THE DYNASTIC TROUBLES OF ISRAEL
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
1 Kings 16:1. Word of the Lord came to Jehu—His father was a prophet (2 Chronicles 16:7). This is the only incident on record of Jehu.
1 Kings 16:2. Forasmuch as I exalted thee—Not that God sanctioned the method by which Baasha attained the throne, but Divine Providence allowed the attainment.
1 Kings 16:3. Behold I will take away—“By me kings reign.” Having reproduced the iniquities of Jeroboam, he should experience the same doom; the similitude of their fate extending to their “posterity.”
1 Kings 16:9. His servant Zimri—Josephus states that Zimri took advantage of the absence of the army and its chief to undertake the siege of Gibbethon. Doubtless this arrangement for debauching Elah in Asa’s house was a part of the plot of Zimri. He thought to consolidate his sovereignty by the massacre, not only of the relatives, but also of “the friends” of the royal house.
HOMILETICS OF 1 Kings 16:1-14
THE DOOM OF THE USURPER
I. Is self-imposed.
1. Opportunity is afforded to reach a different destiny “I exalted thee out of the dust, and made thee prince over my people Israel” (1 Kings 16:2). Though the means by which Baasha seized the throne was foully wrong, yet when he had acquired the highest rank and the mightiest power in the realm, he had the opportunity of using his influence in favour of religious reform. He was raised from the lowest rank, and from a tribe hitherto undistinguished; and the “might” with which he ruled for twenty-four years, causing even Asa to call in the aid of the Syrian king, showed that he was not deficient in capacity. Had he striven to walk in the commandments of God, his sins would have been forgiven, and his dynasty firmly secured. But the opportunity passed unimproved. A great person is like a great hill, sometimes giving a beautiful prospect, at other times shrouded in darkness and shaking with storms.
2. A course of evil is deliberately and persistently followed. “Thou hast walked in the way of Jeroboam” (1 Kings 16:2). A man is not wicked all at once. Wickedness has its gradations. Bad thoughts come first, bad words follow, and bad deeds finish the progress. Wickedness is infectious. “Thou hast made my people Israel to sin.” A bad man is like bad water: both are poisons. The only disturber of men, of families, cities, kingdoms, worlds, is sin; there is no such troubler, no such traitor to any state, as the wilfully wicked man; no such enemy to the public as the enemy of God. Sin which is deliberately chosen and practised, and enforced on others, will bring its own doom.
II. Is not reached unwarned (1 Kings 16:1-4; 1 Kings 16:7). This is made clear by a double reference to the fact that the prophet Jebu was sent to remind Baasha of his sin, and to pronounce a judgment on him and his house, similar to that which fell on the house of Jeroboam. Though the destruction of Jeroboam had been foretold, and though Baasha may be rightly regarded as God’s instrument to punish Jeroboam’s sins, yet, as he received no command to execute God’s wrath on the offender, and was instigated solely by ambition and self-interest, his guilt was just as great as if no prophecy had been uttered. The proud usurper, blinded by success, and still more by a life of impenitent wickedness, is apt to be indifferent to the awful doom which is certainly descending on his head. But, in his mercy, God sends His faithful messengers to warn and prepare; and be that taketh warning shall deliver his soul (Ezekiel 33:4). The warnings of God are manifold and constant; and dull indeed must be the ear that cannot hear, and hard indeed the heart that cannot feel. The sinner’s can not is his will not, and his will not is his condemnation.
III. Will be terrible and complete (1 Kings 16:11-13). The doom so long and so plainly threatened fell at length with fearful and desolating severity. Zimri exterminated the race of Baasha; and the Jews say when such a matter is determined, they not only destroy the house of the person himself, but the five neighbouring houses, that the memory of such a person may perish from the earth. “The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest about thirty years after date.” Philo Judaeus says that the builders of Babel engraved everyone his name upon a brick, with a view of perpetuating their memory: yet this did not serve their purpose. It is just with God to bury those names in the dust which are raised by sin. The atrocities of the usurper will not go unpunished.
IV. Extends to his posterity (1 Kings 16:9-10). Elah inherited all the low, gross instincts of his father, without any of his courage and ability. When an oriental monarch indulges in intoxication he is expected at any rate to do it secretly. He is further precluded by etiquette from accepting the hospitality of his subjects. Elah appears to have set at defiance this restraint, and, like the Egyptian Amasis, to have continually reminded men of his low origin by conduct unworthy of royalty. It is sometimes the curse of a bad man that his sins descend to his children, and their punishment too. When a man lays the foundation of his own ruin, others will be too apt to build upon it. As the winds of winter chase the withered leaves hither and thither, so are the wicked chased. They flee at their own shadow, and death opens to them all the errors of a misspent life. When too late they shut their eyes in despair—undone! undone!
LESSONS:—
1. A possession unlawfully acquired is a fruitful source of evil.
2. God warns before he strikes.
3. To harden the heart in iniquity is to bring ruin on one’s own head.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
1 Kings 16:1-14. Of the two kings, Elah and Zimri, we learn nothing besides that they held to the sin of Jeroboam, except how they died. This was, however, sufficient to characterise them. We see that Elah did not even inherit energy and courage from his father Baasha, but was a coward and a low souled glutton, because when the whole army was engaged in combat with the Philistines before Gibbethon, he not only remained at home, but drank and caroused. Zimri was still worse; ambition led him to unfaithfulness and treason; he not only murdered his king and master, but the king’s whole house. How little esteemed and respected he was, appears from the fact that the whole army, as soon as they heard of his having ascended the throne, immediately made another king, and marched against Zimri. Then when shut in and surrounded, he set fire to the citadel over his head, and gave himself to the flames—his act was one of despair rather than of heroism (1 Kings 16:17-18).—Lange.
1 Kings 16:1-4. The general law is repeated with the same stern simplicity to one man as to another. “Whether you came in by right means or foul; whether you are a legitimate heir or a conspirator, God has made you a prince; your crime is your own. Your power is His. Trying to be something in yourself, you pronounce your own sentence. When you think to make gods, God unmakes you.” The principle is again affirmed, that a regular succession, a sure house, is a blessing to a land: that a man who desires to found such a one, desires a good gift; but that it is a gift; that as a witness of God’s permanence and presence it is good; that succession, apart from Him, is a mere transmission of curses. The particular phrase, “provoke me to anger,” is used here as it is everywhere else in the Bible. God is contemplated as jealous over His people, feeling like a husband or father to a rebellious wife or child. It is presented with all boldness to men who had the lowest, most grovelling conceptions of the divine nature, not to flatter them, but to counteract them, to destroy the fiction that God is indifferent to His creatures or hates them, which is the foundation of all idolatry, to prepare the way for the full revelation of that truth which interprets His jealousy, and is the ground of all right faith in man—“God is Love.”—Maurice.
1 Kings 16:2-4. The sins of the common people which they have learned from their princes, as well also as those which these do not restrain when they can, are charged to them. Those who are lifted up out of the dust are often the proudest and most arrogant, because they think they must thank only themselves for their exalted position, and they forget what is written in 1 Samuel 2:7. For Baasha, also, the hour struck when it was said, Behold, oh! most proud, &c. (Jeremiah 50:31). The throne that has been obtained by lying, deceit, falsehood, and bloodshed, has no stability. The judgment of God, though delayed for a time, will not always tarry (Psalms 5:6-7). Robbers and murderers are not always in caves and the hidden recesses of forests; sometimes they are seated upon thrones: but the Lord will sweep them away, and their end will be with horror. Before His tribunal, no people, no crown is a protection.—Osiander.
1 Kings 16:2. The responsibilities of rank. I. Afford exceptional opportunities for doing great good, or great mischief. II. Are rarely used for the noblest purposes when unrighteously acquired. III. Merit corresponding punishment when abused.
1 Kings 16:6. The little that is told of Baasha is sufficient to show that he was an ambitious, rough, and violent—indeed, even a blood-thirsty—man. He did not conspire against his lord and king, and usurp the throne in order to bring the fundamental law of Israel into force again, and to make an end of the sin of Jeroboam, for he himself adhered firmly to it all his life, in spite of all the warnings and threatenings of the prophets. He only cared for dominion, and for this he esteemed the sin of Jeroboam as necessary as the latter had done. In short, he seems to have been a rough soldier who cared little or nothing about religion. He was the first king-murderer in Israel, and led the way, as it were, to this crime, which was afterwards so often imitated.—Lange.
1 Kings 16:8-10. King Elah. I. He riots and carouses whilst his people are pouring out their blood in war. It is a sign of great barbarousness and rudeness amid exterior refinement, when the great and rich lead a frivolous and luxurious life, whilst the masses eat their bread in the sweat of their brow, and are famishing. A riotous court life is the usual precursor of the storm which shakes or destroys the throne. II. Death suddenly overtakes him in drunkenness. To go suddenly and unprepared from time into eternity is a heavy fate: but it is still more fearful to leave the world in drunkenness. The nearer chastisement comes to the ungodly, the more secure are they. It is fearful when one can say nothing more of a man than “He has despised God and His word, served his belly, and ended his life with a revel.” Better to famish and be miserable with Lazarus, and then be borne by angels into Abraham’s bosom, than with the rich man to live in splendour and revelry, and afterwards to suffer the pains of Hell.—Wurt. Summ.
1 Kings 16:8. The crime of murder. I. Is heinous in the sight of God and man. II. Is ever a ready weapon in the hand of an unscrupulous usurper. III. Never goes unavenged. IV. Is a stain of infamy on succeeding generations.
1 Kings 16:9. Drunkenness.
1. Is an evidence of great moral degradation.
2. Forfeits the respect of others.
3. Renders a man an easy victim to his enemies.
4. Is closely associated with violence and crime.
5. Incapacitates for the most obvious duties.
6. Inevitably issues in a miserable death.
—Drunken revels are an abomination to the Lord, and only occur where the fear of God is absent. The drunkards rank with those who will not inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10); and the Lord Christ warns—Take heed to yourselves, &c. (Luke 21:34).
1 Kings 16:13. The emptiness of idolatry. I. It is a “vanity”—“vapour,” “nothingness.” II. As a creation of man it is inferior to himself. III. It is unsatisfying to man. IV. It provokes the anger of God.