3 Joram[a] son of Ahab became king of Israel in Samaria in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and he reigned twelve years. 2 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord,
First of all, if this is the description of you.....things are not going to go well. How can you lead God's people, or at least a part of God's people, if this is your judgment.
The second thing that hits me is how these kings seem to dance in and out with God. They want to make their own way, create their own gods and make the people worship their way...and then when things start to go bad, they inquire to the real God. Its pretty funny actually. Its like a teenager who thinks they know everything. They try to act autonomously, and then when things get really tough, they call in mom and dad for help.
27 Then he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall. The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land.
This ending verse threw me for a loop. He did what? Did he do this to make it look like the Israelites did it? I'm not sure. I might be getting confused in all the groups here. Untangle it for me.
We've talked about it multiple times, but the pattern of humans wanting control and no involvement from God until times are tough is something they struggled with in the times of the bible just as I do today.
ReplyDeleteAs for your question I tried to do a little research. A common theme I found is that the sacrifice of the eldest was a last ditch desperate attempt to call on help from his god. I can't imagine killing my own son rather than just suffering the fate of destruction by this army myself but that is where this man had come to. Picking his son to sacrifice was in line with finding the most valuable biggest sacrifice he could possibly make in order to call on action of his God. I found multiple takes on the Israelite's response to this action and the ones the resonate most with me is that they were basically appalled by this action but also felt some sense of responsibility that they had pushed a man to his limits so that he would take such a barbaric action and that they maybe had wished they had left him to be judged by God himself rather than see him kill his own son.
not the Matthew Henry write up but thats what I got.
knut