Drunk With Blood (24 page)
1 Kings 20.36
Number Killed: 1
A neighbor in the word of the Lord
I don’t completely understand God’s thinking on this one. Maybe a believer can explain it to me.
It all happens fast, in just two verses. Here’s a summary:
A “son of a prophet” asked a “neighbor in the word of the Lord” to smite him.
A certain man of the sons of the prophets said unto his neighbour in the word of the LORD, Smite me, I pray thee. 1 Kings 20.35a
The neighbor refused.
And the man refused to smite him. 20.35b
So God sent a lion to kill him.
Then said he unto him, Because thou hast not obeyed the voice of the LORD, behold, as soon as thou art departed from me, a lion shall slay thee. And as soon as he was departed from him, a lion found him, and slew him. 20.36
It turns out, though, that there was some reason for the prophet’s madness. The prophet wanted a good disguise when he met King Ahab, and he figured a wound would help. So he wanted his neighbor to cut his face, so he could put a bandage on it, so King Ahab wouldn’t recognize him when he saw him. Or something like that.
(I don’t know why the prophet couldn’t just put a bandage on his face or a bag over his head to disguise himself. And I’m not sure why the disguise was necessary anyway. But I guess it was all very important to God.)
Anyway, the batshit crazy prophet found another guy who was willing to smite him.
Then he found another man, and said, Smite me, I pray thee. And the man smote him, so that in smiting he wounded him. 20.37
And so the prophet got his costume ready for his meeting with King Ahab.
So the prophet departed, and waited for the king by the way, and disguised himself with ashes upon his face. 20.38
Which leads us to God’s next killing.
1 Kings 20.39-42, 22.35
Number Killed: 1
Ahab
In God’s last killing (
97
), he sent a lion to kill a man for not smiting a prophet when the prophet asked him to. But the next guy that came along was willing to do it, so the prophet was able to put ashes on his face and have a proper disguise for his meeting with King Ahab.
When King Ahab passed by, the prophet (with his cool disguise) said to him:
Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver. And as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. 1 Kings 20.39-40a
Which, of course, was complete bullshit. God’s prophet was not only crazy, but a liar, as well.
King Ahab played along though, and said, “OK, whatever.”
The king of Israel said unto him, So shall thy judgment be; thyself hast decided it. 20:40b
Then the prophet wiped off the ashes on his face and revealed his true identity. He was a prophet! (It’s really hard to tell a prophet when he has ashes on his face.)
He … took the ashes away from his face; and the king of Israel discerned him that he was of the prophets. 20.41
And then the prophet told King Ahab the bad news. God was going to kill the king (and his family, of course) for letting king Benhadad live. (See 1 Kings 20.34 and note at the end of
96
)
Thus saith the LORD, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people. 20.42
And that’s what happened. God carefully arranged things so that King Ahab would die while fighting the Syrians.
The battle increased that day: and the king [Ahab] was stayed up in his chariot against the Syrians, and died at even: and the blood ran out of the wound into the midst of the chariot. 22.35
And that is God’s last killing in 1 Kings 20. (Five in one chapter!)
2 Kings 1.10-12
Number Killed: 102
Israelites messengers
King Ahaziah (of Israel) became ill after falling though a lattice floor. So he sent some messengers to ask Baalzebub if he would recover.
Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers, and said unto them, Go, enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron whether I shall recover of this disease. 2 Kings 1.2
Then an angel told Elijah to tell some messengers to tell Ahaziah that God would kill him for asking the wrong god.
The angel ... said to Elijah ... Arise, go up to meet the messengers ... and say unto them, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron? Now therefore thus saith the LORD, Thou shalt not come down from that bed ... but shalt surely die. 1.3-4
So the messengers delivered the message to King Ahaziah.
The messengers … said unto him, There came a man up to meet us, and said unto us, Go, turn again unto the king that sent you, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that thou sendest to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron? therefore thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die. 1.5-6
Ahaziah asked them what the guy who gave them the message looked like. They said he was “a hairy man” with “leather about his loins.”
What manner of man was he which came up to meet you, and told you these words? And they answered him, He was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins. 1.7-8
When the king heard that, he knew it was Elijah. Nobody dresses like Elijah!
He said, It is Elijah. 1.8b
So the king sent a captain and fifty men to go find Elijah. They found him sitting on top of a hill and said to him, “Come down.”
Then the king sent unto him a captain of fifty with his fifty. And he went up to him: and, behold, he sat on the top of an hill. And he spake unto him, Thou man of God, the king hath said, Come down. 1.9
Which was the wrong thing to say, judging from Elijah’s response.
Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. 1.10a
And that’s what happened. Fire came down from heaven and burned the 51 guys to death.
There came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. 1.10b
I’m not sure how Ahaziah found out about all this, but he did, and he sent another captain and 50 men to try again.
Again also he sent unto him another captain of fifty with his fifty. 1.11a
They found Elijah sitting on top of the same hill and the captain told him the same thing: “Come down quickly.” (I guess they added the quickly for emphasis.)
He … said unto him, O man of God, thus hath the king said, Come down quickly. 1.11b
Elijah responded in the usual way.
Elijah answered and said unto them, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. 1.12a
You probably can guess what happened next.
The fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. 1.12b
Once again the king found out what had happened. So he sent another captain with 50 men. (He figured it worked out well the first two times.)
He sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty. 1.13a
But this time the captain didn’t ask Elijah to come down. He got on his knees and groveled in front of Elijah, begging him not to burn him to death.
The third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah … and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be precious in thy sight. Behold, there came fire down from heaven, and burnt up the two captains of the former fifties with their fifties: therefore let my life now be precious in thy sight. 1.13b-14
And that worked a lot better. An angel of the Lord told Elijah to go down with them to see Ahaziah. And he did.
The angel of the LORD said unto Elijah, Go down with him: be not afraid of him. And he arose, and went down with him unto the king. 1.15
So the moral of the story is this: If you see a hairy man dressed in a leather loin cloth sitting on top of a hill, don’t ask him to come down (unless you grovel first) or God will burn you to death.
2 Kings 1.16-17
Number Killed: 1
Ahaziah of Israel
In his last killing (
99
), God burned 102 men to death (in two shifts of 51 each) for asking Elijah to come down from his hill. The problem, I guess, was not so much in what they asked, but in how they asked it. The first two times, the captain asked directly, and God burned them all to death. The third time the captain groveled first and asked later, and that worked out fine. There’s a lesson there somewhere.
There was a reason, though, that Ahaziah wanted Elijah to come down from his hill. He wanted to ask Elijah to ask God if he was going to recover from his illness. And now that the third group of 51 got Elijah to come down from his hill, Ahaziah could ask Elijah to ask God about it.
[But Elijah had already told Ahaziah (via messengers) back in 2 Kings 1.6 that God was going to kill him for asking the wrong god, so I don’t know why he had to send the three sets of 51 to asked Elijah again. I guess he wanted Elijah to come down and give him the message directly.]
In any case, Elijah came down the mountain to talk to the king.
He arose, and went down with him unto the king. 2 Kings 1.15
Here’s what Elijah told the king (again).
Thus saith the LORD, Forasmuch as thou hast sent messengers to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron, is it not because there is no God in Israel to enquire of his word? therefore thou shalt not come down off that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die. 1.16
And in the next verse, King Ahaziah dies “according to the word of the Lord.”
So he died according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had spoken. 1.17
2 Kings 2.23-24
Number Killed: 42
Boys
After Elijah went up to heaven in a chariot of fire, his disciple, Elisha, put on Elijah’s mantle and started to perform miracles of his own. First he parted the Jordan River by slapping it with Elijah’s mantle, and then he healed some water by adding a bit of salt.
Then he decided to go to Bethel.
While he was walking along, a group of 42 young boys started to make fun of Elisha’s bald head.
As he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 2 Kings 2.23
So Elisha decided to try his new-found prophet powers by cursing the little buggers in the name of the Lord. Then he stood back to watch what would happen.
He turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. 2.24a
What happened must have been hard to watch. Two she bears came out of the woods and tore all 42 boys apart.
There came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. 2.24b
The Bible doesn’t say how Elisha reacted to the slaughter. It just says that he kept going on his journey to Bethel.
He went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria. 2.25
I bet God got a kick out of the whole thing, though. He’s the type.
