Prophets of the Lord are multiplied under these ill-omened reigns. We have first seen Ahijah the Shilonite prophesying to Jeroboam that he would be king over the ten tribes (1 Kings 11:29), then pronouncing the death of his son and the annihilation of his whole line to the same king (1 Kings 14). After him Shemaiah, the prophet to Rehoboam, persuading the king and his people not to fight against their brethren, the children of Israel (1 Kings 12:22; 2 Chron. 11:2), the only thing appropriate for those who yet maintained the lamp of David. They, the Lord’s witnesses, ought to accept the division as the result of their sin and ought to commit themselves to God who would know how to remedy the situation once His judgment, having run its course, would bear its fruit. And that is why Ahijah had said to Jeroboam: “And I will for this afflict the seed of David, but not forever” (1 Kings 11:39). Before these prophets, under the reign of Solomon Iddo the seer had prophesied concerning Jeroboam, to say nothing as to Nathan, who had played such a marked role in the days of David and at the opening of the reign of his son. Lastly, Azariah the son of Oded encouraged Asa, the king of Judah, to restore the worship of the true God after his victory over Zerah the Ethiopian (2 Chron. 15:1, 8).
All these prophets were, properly speaking, prophets of Judah, for even Ahijah the Shilonite first prophesied to Jeroboam near Jerusalem, and would not have been found in the territory of the ten tribes were it not through the circumstances of the division of the kingdom. It is so too with regard to “the man of God from Judah” who prophesied against Jeroboam in 1 Kings 13. We will not speak of the “old prophet” in that same chapter 13, remaining behind at Bethel through his unfaithfulness.
Hanani, a prophet of Judah (2 Chron. 16:7), prophesies against Asa who had called upon Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, for help against Baasha, the king of Israel. Despite the apparent success of this league, Hanani tells the king that henceforth he would have wars and not the rest he had hoped for in his alliance with the world. Pious Asa, incensed at the divine reproof, sets himself against the Lord by casting His prophet into prison!
After Hanani there appears Jehu, his son. He is a prophet in Israel as well as in Judah. He prophesies against Baasha, the king of Israel, Asa’s enemy, but also against Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, the friend of Ahab (2 Chron. 19:2; 20:34), for these two things — the world’s hatred for the children of God and the friendship of God’s children for the world — are equally sinful in the eyes of the Lord.
Jehu prophesies against Baasha who had smitten the house of Jeroboam, pronouncing the same judgment upon the former that had already come upon the latter: “Him that dieth of Baasha in the city shall the dogs eat, and him that dieth of his in the field shall the fowl of the heavens eat” (1 Kings 16:4; cf. 1 Kings 14:11). Nevertheless Baasha, just like Jeroboam, “slept with his fathers,” and “The rest of the acts of Baasha, and what he did, and his might, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?” (1 Kings 16:5, 6). Reference is made quite frequently in these books to the chronicles of the kings of Israel or to those of the kings of Judah. These chronicles were drawn up during the course of the reign of all the sovereigns of those times, whether Jewish or Gentile. They have nothing to do with the Word of God. That which it has not pleased the Lord to record or to explain is found recorded there. These chronicles have been lost; perhaps someone will one day find some fragments of them. The believer has no need for any of them; he has God’s Word. There in God’s account he finds all that is necessary for him as well as the divine evaluation of people, events, and things. Certain deeds may be recorded in noninspired writings, and even with great exactness, but these deeds are never accompanied by anything more than human evaluation. And what is more, men of God, prophets, seers could be used to draw up these chronicles, to make these genealogical registers, to write these commentaries (2 Chron. 12:15; 13:22); these writings are still not the inspired Word of God. In spite of their human interest they are of no importance whatsoever for setting forth the truth of God. And so they have disappeared, whereas the Word of God remains.
When they were still in existence they testified to the divinity of this Word and to the reality of the facts recorded in it; now that they have disappeared, they have no other witness than the mention of them in the sacred writings. Amid the ruin and disappearance of these things the Word of God remains, the only monument, the only document that cannot be shaken!
The history of the kings of Israel becomes increasingly dark and tragic. The curse of God rests upon this apostate line. Elah, the son of Baasha, reigns two years (1 Kings 16:8); Zimri, who had a high rank in the army, kills him at Tirzah while he was drinking himself drunk. Thus the word of Jehu the prophet begins to be fulfilled, for “As soon as he sat on his throne, he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not a male, neither of his kinsmen nor of his friends” (1 Kings 16:11). This action of extermination was accomplished in a few days, for Zimri reigned seven days at Tirzah (1 Kings 16:15). And these seven days were sufficient for him to do “evil in the sight of Jehovah, in walking in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin which he did, making Israel to sin” (1 Kings 16:19). When a man’s heart is estranged from God, each of his deeds bears the impress of this, and so it is that a mass of iniquities may accumulate in so short a period of time.
The people, encamped before Gibbethon on the day of Zimri’s usurpation, choose Omri, the captain of the army, for their king. These facts always repeat themselves in the decline of empires. When the people is without God, His will is counted as nothing. That which He established in the beginning is done away with; he who has might reigns, and as might lies in the army, the empire is at the mercy of the military power. Conspiracy on the one hand, soldierly revolution on the other.
Another feature characterizes the decline of the kingdom. Israel is divided against itself: how shall it stand? Half the people choose Tibni for king, while the other half follows Omri. This latter prevails: Tibni dies, Omri reigns. He reigns twelve years altogether, six years at Tirzah. He builds Samaria and does worse than all those who had been before him. He sleeps with his fathers and is buried in Samaria.
Ahab, the son of Omri, begins to reign during Asa’s lifetime yet, for all the catastrophes mentioned in 1 Kings 15 -16 take place during this latter’s reign. Just as the reigns of Ahab’s predecessors (Nadab, a year; Elah, two years; Zimri, seven days) except for Omri had been short, just so the reign of Ahab is prolonged (twenty-two years). Ahab has time before him for doing only evil. He follows the idolatrous worship of Jeroboam, but does worse yet: he marries Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and bows down before Baal to whom he builds an altar and a temple at Samaria. He sets up an image of the Phoenician Astarte and provokes the Lord God of Israel to anger (1 Kings 16:29-33).
And it is in such days that God, provoked to anger, goes forth to manifest His power in testimony against the evil, but also to deliver this miserable people who were willfully serving demons. What a God is ours! He chooses the moment when man has completely rejected Him to show that He is God, He alone, as we shall see in that which follows. But as for us Christians, have we not contemplated what God is at the cross of Christ?
Before beginning with the history of Elijah, one detail is added: “In his [Ahab’s] days Hiel the Bethelite built Jericho; he laid its foundation in Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates in Segub his youngest, according to the word of Jehovah which he spoke through Joshua the son of Nun” (1 Kings 16:34). Five hundred thirty-two years had passed, and the Lord had not forgotten His word (Josh. 6:26), a detail all the more remarkable that it is intended to prove before the eyes of men the infallible authority of all the words God has spoken. Israel was idolatrous, the name of the Lord was being dishonored, evil of most frightful description was vaunting itself in broad daylight in this time of apostasy. Why did God not intervene? Why did He not crush this ungodly one? It is because He is a God of infinite patience and He proves this. He fulfills His word when after five centuries man might have thought and no doubt did think that He was no longer paying any attention. One act of disobedience brings on the judgment foretold, down to the very letter. This event takes place before the eyes of all; did it speak to the conscience of the people and of their king?
And it is a man of Bethel who builds Jericho! There is no more fear of God before the eyes of Israel. God’s threats are just as despised as His promises. This event is given us here as being morally the final stage of the condition of the individual in a time of apostasy, for historically speaking, it took place during the twenty-two years of Ahab’s reign.