And 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, inquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron whether I shall recover of this disease.
Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber х hasªbaakaah (H7639), the net, or lattice; ba`ªliyaatow (H5944), in his loft-upper room] - (cf. Daniel 6:11.) A wooden parapet or fence, breasthigh, surrounds the flat roofs of houses; and sometimes, instead of a parapet, the terraces are guarded, like the galleries with balustrades only, or lattices - i:e., net or trellised work (Deuteronomy 22:8). The name seems to import that the roof of the royal palace in Samaria was surmounted on the roof in this fashion, and that it was over this trellis the king was carelessly leaning when it gave way; or, it might be an opening, like a skylight, in the roof itself, done over with lattice-work, which, being slender or rotten, the king stepped on and slipped through. This latter supposition is most probably the true one, as Ahaziah did not fall either into the street or the court, but "his upper chamber."
Enquire of Baal-zebub. Anxious to learn whether he should recover from the effects of this severe fall, he sent to consult Baal-zebub х Ba`al-Zªbuwb (H1176)] - i:e., the god of flies, fly destroyer, who was considered the patron deity of medicine. This consultation of a pagan deity by the king openly, affords a deplorable example of the extent to which the Israelites were infected with the baneful influence of Philistine idolatry, and it was a direct violation of the Mosaic law (Deuteronomy 18:13-14). Hengstenberg ('Pentateuch,' 1:, p.
89), following Selden ('De diis Syris,' 375), ridicules the idea that the Philistines believed they needed the divine aid to save them from flies, and considers it as a derisive name. [But, not to speak of the Greeks, who had Zeus Apomios at Elis, and of the Romans, who had their Myiagrus deus, or deus muscarum Aver runcus, there was a pressing cause to call forth the religious sentiment of the Philistine pagan in this particular direction at Ekron.] Flies have at all times swarmed in great abundance in that locality; and sometimes they have multiplied in such myriads as to amount to a plague.
Jurieu ('Hist. des Dogmes,' p. 631) identifies this god with Pluto of the Greeks and Romans. Hence, a temple to that idol was erected at Ekron, which was resorted to far and wide, though it afterward led to the destruction of the place (Zechariah 9:5; Amos 1:8; Zephaniah 2:4) 'After visiting Ekron, "the god of flies" is a name that gives me no surprise. The flies there swarmed, in fact, so innumerably, that I could hardly get any food without these troublesome insects getting into it' (Van de Velde, 1:, p. 170).
Other derivations have been given of the name of this idol. Dr. Hyde ('Vet. Persarum. Rel. Histor.,' cap. 8:,
p. 160) says that it comes from the Syriac Beeldebobo, or Beeldevovo - i:e., the god of enmity. Others trace it to an Arabia origin, meaning fecundity; and that Ahaziah consulted the idol at Ekron in preference to all others, in his anxiety for an heir. But the first derivation is the right one.