Ahaziah was the son of Ahab and Jezebel. He was badly born. Some
allowance must be made for this fact in estimating his character.
Again and again we have had occasion, and shall indeed often have, to
remark upon the disadvantages of children born of wicked parents. It is
not for us to lay down any final doctrine of responsibility; we must
leave that in the hands of a just and gracious God.
A terrible spectacle, however, it is to see a man whose father sold
himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, who bound himself as
for a price to show rebellion on the very floor of Heaven.
Ahaziah was a prince of evil--a man who said he would defile the
sanctuary and commit his supreme sin within the shadow of the altar,
and whose mother laid the plans for the murder of Naboth, and who all
but personally superintended their execution. What can we expect from
such a child of darkness? Who can gather grapes of thorns, or figs of
thistles? Was he responsible for his own actions? Society is often hard
on such men--not unreasonably or unnaturally. Yet society is often very
gracious to such men, saying with an instinctive piety and sense of
justice: “After all, such men are not to be personally blamed for their
antecedents; they may indeed be open to some measure of suspicion, but
even they must have their opportunity in life.”
Let us consider the case of Ahaziah and see how matters stand for our own
instruction.
To understand the matter thoroughly, we must go to the twenty-second
chapter of the first Book of Kings: “Then said Ahaziah, the son of Ahab,
unto Jehoshaphat: ‘Let my servants go with thy servants in the ships.’
But Jehoshaphat would not.”
Jehoshaphat was right when he acted upon his instinct. By-and-by he came
to act upon a basis of calculation, and then a compact was entered into.
But who dare set aside the voice of instinct--the very first voice that
rises in the soul to make judgment and to give direction?
Jehoshaphat, on hearing the proposal of the son of Ahab, said: “No. I
have known thy father too well. I am too familiarly acquainted with thy
family history. Thou shalt not send thy servants with mine.”
It would be well for us if we could sometimes act more promptly upon our
instincts. It would have been well for Jehoshaphat if he had acted upon
his instinct.
Ahaziah fell through the lattice, and in his helplessness he became
religious. Man must have some God. Even Atheism is a kind of religion.
When a man recoils openly from what may be termed the public faith of
his country, he seeks to apologize for his recoil, and to make up for
his church absence by creating high obligations of another class. He
plays the patriot; he plays the disciplinarian; he will be a Spartan in
personal training and drill--in some way he will try to make up for or
defend the recoil of his soul from the old altar of his country.
It is in their helplessness that we really know what men are. Do not
listen to the frivolous and irresponsible chatter of men who, being in
robust health, really know nothing about the aching, the sorrow, the
pain, the need and the agony of this awful human life.
What does our helplessness suggest? Instantly we go out of ourselves to
seek friendship, assistance and sympathy. “Oh, would some gentle hand
but touch my weariness!” Thus cries the helpless one. All that, being
fairly and duly interpreted, has a religious signification. The cry for
friendship is but a subdued cry for God.
Sometimes men will invent Gods of their own. This is what was done,
practically, by Ahaziah. Men will go out after novel deities. This is
what is being done every day--not under that name, but the mere name
makes no difference in the purpose of the spirit. Say new enjoyments, new
entertainments, new programs, new customs--these, being interpreted as to
the heart of them, mean new altars, new helpers, new gods.
It is said of Shakespeare that he first exhausted worlds, and then
invented new. That was right. It was but of the liberty of a poet to
do so. But it is no part of the liberty of the soul. Necessity forbids
it, because the true God cannot be exhausted. He is like His own nature,
so far as we know it in the great creation; He is all things in one,
gleaming and dazzling as noon-tide, soft and gentle as the balmy wind,
strong as the great mountains and rocks, beauteous as the tiny fragrant
flowers, musical as the birds that make the air melodious, awful as the
gathered thunder which hovers above the Earth as if in threatening.
Who can exhaust nature?
Who can exhaust nature’s God?
Still, the imagination of man is evil continually. He will invent new
ways of enjoying himself. He will degrade religion into a mere form of
interrogation. This is what Ahaziah did in this instance: “Go, inquire of
Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this disease.”
All that we sometimes want of God is that He should be the great fortune
teller.
How true it is that Ahaziah represents us all in making his religion
into a mere form of question asking--in other words, into a form of
selfishness!
The messengers have now come. They have taken their speech from their
king, and they are on the road to consult Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron.
But who is this who meets them, and who asks:
“Is it not because there is not a God in Israel that ye go to inquire of
Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?”
The men had said nothing about their errand. Who is it that reads the
heart night and day, to whom the darkness and the light are both alike,
and from the fire of whose eye nothing is hid? How do we get the
impression that when we have perfected our lie it is in some sense public
property? We are sure the man whom we meet knows it. He looks as if he
did.
Elijah is an abrupt speaker. The “hairy man” and “girt with a girdle of
leather” did not study the scanning of his sentences. He struck with a
battering ram; his interrogations were spears that quivered in the heart;
his looks were judgments. What an effect he produced upon these men! Why
did they not go past him and say: “Keep thy speeches to thyself, thou
hairy man, nor interfere with the king’s messengers”?
We can not do that. We know that some men are not to be turned away so.
We may attempt to deceive, evade or disappoint them, but they have a
magnetic and most marvelous influence upon us. Though they do not speak
in the imperative mood, they speak with imperative force.
The men turned back like whipped children to tell the king what they had
heard, and Ahaziah was surprised at their early return. He can not sleep.
He asks that the book of the chronicles may be brought, that he may look
up events and see where the loop slipped, where the wrong entry was made,
or where the minutes were not carried out in detail.
All this means that Elijah lives in some form or other and will meet us
and confront us and have it out with us.
Look at the conflict between Ahaziah and Elijah, the Tishbite. Ahaziah is
the king and Elijah is only the prophet, and the king ought to have every
thing his own way ex-officio. Now we shall see what metal Elijah is made
of. He handled kings as if they were little children. He took them up and
set them down behind him and said: “Wait there until I return, and stir
at your peril.”
The prophet should always be the uppermost man. Kings are nothing
compared to teachers and seers--men who hold the judgments of God on
commission. The great men of the nation are the prophets, the teachers,
the educators of thought, the inspirers of noble sacrificial enthusiasm.
See how Elijah tramps among the kings. He has no favor to ask. If he were
driven to ask for one morsel of bread, he would be Elijah no more.
Ahaziah sends to Elijah and says: “Come down.” These words sound very
commanding and imperative. Elijah answered: “If I be a man of God, then
let fire come down from Heaven and consume thee and thy fifty. And there
came down fire from Heaven and consumed him and his fifty.”
Look at the conflict and its parties. On the one hand, petulance; on the
other, dignity. On the one side, anger--fretful, fuming, petty; on the
other, judgment--calm, sublime, comprehensive, final.
Ekron was one of the royal cities of the Philistines. Its situation is
pointed out with considerable minuteness in Scripture. It is described as
lying on the northern border of Philistia and of the territory allotted
to Judah. It stood on the plain between Bethshemesh and Jabneel. Jerome
locates it on the east of the road leading from Azotus (Ashdod) to Jamnia
(Jabneel). From these notices we have no difficulty in identifying it
with the modern village of Akir. Akir stands on the southern slope of
a low and bleak ridge or swell which separates the Plain of Philistia
from Sharon. It contains about fifty mud houses, and has not a vestige of
antiquity except two large and deep wells and some stone water troughs.
Ekron means “wasteness.” The houses are built on the accumulated rubbish
of past ages, and, like their predecessors, if left desolate for a few
years they would crumble to dust. The most interesting event in its
history was the sending of the ark to Bethshemesh. A new cart was made
and two milch kine yoked to it, and then left to choose their own path;
“and they took the straight way to the way of Bethshemesh,” the position
of which can be seen in a gorge of the distant mountains eastward. The
deity worshiped at Ekron was called Baal-zebub, and we may conclude from
the story of Ahaziah that this oracle had a great reputation, even among
the degenerate Israelites. Ekron was a large village in the days of
Jerome, and also in the age of the crusades.