Bible Difficulties (46 page)

`Let my servants go with your servants in the ships.' But Jehoshaphat was not willing"

(NASB). But 2 Chronicles 20:35-36 contributes the interesting information that Jehoshaphat actually was at first quite willing for Ahaziah to join with him in this undertaking, even though it was wrong for him to act in partnership with a degenerate Baal-worshiper like the son of Ahab and Jezebel. It was only under the pressure of the prophet Eliezer son of Dodavahu, who denounced the alliance as highly displeasing to God, that Jehoshaphat finally backed away from the agreement. 2 Chronicles 20:37 tells us that Eliezer predicted that Yahweh would destroy all the ships that Jehoshaphat had built, and then the Lord apparently proceeded to do so by sending a violent storm on the harbor of Ezion-geber. There is really no basic contradiction between the two accounts, even though there is perhaps a difference in emphasis. But we still cannot be quite certain whether Jehoshaphat notified Ahaziah that the deal was off at some time before the storm struck or whether it was after it had smashed up the ships. In the latter case, the only thing that Jehoshaphat could have vetoed, so far as Ahaziah was concerned, was a project to attempt a rebuilding of the ruined fleet as a joint venture for a second time.

203

2 Kings

When did Jehoram son of Ahab begin his reign?

2 Kings 1:17 states that Jehoram, Ahab's younger son, began his reign as King of Israel in the
second
year of
Jehoram
son of Jehoshaphat, King of Judah. (Quite confusing is this appearance of identical names among the children of both Ahab of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah, but apparently their treaty of alliance and friendship extended even to the naming of their children!) This appears to be in conflict with the notation in 2 Kings 3:1, that Jehoram ben Ahab became king in the "eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat." But the discrepancy arises from the fact that just prior to joining Ahab in the unsuccessful attempt to recapture Ramoth-gilead from the Syrians, Jehoshaphat took the precaution to have his son Jehoram installed as coregent on the throne of Judah.

In the battle of Ramoth-gilead, in which Ahab was fatally wounded by an arrow (1

Kings 22:34-35), Jehoshaphat himself nearly lost his life; so his foresight was well grounded. But Jehoram began his reign as
coregent
in that year, 853 B.C. Yet Jehoshaphat lived on until 848, five years later. Thus it came about that the second year of Jehoram ben Jehoshaphat was 851-850. It was also the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat (who began to reign in 869-868 as sole king, that being the year when his father Asa died). Since Jehoram ben Ahab ascended the throne of Israel in 850,
both
synchronisms were correct: the second year of Jehoram ben Jehoshaphat was the same as the eighteenth of Jehoshaphat.

It should be pointed out in this connection that this precedent for installing the crown prince as coregent in his father's lifetime was followed at least six times in the course of the Judean monarchy: (1) Asa died in 869, but his son Jehoshaphat became coregent in 872 (making three or four years of coregency); (2) Jehoshaphat died in 848, but his son Jehoram became coregent in 853; (3) Amaziah died in 767, but his son Azariah (or Uzziah, as he is variously known) became coregent in 790 (possibly when Amaziah was taken captive to Israel by Jehoash ben Jehoahaz, king of Israel); (4) Uzziah died in 739, but his son Jotham became coregent in 751 (when his father was stricken with leprosy); (5) Jotham died in 736 or 735, but his son Ahaz became coregent in 743. (6) Ahaz died in 725, but his son Hezekiah became coregent in 728. From the technical legal standpoint, Jehoiachin was the senior king of Judah from 597 (Ezekiel always dates his prophecies by Jehoiachin's regnal years); and so during the entire reign of his brother Zedekiah (597-587), the latter ruled only as coregent. If we bear these guidelines in mind, many apparent confusions in the dates of the period of the divided monarchy can be readily cleared up.

The young men who mocked Elisha because he was bald were cursed, and forty-two
of them were killed by two she-bears (2 Kings 2:23-24). How could a man of God
curse people for such a mild personal offense?

A careful study of this incident in context shows that it was far more serious than a

"mild personal offense." It was a situation of serious public danger, quite as grave as the 204

large youth gangs that roam the ghetto sections of our modern American cities. If these young hoodlums were ranging about in packs of fifty or more, derisive towards respectable adults and ready to mock even a well-known man of God, there is no telling what violence they might have inflicted on the citizenry of the religious center of the kingdom of Israel (as Bethel was), had they been allowed to continue their riotous course.

Perhaps it was for this reason that God saw fit to put forty-two of them to death in this spectacular fashion (there is no evidence that Elisha himself, in imposing a curse, prayed for this specific mode of punishment), in order to strike terror into other youth gangs that were infesting the city and to make them realize that neither Yahweh Himself nor any of His anointed prophets were to be threatened or treated with contempt.

Certainly from that time on, the whole Israelite community became convinced that Elisha was a true prophet and that he bore an authoritative word from God. Even the ungodly king Jehoram son of Ahab treated him with great deference and respect (see 2

Kings 3:11-13) after this had taken place.

Was not Elisha the prophet guilty of lying to the Syrian troops in 2 Kings 6:19?

Technically Elisha's statement to the foreign invaders was true in the light of the situation in which he made it. He said to the expeditionary force of Benhadad, sent to capture him by surprise, "This is not the way, nor is this city; follow me and I will bring you to the man whom you seek" (NASB). While it is true that Dothan had been Elisha's location the night before and that they had taken the right way to get up to Dothan, nevertheless neither of those facts was now true. Why? Because Elisha was no longer in Dothan; he had come out of the city to meet them. Therefore the way up to Dothan was no longer the right path for them to use if they wished to capture the troublesome prophet. Thus he was only speaking the truth when he said, "This is not the way, nor is this the city." It was not Elisha's purpose to go in front of them down the highway to Samaria, the city where he would remove the "blindness" (i.e., their inability to recognize him) from their eyes. Consequently the rest of his statement was likewise true: if they would follow him all the way down to Samaria, then he would indeed bring them to Elisha inside the city of Samaria. The following verse (v.20) shows how he fulfilled his promise to the letter. Samaria was the right city for them to see the prophet they had come to capture. But unfortunately for them, when they did get into Samaria, they saw their hoped-for quarry surrounded by the regimental troops of the king of Israel; and it was the Syrians who were taken prisoner.

This delightful episode certainly does record the complete discomfiture of the foreign invaders by a supernatural blindness cast on them by the Lord (somewhat like the blindness sent on the Sodomites who riotously attempted to break down the door to Lot's house [Gen. 19:11]). But it is not really justified to call Elisha's statement a lie, for every part of it was technically correct. Nowhere does he actually say, "I am not the man you are looking for." He only said that he would lead them to that man in the city where they would find him (as soon as as he got there).

When did Ahaziah ben Jehoram become king?

205

2 Kings 8:25 says that Ahaziah son of Jehoram of Judah became king in the twelfth year of Jehoram son of Ahab of Israel. Yet in 2 Kings 9:29 it is stated that it was in his eleventh year. Which is right? Is there not a discrepancy of one year?

The answer is that Ahaziah ben Jehoram became king in 841 B.C., which according to the nonaccession-year system came out to Jehoram ben Ahab's twelfth year, but according to the accession-year system was his eleventh year. In 2 Kings 8:25 the nonaccession-year system was used, but in 2 Kings 9:29 it was the accession-year system that was followed. Confusing?

The fact of the matter is, however, that the Northern Kingdom followed the nonaccession-year system from 930 B.C. until 798 B.C., but from 798 (the beginning of the reign of Jehoash ben Jehoahaz) till the Fall of Samaria in 722 B.C., it switched to the accession-year system. The southern kingdom, on the other hand, used the accession-year system from 930 until the beginning of the reign of Jehoram ben Jehoshaphat (848-841), or possibly a couple of years earlier, in 850 B.C., before Jehoshaphat died. Around 850

the southern kingdom of Judah switched to the nonaccession-year system and stayed on it until the end of the reign of Joash ben Ahaziah (835-796)--when it finally reverted to the accession-year system (i.e., the first official regnal year did not begin until New Year's Day of the year following the year when the new king came to the throne). Therefore, by the accession-year system, what was the eleventh year of Jehoram was the twelfth year by the nonaccession-year system, i.e., 841 B.C. No discrepancy!

How old was Ahaziah when he began to reign (cf. 2 Kings 8:26 with 2 Chron. 22:2)
and Jehoiachin when he began to reign (cf. 2 Kings 24:8 with 2 Chron. 36:9-10)?

Copyists were prone to making two types of scribal errors. One concerned the spelling of proper names (especially unfamiliar proper names), and the other had to do with numbers. Ideally, we might have wished that the Holy Spirit had restrained all copyists of Scripture over the centuries from making mistakes of any kind; but an errorless copy would have required a miracle, and this was not the way it worked out.

It is beyond the capability of anyone to avoid any and every slip of the pen in copying page after page from any book--sacred or secular. Yet we may be sure that the original manuscript of each book of the Bible, being directly inspired by God, was free from all error. It is also true that no well-attested variation in the manuscript copies that have come down to us alter any doctrine of the Bible. To this extent, at least, the Holy Spirit has exercised a restraining influence in superintending the transmission of the text.

These two examples of numerical discrepancy have to do with the decade in the number given. In 2 Chronicles 22:2 Ahaziah is said to have been forty-two; in 2 Kings 8:26 he is said to have been twenty-two. Fortunately there is enough additional information in the biblical text to show that the correct number is twenty-two. 2 Kings 8:17 tells us that Ahaziah's father Joram ben Ahab was thirty-two when he became king, and he died eight 206

years later, at the age of forty. Therefore Ahaziah could not have been forty-two at the time of his father's death at age forty!

Similar is the case of Jehoiachin, whose age at accession is given by 2 Chronicles 36:9-10 as eight but by 2 Kings 24:8 as eighteen. There is enough information in the context to show that eight is wrong and eighteen is right. That is to say, Jehoiachin reigned only three months; yet he was obviously a responsible adult at the time, for he "did what was evil in the sight of the Lord" and was judged for it.

Observe that in each case it is the decade number that varies. In Ahaziah's case it is forty-two as against twenty-two. In Jehoiachin's case it was eight as against eighteen. It is instructive to observe that the number notation used by the Jewish settlers in the Elephantine in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (fortunately we have a large file of documents in papyrus from this source) consisted of horizontal hooks to represent decades. Thus eight would be /III IIII, but eighteen would be /III IIII, with a horizontal hook over the Is. Similarly twenty-two would be I, followed by two horizontal hooks, one over the other; but forty-two would be /I, followed by two sets of horizontal hooks, one hook over the other in each set. If, then, the manuscript being copied out was blurred or smudged, one or more of the decade notations could be missed by the copyist.

The same was probably the case with the date of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in 701

B.C. This is stated in 2 Kings 18:13 to have occurred in the "fourteenth" year of Hezekiah, which implies that Hezekiah must have begun his reign in 715. Yet the other six references to Hezekiah's chronology in 2 Kings make it clear that he was crowned as assistant king in 728 and became sole king in 725. Since Sennacherib did not become king in Assyria until 705 and the invasion occurred in the fourth year of his reign, the 701

date for the invasion is absolutely certain. Therefore we are to understand the "fourteen"

in 2 Kings 18:13 as a miscopying of an original "twenty-four". The difference in the Hebrew notation would have been as follows: fourteen was /III, with a horizontal hook over the Is, and twenty-four was /III, with two horizontal hooks over the Is, one over the other. A blurred manuscript probably confused the scribe of Isaiah 36:1, who originated the error; and it may have been that the later scribe of 2 Kings 18 was so impressed by the number fourteen with which he was familiar in the Isaiah text that he decided to

"correct" v.13 to conform with it. At least that is the likeliest explanation I know of. (See also the discussion of Sennacherib's invasion in Hezekiah's fourteenth year at 2 Kings 18:13.)

How could God commission Jehu to destroy the house of Ahab (2 Kings 9:6-10; 2

Kings 10:30) and then later condemn him for the bloodshed (Hos. 1:4)?

There can be no question that Jehu fully carried out the commission he received from the Lord: "You shall strike the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of My servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the LORD, at the hand of Jezebel. For the whole house of Ahab shall perish" (2 Kings 9:7-8, NASB). After Jehu, racing back from Ramoth Gilead to Jezreel, shot King Jehoram dead, and Ahaziah of Judah as well (for he was the grandson of Jezebel), he then proceeded to the city of 207

Samaria and intimidated the elders of that city into decapitating all seventy of Ahab's sons who were living in the palace (2 Kings 10:1-10). Not long after that he managed to lure all the Baal-worshiping leaders of Israel into the temple of Baal on the pretext of leading them in a great celebration of worship there. Once they were locked up inside the temple itself, he had them all massacred by his troops and destroyed the entire building, desecrating it in such a way that it could never be used for worship again (vv. 18-27).