"And the destruction of Ahaziah was of God, by coming to Joram; for,
when he was come, he went out with Jehoram against Jehu the son of
Nimshi, whom the Lord had anointed to cut off the house of Ahab."--2
CHRON. xxii. 7.
We rarely read this part of the Bible. And I do not wonder at it. For
those particular chapters are undoubtedly dreary and monotonous. They
contain the names of a number of incompetent and worthless kings who
did nothing that was worth writing about, and who were singularly
alike, so that when you have heard the story of one of them you know
pretty well the story of all. It is the good lives that furnish
attractive reading, because there is so much individuality and variety
in them, so many pictorial lights and shadows. A novel in which all
the characters are mean, would be read by nobody. The blackness needs
to be relieved by something good, for darkness is always monotonous.
Bad men show a dreary sameness in their thoughts and doings, their rise
and fall. The godly are like nature illumined by the sunlight,
manifold and infinite; the wicked are like nature when the darkness
covers it, uniform and dismal. Nearly all that is said in the Bible
about these bad kings, is that they walked in the ways of Ahab or
Jeroboam or some other wicked person, that they closely imitated the
doings of their model. The Bible does not waste space in describing
them more accurately. One or two specimens do for all.
But certain things are said about Ahaziah which afford room for
reflection, and may, perhaps, be useful to us if we take them in a
right way.
And first let me give you a lesson in genealogy. These lessons are
often very wearisome. Let two men get on talking about who was the
cousin, father, grandfather, great-grandmother, and what not of such a
person, and you begin at once to wish that you were out of it, or that
you could quietly go to sleep until they settle the question; and yet
it is not so unimportant as it seems. When a man writes a biography he
deems it his duty to go back three or four generations, and tell you
what sort of fathers and mothers and grandmothers and even
great-grandsires his hero had. It is very wearisome, but it is very
necessary. The story is not complete without that--for breed and
ancestry go quite as far with men as with cattle, and often further.
Ahaziah's descent was right on one side, but it was very mean on the
other. He had David's blood in his veins, and Jehoshaphat's, and
mingled with that, the venom of heathenism. His mother was Athaliah,
and Athaliah was the daughter of Jezebel, and Jezebel was a licentious
heathen princess whom Ahab on an evil day had made his wife.
There is nothing in the Bible more tragical and more infamous than the
story of this woman Jezebel, and the part which she took in shaping the
destiny of the Jewish nation. She was a Syro-Phenician princess, whose
father ruled over the powerful and wealthy cities of Tyre and Sidon.
Ahab was caught by her beauty, and by the attractive political alliance
of which she was the pledge. Some think that the forty-fifth Psalm had
reference to her, which speaks of the daughter of Tyre coming with gold
of Ophir, splendidly arrayed, and bringing a handsome dowry with her.
Ahab thought he was marrying wealth and dignity, and providing for the
greatness of his house, and, as often happens in such marriages, he
forgot to ask for a certificate of character, forgot to ask what sort
of mother he was providing for his children. She came with all her
meretricious splendour covering one of the most fiendish natures that
ever wore a woman's form. She developed, if she did not bring with
her, all imaginable vices--her vindictive passion revelled in blood;
her religion was the filthiest licentiousness; her beauty became the
painted face of a common harlot. Her figure stands forth in the Bible
as the very worst exemplification of the dark possibilities of human
nature. Tennyson says men do not mount as high as the best of
women--but they scarce can sink as low as the worst. For men at most
differ as heaven and earth; but women, worst and best, as heaven and
hell. And this woman became, alas, the mother of kings; and all who
went forth from her inherited her nature, and forgot nothing of her
training. For several generations the taint of her evil influence was
felt throughout the whole court life of Israel, and the licentious
abominations which she had introduced infected the whole national life.
Ahab married for money and position, and this was what came of it.
Her influence extended also to the southern kingdom of Judah. Jehoram,
King of Judah, must needs marry Ahab's daughter, Athaliah, who was the
exact counterpart of her mother, Jezebel. Another wedding in which
morals and religion were sacrificed on the altar of gain--for by means
of it a small kingdom was to be cemented in alliance with a greater,
and another rich dowry to be secured. And the same dreary results
followed--a court corrupted with all manner of impurity, sons and
daughters initiated into all the mysteries of wickedness,
demoralisation spreading all around.
In this atmosphere Ahaziah was trained. His mother's name, says the
record briefly, was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri, that is, the direct
daughter of Jezebel. He also walked in the ways of the house of Ahab,
for his mother was his counsellor to do wickedly--wherefore he did evil
in the sight of the Lord, for they were his counsellors after the death
of his father to his destruction. What else could result in a home of
which Athaliah was the head, in which the main training and influence
were supplied by one of Jezebel's brood. The significant feature in
all these Chronicles is the immense influence of women in shaping the
lives and characters of kings. The men seem to have little to do with
it; the women are almost supreme. Sons do not take after their fathers
but after their mothers. Again and again we read of a good king who
had a wicked father--Josiah, Hezekiah, and others. They shake off
their evil inheritance; they refuse to follow in their fathers' steps;
they destroy idolatry, and endeavour to redeem Israel from its
iniquity. But whenever this is the case you do not look far without
discovering the cause. A good mother has been at work--woman's
gracious influence has counteracted against the pernicious example of
the father. And, on the other hand, we have a long list of vile and
idolatrous kings, whose fathers were either comparatively worthy, or
full of downright godliness, and then, invariably, there is some
evil-minded royal consort at the back of it. Whenever we can get into
the secrets of court life, we find that the character of the wife
determines the moral weight and form of the royal children. It is her
training that shapes the men. How could it be otherwise indeed? What
time had those kings to spend on home matters, what with their
fighting, judging, governing, and attending to all the affairs of
empire? How could they do a father's work and watch the training of
the future kings? It was left to the mothers, and unhappy they who had
mothers like Ahaziah's.
And is not this an everlasting story, true to-day as it was in those
old days? It is the mother's hand mainly that shapes men for good or
evil. Women more than men make the atmosphere of home--the atmosphere
which young lives breathe, and breathing never lose. The wise woman
buildeth her house--the foolish plucketh it down with her hands. What
time does a father spend in disciplining the moral and spiritual nature
of his children? That has to be done in the hours when he is toiling
in the warehouse, or resting wearily after the labours of the day, or
surely it is not done at all. From a mother the child receives all its
early religious thoughts. By her the Bible stories are taught, and
through her lips the good book comes to be loved. None can do it
except her. It is her eyes that watch every moral movement in the
young life--every sign of change--every incipient error--every
beginning of good and evil habit. No eyes can detect these things as
quickly and as surely as hers. And if she is too careless to discover
them, they will go unobserved and unchecked. Unhappy is the mother who
gives to society, or to friendship, or to pleasure the time which she
owes to her sons and daughters, for she will have to reap in vain
regrets the penalty of her neglect. How rarely do good and true women
and men go forth from a home in which a mother has been too busy with
the giddy affairs of the pleasurable world to teach and pray with her
children. Still more rarely do permanently evil and incorrigible lives
go forth from a home in which a noble and religious mother has made it
the chief business of her life to mould and train her children in paths
of pure thought and reverent purpose. There is no religious work which
a woman can do that equals this in importance, and none which secures
such sure and blessed results. That, then, is the main thought
suggested by these chapters--the measureless influence of women in
forming lives for evil or for good.
Then comes the only other thing that we are told about this
Ahaziah--that he was killed because he happened to be found in evil
company. He lived badly because he followed the counsels of his
mother, we read, and he died suddenly and tragically because he
endeavoured to be on very friendly terms with his mother's relatives.
He was King of Judah, and Judah with all its sins still worshipped God
and was comparatively free from idolatry. But Israel, over which
Jehoram, his mother's brother ruled, was given up to all the
abominations of heathenism. Its court was a horrible sink of iniquity,
and God's judgment had gone forth against it and all its doings.
Ahaziah must needs join hands and pledge friendship with his relatives,
and for that purpose visited them--probably he did not intend to do
more. It was just to look at the doings of this court, and have a
taste of its pleasures, and then come back again. But once there he
was led on from step to step--found Jehoram's company very attractive,
entered into his plans, went out with him to battle, took part, no
doubt, in the worship of his gods, and then while the two were going
hand and glove together, the long-deferred judgment of God fell on
Jezebel's house. The soldier raised up by God for that purpose swooped
down upon the wicked king and his favourites with resistless force,
making no distinction; and Ahaziah, being one of the band, shared in
the general destruction.
The destruction of Ahaziah, says the Book, was of God, by coming to
Jehoram. By his coquetting with evil he was made to pay the last
penalty. So runs the story, and it seems far removed from everything
that concerns our lives--yet not so far--things of a similar kind are
happening every day. Men who tread the ways of sinners, who enter into
any sort of fellowship with them, often find themselves involved very
strangely and suddenly in their shame and their punishment. You cannot
go into ways of evil men, or visit any forbidden scenes, or lend your
countenance in any way to their doings, even though you have no further
intention than just to look on, but there is ever hanging over you the
sword of detection. The policeman appears, or God's light is let down
upon the scene, and you are discovered as having part in it, and your
name is stained and your character gone, and your life marked with a
perpetual stigma of disgrace. When God's Judgment comes on sin it
always involves some who are just hovering on the edge of it, as well
as those who are in the thick of it. You ought not to be there.
Remember Ahaziah.
And there are some evil natures and some evil things which a man cannot
touch in even the slightest degree without being led on from step to
step, as Ahaziah was, until he was in the thick of Jehoram's iniquity.
A young woman cannot enter a gin-palace and drink her glass at the
counter--as I see scores do any night--without gradually going further
and losing all the modesty and grace of womanhood. A young man cannot
touch gambling in any of its forms without almost inevitably being
drawn under its fascinations, as one who is slowly involved in a wily
serpent's coils. An English bishop thinks and has said that a little
betting is allowable, that if you only indulge moderately in it, you
may do it with impunity. He might as well have said that if you only
steal coppers the law will smile upon you, but if you steal gold you
will come in for its stripes. He might as well have said, "If you only
put your little finger in this fire it will not hurt you, but if you
thrust your whole hand in, it will burn." There can be no moderation
in a thing which is essentially and in all its principles based on
dishonesty and corruption, and evil excitement and evil greed. I am
profoundly sorry that such a thing has been said by one whose word has
so much authority and influence. It will be taken by thousands as an
encouragement to do what they are only too prone and eager to do. Who
shall curse what a father in Christ has condescended to bless? We need
rather to have all Christian hands and voices raised in passionate and
tearful denunciation of that which is doing more than anything else to
demoralise our youth and eat away the very morals of the nation. We
need to warn against it and denounce it in whatever form and degree it
is practised, and to say, "Touch not, taste not, handle not the
accursed thing."
We must keep away altogether from the men who delight in evil paths,
and from the things, the very touch of which defiles. Go not in their
way, pass not by it. "If sinners entice thee, consent thou not."
Learn the lesson of Ahaziah's life, and how his fall came because he
consorted with wickeder men than himself, and was anxious to see their
doings.