CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
1 Kings 15:27. Gibbethon, which belonged to the Philistines—A town given to the Levites (Joshua 19:44), situate within the tribe of Dan.
1 Kings 15:29. Smote all the house of Jeroboam—Vide Notes on chap. 14 1 Kings 15:10; 1 Kings 15:14. Customary in Oriental scenes for usurpers to exterminate all rivals to the throne. But hereby was fulfilled Ahijah’s prophecy. Left not any that breathed—A more inclusive description than in 1 Kings 14:10, for this embraces both male and female.
1 Kings 15:31. Now the rest of the acts, &c.—The historian cares not to write them; he aimed not to preserve a detailed record of the reigns and deeds of kings; all he set himself to do was to show the conduct of kings in reference to Jehovah and His worship, and the condign punishment which overtook defiance of the theocratic law; thereby tracing the fact that “sin” (1 Kings 15:26), in the odious form of national apostasy, wrought the overthrow of the Israelitish dynasties, until the kingdom of Israel itself perished.—W. H. J.
HOMILETICS OF 1 Kings 15:25-34
THE PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED BY THE WICKED
The sacred writer having traced the history of the kings of Judah to the death of Asa, in the sixty-first year of the divided kingdom, proceeds at this point with an account of the contemporary kings, the narrative occupying seven Chapter s, beginning with Nadab, who ascended the throne in Asa’s second year, and concluding with Ahab, in whose fourth year Asa died. During the single reign of Asa, the government of the rival kingdom of Israel was in six different hands, and the record of that period is stained with conspiracy, crime, and bloodshed. In this paragraph we have an example of how the wicked are sometimes punished by the wicked, which suggests a few obvious reflections.
I. That a life of wickedness is full of danger (1 Kings 15:25-28). It was so to Nadab. It made him an incompetent and unreasonable ruler. It multiplied his miseries. It shortened his days. It alienated the attachment of his subjects—not one of them cared to avenge his murder, or seemed to be horrified at the foulness of the crime, though this was the first regicide that was committed in the history of the kingdom. Sin is a state of unnature; it is a breach of the order of the universe, and it is impossible to escape its penalties, except by finding the refuge in Him “who bare our sins, and carried our sorrows.” “The seeds of our own punishment,” says Hesiod, “are sown at the same time we commit sin.”
We rave, we wrestle, with Great Nature’s plan,
We thwart the Deity; and’ tis decreed,
Who thwart His will shall contradict their own.
A life of wickedness is menaced with a thousand perils, and, if persisted in, will terminate in misery and woe.
II. That the wicked are sometimes used to punish the wicked. Baasha, a hitherto obscure military adventurer, a bold, pitiless conspirator, was the instrument who punished the hapless Nadab, and who carried out the long-threatened vengeance against the house of Jeroboam (1 Kings 15:29-30). He would do this to secure himself on the throne he had so wickedly usurped, without thinking of Ahijah’s prophecy (chap. 1 Kings 14:10-14)—perhaps without knowing it. He might be influenced by some personal quarrel with Nadab, or to be revenged on the house of Jeroboam for some injury received from them, or to rid the country of the cruel tyranny of an unpopular prince, or to clear the way for carrying out his own ambitious and daring schemes. Yet he signally fulfilled the Divine threatenings with a more savage barbarity than was originally intended. He not only slew every male, but “he left not to Jeroboam any that breathed”; and thus the dynasty of Jeroboam became utterly and hopelessly extinct. It is a terrible thing to be abandoned to the remorseless cruelty of the wicked. The sack of Rome by the Goths (vide Gibbon, c. xxxi.) is a graphic example of the merciless and unbridled ferocity with which one wicked nation may punish another. Well might David pray, “Let us now fall into the hands of the Lord; and let me not fall into the hands of man” (2 Samuel 24:14).
III. That the use of the wicked as instruments of punishment does not necessarily turn them from their wickedness (1 Kings 15:34). Baasha continued in the same evil courses which had brought such frightful sufferings upon his predecessors, and in inflicting which he had been the unconscious instrument—another illustration how little influence the most notable punishments of sin has in deterring the wicked from their sins “The entail of iniquity cannot be cut off but by a thorough conversion of the soul to God; and of this these bad kings seem to have had no adequate notion. The wicked followed the steps of the wicked, and became still more wicked. Sin gathers strength by exercise and age.” The sinner cannot reform himself; and he vainly strives to maintain his authority and prestige by the mad, purblind policy of committing still more outrageous acts of iniquity. What would be the condition of the world if wickedness had unchecked and unrestricted sway? What must be the nameless horrors of that Gehenna where all moral restrictions to evil are removed!
LESSONS:—
1. The forbearance of God has its limits.
2. A similar punishment to that which the wicked have inflicted on others may overtake themselves.
3. A life of sin leads to misery and death.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
1 Kings 15:25-34. Nadab, the son of Jeroboam, reigned but two years over Israel. Then Baasha, of the tribe of Issachar, conspired against him and slew him. There is nothing in the records of conspiracies like this which separates the Bible history from ordinary history. We have, on a very small scale, in the annals of a few petty tribes, just what we have expanded to its highest power in the history of the Roman or of the Byzantine Empires. Nor is the result different. The new house is like the old. The rebel and murderer becomes a tyrant. It will be said, There is a grandeur about crimes and miseries which affect a world; but what interest can we feel in the story of men so diminutive in influence, so insignificant in character, as Jeroboam or Baasha? I answer, The Scripture wishes us to feel none, except so far as by a small experiment we may discover a truth for all ages and nations.—Maurice.
1 Kings 15:25-31. The ruin of the house of Jeroboam proclaims these two great truths: Sin is the destruction of a people (Proverbs 14:34); and: He who heareth not My word, of him will I require it (Deuteronomy 18:19). God does not punish the innocent children for the sins of their fathers, but those who, despising the Divine patience and long-suffering shown to their fathers, perpetuate, without any shame, the sins of their fathers (Exodus 20:5-6). A given example of evil is rarely without imitation; as Jeroboam rebelled against the house of David, so did Baasha against the house of Jeroboam. Desire for rule and envy beget first dissatisfaction with the condition in life ordained by God, lead then to breach of faith, and end at last with murder and homicide.—Lange.
1 Kings 15:27-28. Conspiracy.
1. Is often provoked by a reckless and tyrannical government.
2. Is often the dangerous policy of the wicked and ambitious.
3. Is often associated with cruelty and murder.
1 Kings 15:27. It is curious to find Issachar furnishing a king. This tribe had never made, and could have no grounds for making, a claim to pre-eminence. It had furnished one undistinguished judge, Tola (Judges 10:1), who, on obtaining his office, had at once settled himself in the territory of Ephraim. Otherwise the tribe was as little famous as any that could be named. The “ass crouching between two burthens” was a true symbol of the patient, plodding cultivators of the Esdraelon plain, who “saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant; and bowed their shoulder to bear, and became servants unto tribute (Genesis 49:14-15). It cannot have been in consequence of any claims or merits on the part of his tribe that Baasha became king. He probably owed his rise simply to his own audacity and his known valour and skill as a soldier. He appears not to have been even a person of good position in his tribe (chap. 1 Kings 16:2).—Speaker’s Comm.
1 Kings 15:29-30. Divine vengeance. I. Though delayed, is certain. II. May be unconsciously carried out by wicked and cruel men. III. Is not meaningless in its threatenings. IV. Is manifested on account of inveterate wickedness.
1 Kings 15:29. Conspirators and rebels profess to overthrow tyranny and to throw off its yoke; but when they obtain power and sovereignty they are themselves the most violent and cruel tyrants.
1 Kings 15:34. Baasha trod in the footsteps of Jeroboam just as if Jeroboam had been good and upright. And yet Baasha himself was an instrument in the hand of God to punish Jeroboam on account of his sins. What folly! When Jeroboam’s son, Nadab, did as his father, we can explain it by paternal influence; but that Baasha should have pursued the same course is a proof of monstrous blindness. The world does not allow itself to be interrupted in its purposes; vain conduct after the way of those who live before is always inherited (1 Peter 1:18).—Calwer.
—Sin morally blinding. I. Hides from the soul the excessive turpitude of sin. II. Renders the soul incapable of learning lessons from the most terrible punishments of sin. III. Prevents the soul from seeing the danger and misery into which it is surely drifting.