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Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. Welcome to day 174. Can you believe we're 174 days in to studying the Bible? I'm super excited. Today we are in second kings, two kings, chapters nine through 11. We got a lot of murder, okay? Like a lot of murder, a lot of blood. It's a bloody day, okay? And if you've done the reading, shout out to you. You're going to understand all the context clues, all the nerdy nuggets. And like always, I'm going to leave you with the timeless truth. If you haven't done the reading for today, stop the video, pause the audio, go do the reading. The main character, really, or the character that's about to take center stage, is a man by the name of J. Who. So chapter nine starts the context clue set to understand all this. Okay? If you get this wrong, nothing else really makes sense. It's kind of like the top button of a shirt. Okay? If it's wrong, then all the other buttons are gonna get jacked up. So we have to ask this. Who was supposed to anoint Jehu? Okay. Who was supposed to anoint Jehu? I need you to go all the way back to first kings, okay? First kings. I'm pretty sure it's chapter 19. I want to say it's chapter 19. You know what, I'm just going to go ahead and fact check myself really quick because my Bible's open right here. 1 Kings, chapter 19, right around verse. Yeah, verse 16. Okay. In First Kings, chapter 19, verse 16, Elijah is supposed to go anoint Jehu, okay, as the next king of Israel. Why does he not wanna do this? He does not want to do this because it is dangerous. It is politically, physically dangerous to go anoint a king while there's another king who's currently on the throne. Especially when that king and his wife, that would be Ahab and Jezebel, want to kill you. So Elijah just doesn't do it. He completely disobeys God. And so now Second Kings, chapter nine opens and it says this. Then the prophet Elisha. So now it's on Elisha to anoint Jehu. And this is where things get interesting. Then the prophet Elisha called A member of the company of the Prophets, and said to him, gird up your loins, take this flask of oil in your hand and go to Ramoth Gilead. When you arrive, look therefore Jehu, son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi, go in and get him to leave his companions and take him into an inner chamber. Then take the flask of oil, pour it on his head, and say, here's the words that this Internet, this prophet, intern is supposed to say. Okay? Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel. Okay. Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel. 10 words. The intern is supposed to say 10 words. Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel. Then open the door and flee. Do not linger. Why is he saying that? Well, because this is a dangerous thing to be doing. Jehu is a commander of the army, the military guy. So let's just start with this. Should this unnamed member of the Company of the Prophets be the person to go anoint Jehu? No, Elisha should be the person going to anoint Jehu. And should Elisha even be the person going to anoint Jehu? No. Elijah should be going to anoint Jehu. But he's dead. Okay? He died in the whirlwind, so that's that. He died in God's tornado. So in his light, the reason that he had to get judged by God is because he refused to go anoint Jehu because he knew anointing a king while there's already a king on the throne is treason. Okay, this is seditious. Now, this is a great plan if you want to unalive yourself. But if you want to stay alive, then you shouldn't go around anointing new kings when there's already a king. So that's the context. Okay? So first we have to establish in chapter nine, verse three, Elisha shouldn't even be delegating this to anybody. But he is. And he's clear that he's to say 10 words total. Now let's get there. Let's get the young man, the young prophet. I love how it's like double, double. The young man, the young prophet, went to Ramoth Gilead. He arrived while the commanders of the army were in council, and he announced, I have a message for you, Commander. For which one of us asked Jehu for you, Commander. So Jehu got up and went inside. The young man poured the oil on his head, saying to him, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. So we're adding stuff already. Okay? The God of Israel, I anoint you king over the people of the Lord. This is not. This is. We're already off, okay? This is like a game of telephone. This prophet has broken the game. This is not. This is not what Elisha said. You shall strike down the house of your master Ahab. Wait, what? What? No one told this man to say that. No one told him to say this. You shall strike down the house of your master Ahab so that I may avenge on Jezebel the blood of my servants, the prophets. So now we got a prophet is telling a commander of the army that God wants to avenge the blood of the prophets. This is bad. This is not good. Okay? In the blood of all the servants of the Lord, for the whole house of Ahab shall perish. I will cut off from Ahab every male bond or free in Israel. I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, and like the house of Basha, son of Ahijah. The dog shall eat Jezebel in the territory of Jezreel, and no one shall bury her. Bro, that is not the ten words. Ten words, bro. Here's what Elisha told you to say. Thus says the the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel. That was the message. Bruh went and gave a whole paragraph of prophecies, ok? Then he opened the door and fled. So he remembered that part. Now Jehu is about to go on a rampage. And every single time he kills someone, he's going to quote this prophecy and everything that Jehu does. I need you to begin to see it through. The context of this is not how any of this is supposed to go down. First of all, Elijah was supposed to anoint this man. Second of all, if Elijah refused to do it and got judged, why does Elisha think he can pass the buck off to an unnamed young intern? Second of all, intern was like, let's go. Today's my day. I know they only gave me five minutes to preach, but they about to get this 30 minute sermon a day. Okay? The intern is like, and you gonna kill Ahab and you gon kill Jezebel. Like, I mean, intern is going off and now Jehu is going to go on a killing rampage. Not only is Jehu going to kill Ahab, kill Jezebel, he's actually going to go to Judah and kill King Ahaziah, who's the king in Judah. And let's see if Ahaziah's a good king or a bad king. Oh, Ahaziah's an evil king. Okay, well. And if you don't have this chart, by the way, you need a text, sorry, DM me the word idol. And you can get this awesome chart with all the good and evil kings of both Israel and Judah. He kills Jezebel, he's gonna kill Ahab, he's gonna kill Ahaziah, and now he's going to kill the 70 sons of Ahab, which is just total. This is just flat out murder. And every time he's going to quote some prophecy, and the reality is that he's misquoting prophecy. There are prophecies that he's quoting from, like Elijah, but he's misquoting them. And he thinks he has godly authority to do this stuff and he does it. So what should he have done? Because Jehu's gonna get judged for all this. Okay, it's a duh. He's gonna get judged for murdering a bunch of people, but his name is gonna come back up in the book of Hosea. And so God's gonna have justice and mercy on Jehu. And why does he have justice and mercy? Because the only reason that he is doing a bunch of sinful stuff is because he's been emboldene a word of prophecy. And so this is why prophecy can't go haywire in church. It's why it can't go haywire. It's why the Bible says that people who speak on God's behalf, teach on God's behalf, prophesy for God are going to get judged at a higher standard. Because now we have a domino effect of a leader who thinks that he has license to do stuff that he honestly does not have God's green light or thumbs of thumbs up or approval to actually do. Family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. When you get into the details of the text, you'll realize how he alludes to the officials that he wants to kill King Ahab's sons. But he doesn't flat out say it because he's really testing them to see are you guys sketchy like me, like, are you guys down to really do this? He kills some Ahaziah's relatives. And now the only thing that he actually does that he has license to do is verse 18 of chapter 10. He is going to kill all of the prophets that are in service to baal and that it's great. He's going to kill a bunch of BAAL worshipers. And he has biblical grounds to do that. Okay? The Torah tells us that people who are going are going after false gods should be put to death. They should be stoned. Okay? So that he has license to do verse 27. Then they demolished the pillar of Baal and destroyed the temple of Baal and made it a latrine. So this is where the joke's back. Ok, now I think that I explained to you guys the meaning of Beelzebul and Beelzebub, ok? Beelzebul is lord, prince, Lord of the temple, lord of the house. Beelzebub is lord of the flies, lord of the dung, Lord of the outhouse. Okay? So by changing one letter, Beelzebul to Zealz, it completely changes the name of the God baal. Baal. And so this is going to come full circle. And that now they have destroyed Baal's temple and they have turned it into a pit latrine. So they turn it into an outhouse, which is full circle on jokes on you, baal, because now your temple is a toilet. Let me read you some dirty nuggets when Jezebel dies, okay, there's this. This is chapter nine, verse 35. I'm just going to read you these nerdy nuggets really quick. There is now a connection between Jezebel and Anat. Anat is Baal's wife and sister. Okay? Anat is the wife slash sister of BAAL or BAAL Anat. When she attacks, someone cuts off their hands and their heads. And so now they're gonna find Jezebel with only skull and palms and feet because she's dying in the exact same way that Anat's victims die. This is a massive play that you will wind up like the gods you serve. Next, nerdy nugget. Jehu consistently misquotes prophecy in order to justify his evil, murderous actions. So by him quoting, you can see in the text, he's trying to justify the things that he knows are wrong. So although he's received a bad prophecy, here's what Jehu should have done. He should have made the prophet perform a sign. Okay? So if a prophet gives you a word, you can't just be like, well, let's fact check you. Let's get another prophet. No, you gotta ask the prophet. Okay? Confirm what you're saying with a sign. Next. David dared not kill Saul because he believed that Saul was God's anointed. So the fact that Jehu would kill God's anointed, the person who's been anointed to be king. So David has already been anointed, but he still believes that Saul, once you're anointed, you're not unanointed. So Saul is God's anointed. How dare I lay a hand on God's anointed? So what you see with David and Saul is David would dare not kill Saul. And Jehu has none of this. Respect absolutely no decorum. OK, so chapter 10 starts. And Jehu is refusing to flat out tell the Israelite officials to kill Ahab's 70 sons because he knows that it's wrong. And two things. Canaanites behead people and Assyrians stack skulls in heaps. That's exactly what Jehu is doing to the seventy sons of Ahab because he is acting more Assyrian than he is Jewish. Jehu blackmails the officials of Samaria by having them complicit in this crime against Ahab's sons. This is barbaric behavior. Baal's temple becomes an outhouse latrine. And then chapter 11, chapter 11, we're at a bit of a impasse. Well, not just chapter 11, chapter 10. What happens is I wrote out this whole, like, family tree here because this is actually very, very complicated. I had to write, like, a whole family tree. You probably can't see that. So we have a king by the name of Ahaziah. And the conflict with Ahaziah is God has made David a promise that there will always be someone on your throne. So Ahaziah is the king in Judah. The only problem is he is the nephew of Ahab. And God has promised that Ahab's line is going to get wiped out. So this creates a problem because Ahaziah has Ahab's blood and David's blood running through his veins. How? Well, his father Jehoram marries Athaliah, which is Ahab's daughter and probably maybe even sister, which is very complicated. Sorry. No, yeah. Daughter, sister. So Ahab is Ahaziah's uncle. Ahaziah is Ahab's nephew. Uncle, nephew, relationship. Athaliah, who is Ahaziah's mom and Ahab's daughter, is totally wicked. Okay? Which is why Ahaziah is going to end up being wicked. When Ahaziah dies, Athaliah goes on a rampage, killing anybody in David's line she can find. But her daughter Jehosheba hides her nephew Joash, who's gonna become the next king. Okay, so this is a complicated family tree of family members trying to kill other family members, intermarrying with Israelite kings, with Jewish Judahite kings. This is very, very, very complicated. But here's what you need to know is that God is going to keep his covenant to David by allowing Jehoshapha to hide Joash. And where does she hide Joash? In the temple. And so Athaliah becomes queen for I can't remember how long, but after a while, the people essentially rise up and install Joash as king. Okay, complicated, but that gives you enough context in order to really get through chapter 11 and know what you're reading, because chapter 11 just starts out with, now, when Athaliah, Ahaziah's mother, saw that her son was dead. And it's like, when did her son die? Well, her son died way up in chapter nine. Okay, so two chapters ago, Ahaziah died. When she saw her son was dead, she set about to destroy all the royal family. Which royal family? The royal family of Judah, not the royal family of Israel. However, her father and maybe brother is Ahab, who was the king in the north, which is the king of Israel. And for whatever reason, someone thought it was a good idea for these lines to intermarry. These lines, intermarrying is a bad idea. And so this intermarriage places the Davidic covenant at risk, because now God has to bring judgment on one of David's descendants. And it. And it almost gets to the brink of David not having someone to be on his throne. So those are all the nerdy nuggets I could give you. Here's the timeless truth. Sin always has a domino effect. Sin will always have a butterfly effect. That is typically something that you cannot foresee and that you cannot predict. And so sin has this way of having a butterfly effect, a ripple effect, a domino effect. And so Elijah, if Elijah had just gone and did what God told him to do, go anoint Jehu but because he passed the buck, now Elisha has to do it. And Elisha doesn't want to do it because Elisha is scared. And so he passes the book to some intern, and that intern jacks up the whole prophecy, does not repeat what Elisha has said, and now sets this maniac on a killing rampage. And now he thinks he's justified by God. This is how sin works. That what starts off as just one degree off means that you are miles off course. When a ship is one degree off, they will end up at a totally different destination. They'll end up in a different country, in a different nation because they were one degree off. And so obedience is required if we are going to actually be the people who carry God's word and his message. And sin will always have a ripple effect, a domino. Do not let sin lie to you and tell you that there's no consequences for your actions. There are consequences when we sin against the Lord and when we disobey. And so we get to see Elijah's consequences have this ripple effect generations later. And the actions of Jehu are the fruit of Elijah's disobedience. And even though God has dealt with Elijah and brought judgment, there still is a ripple effect. And. And you just don't know how sin is going to begin to create a butterfly effect in the lives of people that you don't even know. So obey the voice of God. And with that, I want to invite you to tune in tomorrow for day 175. We're going to continue our trek through two kings. If you're on a streak, don't break it. If you're not on a streak, how about we start one? I love you. I'm so proud of you. I'll see you right here tomorrow as we continue to walk through the Book of Two Kings. Love you so much. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses at thebibledepartment. Com. We'll see you back here tomorrow.