Scripture Daily

Context No. 1237 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 15:23-31: in context

23In the fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah, Pekahiah the son of Menahem began to reign over Israel in Samaria for two years. 24He did that which was evil in the LORD’s sight. He didn’t depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, with which he made Israel to sin. 25Pekah the son of Remaliah, his captain, conspired against him and attacked him in Samaria, in the fortress of the king’s house, with Argob and Arieh; and with him were fifty men of the Gileadites. He killed him, and reigned in his place. 26Now the rest of the acts of Pekahiah, and all that he did, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. 27In the fifty-second year of Azariah king of Judah, Pekah the son of Remaliah began to reign over Israel in Samaria for twenty years. 28He did that which was evil in the LORD’s sight. He didn’t depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, with which he made Israel to sin. 29In the days of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath Pileser king of Assyria came and took Ijon, Abel Beth Maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali; and he carried them captive to Assyria. 30Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, attacked him, killed him, and reigned in his place, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah. 31Now the rest of the acts of Pekah, and all that he did, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.

This passage records a dizzying stretch of Israel's late history: one king murdered by his officer, who takes the throne; then that king murdered by another conspirator, who seizes power; and in the midst of the bloody instability, the Assyrian empire arrives, carrying off whole regions of the land into exile. King after king does evil, none departing from the sins that led Israel astray, and the kingdom lurches from coup to coup while its enemy tears pieces off it.

The relentless pattern in these verses is instability, one violent overthrow after another, kings rising and falling by assassination in rapid succession. And underneath the political chaos runs a single spiritual diagnosis, repeated of each king: he did evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam. The kingdom that had cut itself loose from God generations earlier is now reaping the whirlwind, a society coming apart, with no stability, no legitimacy, no one able to hold power for long, and an enemy at the gates carrying off the people piece by piece. It is a grim picture of what happens to a people who abandon God: not usually a single dramatic collapse, but a slow disintegration, a loss of the center that once held things together, until nothing is secure and the whole structure comes apart. The coups and the exile are the outworking of a deeper unmooring. And it is a warning worth heeding, that a nation or a life unmoored from God does not simply carry on as before; it loses, over time, the stability and coherence that only its foundation could give. Cut loose from God, the kingdom tore itself apart from within while its enemies tore it apart from without.

Do I see how a life or a people cut loose from God slowly loses its stability and coherence, and am I keeping my own life anchored to the foundation that alone can hold it together?

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