II
Kings 9:26
There are parts of the Bible that
were not meant to be read in sections but that were written as entire books,
and although we can look closely at individual episodes we lose something if we
don’t also consider the wider design.
The history books that include the First and Second Books of Kings and
Chronicles are like that. In order to do
justice to this series of sermons on II Kings, this morning I’m going to do
things a little differently from usual, and instead of one, short reading and a
separate sermon, I’m going to sort of combine it all into one longer
chunk.
Go back to I Kings 21:1-24 and
you’ll find this story:
“Naboth
the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel, beside the palace of King Ahab of
Samaria. And Ahab said to Naboth, ‘Give me your vineyard, so that I may
have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house; I will give you a
better vineyard for it; or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its value
in money.’ But Naboth said to Ahab, ‘The Lord forbid that I should
give you my ancestral inheritance.’ Ahab went home resentful and sullen
because of what Naboth the Jezreelite had said to him; for he had said, “I will
not give you my ancestral inheritance.” He lay down on his bed, turned away his
face, and would not eat.
His wife
Jezebel came to him and said, ‘Why are you so depressed that you will not
eat?’ He said to her, ‘Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and said
to him, “Give me your vineyard for money; or else, if you prefer, I will give
you another vineyard for it”; but he answered, “I will not give you my
vineyard.”’
His wife
Jezebel said to him, ‘Do you now govern Israel? Get up, eat some food, and be
cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.’ So she
wrote letters in Ahab’s name and sealed them with his seal; she sent the
letters to the elders and the nobles who lived with Naboth in his
city. She wrote in the letters, ‘Proclaim a fast, and seat Naboth at the
head of the assembly; seat two scoundrels opposite him, and have them
bring a charge against him, saying, “You have cursed God and the king.” Then
take him out, and stone him to death.’ The men of his city, the elders and
the nobles who lived in his city, did as Jezebel had sent word to them. Just as
it was written in the letters that she had sent to them, they proclaimed a
fast and seated Naboth at the head of the assembly. The two scoundrels
came in and sat opposite him; and the scoundrels brought a charge against
Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, ‘Naboth cursed God and the king.’
So they took him outside the city, and stoned him to death. Then they sent
to Jezebel, saying, ‘Naboth has been stoned; he is dead.’ As soon as
Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, Jezebel said to Ahab, ‘Go,
take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to
give you for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead.’ As soon as Ahab
heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab set out to go down to the vineyard of Naboth
the Jezreelite, to take possession of it.
Then the
word of the Lord came
to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: Go down to meet King Ahab of Israel, who
rules in Samaria; he is now in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to
take possession. You shall say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: Have you killed, and also
taken possession?’ You shall say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: In the place where dogs
licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood.’ Ahab
said to Elijah, ‘Have you found me, O my enemy?’ He answered, ‘I have found
you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of
the Lord, I
will bring disaster on you; I will consume you, and will cut off from Ahab
every male, bond or free, in Israel; and I will make your house like the
house of Jeroboam son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah,
because you have provoked me to anger and have caused Israel to sin. Also
concerning Jezebel the Lord
said, “The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel.” Anyone
belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat; and anyone of his
who dies in the open country the birds of the air shall eat.”’”
The
incident is left there, although the strife between Elijah on one side and Ahab
and Jezebel on the other continues. The
history goes on and almost a generation passes.
Elijah trains Elisha to succeed him and is carried away to heaven. Ahab dies.
Elisha gains respect as a prophet.
Jezebel hangs on as the aging Queen Mother. The kingdom of Israel is repeatedly invaded,
and Elisha helps guide the resistance to the invaders, all the while urging
faith in God, while the kings put politics first.
And a lot
of what the Bible records sounds like the usual round of alliances and wars,
but we get occasional glimpses of the people who are caught up in them. Mostly it is the kings and generals, with the
prophet Elisha showing up every so often to perform a miracle among the people
who, because of these wars, are caught up in famines and shortages. At one point we hear about a siege that
reduces people to cannibalism. There are
reminders that, as the proverb says, when elephants fight the grass gets
trampled.
Then the
day comes that Elisha does something out of character for him. He sends one of his servants to find one of
the king’s generals. The servant calls
him out of a meeting and pours oil on his head, announcing that the general,
Jehu, is thereby anointed as the new king of Israel, and then runs away. Jehu reports the incident to his officers,
who proclaim him king, and a palace revolution is underway.
Ahab’s son, Joram, tried to face the
rebellion down and his army meets Jehu’s army outside his capital city, on the
land where Naboth’s vineyard had once been.
Joram takes an arrow between the shoulders as he is racing his chariot
to escape and dies immediately.
“Jehu said to his aide Bidkar, ‘Lift him out, and throw him
on the plot of ground belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite; for remember, when
you and I rode side by side behind his father Ahab how the Lord uttered this oracle
against him: “For the blood of Naboth and for the blood of his children
that I saw yesterday, says the Lord, I swear I will repay you on this very plot of
ground.” Now therefore lift him out and throw him on the plot of ground, in
accordance with the word of the Lord.’” [II Kings 9:25-26]
A series of what we would call war crimes
follows. Ahab had seventy other sons, and
Jehu arranges for their massacre.
Jezebel is thrown from a window and her body is trampled by horses then
eaten by dogs. Jehu then arranges a
festival for all the followers of Baal in Israel and once they’re together in
the temple of Baal, he locks them in and slaughters them all. Jehu ruled Israel for the next twenty-eight
years.
The
message is for the powerful and the powerless alike.
The
injustice of a ruler does not go unnoticed or unseen, even if it is arranged
privately and carried off flawlessly and appears on the face of things to be
totally legal. God sees all. And God has time that we do not. If human beings call out the wickedness and
the ruler denies it, and has the power to go on as if nothing has happened, God
remembers.
But
the longer that human beings ignore even one small crime, the more trouble
compounds before it is corrected, and the more innocent people become drawn
into the vortex. Those people, too,
might be the ones who seem to have benefited from the deed. It was not God whose decision condemned
Ahab’s descendants to bloody executions.
It was Ahab’s establishment of the might-makes-right,
I’m-the-king-and-what-I-say-goes atmosphere that laid the groundwork for people
like Jehu to kill in their self-interest, the way that Ahab had done. We are responsible not only for our actions,
but for the unknown consequences they carry.
We
see this when we examine the histories of the Old Testament in their whole
breadth. We see that there is an element
of tragedy built into things, where we come into a world tainted by the deeds
of people long dead. In our day, we
wrestle with the results of the slavery brought to an official end in 1865, but
whose effects are all around us, whether we want to see that or not. And centuries from now the world will judge
us for how we conduct ourselves in light of the dangers of changing climate and
rising seas begun by decisions made innocently enough long before we were
born. We are embedded in the time that
we are born, no less than Elijah and Elisha and the kings and queens of Israel.
Yet I would suggest looking not only at those
histories, but the entirety of the scriptures for one more point that must not
be lost.
We can, if we let ourselves, become trapped in
the notion that there is no way out of this running account of injustice, evil,
and oppression. (Let’s just use the
shorter word “sin”.) We can put
ourselves into the line of those who explain that our choices are captive to
the choices of those before us. We can
push things back and back and back to the primeval sin, that Adam and Eve
moment when everything first fell apart and blame them.
But
that’s been dealt with already. God
stepped into human history in a decisive way, and did it within the very people
who produced both Naboth and Ahab, Elijah and Jezebel, Elisha and Jehu. God became subject to all that we face when
he was born in the person of Jesus. He
was dispossessed by Herod and the Romans, who took his very life. And in letting that happen, he destroyed the
cycle by not playing into it in the way that even a righteous man like Elisha
did.
Jesus,
on the cross, put an end to the power games and the revenge, absorbing all of
that and carrying the sin of the world himself in a way that lifts it from us,
and leaves us free to put the past behind.
Sometimes it even means we leave the present behind, refusing, like him,
to accept anyone’s ways but God’s. Said
Paul,
“If, because of one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion
through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of
grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the
one man Jesus Christ.” [Romans 5:17]
It’s at the cross that anybody’s old story ends
and their new story begins.
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