Keil & Delitzsch - OT Commentary on 2 Kings

The Second Book of Kings

Ch. 1. Ahaziahs Illness. His Death Announced by Elijah

After the Moabites had rebelled against Israel, Ahaziah became sick in consequence of a fall through a grating in his upper room, and sent messengers to Ekron to consult the idol Baalzebub concerning the result of his illness. By the command of God, however, Elijah met the messengers on the road, and told them that the king would die (vv. 1-8). When Ahaziah sent soldiers to fetch Elijah, the messengers were miraculously slain on two successive occasions, and it was only his humiliation before the prophet which saved the third captain and his host from sharing a similar fate; whereupon Elijah went with him to the king, and repeated the threat already announced on account of his idolatry, which was very soon fulfilled (vv. 9-18).

[[@Bible:2Kings 1:1]]

[[@Bible:2Kings 1]]

2Ki. 1: 1-8.

After the death of Ahab, Moab rebelled against Israel (v. 1). The Moabites, who had been subjugated by David (2Sa. 8: 2), had remained tributary to the kingdom of the ten tribes after the division of the kingdom. but when Israel was defeated by the Syrians at Ramoth in the time of Ahab, they took advantage of this defeat and the weakening of the Israelitish power in the country to the east of the Jordan to shake off the yoke of the Israelites, and very soon afterwards attempted an invasion of the kingdom of Judah, in alliance with the Edomite and other tribes of the desert, which terminated, however, in a great defeat, though it contributed to the maintenance of their independence. For further remarks, see at 2Ki. 3: 4ff.

[[@Bible:2Kings 1:2]]

2Ki. 1: 2.

Ahaziah could not do anything to subjugate the Moabites any further, since he was very soon afterwards taken grievously ill. He fell through the grating in his upper room at Samaria. , the grating, is either a window furnished with a shutter of lattice-work, or a door of lattice-work in the upper room of the palace, but hardly a grating in the floor of the Aliyah for the purpose of letting light into the lower rooms, as the Rabbins supposed. On account of this misfortune, Ahaziah resorted to the Ekronitish Baalzebub to obtain an oracle concerning the result of his illness. , i.e., Fly-Baal, was not merely the averter of swarms of insects, like the , of Elis (Ges., Winer, Movers, Phniz. i. p. 175), since the Fly-God cannot have received his name as the enemy of flies, like lucus a non lucendo, but was (LXX, Joseph.), i.e., God represented as a fly, as a fly-idol, to which the name Myiodes, gnat-like, in Plin. h. n. xxix. 6, clearly points, and as a god of the sun and of summer must have stood in a similar relation to the flies to that of the oracle-god Apollo, who both sent diseases and took them away (vid., J. G. Mller, Art. Beelzebub in Herzogs Cycl. i. p. 768, and Stark, Gaza, pp. 260, 261). The latter observes that these (the flies), which are governed in their coming and going by all the conditions of the weather, are apparently endowed with prophetic power themselves. This explains the fact that a special power of prophecy was attributed to this god.[footnoteRef:1] Ekron, now Akir, the most northerly of the five Philistine capitals (see at Jos. 13: 3). [1: The later Jews altered the name Beelzebub into , i.e., probably lord of the (heavenly) dwelling, as a name given to the (Mat. 10:25, etc.); and the later Rabbins finally, by changing into , made a fly-god into a dung-god, to express in the most intense form their abomination of idolatry (see Lightfoot, Horae hebr. et talm. in Mat. 12:24, and my Bibl. Archol. i. pp. 440, 441).]

[[@Bible:2Kings 1:3]]

2Ki. 1: 3, 4.

But the angel of the Lord, the mediator of the revelations made by the invisible God to the covenant nation (see Comm. on the Pentateuch, vol. i. pp. 185-191, transl.), had spoken to Elijah to go and meet the kings messengers, who were going to inquire of Baalzebub, and to ask them whether it was from the want of a God in Israel ( as in Ex. 14:11; see Ewald, 323, a.) that they turned to Baalzebub, and to announce to them the word of Jehovah, that Ahaziah would not rise up from his bed again, but would die. And Elijah went, sc. to carry out the divine commission.

[[@Bible:2Kings 1:5]]

2Ki. 1: 5-8.

The messengers did not recognise Elijah, but yet they turned back and reported the occurrence to the king, who knew at once, from the description they gave of the habitus of the man in reply to his question, that it was Elijah the Tishbite. : what was the manner of the man? is used here to denote the peculiarity of a person, that which in a certain sense constitutes the vital law and right of the individual personality; figura et habitus (Vulg.). The servants described the prophet according to his outward appearance, which in a man of character is a reflection of his inner man, as , vir pilosus, hirsutus. This does not mean a man with a luxuriant growth of hair, but refers to the hairy dress, i.e., the garment made of sheep- skin or goat-skin or coarse camel-hair, which was wrapped round his body; the (2Ki. 2: 8; 1Ki. 19:13), or (Zec. 13: 4, cf. Mat. 3: 4, Heb. 11:37), which was worn by the prophets, not as mere ascetics, but as preachers of repentance, the rough garment denoting the severity of the divine judgments upon the effeminate nation, which revelled in luxuriance and worldly lust. And this was also in keeping with the leather girdle, , (Mat. 3: 4), whereas the ordinary girdle was of cotton or linen, and often very costly.

[[@Bible:2Kings 1:9]]

2Ki. 1: 9-16.

After having executed the divine command, Elijah returned to the summit of the mountain, on which he dwelt. Most of the commentators suppose it to have been one of the peaks of Carmel, from 2Ki. 2:25 and 1Ki. 18:42, which is no doubt very probable, though it cannot be raised into certainty. Elijahs place of abode was known to the king; he therefore sent a captain with fifty men to fetch the prophet. To the demand of the captain, Man of God, the king has said, Come down, Elijah replied, And if I am a man of God, let fire fall from heaven and consume thee and thy fifty. (The expression , and if, shows that Elijahs words followed immediately upon those of the captain.) This judicial miracle was immediately fulfilled.

[[@Bible:2Kings 1:11]]

2Ki. 1:11, 12.

The same fate befell a second captain, whom the king sent after the death of the first. He was more insolent than the first, both because he was not brought to his senses by hearing of his punishment, and because he increased his impudence by adding make haste (). C. a Lap. For the LXX (Cod. Alex.) have , so that they read . The correctness of this reading, according to which would be an error of the pen, is favoured not only by in vv. 9 and 13, but also by which follows; for, as a general rule, would be followed by . The repetition of this judicial miracle was meant to show in the most striking manner not only the authority which rightfully belonged to the prophet, but also the help and protection which the Lord gave to His servants. At the same time, the question as to the morality of the miracle, about which some have had grave doubts, is not set at rest by the remark of Thenius, that the soldiers who were sent come into consideration here purely as instruments of a will acting in opposition to Jehovah. The third captain also carried out he ungodly command of the king, and he was not slain (vv. 13ff.). The first two must therefore have been guilty of some crime, which they and their people had to expiate with their death. This crime did not consist merely in their addressing him as man of God, for the third addressed Elijah in the same way (v. 13), but in their saying Man of God, come down. This summons to the prophet, to allow himself to be led as a prisoner before the king, involved a contempt not only of the prophetic office in the person of Elijah, but also of the Lord, who had accredited him by miracles as His servant. The two captains who were first sent not only did what they were bound to do as servants of the king, but participated in the ungodly disposition of their lord ( Theodoret); they attacked the Lord with reckless daring in the person of the prophet, and the second captain, with his Come down quickly, did it even more strongly than the first. This sin was punished, and that not by the prophet, but by the Lord Himself, who fulfilled the word of His servant.[footnoteRef:2] [2: , as Theodoret very aptly observes.]

What Elijah here did was an act of holy zeal for the honour of the Lord, in the spirit of the old covenant, under which God destroyed the insolent despisers of His name with fire and sword, to manifest the energy of His holy majesty by the side of the dead idols of the heathen. But this act cannot be transferred to the times of the new covenant, as is clearly shown in Luke 9:54, 55, where Christ does not blame Elijah for what he did, but admonishes His disciples, who overlooked the difference between the economy of the law and that of the gospel, and in their carnal zeal wanted to imitate what Elijah had done in divine zeal for the honour of the Lord, which had been injured in his own person.

[[@Bible:2Kings 1:13]]

2Ki. 1:13, 14.

The king, disregarding the punishing hand of the Lord, which, even if it might possibly have been overlooked in the calamity that befell the captain who was first sent and his company, could not be misunderstood when a similar fate befell the second captain with his fifty men, sent a third company, in his defiant obduracy, to fetch the prophet. ( after is apparently an error of the pen for , as the following word shows.) But the third captain was better th