This lesson is lesson eight entitled approaching exile and we are tackling second Kings trackers eight through thirteen and we are indeed getting closer and closer to the exile portion of this Bible study Remember it's entitled from glory to exile We've talked all about the glorious temple and reign of King Solomon everything that he did great at least at the beginning of his reign Right the first they were take what 30 years? I guess you could surmise everything was going great and now we're going getting closer and closer to exile because of Israel's impenitent sins And so we're just interesting closer to that next lesson We're gonna look at the fall of the northern kingdom and the lesson after that will be the southern kingdom will be a lot more content For lesson 10 who talked about the great reigns of his echae and Josiah But I'm ahead of myself right now Let's just focus on chapters 8 through 13 and wrap up various loose ends especially with the rain Not so much the rain's using but the ministry of Alicia because he's still alive and well according to our timeline here But he is going to pass away in chapter 13 So we're gonna be wrapping up loose ends with his life and concluding the great ministry that his spiritual father Elijah Started and he picked up the baton of course and I guess you're gonna say we're going to wrap up the loose ends for Alicia We're also gonna be focusing on a couple of important characters up north is King Jehu He's kind of a controversial figure for sure because God asks him to clean up house in a major way and he certainly gets brutal and bloody about it Which is going to be something against him But then also down south there is the character Atheliah and she has a bone to pick an axe to grind against the divinity So we're gonna look at some of these main themes or highlights or characters That's what's gonna work out Alicia and the end of his ministry King Jehu in the north and I the lion in the south plus some other important details As well so without let's jump into chapter 8 with Alicia and the anointing of King Jehu But first there is a little story of Alicia proclaiming a seven-year famine on Israel Which of course is an echo of Elijah so this is in chapter 8 verse 1 says Elijah had said to the woman who son he had restored to life Arise in the part with your household and sujourn wherever you can for the Lord has called a famine and it will come upon the land for seven years So the Roman the woman arose and did according to the word of the man of God She went with her household and sujourned in the land of Philistines for seven years and at the end of seven years ago It's on to say how she came back into town and her land had been confiscated somehow So we don't exactly know but she goes to the king to petition to have her land back and sure enough the king was listening to Alicia's Companion his spiritual son his protégé Gahazi remember Gahazi was the one who ran after nam on the Syrian and took a bunch of his wealth and tried to hide it from Alicia And so the leprosy from nam on went on to Gahazi and it probably wasn't some sort of contagious skin disease Otherwise, there's no way he would have been in the king's presence or at least he was a super far distance But it's probably just some sort of non-contagious disease That's the same character here So Gahazi is telling the king right then when the woman arrives. Hey look There's the woman I was telling you about though the same woman whose son Alicia had raised from the dead So in any case long story short is the woman had all of her lands for store So a couple of little interesting thoughts about this story before we move on to Jehu Which is that this is a seven-year famine and that is a doubling of the famine and the drought that Elijah had proclaimed If you remember back at the beginning of Elijah's story right before the whole conquest between the gods the Theomak He'd have smacked down between the prophets of Baal and Elijah and Leole He proclaimed that three and a half year famine Now this is a doubling and that's really significant because remember how Alicia had asked his spiritual father Elijah for a doubling of a spirit And so we had talked about how there's a doubling of the actual miracles of Alicia And I'm gonna actually go through those as we conclude and wrap up Alicia's life I'm gonna share with you here based on your commentaries the eight miracles of Elijah and the 16 miracles of Alicia look at all that in a Conclusive way, but here I think it's really really interesting how even his punishment is a doubling right? There's a double of the famine and the drought that's gonna play Israel That's that's really interesting also theologically it's interesting because If you go back to Deuteronomy 28 as I shared with you all the plagues and famine and drought and all this stuff and wars and These things that are occurring are getting worse and worse and worse because Israel is not Penitent they're they're not repenting from their sins and so they are literally approaching exile more and more and more as these Deuteronomy curses get worse.
So that's why it was a three and a half year Well, two reasons why it was a three and a half year drought and famine with Elijah up now It's a seven year famine here because Alicia has a doubling of Elijah's spirit number one But also because they're getting closer and closer to exile another interesting thing is that this seven year famine for me 100% Echoes Exodus because Joshua had listened to and interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh remember so there's gonna be a seven year Rain or time of plenty followed by a seven year famine I think that's significant because we've been sharing all along in these past few lessons And we'll continue to talk about that in lessons nine and ten that there is a new Exodus story going on Israel as well as Judah in the south have fallen prey to idolatry there in spiritual bondage again And especially up in the north of those two golden calves that is Egyptian idolatry that is the worship of the golden cap Oppos and it's actually doubly bad because it is as many scholars will point out It is a representation of the Canaanite god I think it's very much a bolt and my personal opinion I don't think it's an either or so Israel is in bondage Just like they were in Egypt and so this seven year famine in my mind kind of echoes the story of the Exodus to some small or greater extent All right, so Alicia showed compassion on this shoot a night woman She's that's the same woman as we talked about who's a son He had raised from the dead and she gets her lands when she comes back And I thought about this a lot I don't really have a firm opinion as to the typology that this might represent I do wonder if it is an echo of the upcoming exile where this woman has to leave the land But then she comes back and the lands are restored to her especially through the ministry of the prophets in this case Gahazi which is Alicia's servants I think that there might be an illusion here for the future exile from the land that we're getting close to which is actually the very Next lesson and these next chapters coming up in second Kings 14 and following 14 through 17 to be precise in the northern kingdom And then there's the restoration of those lands through the king of the prophets I personally think you could play around with that and apply Exodus imagery to exile and return because that's what we're gonna see a lot of in the prophets is the prophets are always saying look God will bring you back and so we're gonna see a ton of that in the next couple of lessons I'm looking at the prophets various famous prophetic verses just to kind of get a sense of all that So this is a short little story here with Alicia and the Shenanite woman and the seven year family But you can see you don't want to read anything really quickly You want to pause and think about geography and time and numbers and all this type of stuff And I think that's that gives you a little bit more of a deeper understanding So that's just the first few verses here chapter eight one through six Before we move on to chapter seven I want to go back and review very quickly here something that God had commanded Elijah right before he died If you remember back in first Kings chapter 19 right after Elijah had put the smackdown hunt on the false gods of ball right there at Mount Carmel With that theomaki that that contest between the gods right remember He ran for his life and he went over to Sinai It is a bit of a liar bit of news complaining a little bit depressed and he's like on the last prophet left and God says no I got seven thousand other Individuals who have not bent the needs of all so I do have my faithful remnant even though we can't see it There is a faithful remnant and Paul talks about this in Romans two There's always a faithful remnant here. Well in any case God gives him three instruct last final instructions and Requirements here before God will take him up into the world of heaven like we saw so the first one He says back in verse Kings 19 is you need to anoint this character Haza El as king of Syria Which is interesting because this is a a Gentile guy who is going to be appointed king Right now we're gonna see this is gonna be fulfilled by Alicia right now And then the second command was that you need to anoint Jehu as king of Israel So that's obviously in Israelite and we're gonna see in just a little bit That's gonna be fulfilled by one of Alicia's associates or son spiritual sons And then the third bit of interesting command or instructions that God gave to Elijah was anoint Alicia as your own successor Which we already saw so by the time Elijah was taken up into heaven He only performed one of these three commands anointing Alicia as a successor Haza El still needs to be appointed king of Syria and Jehu needs to be appointed as king of Israel Okay, that's exactly what we're going to see play out here in the next couple of chapters So I wanted to review that with you so that was freshen your brain Alrighty, so chapter eight verse seven and following Alicia is going to accomplish that first anointing or appointment or instruction for Haza El to become king of Syria And he gives this prophecy in fact We'll just been a little time to reading it says chapter eight verse seven Alicia came to Damascus and Ben-Haddad the king of Syria was sick And it was told to him the man of God has come here the king said to Haza I'll take a present with you and go to meet the man of God and inquire the Lord through him saying shall I recover from the sickness Now this is really interesting just first and foremost before we read on is so interesting how a foreign pagan Gentile God King excuse me a foreign Gentile pagan king sends word to the man of God the prophet of Yahweh to inquire whether or not He's going to be healed That is the exact opposite of what we've been seeing over and over again with the kings of Israel the kings of Israel Are the ones who go after the pagan prophets and the pagan priests asking remember bells of all so go and quiet Go send some men to inquire bells about whether I'm going to survive and of course that didn't happen So it's just so interesting here how often you find that the Gentiles have faith and inquire of God in his prophets when God's own people Don't do that. That's a recurring theme throughout scripture here where there's there's the failure of the Jewish people or the failure of the Jewish leadership I guess you can narrow it down to that if you wanted to where they don't accept God or his prophets But the Gentiles do that that's something that goes into Paul's of this was Paul talks about this a ton So anyways take that to thought to prayer there's a reading this here is this foreign king of Syrian who Enquires of Alicia whether or not he's going to inquire. I'm sorry Whether he's going to recover from his illness.
All right So in verse 9 how's that I went to meet him so how's that I is a commander of the king bin hadad verse 9 I went to meet him and took a present with him all kinds of good to Damascus 40 camel loads And when he came and stood before him he said your son Well, the respect here is incredible your son bin hadad king of serious sent me to you saying shall I recover from the sickness? And Alicia said him go and say to him You shall certainly recover but the Lord has shown me that you that he shall certainly die which is kind of a riddle He's gonna recover, but he's gonna die. So what that means is he's not gonna die of this particular illness He's gonna die for some other reason then it says in verse 11 He fixed his gaze and stared at him until he was ashamed This is very confusing here with all the pronouns now you have to have clear pronouns Just to avoid modern debates with everything going on I mean in case he fixed his gaze and stared at him until he was ashamed probably what this means is Alicia fixed his gaze and stared at HazaL until HazaL was ashamed You know if you've had someone really stare at you like incessantly you're like this is really weird I kind of embarrassed right now like what's going on is my hair out of whack or I got a boogie my nose or is there something on my face? Like what why are you staring at me like this?
That's kind of what I imagine going on here So HazaL is embarrassed and ashamed and then the man of God Alicia wept and HazaL HazaL said why does my lord weep the answer because I know that evil that you will do to the sons of Israel You will sit on fire their fortresses You will slay their young men with a sword and dash in pieces their little ones and rip up their women with child and HazaL Said what is your servant who's but a dog that you should do such a thing a great thing Alicia said the Lord has shown me that you are to be king over Syria and then he departed from Alicia came to his Master and said what did he say to you he said well you're gonna certainly recover but the next day he suffocated him took a Web link it suffocated his master and so HazaL becomes king this is a really interesting story besides the point where I have Where I shared with you a moment ago how HazaL this foreign king recognizes and gives respect to to Alicia But I also think that you have a contrast between HazaL himself the commander So then how that is the king he's killed by HazaL HazaL the commander seems to me to be in stark contrast with the other commander that we've seen recently Naamann remember Naamann the commander of the Syrian army it comes to Alicia with a whole bunch of wealth All kinds of wealth to try to give it to Alicia to be cured of his leprosy Well now you've got kind of a contrast right you've got this new commander HazaL who comes but not he doesn't repent and he is told by Alicia that he's gonna become king because he's a murderer and there's of course a scotch moment or a scotch conversation I call these things a smoker cigar just kind of debate did HazaL get the idea from Alicia or what did he already have in his heart that he Wanted to do this and Alicia simply said I know your intentions I think it's the latter personally I don't think Alicia put the idea into his head but in any case there's a contrast You've got Naamann the Syrian who is an example of a converted Gentile and here you have HazaL Who is an example of a non-converted Gentile? I think that's really really interesting Okay, so he then goes in and and Alicia tells him all this horrible stuff You're gonna be an absolute enemy you're gonna bring misery and terror and horror to the people of Israel So then people ask why why is this? sanctioned by God why is this allowed by God why did in fact God told Elijah himself back in first Kings 19 you to a point HazaL as king Right, so why would God do this? It's because of those do-durnomic curses.
It's because he is allowing Syria who I mean exceptions aside such as Naamann the commander he is allowing Syria to be the instrument of punishment for his people because they're fallen into gravesim And he wants to wake Israel up There's this whole prolonged period for the northern kingdom at least between 930 when the kingdom split and 722 when they're actually exiled 200 years and even 350 for the south of God being patient with his people and trying to get them to sober up and wake up and All these curses are progressively getting worse and worse And so now they're getting worse like we see the seven-year famine instead of three and a half years before now You've got Syria just through HazaL man just wreaking havoc on the countryside This is in God's wisdom and God's providence He wanted these things to take place either through his direct will or as permissible or probably a combination of both He wanted to happen so Israel would repent and you see some matterings of that here and there I'm gonna share with you chapter 13 the king of Israel does go run to Alicia with devotion and affection So what we'll see that but the whole point of this is look Israel You need to trust me You need to turn away from your gods if you don't things are gonna get progressively worse and that is the role of AsaL You see so hope that makes sense for you because I think that's what's going on here with the appointment of HazaL to be king of Syria Alrighty, so verse 16 and following now I'm just gonna follow the notes here because it gets kind of tedious This is where people's eyes glaze over this is like one example of one place where people's eyes might glaze over when you're seeing the Transitions of power in the north or the south. It just it goes by too quickly So let me just summarize here for you have your charts that I gave you in your notes a couple lessons back You also have comment areas that will provide this for you as well and where you can see all the names of the king So here's what's going on in the south during this time? So number one Juhos of that the king of Judah in the south he dies his son Johorim his short name is Johorim So I think I said this before in the last lesson how my name is Nicholas Well, my short name is Nick. That's the exact same concept Johorim short named Johorim, right?
So I don't know you could pick Christopher short name Chris, you know something like that all right So Johorim his son succeeds him well The bad thing is that Johorim marries this gal named Athalaya And she is the evil daughter of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel up north And you remember how awful Ahab and Jezebel were they brought state sponsored idolatry to a ball into the kingdom on top of the state sponsored idolatry to the golden calves their murderers their sheets they are just pure evil right pure evil I wouldn't say pure evil actually because I think maybe Ahab he repented a couple different points So in any case they are very bad just put it that way leave it at that right? So Johorim marries Athalaya bringing Athalaya into the southern kingdom of Judah. This is not going to go well Okay, this is not going to go well at all now Let me just read really quickly just a couple of verses chapter 8 verse 18 It says that Johorim walking all the ways of the kings of Israel up and up north and the house as the house of Ahab had done for the daughter of Ahab was His wife and he did what was evil in the side of the Lord yet The Lord would not destroy Jew up for the sake of David his servant since he promised to give a lamp to him into his sons forever All right, so again, this is the refrain that we've seen you got kings who are getting progressively worse This this by far is the next step in evil being committed in the southern kingdom How Johorim marries Athalaya and brings again ball like dollar traits formalized There's like there's a temple set up to ball in Jerusalem, which you discovered is later on the text So it's really really bad. However, God is faithful just like he swore to David There would always be one of his descendants on the throne.
So that's kind of a note of Hope right for its affirmation because we as the reader here are thinking Oh my gosh, this is not gonna go well at all and it doesn't in fact It's really really bad as we're gonna share with you But there's always that hope there's always the concept that God is in control. Okay, so that is the thing with this Okay, so one more point here Johorim number three in your notes Johorim dies. All right, so he married Athalaya their son is named Ahab hasiah Now, it's very similar to Athalaya. I am sorry.
I did not name these characters Athalaya is now the queen mother of Ahasiah her son, okay? Now remember everything that we talked about about the queen mother in first Kings chapter two in Bathsheba was the queen mother in Solomon's Rain we shared with you I could talk about how the queen mother the dead Iraq the great lady has real authority real influence to do good or to do evil So you know that if she is the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel and worships ball She's gonna bring about grave evil and bad things in the kingdom Okay, so this is just one massive red flag and speed bump or or warning sign whatever sirens blaring Whatever you want to say, okay, so there's the transitions of power going on in the kingdom of Judah and that significantly placed right here One because again Johorim marries at the lie and their son therefore is the the nephew to the king North but also at the lie is gonna be a very important figure as we get to the story of Judah Okay, all right So with that then let's move on to look at what happens with Jeh who finally King Jehoo is going to be an elected and that accomplishes The second commandment or instruction that God gave to Elijah So remember number one was an Oaxa L or a point him that's done check moving on number two was to anoint Jehoo that's gonna happen now Hey, this is Dr. Nick Thank you so much for listening to this course sample if you enjoyed it and want to listen to the entire lesson Please become a student over at scripture and tradition calm where you can listen to this entire course But also all the other courses that we have available in the S&T audio library where you can listen to them on demand however And whenever you want so thank you so much God bless you and keep studying your Bible