mansions. "Father, I will," (is His last and closing
intercessory prayer in behalf of every member of the Church on earth,) "that
they also, whom you have given me, be with me where I am; that they may
behold my glory!"