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Context No. 3337 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 3:20-27: in context

20In the morning, about the time of offering the sacrifice, behold, water came by the way of Edom, and the country was filled with water. 21Now when all the Moabites heard that the kings had come up to fight against them, they gathered themselves together, all who were able to put on armor, young and old, and stood on the border. 22They rose up early in the morning, and the sun shone on the water, and the Moabites saw the water opposite them as red as blood. 23They said, “This is blood. The kings are surely destroyed, and they have struck each other. Now therefore, Moab, to the plunder!” 24When they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up and struck the Moabites, so that they fled before them; and they went forward into the land attacking the Moabites. 25They beat down the cities; and on every good piece of land each man cast his stone, and filled it. They also stopped all the springs of water and cut down all the good trees, until in Kir Hareseth all they left was its stones; however the men armed with slings went around it and attacked it. 26When the king of Moab saw that the battle was too severe for him, he took with him seven hundred men who drew a sword, to break through to the king of Edom; but they could not. 27Then he took his oldest son who would have reigned in his place, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. There was great wrath against Israel; and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.

God provides water that saves the allied armies and lures Moab into a fatal misjudgment, and the battle turns against Moab. Then comes a horrifying act: the king of Moab, cornered and desperate, takes his own firstborn son, the heir to his throne, and offers him as a burnt offering on the city wall.

It is a scene of terrible pagan desperation, a father killing his child to try to buy the favor of his god. The passage does not commend this; it recoils from it, exposing the darkness of a religion that would demand such a price. And it stands in stark contrast to the God of Israel, who would never ask a father for his child's blood. Where false worship drives a man to sacrifice his son in a frantic bid for help, the true God provides the sacrifice himself, and in the end gave his own Son, so that no one would ever need to give theirs. The desperation of false religion is laid bare against the mercy of the God who gives rather than demands.

Do I see the mercy of the true God, who gives rather than demands, against the desperation of every false religion that asks us to buy favor with what is precious?

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