For my weekly quiet time this week, I studied II Kings 14.
This chapter is about Israel and Judah restoring the boundaries of the Davidic and Solomonic empire, or at least coming close to doing so.
In v 25, we read about a prophecy from Jonah the son of Amittai, the very prophet who is the subject of the Book of Jonah. Jonah prophesied that King Jeroboam II of Northern Israel would restore the border of Israel from Hamath in Syria, all the way to the Sea of the Arabah, next to Judah, in the South (cp. Joshua 3:16). According to Jonah’s prophecy, Jeroboam II would restore Israel’s northern and southern boundaries, which had been moved by her foreign enemies.
A tradition says that God desired for Israel’s northernmost boundary to be up to the gate of Hamath in Syria (Numbers 34:8), which was the case under King Solomon (I Kings 8:65); in another tradition, however, Israel’s northernmost boundary was to be further north than the gate of Hamath, extending all the way to the Euphrates River (Genesis 15:18), as was true under Solomon (I Kings 4:21, 24). And so there are different traditions about what God wanted Israel’s boundaries to be, and where they were under King Solomon.
II Kings 14 assumes that the northernmost boundary was the gate of Hamath, and yet it also hints that the boundary could have been further than that. V 28 states that Jeroboam II recovered the city of Hamath, which had belonged to Judah. And yet, scholars are quick to say “Not so fast!”, because Israel and Judah never possessed Hamath, so how could Jeroboam II “recover” it? II Samuel 8:9-10 says that the king of Hamath appeased David with gold, silver, and bronze, after David had defeated the Syrian king Hadadezer. For some scholars, this implies that David didn’t take over Hamath, but that he and the king of Hamath reached some sort of agreement. Yet, as we saw, there is a tradition that Solomon dominated the region up to the Euphrates region, which would include Hamath. Maybe David and Solomon had a degree of control over Hamath, while also allowing it to maintain a certain amount of independence. In any case, Jeroboam II is regaining what once belonged to Northern Israel, as he defeats the Syrians, who have afflicted the Israelites for quite a long time.
Judah too is making gains. King Amaziah of Judah defeats Edom in battle and takes Sela from it. And his successor, Azariah, retakes and rebuilds Elath, which is near Ezion-geber (Deuteronomy 2:8). Ezion-geber was a southern port that belonged to Israel under King Solomon (I Kings 9:26). While Northern Israel takes back Israel’s cities from the Syrians in the North, Judah does so from her Southern enemies, such as the Edomites.
According to the author of II Kings 14, the reason that Jeroboam II is winning is that God has taken pity on Israel in her distress, and God has seen that there is nobody else helping his people. Consequently, God has given victory to Jeroboam II.
When I attended a liberal Seventh-Day Adventist church in New York City, I heard one of its teachers claim that Jonah’s nationalistic prophecy was the exact opposite of the prophet Amos’ message of doom against Israel, which also occurred during the reign of Jeroboam II. Similarly, one of the commentaries that I read contrasted Jonah’s prophecy with that of Micaiah in I Kings 22. Whereas Jonah encouraged the king of Israel to take back the cities that the Syrians had stolen, Micaiah foretold that King Ahab’s attempt to do so (in the case of Ramoth-gilead) would result in dismal failure.
Is there a contadiction here? Personally, I’m not a fundamentalist, who resorts to mental gymnastics to make all of the Bible internally consistent. But, in this case, I don’t think that there’s a glaring contradiction. God can give different messages for different contexts. In I Kings 22, when there was peace between Israel and Syria, Ahab was wrong-headed to start a war to retake Ramoth-gilead; war was unnecessary. After Syria had beaten up on Israel, however, that was a good time for God to give Israel relief from her enemy, to paralyze Syria, and (in the process) to take back the cities that the Syrians had taken from her.
Regarding Amos and Jonah, maybe Amos had prophesied after Jeroboam II’s victories, which Jonah had predicted. In Amos 6:13, Amos rebukes Northern Israel for thinking that she took Karnaim by her own strength, without the assistance of God. Jonah’s message was appropriate for Northern Israel when she was experiencing distress and needed God’s deliverance. After she had been delivered and become proud, refusing to repent of her wrong-doing and to acknowledge God, the appropriate message was Amos’ prophecy of judgment.
In Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History, Francis Schaeffer makes the point that God doesn’t act the same way all of the time. In the Book of Joshua, for example, God forbids the Israelites to take plunder from Jericho (to Achan’s detriment), yet he allows them to plunder Ai. For Schaeffer (if I remember his argument correctly), the lesson is that we serve a living God. We don’t just rely on a book, but on a personal being for guidance.
That can be dangerous, for at least relying on a book can give us a degree of stability. If that stability goes out the window, what’s to stop someone from claiming that God has made an exception to his “Thou shalt not murder” rule, and has commanded us to kill men, women, and children? There are Christians who actually defend the Conquest by saying that God can make exceptions to his own rules!
In II Kings 14, at least, we see some measure of reason. It’s wrong for Ahab to start a war with Syria during a time of peace, but it’s all right to do so after Syria has afflicted Israel one-too-many times. It’s all right to trust in God’s deliverance when things are rough, for God is good and loves Israel; but it’s wrong to become proud and vain, to glorify self rather than God. In that case, judgment may come!
Then there’s the story of Amaziah of Judah in II Kings 14. King Amaziah has just defeated Edom, and so he believes that he’s strong enough to challenge Northern Israel to a fight, perhaps to take back Northern Israel for the Davidic line in Judah. But Jehoash, the King of Northern Israel, tells Amaziah that he is way out of his league: that just because Amaziah beat Edom, that doesn’t mean he can beat Northern Israel! But Amaziah fails to heed Jehoash’s warning, and Jehoash thwallops him. There’s a place for expecting the extraordinary, but there’s such a thing as realism in the Bible! Are there absolutes, or are things relative to the situation? And relative to what?