2 Kings 1--Elijah Denounces Ahaziah

2 Kings 1
English Standard Version

Elijah Denounces Ahaziah
1 After the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against Israel.

2 Now Ahaziah fell through the lattice in his upper chamber in Samaria, and lay sick; so he sent messengers, telling them, “Go, inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover from this sickness.” 3 But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, “Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say to them, ‘Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? 4 Now therefore thus says the LORD, You shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.’” So Elijah went.

5 The messengers returned to the king, and he said to them, “Why have you returned?” 6 And they said to him, “There came a man to meet us, and said to us, ‘Go back to the king who sent you, and say to him, Thus says the LORD, Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.’” 7 He said to them, “What kind of man was he who came to meet you and told you these things?” 8 They answered him, “He wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.” And he said, “It is Elijah the Tishbite.”

9 Then the king sent to him a captain of fifty men with his fifty. He went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, “O man of God, the king says, ‘Come down.’” 10 But Elijah answered the captain of fifty, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty.” Then fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty.

11 Again the king sent to him another captain of fifty men with his fifty. And he answered and said to him, “O man of God, this is the king's order, ‘Come down quickly!’” 12 But Elijah answered them, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty.” Then the fire of God came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty.

13 Again the king sent the captain of a third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up and came and fell on his knees before Elijah and entreated him, “O man of God, please let my life, and the life of these fifty servants of yours, be precious in your sight. 14 Behold, fire came down from heaven and consumed the two former captains of fifty men with their fifties, but now let my life be precious in your sight.” 15 Then the angel of the LORD said to Elijah, “Go down with him; do not be afraid of him.” So he arose and went down with him to the king 16 and said to him, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Because you have sent messengers to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron—is it because there is no God in Israel to inquire of his word?—therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.’”

​17 So he died according to the word of the LORD that Elijah had spoken. Jehoram became king in his place in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, because Ahaziah had no son. 18 Now the rest of the acts of Ahaziah that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

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As much as Ahab was a wicked king, he was a strong military leader that the nations around Israel feared.  After his death, the Moabites wanted to test Israel to see if Ahab's son Ahaziah was as formidable an opponent as Ahab was.  However, Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice in his upper chamber and been injured so that he was not able to lead the army in battle, so he told his servants to inquire of Baal-zebub (Beelzebub in the New Testament--the very spirit that Jesus was accused of casting out demons by.  You may know this demon by another name, "The Lord of the Flies.") to inquire if he would recover from this "sickness" (maybe this is better translated "injury" or maybe there was some secondary infection or sickness that happened after the initial fall).  This demon was the "god" of the Philistine town of Ekron.

The LORD, being displeased that Ahaziah sought to inquire of foreign gods sent Elijah the Tishbite (the same Elijah we've been reading about in 1 Kings) to the messengers of King Ahaziah to tell them, "Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? Now therefore thus says the LORD, You shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die."

The messengers returned much sooner than expected, for the Philistine territory is far away from Samaria to the south of Judah and when asked why they had returned so quickly, the messengers replied, “There came a man to meet us, and said to us, ‘Go back to the king who sent you, and say to him, Thus says the LORD, Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.’”  Of course, this was not the news that Ahaziah wanted to hear--typically kings thought that if they paid enough money to the prophets of these false gods, they could pay for their blessing.

The king is upset and wants to get a description of the prophet so that he can search for him (likely to try to do him harm or kill him since he is angered by the words of the prophecy).  The description of Elijah by the messengers matches almost identically with the description of John the Baptist from the New Testament, “He wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist," and they remembered that he had given them his name, "Elijah the Tishbite."

It is almost certain the Ahaziah recognized this name because his father Ahab and his mother Jezebel so hated Elijah and blamed him for many of the things that the LORD brought upon them as a result of their wickedness and idolatry.  Then the king sent a captain from his army and the fifty men of his battalion that were assigned to him to go and arrest Elijah the Tishbite.  It seems they had no trouble finding him, and when they found him they said, "O man of the God, the king orders, 'Come down.'"  Elijah knew what was happening and that this an show of force by the king to say that he was in charge and God was not, so there is another experience much like the one on Mount Carmel (and other places in the Bible) where there is a test to prove that Elijah is the prophet of the LORD and speaks the LORD's own words.  Elijah said that this would be the sign that he was truly the prophet of the LORD and that his message he spoke was true--fire would come out of heaven and consume this company of fifty soldiers, just like how the fire had come down out of heaven at Mount Carmel and consumed the sacrifice, wood, the altar and had licked up the water that covering the sacrifice and was in the trench around the altar.  The captain and his fifty men were consumed by the fire, but somehow word got back to Ahaziah what happened.

You would think that would been enough for Ahaziah to cry "Mercy," but he sent another captain with another fifty soldiers with the same message, and to no one's surprise the LORD did the same thing to the second company of fifty and their captain as had happened to the first (well, maybe Ahaziah was surprised, but I'm not sure anyone else was).  Ahaziah is some special kind of stupid (probably both thick headed and hard-hearted like Pharaoh) because he sends a third group of fifty expecting different results, but it was the captain of these fifty men that acted different that saved his life and the lives of his men.

He did not come to Elijah with the king's message that the king ordered Elijah to come down off the mountain and come with them.  No, he knew if he did the same thing as before, he would be met with the same results.  Instead, he immediately bows down in humility and worship and cries out for mercy that his life and the lives of his men might be saved.

Then the angel of the LORD (for those that have forgotten, I believe this is the name used for the second person of the Trinity in the Old Testament before His incarnation when He received the name Jesus) spoke to Elijah and told Elijah to go down to this captain and to not be afraid of him.  Elijah then went with them to the king and boldly proclaimed the prophecy the LORD had given him to the king's face in exactly the same way that he had delivered it to the messengers the king had sent to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron,  “Thus says the LORD, ‘Because you have sent messengers to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron—is it because there is no God in Israel to inquire of his word?—therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up, but you shall surely die.’”

Ahaziah's death came shortly after Elijah's message was delivered as we saw last time that Ahaziah only reigned in Israel for two years, and apparently he spent most of his reign sick in bed from this incident.  Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, then also ruled over Israel starting in the second year of his reign in Judah, for Ahaziah died without a son.  However, this is not the happy ending of reunification that we are hoping for because Israel will establish more bad kings like Ahab to be kings over them before the time of the kings is finished.  It was just good that the southern kingdom of Judah was willing to step in for a time and provide leadership and protection when their brothers to the north were "like sheep without a shepherd."