Tough times, when prophets are anointed in blood.
Not literally, of course; let’s not be grotesque. But the
Bible’s first mention of Elijah’s successor tells us he would cause death, and
he needed no sword to do it.
Most Old Testament prophets did more suffering and dying than killing and laying waste: “They were stoned, they were sawn in two,
they were killed with the sword.” Still, there were a few notable exceptions to the rule.
Elijah, Elisha’s mentor, was one of these. Having miraculously
convinced the people of Israel that the Lord was indeed God and Baal was not,
Elijah called to the crowd, “Seize the prophets of Baal; let not one of them
escape.” The people escorted 850 false prophets to the brook Kishon, and there
they were slaughtered, either by Elijah personally, or more likely at his
command. Then there was Samuel, who hacked the king of the Amalekites to pieces before God in Gilgal when Saul refused to do his duty as king of Israel.
But these were the exceptions. Prophets were men of the word,
not men of the sword.
It is not a simple matter to determine exactly who it was Elisha
“put to death”. Most commentators on Kings note that he was not known for either
engaging in or commissioning acts of violence. It is highly probable a few of
the 42 young thugs cursed by Elisha expired of bear-inflicted injuries, but this is not explicitly
stated in the text; moreover, the incident seems to have taken place quite a
bit prior to the anointings of both Hazael and
Jehu, rather than following after them, as seems to be the burden of the prophecy. Cursing
was simply not a prominent feature of Elisha’s latter-day ministry.
In the end, we must confess that we do not know exactly how
this prediction was fulfilled. The events described in 1 Kings give us
only a hint of the Elisha’s real impact on Israel. His prophetic ministry
spanned the reigns of at least four Israelite kings over a period of more than
forty years. There were any number of occasions on which this prophetic word
may have come to fruition, not least in Elisha’s final oracle, his prediction that the armies of Israel would strike down the armies of Syria
on three occasions. This promise was fulfilled during the lifetime of Jehoash.
All the same, Barnes’ suggestion that Elisha slew them “with
a spiritual slaying by the ‘word of the Lord,’ which is ‘sharper than any two-edged
sword,’ is too ridiculous to be entertained. The sword of Hazael caused literal,
physical death, as did the sword of Jehu. Why would the deaths attributed to
Elisha be of any other sort?
* * * * *
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Henry II
is said to have inquired. Perhaps he only meant it rhetorically, but four of
his knights promptly took it upon themselves to assassinate the Archbishop of
Canterbury at vespers.
The writers of fiction and non-fiction alike tell us
powerful people rarely need to get their hands dirty. They have subordinates
and agents to accomplish their purposes, and often do not even have to issue
direct commands in order to have their will carried out. This allows them what
we call “plausible deniability” in the event their schemes backfire in some
unexpected way.
The execution of Naboth in 1 Kings 21 was just
such an occasion. King Ahab complained to his wife Jezebel that his neighbor Naboth
refused to sell him a vineyard he coveted, which was Naboth’s right under the
Law of Moses. Ahab did not have to tell her he wanted his neighbor dead, or how
she ought to do it. He didn’t give a single order. He simply went to bed and
pouted; et voilà, plausible deniability. Jezebel, a Phoenician princess from Sidon, was quite unused to the
peculiar Israelite notion that even kings are required to be subject to laws,
so she went out and ruthlessly engineered Naboth’s murder. She had probably
seen members of her family do similar things ... or maybe she just couldn’t
stand watching her husband behave like a spoiled six-year-old.
Nothing in the narrative suggests for a moment that Ahab
knew what was happening. In fact, it reads as if he may well have continued sulking in his chambers. But Jezebel
“wrote letters in Ahab’s name and sealed them with his seal.” She specified to the elders and leaders of
Naboth’s city exactly how he was to be dealt with. She received the news of
Naboth’s death, and told her husband he was now free to take possession of
Naboth’s vineyard. On one level, it was all Jezebel.
But God was not fooled. Through Elijah, God says to Ahab, “Have
you killed and taken possession?” Jezebel would certainly get her just desserts;
God would see to that. But he held Ahab primarily responsible for her crime. Ahab
knew exactly what sort of depraved psyche he was turning loose on Naboth when he
complained to Jezebel about him. Moreover, he was Jezebel’s husband and king,
accountable both because he had chosen to marry her in the first place, and
because what she did happened on his watch and for his benefit.
How many times do you and I discreetly and deliberately set
in motion events with which we would be reluctant to find ourselves identified?
God, who knows the motives of men’s hearts, is not fooled by any number of
layers of plausible deniability.
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