Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Athaliah's treachery

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 11:1–3, “And when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal. But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’s sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the bedchamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain. And he was with her hid in the house of the LORD six years. And Athaliah did reign over the land.”

Athaliah was part of Ahab’s family, she was Ahab’s  sister (2 Kings 8: 18, 26). Her father and mother had attempted to remove any remembrance of the Lord God from Israel and replace the Lord God with Jezebel’s own god. Of course. Athaliah wanted to do the same in Judah and she also wanted to destroy the house of David and their Temple as well. As soon as she heard that her husband the current head of the Davidic dynasty was dead she murdered all the living descendants of David’s house that she could lay her hands on. She did this to make sure that the Davidic dynasty would be eradicated from history. The Lord had done the same to Ahab’s family and she wanted to act as God. However, the Lord preserved one of David’s descendants. One courageous nurse took a young child called Joash and his him away. She risked certain death if she was discovered but the Lord remembered the promise that He had made to David.While Jehu removed the Baal worship, introduced by Ahab from Israel, he didn’t do anything to remove Jeroboam’s false form of worship. The Lord accepted the fact that Jehu had rescued Israel from a complete return to the ways of the Amorites and promised him that his descendants, to the fourth generation, would rule on the throne of Judah. The fourth generation was a very important generation in the Lord’s accounting. Israel’s ancestors were to be delivered from bondage in the fourth generation (Gen 15: 12-16). The Lord also promised to visit the iniquity of people to bowed down to false gods and refused to bow down to the Lord to the third and fourth generation. (Ex 20: 5) However, because Jehu refused to deliver Israel from Jeroboam’s sin, the Lord allowed Israel’s borders to whittled away during his time. The area of Israel beyond the Jordan River were invaded by the Syrians. After a 28 year reign Jehu died and his son Jehoahaz became king in his place.

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