Scripture Daily

Context No. 838 of 4322 · 2 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

2 Chronicles 22:1-6: in context

1The inhabitants of Jerusalem made Ahaziah his youngest son king in his place, because the band of men who came with the Arabians to the camp had slain all the oldest. So Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah reigned. 2Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah the daughter of Omri. 3He also walked in the ways of Ahab’s house, because his mother was his counselor in acting wickedly. 4He did that which was evil in the LORD’s sight, as did Ahab’s house, for they were his counselors after the death of his father, to his destruction. 5He also followed their counsel, and went with Jehoram the son of Ahab king of Israel to war against Hazael king of Syria at Ramoth Gilead; and the Syrians wounded Joram. 6He returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which they had given him at Ramah, when he fought against Hazael king of Syria. Azariah the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, went down to see Jehoram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick.

Ahaziah comes to the throne of Judah almost by accident, the youngest son left after raiders killed his older brothers, and he reigns only a year. The Chronicler's verdict on him is short and damning, and it puts its finger on exactly why he went wrong. He walked in the ways of the house of Ahab, the text says, because his mother was his counselor in doing wickedly. His mother was Athaliah, of Ahab's line, and she and her relatives became the voices in his ear. He did evil in the sight of the LORD, like the house of Ahab, for they were his counselors after his father's death, and the passage adds four chilling words about where that counsel led: to his destruction.

The account keeps circling back to the same cause, not Ahaziah's own scheming but whose advice he took. He was formed, and finally ruined, by the people he listened to, and the most dangerous of them was the closest of them, his own mother. It is a hard, honest observation about how a life goes bad. Ahaziah did not sit down one day and choose destruction; he took the counsel of the people around him, trusted the voices nearest to him, and became like them, and their counsel carried him straight to his end. Whom a person lets advise him is not a small thing. The trusted voice, especially the intimate one we least think to question, is quietly shaping us toward wisdom or toward ruin, and Ahaziah followed his the whole way down.

Ahaziah did evil and was destroyed because he took the counsel of those nearest him, his own mother chief among them. Whose voices am I letting shape me, and are the trusted, intimate ones pointing me toward good or, without my questioning it, toward ruin?

Sources