The Skeptics Annotated Bible (333 page)

29 So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah went up to Ramoth-gilead.

30 And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, I will disguise myself, and enter into the battle; but put thou on thy robes. And the king of Israel disguised himself, and went into the battle.

31 But the king of Syria commanded his thirty and two captains that had rule over his chariots, saying, Fight neither with small nor great, save only with the king of Israel.

32 And it came to pass, when the captains of the chariots saw Jehoshaphat, that they said, Surely it is the king of Israel. And they turned aside to fight against him: and Jehoshaphat cried out.

33 And it came to pass, when the captains of the chariots perceived that it was not the king of Israel, that they turned back from pursuing him.

34 And a certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness: wherefore he said unto the driver of his chariot, Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host; for I am wounded.

35 And the battle increased that day: and
the king
was stayed up in his chariot against the Syrians, and
died at even: and the blood ran out of the wound into the midst of the chariot.

(22.35)
“The king … died at even: and the blood ran out of the wound into the midst of the chariot.”
God killed Ahab for showing mercy to King Ben-Hadad. (See 1 Kings 20.42)
God’s 98th Killing

36 And there went a proclamation throughout the host about the going down of the sun, saying, Every man to his city, and every man to his own country.

37 So the king died, and was brought to Samaria; and they buried the king in Samaria.

38 And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria; and the dogs licked up his blood; and they washed his armour; according unto the word of the LORD which he spake.

39 Now the rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, and the ivory house which he made, and all the cities that he built, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?

40 So Ahab slept with his fathers; and Ahaziah his son reigned in his stead.

41 And Jehoshaphat the son of Asa began to reign over Judah in the fourth year of Ahab king of Israel.

42 Jehoshaphat was thirty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Azubah the daughter of Shilhi.

43 And he walked in all the ways of Asa his father; he turned not aside from it, doing that which was right in the eyes of the LORD: nevertheless
the high places were not taken away
; for the people offered and burnt incense yet in the high places.

(22.43) “The high places were not taken away.”
240 Did Jehoshaphat remove the high places?

44 And Jehoshaphat made peace with the king of Israel.

45 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, and his might that he shewed, and how he warred, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

46
And the remnant of the sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land.

(22.46) “And the remnant of the sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land.” Jehoshaphat “did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord” and “took” the homosexuals (sodomites) “out of the land,” or as the RSV says, “he exterminated” them.

47 There was then no king in Edom: a deputy was king.

48 Jehoshaphat made ships of Tharshish to go to Ophir for gold: but they went not; for the ships were broken at Ezion-geber.

49 Then said Ahaziah the son of Ahab unto Jehoshaphat, Let my servants go with thy servants in the ships. But Jehoshaphat would not.

50 And Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David his father: and Jehoram his son reigned in his stead.

51 Ahaziah the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned two years over Israel.

52 And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, and walked in the way of his father, and in the way of his mother, and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin:

53 For he served Baal, and worshipped him, and provoked to anger the LORD God of Israel, according to all that his father had done.

Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?
—
2 Kings 18.27

If you read nothing else in 2 Kings, be sure to read 2.23-24, where God sends two bears to rip up 42 little children for making fun of Elisha’s bald head. It’s one of the many Bible stories that you never heard in Church or Sunday School.

Highlights:

• Elijah proves that he is a man of God by burning to death 102 men.
  1.10
  ,
  12
  
• God kills Ahaziah for consulting another God.
  1.16-17
  
• He sends two bears to rip up 42 little children for making fun of Elisha’s bald head.
  2.23-24
  
• Elisha makes his servant (Gehazi) and all of his descendants lepers forever.
  5.27
  
• Elisha makes an iron axe head swim.
  6.6
  
• God answers Elisha’s prayer by smiting his adversaries with blindness.
  6.18
  
• Mothers boiling and eating their own children.
  6.28-29
  
• “Behold, this evil is from the Lord.”
  6.33
  
• A skeptic is trampled to death.
  7.17-20
  
• God sends a seven-year famine.
  8.1
  
• He vows to “cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall.”
  9.8
  
• He pays back Ahab by killing his son.
  9.24-25
  
• He has Jezebel thrown off a wall and feeds her body to the dogs.
  9.33-37
  
• All seventy of king Ahab’s sons are killed, their heads put in baskets, and sent to Jehu.
  10.1-10
  
• “So Jehu slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and his kinsfolks, and his priests, until he left him none remaining.”
  10.11
  
• Jehu meets with 42 brothers of Ahaziah, and then he murders them. 2 Chronicles 22.7 says that his killing was “of God.”
  10.13-14
  
• Jehu shows off his “zeal for the Lord” by murdering the rest of Ahab’s family in Samaria.
  10.16-17
  
• He assembled the followers of Baal and them slaughtered them all.
  10.18-28
  
• God rewards Jehu for murdering Ahab and his family.
  10.30
  
• He, the divine physician, strikes king Azariah with leprosy.
  15.5
  
• He sends lions to devour the Samaritans because “they knew not the manner of the God of the land.”
  17.25-26
  
• “That they may eat their own dung and drink their own piss with you”
  18.27
  
• An angel of the Lord kills 185,000 men while they sleep. “And when they arose, early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.”
  19.35
  
• God caused king Sennacherib to be murdered by his sons.
  19.36-37
  
• Isaiah makes the sun move ten degrees backwards.
  20.11
  
• He will “bring such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle.”
  21.12