Would you like to read James McNaught’s novel Sinking Sand”? click here: Sinking Sand
(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
2 Kings 1:9–18, “Then the king sent unto him a captain of fifty with his fifty. And he went up to him: and, behold, he sat on the top of an hill. And he spake unto him, Thou man of God, the king hath said, Come down. And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. Again also he sent unto him another captain of fifty with his fifty. And he answered and said unto him, O man of God, thus hath the king said, Come down quickly. And Elijah answered and said unto them, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And the fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. And he sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and besought him, and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be precious in thy sight. Behold, there came fire down from heaven, and burnt up the two captains of the former fifties with their fifties: therefore let my life now be precious in thy sight. And the angel of the LORD said unto Elijah, Go down with him: be not afraid of him. And he arose, and went down with him unto the king. And he said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Forasmuch as thou hast sent messengers to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron, is it not because there is no God in Israel to enquire of his word? therefore thou shalt not come down off that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die. So he died according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had spoken. And Jehoram reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah; because he had no son. Now the rest of the acts of Ahaziah which he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?”
Ahaziah made the assumption that he was king and that everyone in his kingdom must obey him. He forgot that the Israeli king only ruled under the Lord’s authority. He sent a captain with a company of soldiers giving the captain all his royal authority to bring Elijah to Samaria. Elijah was the Lord’s prophet so he served a higher authority than the king. When the first captain came in the king’s name he ordered Elijah to come and see the king. In order to show that the Lord had greater authority than the king Elijah called on the Lord to ring fire from heaven and that company and their captain were consumed. The same thing happened to the second captain and his company of soldiers. This wasn’t just a case of gratuitous violence but was done in the context of Elijah’s confrontation with Ahab at Mount Carmel. In that case, the Lord had brought fire from heaven to show that He is the true God while Ahab’s god of fire was just a fake. Because the captains had come believing in a god that had recently been proved to be false, Elijah demonstrated to them and the entire nation, that there is one true God in heaven and Elijah was the servant of the true God of heaven. The third captain understood the truth and begged Elijah to save his life. This captain knew that Elijah served the true God and treated the prophet with the respect that the Lord deserved. Elijah castigated Ahaziah causing after false gods and forgetting the first commandment and that he would die as a punishment. Ahaziah’s son was called Jehoram, who reigned as king after his father’s death. Another Jehoram, Jehoshaphat’s son was also the king in Judah.
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