This is the transcript of the video by John Thatcher:
The first thing that we read about Noah, is that he has this most beautiful phrase attached to him, which was also attached to Enoch at the same time –
“They walked with God”
Enoch walked with God and then it goes on to say a little bit more
“Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him”
Just that phrase. I’ve always looked at that phrase and thought I should love to have that on my tombstone –
“He walked with God”.
But I hope I won’t have a tombstone. Who knows? – It may be that the Lord will come in the next couple of years.
But Enoch walked with God and he was taken.
I personally believe that the flood was local. I think it was in Mesopotamia and I think that Enoch was taken so that he did not see the death that was caused by the flood, but that’s only a personal opinion.
But also then in Genesis 6 it says these are the generations of Noah.
“Noah was a just man and perfect in his generation and Noah walked with God.”
And what a beautiful phrase that is, Noah or Enoch walked with God.
It says everything about them. It says that these two men and I’m sure others like them, in amongst a world of evil, in amongst a world of violence, the Bible tells us that that world was filled with violence so that it tore at God’s heart. And I reckon it must be the same today. What an evil world we live in, and I have a little bit more to say about that later.
And then eventually after the flood subsided, on the seventh month, the ark came to rest on what the Bible calls Ararat.
The meaning of Ararat is ‘the curse is reversed’ or ‘the curse is ended’.
And that’s the meaning of that word. So whether it actually is the mountain range we know as Ararat today, or whether the Ark resided on another point that was simply called ‘the curse is now reversed’ – because God will never again bring a flood upon the earth to kill all mankind – I don’t know- it could have been another place simply given that name, as a symbolic name.
The 120‑Year Decree
“The Lord said my spirit will not strive with man for ever. For he is indeed flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years.” Genesis 6:3
When is that measured from?
Well, if we assume that it means that there was 120 more years left for mankind, and we know that Noah was 600 when the flood came, it would mean that Noah was told that there was going to be a flood and destruction when he was only 480 years old – a mere spring chicken!
He’s 480 years old and he’s been told that this flood would come, but he’s got no children at this stage. None of his children have been born. I don’t even know if he was married. Probably not, at this stage. Although God did tell him in the promise that you and your sons and their wives will go into the ark. So even before he had children, he knew that his family would be saved.
So, Noah has 120 years.
And I’ve often wondered what he did in those 120 years. Well, I guess he built a boat. But what else did he do in that 120 years? And there’s a clue in the second letter of Peter, which I sometimes think we miss. 2 Peter 2:2 –
“And spared not the old world, but saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly.”
Noah spent 120 years preaching righteousness. He had the best visual aid the world has ever seen! But obviously, no one was moved by it.
They must have thought he was mad because apparently it hadn’t rained on the earth in those days, until this event. And there’s this huge ship that he’s building. People must have just walked past and thought he was mad.
But he was a preacher of righteousness. And I’ve often used to friends of mine. that phrase – If you preach and you don’t get much result, if you talk to people or you have a blog or you have a YouTube channel or whatever you try, and you don’t get much result – well, we’re living in the days of Noah.
That doesn’t mean we don’t try. It doesn’t mean that we ought not to be out there everyday, preaching. But it does mean that the chances of success are probably fairly slim, because these days are the days of Noah.
And Jesus said that, “It’s the days of Noah, it’s the days of Lot”.
And so, I expect that we might take encouragement from that. Not encouragement in the sense that we’ll never have success in preaching, but encouragement in the sense that if we do spread the gospel to the best of our extent, and we don’t get much response, we’re simply like Noah.
Hebrews 11 tells us –
“By faith Noah being warned of God of things not yet seen moved with fear prepared an ark for the saving of his house by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”
After Elijah,everybody who came to God,came because of their faith. Andthen we go on, there’s anew creationafter Noah. In Genesis9were weread of the Ark settling on the land, and Noah coming out, and life starts again.And there isapparentlya new creationwith Noah as the new Adam,which I want to spend a little bit of time on.
The first thing you notice is that the water covered the whole earth. In the days of Noah the water covered the whole earth,I believe itwas the localized earth.The Hebrew word for the whole earth often just means the land in which they are living.But wherever it was,it was covered in water,what does that remind you of?
Genesis 1:1
“And the Spirit of the Lord moved over the waters.”
The whole earth was covered in water. And so, as we unfold, Noah inherits the same words that Adam inherited.
Exactly the same phrases are used
We read in Genesis 9:11 that God promises to never destroy the earth again.
But He says that His flood has covered the whole earth, and he gives promises to Noah that Noah should replenish, go on and breed and make sure the earth is sustained and full of people again.
And that was exactly the same promise that was given to Adam, the same instructions.
And then we’re told in Genesis 9:2
“And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of the air upon all that moves upon the earth and the fishes of the sea and into your hand they are delivered.“
That’s exactly the same promise given to Adam. Adam was told that every animal would be subject to him. And there’s Noah receiving exactly the same promise. So, the water recedes and life starts again. And we had come into a new life and everything that Noah sees is created by himself, well it’s brought to be by himself and by the Ark.
And Peter says this was like a baptism –
“Which the world was sometimes disobedient which once with the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the Ark was preparing wherein a few that his eight souls were saved by water. The like figure wherein even baptism now also saves us not the putting away the filth of the flesh but answered for good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 3:20-21
And so the whole symbol of Noah coming out of the flood was of baptism for us, that we are saved from a dying world. We are saved from a world of unrighteousness, from a world of violence.
I think there are times when I look around this world and it must have been like that in days of Noah. It is a world given over to violence, and given over to evil.
Now I want to give consideration to something else, which I think isn’t obvious when we read through the story of Noah –
Named Sons from Adam to Noah
Notice the list of named sons from Adam to Noah –
I’m sure they didn’t all have boys first, but the firstborn son is the one that’s named. And after that, they had lots of sons and daughters.
It’s always the same until you get to Noah, and suddenly it changes!
“And Noah was 500 years old and begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.”
The pattern changes. It doesn’t say which was the firstborn, and then go on after that to say he had sons and daughters.
It names the three boys straight away. And it’s apparent that they are the only three children that Noah had, because when he goes into the ark, those three with their wives are taken in with him.
Why is the pattern changed?
Why is it not the same?
I assume Shem, Ham and Japheth, that’s probably the order of birth, although I don’t think that’s true actually, because I think that Ham actually was the last one born. But the three of them are grouped together without any distinction about which one is the first born.
Next slide – I love AI. It’s so good! Back in the old days, I had to go through and count up how many years people had lived and then put them in a column, and then put them into an Excel spreadsheet and ask them to draw a column graph, and then put the labels in myself. Now you just say to AI, please read the first half of the chapter and draw me a graph – and out it comes!
And when you look at it, you’ll notice this is the age of each of the patriarchs, how old they were when their first child arrived. And I hope you’ll notice something odd.
The first thing is, the first four of these patriarchs, they gradually got younger and younger and younger as they were having children.
I reckon the first four there, you could probably draw a straight line through the top of those bars and that would pretty much be a straight line, declining downwards saying they were getting younger.
Then, well, something happens to Jared who’s a late starter, maybe a late bloomer, I don’t know. But whatever happens to him, he’s a bit late. And then there’s a couple of others. It seems Enoch was much the same as the first four. Then the next two.
But look at Noah. He’s 500 when he has his first child. Imagine getting up at night, with the baby crying when you’re 500.
But this is odd – This is an outlier.
This is telling us something. It’s telling us that something was going on in Noah’s life which was different to the rest of us. And he’s having children twenty years after he knows the flood is coming. Now I want to read another Genesis 5:28 – this is an important verse.
“Lamech lived one hundred and eighty two years and had a son. He called his name Noah, saying, “This one will comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed.”“
Nobody else gets that statement. Nobody else gets any reason for birth, only Noah.
And Lamech says, “This kid is going to grow up and do all the hard work” –
“This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands because of the ground which the Lord has cursed.”
This child, this child who has not yet done anything deserving of being a slave, is going to be our slave for the next 500 years. He is going to inherit the curse. He is going to inherit the curse that passed on to Adam.
We are going to be saved by him taking our curse. Can you see where it’s going?
Jesus was a curse for us, as is written, “cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree.”
Jesus suffered death when he didn’t deserve to suffer death. Jesus was the only human being ever who did not deserve to die, and he died for us.
He inherited God’s curse of death for you and I.
And here’s Noah screaming this example. That he was going to inherit God’s curse on mankind.
He’s going to inherit it for his parents and for all mankind.
And so, he didn’t start his family until he was 500 years old, until he’d fulfilled the role, of taking that curse from his parents.
Another thing, you look around, Noah didn’t have grandchildren by the time he’d gone into the ark.
But he did have brothers and sisters. We’re told that Lamech had other children apart from Noah. They didn’t go into the ark.
Can you imagine what it must have been like for Noah in his heart to shut the door of the ark, knowing his family was still outside?
Not his immediate family, his children and their wives – they were taken in. But all the others were not taken. I imagine there was much grief in his heart.
And it gives me an understanding of why Enoch was removed so that he would not see the death that was coming.
But Noah did.
And even when Noah opened the door of the ark, he waited seven days. I wonder if that was in fear of what he’d see. Can you imagine if the whole world had been killed? A few months later, there might have been rotting people.
I don’t know. Maybe not.
But there was Noah – I think greatly anguished by what happened.
And it happened because of the wickedness and the sin of the people that I can imagine when Jesus comes it might be similar. I don’t know, but perhaps there will be great destruction of evil, and there will be great sadness.
And then we come to the end of the story.
I remember once I had a Sunday school class, about 10 years ago, I think.
And I said to them, There’s a new movie coming out. It’s called Noah, I think. It was called Noah. And Russell Crowe was the lead player – played Noah.
It was a funny movie, it had all these weird monsters running around. And I said to the kids, It’s pretty strange.
One thing I got from it, it did give me a reason why Noah was naked and drunk.
And the whole class said, What?
I said, you know, Noah was naked and rolling around drunk. And they said, Where did you get that from? And I said, Actually, in the Bible.
So, we read the chapter and none of them knew it. And I can understand that. We had sanitized our Sunday school lessons. We just missed that bit. Like Lot and his daughters, we don’t talk about that. But somewhere we’ve got to, somewhere that’s got to come up.
And Noah, it looks like the last part of the record is that he fails.
He plants, I don’t know where he got the grape seeds from. Maybe he just snuck a few on board, I don’t know. But he plants grapes and he says he becomes a tiller of the soil.
And he gets these grapes and he makes wine out of them. He must have remembered a bit from the past.
So, he makes wine, gets drunk, and he’s naked. And his youngest son, Ham, makes fun of him.
He comes out and says to his brothers, “Look, dad’s drunk and naked”, and the other two boys put a blanket over their shoulders and they back in so that they don’t look at their father’s nakedness and they cover him.
And then a curse passes on to the son of Ham, to Canaan.
And I’ve heard it said that this is an illustration of how even though Noah was perfect in his ways and was, as we read, complete, and he walked in the steps of God he walked with God we can all still make mistakes and this is the end of the record. And the same thing goes with Lot, and Lot had an amazing righteousness but the last record is that he inseminates both his daughters and that seems to be a pretty ugly ending of the story. But I don’t believe that. I don’t believe either of those acts were the end of these two people
Noah lived another 350 years after the flood.
I don’t think it would have taken him 350 years to make a couple of bottles of wine.
I would suggest that this happened very close to when he came out of the ark, maybe four, five, six, ten years, and he was able to grow grapes and that’s when he did it.
It doesn’t tell us what happened the next 340 years. That wasn’t Noah’s last act.
And the same with Lot – that is not the last act of Lot.
I’m sure most of you know, if you’ve ever heard me give talks about Lot, I have a passionate love for Lot. Lot and his daughters saved my life. We would not be here now if it was not for Lot and his daughters.
Because what those girls did, out of absolute love for their father, that they would not let the name of their father die out.
They brought forth a little child called Moab. And Moab eventually brought forth a little girl called Ruth. And she eventually brought forth a little man called David. And he eventually gave me Jesus Christ.
I owe those two girls my life. And I don’t think that was the last act of Lot. I’m sure Lot lived a pretty reclusive life. He was a rich man remember, he was rich when he split from Abraham.
But now he’s a caveman.
He’s living in a cave with nothing, except just his daughters and his grandchildren.
And so, Noah and Lot become symbols of the righteous when Jesus comes back.
Both Peter and Jesus say the symbol of the righteous people will be Noah and Lot.
Jesus said as in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah so it would be the days of the coming of the Son of Man. And Peter says the same thing. The flood came upon the world, and it destroyed all those people that were evil. But Peter makes a beautiful point out of this. And might I… I’ve said this before so forgive me if you get a feeling of deja vu when I say this …but It says that God knows how to rescue the righteous.
That flood that came, was not just to destroy the wicked. I don’t think it was even primarily to destroy the wicked.
It was to save Noah.
The same waters that destroyed the wicked bore Noah up. It was an act of salvation, not of destruction.
And the fire and brimstone that came down on Sodom was not an act of destruction.
It was an act of salvation.
It saved Lot and his daughters.
And so these acts are used in symbol of the saints when Jesus comes.
Yes, I assume there will be a time of some destruction knocking the world into shape, but it’s an act of salvation because like Lot and like Noah, we will be taken out of the destruction that happens.
And it’s why I really love the thought that in those verses where Peter talks about Noah and of Lot, he says that those people, those people were saved.
God knows how to save the righteous and that’s been likened to us.
So when you talk about Jesus coming back, just think, is He coming back to set up a worldwide kingdom?
Yes, He is.
Is He coming back to turn the hearts of Israel back to Jesus Christ?
Yes, He is.
Is He coming back to make the whole world a place of no more tears?
Sounds like a shampoo.
A place of no more tears or sadness?
Yes, but that’s not what He’s talking about.
What He’s talking about is He’s coming back for you.
He’s coming back because He cannot stand to leave you suffering one moment longer.
He’s coming back like He came back for Noah and He came for Lot.
He’s coming back to save us, to bring us to Himself.
And so, we come to the end of this theme of looking at the presence of God, how we might have encounters of the Lord.
The greatest encounter of the Lord, of course, was with Jesus Christ.
When he said to Philip – “Have I been with you for so long and you haven’t seen the Father in me?”
That’s where we encounter God I don’t know about your life but I suspect you won’t see an earthquake wind and fire. And I suspect probably you won’t hear a voice thundering from a storm. But what all of us will see is in these symbols here.
The gift of God that in the quietness where Jesus knelt by the sea of Tiberius and He communed with His father. That was the greatest encounter with the Lord that we will ever see, and that encounter is open to us.
Through Jesus Christ we see the Lord.
Yes, no one can look upon God and live, but we can look upon His image and live forever.
In the most unusual places throughout the Bible, Elijah comes up. And you sort of think, why?
I mean, yes, there was the Mount Carmel incident, but why was it that he keeps coming up? And why was he taken to heaven? No other prophets were taken to heaven. Why did Malachi say that Elijah would come before the day of the Lord? He was only the second person ever after Moses to go up into Mount Horeb.
And if God said of Moses –
“I have spoken to my other prophets in dreams and in visions”,
then I’m sure he’d also say, “But to Elijah I spoke face to face.”
And he’s been linked to Moses forever. He’s only the second after Moses to go up on that mountain. He appeared with Moses at the Mount of Transfiguration. No other prophets.
He also turns up in the book of Revelation. No other prophet turns up in the book of Revelation.
Many others have their visions quoted. For instance, Revelation will give visions of the throne room of God, very similar to Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1, but none of the prophets turn up, except Elijah.
Why?
When the people of Israel left Egypt, it says in Exodus 12 that a mixed multitude went out with them.
Mixed Multitude
And I want to just stop there for a minute and think about who that mixed multitude was.
Don’t worry, we’ll get back to Elijah.
Who was that mixed multitude that went out?
And we’d imagine there would have been some Egyptians who would have thought, “Well, this is the true God, even though we’re Egyptians, there certainly is a real God who has inflicted these terrible plagues on us.”
But there’s more than that.
There were also a lot of Canaanites in Egypt which were not Hebrews.
Hyksos
They were called the Hyksos and had been nicknamed the Shepherd Kings.
And these were people who had come down before Joseph, and they had moved into the land of Goshen, which is in the Nile Delta. So, all of these people had come down, many of them. In fact, they became so numerous that they actually took over the kingship of Egypt.
So, when Joseph came down, the king of Egypt was not an Egyptian. He was one of the Hyksos, one of the ones that had been nicknamed the shepherd kings.
And the Egyptians didn’t know the difference between the Hyksos and the Hebrews, to them they were all Canaanites, didn’t make much difference.
And you sort of stop and you think to yourself, well that explains a lot of the verses in Genesis that I don’t understand. Because Joseph said to his family, when you present yourself to Pharaoh, make sure you make him understand you are shepherds.
Why?
Because Egyptians hate shepherds. Why on earth would you tell the king that you were shepherds knowing he hated them?
Because he wasn’t an Egyptian, he was one of the Hyksos kings – the shepherd kings.
Do you remember when Joseph shared a meal with his brothers and it said, “The Egyptians will not eat with the Hebrews”? They wouldn’t eat with the Canaanites, they would not eat with the Hyksos, they hated them. Absolutely hated them.
And as Joseph works through his plan, he eventually virtually enslaves the Egyptians. The Egyptians had to sell their land to get food after the time of famine.
Hyksos Left
So, these are the people who joined themselves with the Hebrews and left.
Of course, once an Egyptian pharaoh took over, then he punished both the Hyksos and the Hebrews identically, and so they all went out together.
What did God say about these people who were not Israelites?
We read it in Exodus 12:48 –
And when a stranger dwells with you to keep the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised, and let him come near and keep it, and he shall be as a native of the land, for no uncircumcised person shall eat it. One law will be for the native born and for the stranger who is amongst you.
Every native of another place and all native of Hebrews, would join together.
They would become one people.
So, there were many people who joined in with the Hebrews who were not of Abraham’s line.
So, these people, mixed people, mixed motherhood, probably some Egyptians, lots of the Hyksos, they moved in and they all became Israelites.
Under this condition they must obey the law.
It says there shall be one Law for the native Hebrews and for the people in amongst them.
ONE LAW
Now that’s important.
From this point onwards you’ll find everybody who comes into the land of Israel, who belongs and joins themselves to the Israelites, they all fall in with the law of Moses and obey the law of Moses until Elijah.
Rahab
Rahab the harlot married Salmon.
I feel a bit sorry for her with that epithet, ‘Rahab the harlot’. She obviously had stalks of flax on her roof, but no one calls her Rahab the flax dryer, but she gets what she gets. Some people have said she was actually an innkeeper. That’s possible. I think that it might be a bit of a Me-Too movement thing, but maybe not.
Whichever, it doesn’t matter. She married Salmon and she became a part of the line of David and Jesus Christ.
And she was a Canaanite. And in fact, they disobeyed Deuteronomy 7. The very thing that Deuteronomy said is, “Do not make a covenant with these people – kill them all.”
But do not join with them and whatever you do, don’t marry them. That was absolutely strict.
First thing they did, made a covenant with the people and married Rahab.
Because grace overcomes law.
Because the grace of God is supreme over law.
Ruth
Ruth, she was a Moabitess. It was said,
“No Moabite shall come into the family of the Lord, or to the people of the Lord, unto 10 generations.”
But she came in and married Boaz and also became a pro-genitor of David and of Jesus. And it was fairly obvious when she came in that she was no longer a Moabite.
She became an Israelite. She said, “Your God shall be my God.” And she would have obeyed all of the rules of the law of Moses, everything.
Uriah
Uriah the Hittite, well, I don’t know, but I’m sure he was circumcised, he kept the law, he married into royalty. He married Ahithophel’s granddaughter. He could not get any higher than that in the Hebrew society.
All the Gittites that served David, I’m sure, all kept the law, absolutely.
And so, all of them found salvation by coming into Israel and obeying the law.
What Changed with Elijah?
What changed with Elijah?
Everything!
The first Gentile we see Elijah, convert, if you like, was the widow of Zarephath. She said, “Truly I know this is a man of God – because of the miracles he has performed.”
Did she come into Israel?
No.
Did she keep the law? Not that I know. The Sabbath?
No.
Did she keep the laws of purification for a woman? No.
All of those rules to keep The Law, changed.
Naaman
How about Naaman? Naaman was baptized and completely lost that curse of leprosy.
What did he do then? Did Elisha circumcise him?
No.
Did Elisha tell him to come into Israel to become a part of the family of God?
No.
In fact, he even went back to go into the temple of his own God so the king could lean on his arm and Elisha said, You’re okay, mate.
It all changed with Elisha.
Jonah’s Assyrians
Jonah got sent to the Assyrians to convert them, to tell them of their wicked ways.
And they all, 120,000 people, gave in and they said, “We will worship Yahweh and repent of our ways.”
Do you think Jonah circumcised 120,000 people?
It would take him a long time.
No.
Did they keep the Sabbath? No.
Did they keep the law?
No.
It all changed with Elijah from that point onwards.
Nebuchadnezzar
How about Nebuchadnezzar? God sought Nebuchadnezzar. God chased him.
God must have loved that man because he chased him and even drove him out to live seven years eating grass like a donkey.
God did everything to win him over. Do you think he joined Israel? Do you think he started keeping the law?
No.
Okay, keep going. Darius, Cyrus, all of these people came to know God, but none of them had to fulfill those laws of Exodus 12, where they had to come in and become Israelites.
JESUS
This brings us to one of the words of Jesus.
In the very first part of Jesus’ ministry, the very first act of Jesus’ ministry, he went to Nazareth, where of course he was not accepted because a prophet is not without honour except in his own country.
And this is what Jesus said, and this is what got them really annoyed.
In Luke chapter 4 –
“I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. (Today we would say Lebanese)
And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet none of them were cleansed, only Naaman the Syrian.”
The crowd were furious, and they took him out to a hill to throw him over to his death, but God saved him. Why did they get so furious? Why were they angry about those two examples?
It wasn’t that they didn’t know Gentiles could be accepted. They knew about Rahab. They knew about Ruth. They knew about the mixed multitude who were not Jewish, but all got included.
But they also knew that the two examples that Jesus picked were the ones who did not come into Israel. They did not keep the law.
They were under the law of faith and grace. And that was why the people of Israel were furious.
And the very first act that Jesus did, they wanted to murder him for it. So why did it all change?
Something I have said before about Elijah, so forgive me if you know it –
Elijah, I believe, was not Jewish, not a Hebrew, not an Israelite. And I’ll tell you why I think that.
1 Kings 17:1 says
“Now Elijah the Tishbite of Tishba in Gilead.”
And you might think, well, if he was from a town called Tishba, then that’s in Gilead.
Well, that’s where he came from. But the fact is that those names do not represent any existing town.
There is no town of Tishba, never was.
The book of Tobit in the Apocrypha says that Tishba was probably a place in upper Galilee. Josephus says it was a place in the land of Gilead. Wiki says it could have been El Ishtib, a place south of Galilee.
Fact is nobody knows, and the reason is they don’t know is because it didn’t exist. Every one of those guesses by those people is 800 years after the event. Just imagine if somebody asked you what was happening 800 years ago somewhere.
Of course they don’t know. They’re trying to make a guess.
The word Tishbite does not refer to a town.
TISHBITE
It actually means –
a captive or a stranger
or a sojourner or an immigrant who is non-Indigenous
So that phrase is saying –
Elijah the Tishbite, is Elijah the non-indigenous person in Gilead.
INHABITANT
Now the word inhabitant. It says “the inhabitants of Gilead”. That Hebrew word means a sojourner, a stranger, non-indigenous again, and it does not mean an inhabitant. It’s the Hebrew word that sounds like Toshav.
It is always translated in our Bible as a foreigner or a stranger.
Only once is it ever translated inhabitant, and that’s with Elijah.
Because they’re terrified to say he was not a Jew. They’re terrified to say that he is non-indigenous, that he was a stranger, and he was a sojourner in the land.
So “Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead” should read –
“Elijah of the captives or immigrants, the foreigners and the sojourners of Gilead.”
That’s what the word means.
Just out of interest, everywhere else that word appears, everywhere else in the Old Testament,
that word for inhabitants, which is translated inhabitants here, always refers to a foreigner from outside of Israel.
It says the law must apply here, here, here, and “to the stranger in your midst”.
That word stranger is the word inhabitant.
Why did they change it? Out of the 15 times it appears, why change it once?
Because nobody wants Elijah to be a stranger and a non-indigenous person.
The International Standard Version, which is the only one I could find that gets it right, says –
“Elijah the foreigner who was an alien resident from Gilead said to Ahab.”
So he’s an alien resident from Gilead.
One more proof, and I’m sure if anybody’s heard me talk about this before, they’ll remember this.
Ravens
God fed Elijah with ravens.
Ravens are unclean. Ravens are birds of carrion. They eat roadkill.
Can you imagine an Orthodox Jew who’s really hungry and a pig walks into the room with a sandwich in his mouth? Would the Jew take the sandwich out and eat it?
I doubt it. That’s what Elijah did. He took the meat from an unclean animal out of its mouth with its saliva and ate it. What else is there?
Identified AS THE TISHBITE
I won’t read all of the quotes, but over and over Elijah is identified as the ‘Tishbite’.
1 Kings 17:3 says “Elijah the Tishbite who was the inhabitants of Gilead
1 Kings 21 “the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite”
1 Kings 21:28 “The word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite”
2 Kings 1 “The angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite”
2 Kings 1 “Elijah the Tishbite”
2 Kings 9:36 “Elijah the Tishbite”
Almost every reference to Elijah says Elijah the Tishbite. No other prophet is ever referred to repeatedly by the place where they are associated with.
Many prophets are repeatedly referred to by their father’s name. For instance, it’s quite common to find Elisha, the son of Shaphat. That gets repeated over and over and over. Many other prophets too.But none of them get repeated where they came from.
Just Elijah.
That’s the reason I reckon, why – one of the reasons – why the people, when they see these stories, don’t like the thought that Elijah might not have been one of their own.
Spare Seat for Elijah
At the Jewish Passover, they have a spare seat for Elijah because he heralds the coming of Messiah.
So they’ve got that seat.
Just imagine if they knew it was a Gentile.
They had a spare seat there for a Gentile!
Elijah and Moses
Why is it that Elijah and Moses are so commonly linked?
Only two humans that we know of have ever gone up Mount Horeb and talked to God.
They were linked.
Moses and Elijah were linked at the Mount of Transfiguration. And I’ve got to say, if you stop and think about why Moses and Elijah were picked, you’ll find that many people have said, well, that represents the law and the prophets.
I do not believe that. I honestly think that is just lazy.
Why would you pick the one prophet who never, ever spoke about Jesus?
Moses, sure. Moses, the whole law of Moses, just yelled Jesus from beginning to end.
Every sacrifice, every sin offering, every trespass offering, everything that was done in the law pointed to Jesus. Why would you pick at the Mount of Transfiguration one prophet who never ever mentioned Jesus?
If I was going to pick one to represent the prophets pointing toward Jesus, I’d pick Isaiah. Isaiah 53, what a perfect chapter to represent the coming sacrifice.
Or one of those great other prophecies –
“Unto us a son is given, a child is born, the government shall be upon his shoulders.”
Why not pick that prophet? Or pick the prophets maybe like Ezekiel who speak of a spiritual temple to come? Why pick the one prophet who never, ever spoke of Jesus?
No, there’s another reason.
It clearly speaks of the kingdom. It clearly speaks of the resurrection and Jesus with these two people.
One of them represents those saved through The Law, those faithful people of Israel who were saved under the law of Moses.
The other one represents those who were saved under faith and grace, because it was outside of Israel, outside of The Law. And that’s what Elijah brought.
So, they represented those two groups that will be in the kingdom.
And so, Elijah goes off to Mount Horeb.
And as they go, Elijah’s there in the desert and he’s under a broom tree or a juniper tree, and an angel of the Lord speaks to him and says,
“Have some food to eat, some water to drink”
But he’s got a long journey and then he goes to sleep and does the same thing again.
And so he goes down through a long trip down through the wilderness. He travels for
40 days
Can’t mistake that as the 40 years wandering in the same area.
And who else was up Mount Horeb for 40 days?
Moses.
Moses was up Mount Horeb for 40 days, just like Elijah makes his journey there. And what was the purpose? Why did God bring him there?
God says to him “What are you doing here, Elijah?” I can imagine Elijah saying, “Well you sent for me”.
The angel came and fed him and said, “You’ve got a great journey.” I presume that the angel pointed him in the direction. I presume the angel said, “You’ve got to go to Horeb.”
But when God said, “What are you doing here?” I don’t think he was talking about, “Why did you come to Horeb?” Because God had summoned him. He’s saying, “Why have you left my people?”
Why have you felt sorry for yourself and gone down to Beersheba where you were safe?
Because that was down to Jehoshaphat’s territory. He was safe here. “Why have you left your job?”
And poor old Elijah says, “I’m the only one left. Everybody’s deserted you except me.”
And God saves up the experience for him. And this is our next encounter with the Lord.
I think that if you had guessed at two physical encounters with the Lord before these talks, would you probably not have guessed of Job and the whirlwind and the voice of God out of the whirlwind?
And would you not have thought of Elijah on Mount Horeb? You probably would have guessed them. But this is the encounter with the Lord.
And God says, I’m going to pass an earthquake, wind and fire before you.
And so, the place shakes with an earthquake, it blows with a wind, and there’s fire. What an awe-inspiring experience that would have been! Imagine how he would have felt. He would have known that he was on the same mount as Moses.
He would have known that Moses had experienced this. He would have known all of that. I wonder whether he was in the same cave as Moses was in when God said, “I’ll pass the back part of me before you”. I wonder if it was the same cave. I’m sure Elijah must have felt the presence of Moses while he was doing this.
And I’ve heard it said, and I feel free to criticise because I’ve said this myself, about 40 or 50 years ago. The message was, with the earthquake, wind and fire, if you don’t want to obey God, you can’t be shaken back with an earthquake, you can’t be blown back with the wind, you can’t be burned back. If you don’t listen to the still, small voice, then you’ll never find God.
That’s not what it’s about!
And you miss the whole message, if that’s what you see.
What you’ve got to ask yourself was, has God ever been in the earthquake, wind and fire?
And He has. Of course He has. And I’m sure Elijah was aware of that.
Moses had experienced the earthquake, wind and fire and God was in it. The mount of God shook with the earthquake, and it roared with the noise of trumpets and wind.
And there was a column of fire on it. And God was interacting with his people and gave them the law, sent Moses back down. God was in the earthquake, wind and fire.
And now he’s not. I’m sure that was obvious to Elijah. He said to Elijah, I’m not in it anymore.
It’s over. Israel have adulterated my faith in them so many times, I’m finished.
I’m just going to read one verse out of Exodus.
Mount Horeb was racked in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke of it went up like a kiln. The whole mountain quaked greatly, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Exodus 19:18
Moses spoke, and God answered him in the thunder.
“What are you doing here, Moses?”
Well, that didn’t happen.
But I can imagine that God was there and his power was there and he made His commitment. He married Israel at that mountain. They shared a commitment there and from that time onward He has always called Israel his wife. An errant wife mostly, but always called his wife.
What God was saying to Elijah is, I’m not in that covenant anymore, it’s finished.
So who am I with now? He says, now I’m with seven thousand who have not bowed their knee to Baal. The bloodline doesn’t mean anything anymore. The important thing now is that those people have not transgressed My Law. They have not gone after Baal.
Later God was to write through Jeremiah the prophet, “I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce
and sent her away because of all her adulteries.”
And often people say, Well, didn’t Hosea fix that up?
No, Hosea came before Jeremiah. Hosea was about the offer to bring Israel back as a faithless wife, but she refused the offer. And by the time we get to Jeremiah, I’ve divorced her.
And that’s what Elijah was told.
He was told, I am not in this covenant anymore.
I mean the seven thousand have come to me by faith. So, the covenant was replaced by a covenant of faith and of grace. That’s why all the people who came after this, who were converted, did not come in to keep the law. That’s why the widow of Zarephath did not come down to keep the law.
It’s why Naaman did not have to come down to get circumcised.
It’s why everybody that was baptised in Nineveh, converted in Ninevah, did not have to get circumcised or keep the law because this law has passed. So God starts appointing Gentile kings.
He says to Elijah, What are you doing here? And he says, everybody’s a deserted you God, it’s only me that’s left. God said, I’ve got 7,000 Elijah, that still loved me. I think that was a figurative number.
But of course, Elijah knew. Elijah knew there were people who still worshiped the Lord.
He knew that Obadiah, the servant of Ahab, had hidden the prophets of the Lord in the caves by fifties.
He knew that. Just feeling sorry for himself.
But then he says, Go back and I want you to anoint Hazael. to be king over Syria, and also then to appoint two others, Elisha and also Jehu. But in this particular time, Hazael.
Why is Yahweh appointing kings of other nations? Why is God anointing Hazael?
Because the word’s gone out. Because now the word has spread beyond the limits of Israel.
And now everybody is hearing the message. It will not go out fully until Jesus, but they are all hearing the same message. Nebuchadnezzar, same thing. Cyrus, all the people of Nineveh.
Everybody who heard the message of God was slowly being brought in by faith and by grace, and they came into a new group within Israel.
Well, no they didn’t come into Israel, they stayed out.
And they became a group of people who were faithful to God elsewhere.
In fact, the prophet Isaiah said in chapter 49 –
“I will make you a light to the Gentiles that you might bring salvation to the ends of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6
That applied to Jesus, but before that, it applied to the prophets of Israel as well. The Jews made the Law exclusive. Yes, you’re allowed to come in if you became a Jew, if you were proselytised. But suddenly it became open to everybody who had faith in God.
Transfiguration
And now we come to the Transfiguration.
Now we come to when Elijah and Moses appeared with Jesus. I believe they represent the two different groups. That is, Elijah was a Gentile, they represent those who come in Through Jesus Christ, Moses represented all those faithful of Israel.
So, those people were gathered together and they represent those saints of the future.
Poor Elijah
And poor Elijah, he lay down under that broom tree and he said, “I’m no better than my fathers.”
I guess there are two ways we could take this –
1 – My literal fathers are all dead- I have failed and may as well be dead
2- Elijah hoped he would be the one prophet to bring Israel back to God – and he failed- no better than all the dead prophets who went before him
I think he had a passion that that act on Mount Carmel would be the final act that would bring all of Israel back. And it didn’t. And here he is lying down saying, I wish I was dead. I’m no better than my fathers. I have failed in exactly the same thing that my father’s failed at.
3 JOBS
And then God gives him those jobs. Have you ever wondered why God gave him those three jobs?
Anoint Hazael
Anoint Jehu
Anoint Elisha
How many did he do?
One. He did one!
He anointed Elisha, that’s the only one. He did not anoint Jehu, one of the sons of the prophets did that.
He did not anoint Hazael, Elisha did that.
I’m guessing here, but I think that was one of Elijah’s last lessons. I think God was saying,
“It’s not about you, Elijah. My spirit will go on. The next prophet will take on my spirit, and the next prophet after that. The word, the power of God will keep going, but it doesn’t start and end with Elijah.”
Perhaps. So, he does go and anoints Elisha, and the two of them go down. They go down towards Jericho. They go off together; I suppose a bit like a master and apprentice.
I can imagine Elijah is the leader, the wise old one, and Elisha is the young one following in his footsteps. And it’s It seems that they sort of would travel on together after that point, that they would go on, the pair of them, but they don’t. They separate. At that point, after Elisha has been appointed, they seem to separate because of the following stories. When Elijah goes to condemn Ahab because of Naboth’s vineyard, it’s Elijah by himself. Elisha’s nowhere to be seen. And when, after that, Elijah abuses King Ahaziah for his evil (for going and asking other gods questions about his health, there’s no Elisha there.
The only reason, the only time when they get together again is when Elijah is about to be taken. And here they go down toward Jericho, and they go down to the fords of Jordan there and they cross over. And at that point the two of them are together. And all of the prophets or the sons of the prophets in Jericho, they come out and they say, just like the prophets in Bethel said,
“Do you know the Lord is going to take your master over your head today?”
They can hardly wait to give him bad news.
Of course he knows. He said, “Yes, I know”. And so, they went on together, the pair of them together,
Chariot and wind
And then down comes the chariots of fire and the whirlwind. And the whirlwind takes Elijah.
The whirlwind, of course, was the means by which Elijah was taken up.
But it was the chariots of fire that I guess catches most people’s imagination.
If you ever like to Google images of Elijah being taken, they’ve always got him riding a chariot of fire, and that’s not what happened. He went up in a whirlwind. The chariot of fire was a testimony to what he was. The chariot of fire was a testimony to Elijah because Elisha said
“My father my father the chariot of Israel and his horseman”
It was Elijah who was the chariot of Israel. And later on, when Elisha himself was to die he died in much less exciting circumstances. He was laying sick in his bed, and the king of Israel came and knelt down next to him and said
“My father my father the chariot of Israel and its horseman.”
And he recognized it was the prophet that was the power of Israel.
It was a prophet who had the power of God residing with him, that was in fact the strength of Israel.
And so Elisha goes on, and the story continues on. And I’m sure we’ll recognize in each of the acts of Elisha, that he represented a greater than Elijah.
Elijah and Elisha
I think sometimes, I don’t know about you, but in my brain, I sort of have Elijah as number one and Elisha as number two. It’s not the way it really is. It’s not like that at all.
Elisha did roughly twice as many miracles as Elijah did, because he had twice the spirit.
He received twice the spirit of Elijah. And all of the things that Elisha did were greater.
Everybody knows about the three and a half year famine. of Elijah, but hardly anybody talks about the seven-year famine of Elisha. The Lord brought through Elisha, seven years of famine, twice as long.
And we know that the miracles of Elisha all reflected Jesus. In 2 Kings 2:20 Elisha said,
“Bring me a new bowl and put salt in it. So they did. And he went to the spring of water and threw in the salt. Thus says the Lord, I’ll make this water wholesome. Henceforth neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it.”
And Jesus said,
“But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst, and that water I’ll give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:14
It was Elisha preceding what Jesus was to do.
In 2 Kings 4 Elijah went in and shut the door and prayed in the house and then he got on the bed and lays on the boy with his mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hand to hand. And he stretched out and the body of the boy grew warm. And then the boy sneezed 7 times.
Jesus raises a woman’s dead child in Luke 7 –
“He came and touched the beer in the Bear the bearers stood still. And he said young man I say to you arise. And the dead man sat up and began to speak.”
Why? Because I am the resurrection and the life.
The one who believes in me, even though he was dead, will live.
Everything Elisha did prefigured what Jesus was to do. They said to Elijah, in 2 Kings 4
“There was a man bringing first fruits, twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain. And Elisha said, ‘Give it to the men that they may eat’. But his servant said, ‘How am I to set this before a hundred men?’ So he repeated, ‘Give them to the men that they may eat. For thus saith the Lord, They shall eat and have some left over.’ So he set it before them and they ate and had some left.”
A feeding of the five and the four thousand by Jesus. Exactly the same. The loaves, the amount left over. All of it was prefiguring what Jesus was to do.
Naaman
So Naaman went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of God and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young child.
He was clean. And that symbol of death and the consequences of sin was wiped away from Naaman. Because Naaman was wiped clean as a child when he was baptized by Elisha into life.
John said, I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me comes one more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
Everything Elisha was doing prepared us for Jesus.
But the greatest miracle, I’m sure you know the greatest miracle that Elisha did, the greatest miracle happened when he was dead. This was the power over the grave –
“So Elisha died and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. And as a man was being buried, a marauding band was seen, and the man was cast into the grave of Elisha. As soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood up on his feet.” 2 Kings 13:20–21
Life out of the dead body of Elisha. Life from the grave. Life from Elisha’s dead bones like we have life that came out of the grave of Jesus. How obvious was all this?
The people should have been prepared for this. They should have seen all this in the imagery.
And then we come to the time of John.
I AM NOT ELIJAH
John, said, I am not Elijah. The people said to John the Baptist, “Are you Elijah?” And he said, No, I’m not. But what they meant was, “Are you the literal Elijah who has been sitting up in heaven there and has now come down?” And of course he said, No, I’m not.
But Zechariah had prophesied that he would go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, which he did. John came in the spirit and power of Elijah.
And if he was the one who prepared the way, who was Jesus represented by?
Jesus was Elisha. The Elijah was John, Jesus was the fullness and the greatest, Elisha.
So, when you have a look at the two of them, how John and Elijah prefigured the same acts for Jesus, you’ll see that much of what happened to Jesus at the hands of John the Baptist was prefigured. Elijah ‘baptised’ Elisha with a double portion of his spirit, just as John baptised Jesus in the very same spot. What happened with Elijah and Elisha.
Elijah and Elisha passed over the River Jordan and that’s where Elijah was taken. And John the Baptist in the same river at the same place baptized Jesus and so it was like passing on Elijah’s spirit onto Elisha.
And Jesus after being baptized at that very place, came back again and presented himself to Israel. So, John anointed Jesus at the same place as Elijah had anointed Elisha and given him the power of the Holy Spirit.
And what happened with John and Jesus? After Jesus was baptised, what happened to the pair of them? They split, they went their separate ways. They did not work together, just like Elijah and Elisha didn’t work together. They separated. When did they come together again? When Elijah was about to be taken, when John the Baptist was about to be taken. The only interaction between Jesus and John after that time was when John was in jail and was about to be taken. It was the chariot, it was the chariot of fire that was coming for John. It was the whirlwind that was going to take him up.
And he said to Jesus or, through his followers, he said –
“Ask him whether you are the one to come or whether we should look for another?”
And of course, John knew that they couldn’t coexist. He knew that Elijah and Elisha could not be together. And so when he was in that jail, John knew, I’m not going to get out.
If this is the real new Elisha, I’m not getting out of this, because he knew that this was the time to be taken, because he was following that pattern. It’s why John said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” I don’t know of anywhere else that would have given him the hint of that, except what happened to Elijah and Elisha. That’s how he knew that Jesus was going to go on, but he wasn’t.
And so, he sent his disciples, and he says, “Ask him, are you the one? Or should we look for another?”
I think some people have guessed that that’s shown at the end there’s some lack of faith with John the Baptist. I don’t think so. It was showing that John the Baptist was totally aware that he was not going to get out of this situation. If Jesus was the Messiah, if he was the one who would come, John was not going to survive this. He is now up against the chariots of fire and the wind. And so, he says, “Are you the one or is there another?” It was like Jesus saying to God, Is there some other way?
He knew there wasn’t. I don’t think John doubted. I think John just wanted confirmation.
Is this the end? Is this the place I’m going to die? And it was. And what a beautiful answer Jesus gave.
Jesus could have just said to him, “Go back and tell John yes, I’m the one”. He didn’t. He starts quoting from Isaiah. He says, “Go back and report to John what you’ve seen” –
“The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor, and blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me”.
What that was saying was he was saying to John – “Hang on, mate. Blessed is everyone who is not ashamed of me. Blessed is everybody who hangs on, even at the point where they’re going to die.”
I find it very similar to Paul. The last message of Paul was the last chapter of 2 Timothy. He starts saying things that are so on Paul. He says, “Can you bring me those old books I left? And the letters, the letters, I really want those. Bring me the coat that I left at Troas.”
He’s surrounding himself with all of those things that are familiar.
He’s surrounding himself with everything that had memories because he knows this time he’s not going to get away.
He knows that this time he will die. And the same thing with John.
And so, I look at this message and the encounter with the Lord, it started off to be the earthquake, wind and fire, although the Lord was not in that.
It was the still small voice and that is what is going to convert the soul that lies in sin.
But I think also when we get to the end, we find that the greatest way that we can ever come together with God, encounter the Lord, is through Jesus Christ.
That was how John encountered the Lord.
He saw it in Jesus.
And it was just the quietness of a dove coming and landing on Jesus’ shoulder and saying –
“This is My much-loved Son”.
That was the greatest encounter with the Lord that anybody could have.
The equation of salvation is relatively simple. God gives us love (John 3:16) and grace (Ephesians 2:8) – and only asks for love (Matthew 22:36-40) and faith (Hebrews 11:6) in return.
God’s love and grace are perfect, but we often fall down on our side of the equation (Mark 9:24, Matt 8:26). So, God is always willing to help us – to give us a reason to believe and a basis for a reasoning faith.
So, God reveals certain events beforehand so we can be assured of His existence (Amos 3:7).
“Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7
This is not proof of God’s existence (if it was proof we would need no faith), but it is overwhelming evidence of God’s existence. Many Old testament prophecies contain the phrase “then you/they will know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 12:15, 33:29, 28:24, 37:13), as though the fulfilling of prophesy is evidence that the Lord is God.
In all the stories of Israel’s battles given in the books of Judges and Samuel, a common theme is a lack of weapons. There can be a spiritual meaning to this – that God did not want Israel to depend on their own strength to win battles. However, there was probably a physical meaning also. Here is a list of occasions where the Israelites apparently had a lack of weapons.
Ehud makes his own two-edged sword (Judges 3:16). Why? It’s not a very sophisticated weapon. Two edges is common. About 45 cm (18 inches) long – pretty common. Why did he have to make his own, instead of dropping into the local sword shop? He was left-handed – but I don’t think a left-handed sword is much different from a right-handed one.
Shamgar kills 600 Philistines with an ox-goad (Judges 3:31). We don’t know the circumstances, but again it is likely that no better weapon was available. I would think that an ox goad would be pretty useless against spears. Obviously, God helped him – but why use such a weapon?
Samson goes to Timnath of the Philistines. A dangerous trip. He confronts a lion, but he carries no weapons (Judges 14:5-6).
Samson kills 1000 with an ass’s jawbone (Judges 15:15) as revenge for the death of his wife. He came down, knowing he would exact revenge – and yet with no weapon.
There were no weapons for Barak & Deborah. “Not a shield or spear was seen among forty thousand in Israel” (Judges 5:8). Oppressed by Jabin and his men – they had no weapons.
Gideon’s men were few and only armed with a jug, a torch, and a shophar. (Judges 7:16). Apparently, there were no weapons until the Midianites fled, leaving their weapons behind.
Consequently, the sling gained popularity in the early days of the book of Judges. (Judges 20:16). There seems to be no reference to slings in the days of Moses. Battles in the days of Moses and into the days of Joshua were ‘at the edge of the sword’. Exodus 17:13, Numbers 21:24 etc. In the early days of Judges (chap 20), the fighters were “all those that drew the sword”. But later, there are few references to metal weapons.
Israel was driven to ignoble weapons during oppression. The sling was despised. Goliath calls it a weapon to fight against a dog.
There are some suggestions that even in the time of Saul, metal amour was fairly rare. Saul offers his amour to David to fight Goliath. The amour doesn’t suit David. One would think that if there was a whole armory, then Saul could have selected the best fit for David.
Finally, 2 Samuel 1:21 “.. the shield of Saul, no longer anointed with oil.” The NET Bible notes that this implies that Saul’s shield was made of leather. Multiple layers of leather would make an impenetrable shield. But the leather would have to be regularly rubbed with oil to keep it supple and to avoid cracking. Again, the implication is that the Israelite shields were made of leather and not metal.
A spiritual lesson can be drawn. God supplies the strength – that’s all we need. But – we see that later, in the time of David and subsequent kings, there were weapons of metal. So, there seems to be another reason.
Possible Conclusions
Perhaps the Israelites had not yet learned how to smelt iron. Bronze was well known in Egypt as well as the surrounding nations and the use of copper and tin would have been well known by the Israelites. It was the Hittites who first smelted iron and it is possible that the Israelites were not aware of this process as they come from Egypt. I feel that this explanation fails to explain multiple Bible passages.
Numbers 35 16 “‘If anyone strikes someone a fatal blow with an iron object, that person is a murderer; the murderer is to be put to death.” This implies that iron was a common item in Israel from Moses day.
Deuteronomy 27 5 “Build there an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones. Do not use any iron tool on them.” This implies that the Israelites had iron tools. Why not iron swords?
Deuteronomy 33 25 “The bolts of your gates will be iron and bronze…” Iron seems to be a common item.
There are many other verses implying that iron was well known and utilized by Israel during the time of Joshua and the Judges.
A much more plausible explanation comes from: 1 Samuel 13
19 Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” 20 So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plow points, mattocks, axes and sickles sharpened.
This gives context to all of the stories throughout Judges and into first Samuel. There are many times when Israel lacked weapons and it would seem that this was the reason. When Israel was subject to any nation, that nation would kill all the metalsmiths so that no weapons could be made. A simple and effective plan. The enemies of Israel throughout Judges and Samuel, when they subjugated Israel, would kill all the workers of metal.
I have always loved the story of Deborah. All other women of faith in the Bible, seem to be in a subservient role to men. They obeyed husbands, priests and rulers. Deborah bowed to no man – they bowed before her. No man passed judgment on her; she passed judgement on them. They came to her for wisdom.
The book of Judges contains great stories of Jewish heroes. These stories loom large in Jewish folklore. When the Jewish people think of great heroes, they certainly think of a Moses or a David but also of characters like Ehud, Gideon, Deborah and Sampson – all of which are found in the book of Judges.
The story of Deborah and Barak stands out as different from all the rest, as the great hero of the story is a woman. She is a leader and judge of men and without a doubt was the greatest person in Israel at the time. The other thing that stands out in the story is that it features a second woman who becomes a fundamental part of the narrative. There is a reason for this.
There are some who suggest that God resorted to using a woman leader simply because there was no man ‘up for the job’. I certainly believe this represents a profound misunderstanding of the purpose of the story. It is no accident that two women feature in the story. It is absolutely deliberate.
The story begins with the Israelites again sliding into evil ways after the leadership of Ehud ended. God let Jabin the Canaanite and Sisera his army captain, oppress the people and they cried out. The Canaanites had 900 iron chariots. I think smelting of iron was first practised by the Hittites – and this knowledge extended to surrounding nations. Deborah was already a judge in Israel before this adventure begins. We have no knowledge of why she was selected, but she seems to be firmly established in the role by time our story starts.
She summoned Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him“Has not the Lord God of Israel commanded, ‘Go and deploy troops at Mount Tabor” Judges 4:6
The command is directly from the Lord.
It has been further suggested that Judges 4:8“And Barak said to her, “if you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go!” illustrates cowardice on the behalf of Barak. This could not be further from the truth.
They go on to suggest that verse 9 -“so she said, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman,” was some form of punishment for his cowardice. This belief shows utter ignorance of God’s purpose. Barak did exactly what he should have done – it shows absolute dependence on God. We will explore this more a little later.
Four Judges are listed in Hebrews 11, as examples of great faith. All of their stories contain some elements that would make us possibly reject them as being suitable for faith heroes. They are maybe not the ones we’d select.
Hebrews 11: 32 And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah,
Gideon: Didn’t he doubt and need repeated miracles to assure him of God’s help? Didn’t he make an ‘ephod’ idol which became a snare to him?
Barak: Didn’t he play second fiddle to a woman and appear to hide behind her skirts?
Samson: Didn’t he hang out with harlots?
Jephthah: Didn’t he sacrifice his daughter?
I am always thankful when I read of these characters, because then I am assured that to be a person of faith doesn’t mean we have to lead a perfect life, but simply rely on the grace given to us through one who did lead such a life.
Why is only Barak mentioned in Hebrews and Deborah omitted? Because neither was superior – they were equals with different jobs, separately and individually great, and the author of Hebrews just ‘grabbed’ a handful of names from Judges.
Judges 4:4 records the words “Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, was judging Israel at that time”.
This may seem to be a straightforward statement but is actually far from it.
The word Deborah is a proper feminine noun meaning ‘bee’.
How do we know that the subject is a woman and not an insect? This may seem trivial, but in a moment, we will see that it is important. We can tell from the context. The ‘bee’, judges, speaks, and rules. Clearly not an insect. There are other women with this name in the Bible.
Now look at Lapidoth – A feminine noun meaning ‘torches’ (flames).
So, is this a name or a real torch? Let’s look at the context. This word never appears again – no context. This name never appears anywhere else in the Bible – so we have no contextual way of knowing. But – here is the answer.
In Hebrew, many neuter objects may have masculine or feminine gender. E.g. Spirit (ruach) is a feminine noun, but spirit is not female sex. Sea (yam) is a masculine noun, but the sea is not male sex.
However, if an object has a sex, then it always has a matching gender. E.g. Young woman (Betula) is a feminine noun – as it must be since ‘woman’ has female sex. King (melek) is a masculine noun – as it must be since king has ‘male’ sex.
Now – here’s the kicker!!
Lapidoth is a feminine noun. It cannot possibly apply to a male sex person.
So, Lapidoth is a torch, not a man.
So, should Judges 4:4 read “Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of a torch, was judging Israel at that time” ? I guess not. So, we turn to the word wife.
Wife in Hebrew (issa) means woman, wife, or female animals. Having established that Lapidoth was not a man, we conclude that ‘issa’ means woman.
Finally, we come to this:
“Now Deborah, a prophetess, the woman of fire or flames, was judging Israel at that time”.
So now we come to why Deborah was chosen. Was there no man good enough? Clearly Hebrews 11 judges Barak as a great man of faith. But God did not choose him. God wanted a woman – this is the critical point of the story.
Let’s visit Judges 4:8 again. Does it represent some sort of cowardice on the part of Barak. Absolutely not. Here is a literal translation.
Judges 4:8And Barak saith unto her, `If thou dost go with me, then I have gone; and if thou dost not go with me, I do not go;’ 9 and she saith, `I do certainly go with thee; only, surely thy glory is not on the way which thou art going, for into the hand of a woman doth Jehovah sell Sisera;’ [Young’s Literal Translation.]
Deborah was correctly warning him that he would not get the glory of killing Sisera – that ‘privilege’ would go to a woman. It was not a ‘punishment’ for wanting Deborah to come along – but rather a revealing of the plan of God. Barak should have done exactly what he did – The Holy Spirit was upon Deborah. She was a chosen one. Barak wanted the Spirit of God to go with him, exactly as he should have. And so should we. Every battle we face should be faced with the sword of the Spirit beside us. That was all Barak wanted.
Judges 4 tells of the Battle.
Judges 4:2 Jabin reigned in Hazor.
We have come across Jabin of Hazor before (Joshua 11:1). This was well before the time of Deborah. Jabin means ‘he who God looks upon’ and was very possibly a ‘title’ of the king of Hazor rather than a name. So, the Jabin of Judges 4 would be descendant of the Jabin of Joshua. Joshua destroyed Jabin and the city of Hazor.
Joshua 11:10Joshua turned back at that time and took Hazor, and struck its king with the sword; for Hazor was formerly the head of all those kingdoms. 11 And they struck all the people who were in it with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them. There was none left breathing. Then he burned Hazor with fire.
Evidently, Hazor was rebuilt and again became the major city of the Canaanites. God finally decreed it for eternal destruction. See YouTube:
Deborah instructs Barak to gather 10,000 men to Mount Tabor.
We are also introduced to Heber the Kenite, of the family of Moses’ father-in-law. This family had settled at “Zaanaim, which is beside Kedesh”, probably about 30 kms north of the Sea of Galilee.
The battle is joined at the Kishon river, which runs through the valley of Jezreel, from the lower Jordan to the sea at Mt Carmel.
Barak’s army came down from Mt Tabor and defeated Sisera’s army with its iron chariots. Little detail of the battle is given in Judges 4, but more is added in the Song of Deborah and Barak in Judges 5.
20 From heaven fought the stars, from their courses they fought against Sis′era. 21 The torrent Kishon swept them away, the onrushing torrent, the torrent Kishon. March on, my soul, with might!
It would seem that God sent a torrential rain which caused the Kishon river to flood, thus causing its flood plain to become a sea of mud. Here iron chariots were not just useless – but became a trap as they sunk in the mud. This explains Sisera having to escape on foot.
Sisera escapes to the tents of Heber the Kenite, who had previously been on good relations with Jabin. Jael, Heber’s wife, welcomes Sisera into her tent and promises to hide him there. He is thirsty after the long battle, and he asks for water, but Jael offers him milk. Milk is a soporific, and so the exhausted Sisera falls asleep. Jael takes a tent peg and a hammer and strikes Sisera through the temple, killing him. When Barack comes looking for Sisera, Jael goes out to meet him and shows him the man he has been seeking. The power of sin is struck in the temple by a woman.
Judges 5 is one of the most powerful pieces of poetry in the Bible. It contains hints of the real meaning of the story.
6 “In the days of Shamgar, son of Anath,in the days of Ja′el, caravans ceased, and travellers kept to the byways.7 The peasantry ceased in Israel, they ceased.” This shows the desperate plight of the Israelites under the oppression of Jabin.
7 ….. until I Deb′orah arose, until I arose as a mother in Israel.
This verse is critical! We need to tuck it into our memory banks. Deborah was not married and had no children (as far as we know) and yet she is styled a mother. The spirit of the lord was on her. She is a mother overshadowed by God’s spirit!
12 Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam. (KJV)
This verse is also critical! We need to also tuck it into our memory banks. The KJV is the only one that gets the words right. Now, look, David takes up the same refrain. David and Deborah link the great deliverance at Sinai, and David adds the torrent of rain at the salvation wrought by Deborah.
Psalm 68:8 the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain, at the presence of God; yon Sinai quaked at the presence of God the God of Israel.
Judges 5:5The mountains melted from before the Lord, even that Sinai from before the Lord God of Israel.
But now, David links God’s blessings to the deliverance of Deborah.
Psalm 68:18Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; ….
Exactly the same phrase as Judges 5:12. But now David connects gifts with this.
But wait …there’s more !!
Paul picks up exactly the same phrase in Ephesians –
4:7-8But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.
Barak led captivity captive i.e. the captors of Israel (Jabin and Sisera) were themselves taken captive.
We were captive to sin and death, but Jesus led our captivity captive, when he destroyed the power of sin and death. Jesus gave gifts to us rather than receiving them.
The phrase ‘captivity captive’ only occurs in these 3 places.
So, the salvation by Deborah and Barak mirror our salvation by Jesus.
Deborah, and unmarred woman (virgin?), is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and is called a mother in Israel, and produces the child of salvation- Barak. The mother in Israel (Judges 5:7) produces the spiritual son to overcome sin (Genesis 3:15).
An undoubted parallel with Mary in Luke 1:28-31.
But – we now find a parable within a parable.
Sisera is sin’s power. He is struck in the temple and killed by a woman, using a nail. Jael is called ‘most blessed of women’. Judges 5 24 “Most blessed of women be Ja′el,the wife of Heber the Ken′ite,of tent-dwelling women most blessed.”
Only one other woman has ever been called ‘blessed of women’-
Luke 1:28And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
Jael and Mary are the ‘most blessed of women’.
Jael struck sin (Sisera) in the temple Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
Jael’s tent peg struck Sisera in the head – the fatal blow.
The seed of Mary struck sin, a fatal blow, in its head.
Jesus has the title of a tent peg in Isaiah 22:22-23
The key of the house of David I will lay on his shoulder; So he shall open, and no one shall shut; And he shall shut, and no one shall open. 23 I will fasten him as a peg in a secure place, And he will become a glorious throne to his father’s house.
So, the most blessed of women, took Jesus (the tent peg) and struck sin in the head and so freed the people from sin and death
A powerful parable within a parable. Deborah, an unmarried woman, became a mother in Israel by the power of the Holy Spirit and so produced the son of salvation Barak who saved his people from the consequence of their own sin. Jael took hold of a tent peg (Jesus) and smote the power of sin in its head, crushing it and so freeing the people from the consequences of their own sin.
It is now obvious why God chose these two women as a symbol of His greatest salvation.
The oldest recorded civilization in the world is the Mesopotamian civilization. Overall, the 4 oldest civilizations are the Mesopotamia Civilization, Egyptian Civilization, Indus Valley Civilization, and Chinese Civilization. https://byjus.com/social-science/oldest-civilization-in-the-world/
The first 11 chapters of the Bible take place in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq and Southern Turkey). This was the first civilization on earth and was essentially the totality of the known world to the characters in the first 11 chapters of the Bible. Their concept of ‘the world’ was this region.
The Garden of Eden was in this region as identified by the rivers [Genesis 2:13-14]. Noah’s ark came to rest here [Genesis 8:4], and Abraham was called from the Sumerian civilization near the mouth of the Euphrates [Genesis 11:28].
Genesis 11 leads us into the generation of Shem which produced Abraham. It would seem that the whole story prepares us for the important bit at the end – God calls Terah (or Abraham).
Genesis 11:1 The whole earthhad a common language and a common vocabulary.
Firstly, the earth (Eretz in Hebrew) is usually translated ‘land’ and can (and usually does) mean some localised land. Eg. Genesis 26 There was a famine in the land (eretz) …. 2 The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; settle down in the land that I will point out to you. 3 Stayin this land. Then I will be with you and will bless you, for I will give all these lands to you and to your descendants…” Obviously not the whole earth.
The lands were local. So, the ‘whole earth’ in Genesis 11:1, represented the whole of the then known world. i.e. all of Mesopotamia. I think it’s important to note that this chapter only applies to the descendants of Shem – who lived in Mesopotamia. The other sons of Noah populated other regions.
Genesis 10: 5 From these the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands, every one according to its language, according to their families, by their nations.
This covers a vast time period and I feel that their language divergence was quite separate from Babel story.
Genesis 11 3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.)
This again suggests that the building was in contrast to other civilizations which used stone and unbaked mud bricks – the civilizations of the other sons of Noah in Genesis 10. Stone and unbaked mud bricks were the exact building materials of the most ancient Egyptian constructs. “Most buildings were built of locally available mud brick and limestone.” [Wiki : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_architecture ]
Also, the Sumerians were the first people recorded to use tar as a joining material. “In the ancient Near East, the Sumerians used natural bitumen deposits for mortar between bricks and stones, to cement parts of carvings, such as eyes, into place, for ship caulking, and for waterproofing. The Greek historian Herodotus said hot bitumen was used as mortar in the walls of Babylon. Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitumen
Genesis 11 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavensso thatwe may make a name for ourselves.”
A translation of “heavens” for שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) fits this context because the Babylonian ziggurats had temples at the top, suggesting they reached to the heavens, the dwelling place of the gods. [NET comment.]
Genesis 11: 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building.
A contrast to the desires of the people, to build a tower which would reach up to God, but here the Lord comes down to the people.
So, the tower was built in the plain of Shinar, and the town was called Babel (confusion) – presumably near or at the location of Babylon of later times.
It’s interesting to note that Babylon is between Akkad and Sumer.
Now – do we have any archaeological evidence that the languages were confused.
We certainly do.
The people of the Northen region, Akkad, spoke a Semitic language, as expected.
Named after the city of Akkad in northern Babylonia, Akkadian was the most important language spoken and written in the ancient Near East between the third and first millennia BCE. Akkadian belongs to the Semitic language family and is related to Arabic and Hebrew. It can be divided into a number of dialects, the most important of which are Old Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian. https://nelc.yale.edu/languages/akkadian
What of Sumerian?
The Sumerian Language was spoken in southern Mesopotamia before the 2nd millennium BCE and was the first language to be written in the cuneiform script. It is an isolate language meaning we know of no other languages that relate to it ancestrally. Although there are some theories that Sumerian is a member of the Uralic languages like Hungarian and Finnish, or other language families, this is a minority view with insufficient evidence to make a definite claim. The language was spoken in a region where Semitic languages were also spoken, particularly Akkadian, and it eventually fell out of use in favour of those languages by the turn of the 2nd millennium BCE. https://www.worldhistory.org/Sumerian_Language/
How spectacular is this. Akkad and Sumer were right next to each other – mixed – and yet the Sumerian language has no known relatives. Almost as if it were given a language all its own. The regions of Sumer and Akkad originated as small city states with their own Gods. Over time, they aggregated into city groups, but with no clear distinction between Sumer and Akkad.
How is it possible that a completely new language emerged with absolutely no relationship to surrounding languages? The Babel story.
Under Sargon l (the Nimrod of the Bible) the Akkadians defeated the Sumerians and gradually the Akkadian languages took over.
Firstly, many rumours abound about the 1st century Sanhedrin (or Great Sanhedrin of 71 members).
In New Testament days, the Great Sanhedrin met in the Temple in Jerusalem, in a building called the Hall of Hewn Stones. The Great Sanhedrin convened every day except festivals and Shabbat.
People confidently state that a member of the Sanhedrin, in the days of the apostles, must be of age greater than 40 (the Leader (or Nasi), must be over 50 years old) and must be married. I can find no authoritative historical statements about these conditions, although, like Christian Overseers, it may have been a condition that they do not have rebellious children. After 191BC, when the High Priesthood became corrupted and politicised and the Jewish Leadership Hellenised, the High Priest was no longer a member of Sanhedrin.
In the Christian era, the high priesthood and the Sanhedrin often colluded.
So, is there any evidence that Paul was a member?
Extremely weak- if any.
Acts 26:10 – 11 NET
“And that is what I did in Jerusalem: Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons by the authority I received from the chief priests, but I also cast my vote against them when they were sentenced to death. I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to force them to blaspheme. Because I was so furiously enraged at them, I went to persecute them even in foreign cities.”
This is said to imply that the ‘vote’ Paul cast was that of one of the seventy elders. There is no evidence of this. The fact that he ‘received authority’ means that he had no such authority himself – others had to grant it. Casting a vote, I should think, means consent.
Galatians 1:13-14
“For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.”
Some have suggested that ‘advanced beyond my contemporaries’ suggests Sanhedrin membership. I would think the very opposite. Surely, if Paul had been a Council member, and he is here trying to prove his hardline Jewish credentials, he’d have loudly proclaimed that he was one of the Sanhedrin. But he’s silent on this matter.
Acts 8:1 “Now Saul was consenting to his death.”
Some have suggested that this implies that Paul was a Council member. I don’t think that is implied at all. Consenting just means approval of a decision already taken. And the clothes minder seems a very menial position for a Council member.
Now – evidence against.
The High Priesthood and the Sanhedrin has joined forces against the Christians.
Acts 23:6
“But when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead I am being judged!”
Had Paul been a member of the Sanhedrin, even in the recent past, they would know his history. But clearly, it came as a surprise to them, that he was a Pharisee. Also, Paul ‘perceived’ that the Council was split between Pharisee and Sadducees – a fact he would have been well familiar with had he been a Sanhedrin member himself.
Acts 22:3-5 “Then he said: “I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the strictness of our fathers’ law, and was zealous toward God as you all are today. I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women, as also the high priest bears me witness, and all the council of the elders, from whom I also received letters to the brethren”….
Here Paul lays out his credentials as a Jew. He was taught by one of their supreme Rabbis. He appeals to all the council members to verify that he was given Commission to persecute the Saints. Surely, if he had been a council member, that would have been a supreme testimony to his Jewishness, but he clearly does not claim this.
Philippians 3:2-6 Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation! 3 For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, 4 though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: 5 circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; 6 concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless
Here, again, Paul lays out his “confidence in the flesh”. He lays out his credentials as the “perfect Jew”. He quotes his receiving his Commission as a pharisee, his zeal for the law but nowhere does he say he was a member of the Sanhedrin. Surely, if he was, it would be the crowning achievement of his “Jewishness”.
Although we can’t be certain, it seems to me that the weight of evidence is that he was not a member of the Sanhedrin.
Jehoshaphat was the fourth King of Judah. He had a good example in Asa his father, although Asa also fell through a failure to understand how to deal with Israel. When Israel made war against Judah, Asa had asked the King of Syria for help, and not God. Why? Most likely because he felt he couldn’t ask God to fight against the children of Abraham. Hadn’t God said, “I will bless those who bless the seed of Abraham”, how could Asa fight and kill them? His brothers?
The prophet Hanani scolded Asa for not asking God’s help. Asa failed to realise that the children of Abraham were those who did the deeds of Abraham, not just a blood line. Once Israel gave their love to the golden calves, they ceased to be Abraham’s children.
Asa was furious, and locked the prophet in jail, in the stocks. God effectively said ‘so, you’ve locked up the word of God by its feet – try this on Asa’. God struck Asa with a foot disease – such that he eventually died. Perhaps the origin of the phrase ‘my feet are killing me.’ Asa also inflicted cruelties on the people at this time. You’d reckon Asa was a failure, but 1 Kings 15 says 14 …Asa’s heart was perfect with the Lord all his days. (AV). How great is God’s forgiveness and grace – and His mercies are overwhelming.
Asa may well have also been intimidated by the words of the man of God in 1 Kings 12:22
But this word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God: 23 “Say to Rehoboam son of Solomon king of Judah, to all Judah and Benjamin, and to the rest of the people, 24 ‘This is what the Lord says: Do not go up to fight against your brothers, the Israelites. Go home, every one of you, for this is my doing.’”.
Asa may have felt that these words prevented him from asking God’s help against Israel. But he should have brought his concerns to God.
2 Chronicles 173 Now the Lord was with Jehoshaphat, because he walked in the former ways of his father David; ….and sought the God of his father, and walked in His commandments….. 5 Therefore the Lord established the kingdom in his hand; and all Judah gave presents to Jehoshaphat….. 6 And his heart took delight in the ways of the Lord;
2 Chronicles 18. This chapter chronicles the downhill spiral of King Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat was a great king who tried to walk correctly in the footsteps of David his forebear but unfortunately, he was absolutely obsessed with the desire to unite the two kingdoms. Jehoshaphat made terrible decisions based on this desire. He should have laid his plan before the Lord instead of taking it upon himself to unite Judah and Israel.
2 Chronicles 18Now Jehoshaphat had great wealth and honor, and he allied himself with Ahab by marriage.
In an effort to weld the two kingdoms together, he married his son to the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. This daughter was twice as evil as her mother Jezebel and brought Baal worship into Judah, which finally led to Judah’s downfall. She also almost wiped out the line of David.
2 Some years later he went down to see Ahab in Samaria. Ahab slaughtered many sheep and cattle for him and the people with him and urged him to attack Ramoth Gilead. 3 Ahab king of Israel asked Jehoshaphat king of Judah, “Will you go with me against Ramoth Gilead?”
Jehoshaphat went to see Ahab. It is generally the lesser who goes to the home of the greater. Jehoshaphat obviously put himself in the position of the lesser of the two kings in the hope of gaining Ahab’s favour. Jehoshaphat knew that Ahab and Jezebel worshipped Baal and yet he still went. Ahab asked him to come and help him take the city of Ramoth which had fallen to the Syrians. Ramoth was a Levite city and all the Levites and priests had fled down to Judah leaving the city undefended. Of course, Ahab asked for help, as we are told that Ahab’s army numbered only 7,000, whereas Jehoshaphat’s army number 1.16 million.Jehoshaphat replied, “I am as you are, and my people as your people; we will join you in the war.” 4 But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, “First seek the counsel of the Lord.”This was a profoundly ignorant and stupid thing for Jehoshaphat to say. His people were not the same as Israel’s people nor was Jehoshaphat the same as Ahab. Jehoshaphat thought that because they were all descendant from Abraham, then they were the same people. They were not. The children of Abraham do the works of Abraham and Israel had abandoned Abraham a long time ago. But at least Jehoshaphat asked that they should seek the Lord’s advice.
5 So the king of Israel brought together the prophets—four hundred men—and asked them, “Shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I not?”
Where did Ahab find 400 prophets? Hadn’t Jezebel killed all the prophets of the Lord? Didn’t Obadiah hide the prophets of the Lord by 50’s, in caves to escape Jezebel? How was Ahab able to find 400? Presumably because these prophets prophesied both for Baal and the Lord and were acceptable to Jezebel.
“Go,” they answered, “for God will give it into the king’s hand.” 6 But Jehoshaphat asked, “Is there no longer a prophet of the Lord here whom we can inquire of?”
Why did Jehoshaphat want one more prophet? Why would 401 prophets be better than 400? Because Jehoshaphat knew that the 400 were not true prophets of the Lord alone.
7 The king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, “There is still one prophet through whom we can inquire of the Lord, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah.”
We are not told how Micaiah escaped the wrath of Jezebel.
14 When he arrived, the king asked him, “Micaiah, shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I not?” “Attack and be victorious,” he answered, “for they will be given into your hand.” 15 The king said to him, “How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?”
We can only assume that Micaiah replied in some sort of ironic or sarcastic way, because Ahab clearly could see that he was not telling what he believed to be true.
16 Then Micaiah answered, “I saw all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd, and the Lord said, ‘These people have no master. Let each one go home in peace.’”17 The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Didn’t I tell you that he never prophesies anything good about me, but only bad?”
Micaiah prophesied that Ahab would be killed in battle. He then goes on to explain a scene in heaven where the spirits are asked by God, how they might deceive Ahab. All this is in the hearing of Jehoshaphat, whom we may have expected to abandon the venture.
25 The king of Israel then ordered, “Take Micaiah and send him back to Amon the ruler of the city and to Joash the king’s son, 26 and say, ‘This is what the king says: Put this fellow in prison and give him nothing but bread and water until I return safely.’”
It is amazing to see that Jehoshaphat did not object to the abuse of the prophet. The prophet is slapped by Zedekiah and then confined to gaol on bread and water. And Jehoshaphat does not raise a finger in his defence.
28 So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah went up to Ramoth Gilead. 29 The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “I will enter the battle in disguise, but you wear your royal robes.” So the king of Israel disguised himself and went into battle.
It gets even more bizarre. Jehoshaphat asked for a prophet to inquire of the Lord and when he hears that the battle will be a failure he still goes with Ahab. Not only that, but knowing that the prophet said the king of Israel would be killed, Jehoshaphat accepts the deal that he wears the kings clothing and Ahab goes in disguise. Unbelievable. Jehoshaphat will do anything to please Ahab.
31 When the chariot commanders saw Jehoshaphat, they thought, “This is the king of Israel.” So they turned to attack him, but Jehoshaphat cried out, and the Lord helped him. God drew them away from him
I am sure that Jehoshaphat cried out to God and was saved. This was not the end of Jehoshaphat’s foolishness. He also joined ventures with Ahab’s sons which similarly failed.
2 Chronicles 19: When Jehoshaphat king of Judah returned safely to his palace in Jerusalem, 2 Jehu the seer, the son of Hanani, went out to meet him and said to the king, “Should you help the wicked and lovethose who hate the Lord? Because of this, the wrath of the Lord is on you. 3 There is, however, some good in you, for you have rid the land of the Asherah poles and have set your heart on seeking God.”
Through the prophet Jehu, God squarely laid the blame for the defeat at the feet of Jehoshaphat. God expressly told him that the people of Israel were sinners and had lost their right to God’s protection. You would think that this would be enough to stop Jehoshaphat from ever joining forces with Israel again. But not so.
2 Chronicles 20 10 “But now here are men from Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, whose territory you would not allow Israel to invade when they came from Egypt; so they turned away from them and did not destroy them. 11 See how they are repaying us by coming to drive us out of the possession you gave us as an inheritance. 12 Our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
Jehosaphat seems to be faced with the same dilemma. He felt that he could not make war against Israel because they were God’s people and now, he feels he cannot fight against the peoples of Ammon, Moab and Edom because God had protected the inheritance of these people when Israel had come out from Egypt. But this time Jehoshaphat did the right thing in bringing the problem before the Lord – and he was answered. God effectively says ‘Yes, the children of Israel were forbidden to make war against Moab, Ammon and Edom (Mt Seir) when they left Egypt. This was because God had promised the children of Lot could have an inheritance and that Esau could also have an inheritance. But these nations deserted the God who gave them these promises and so God allows Israel to destroy them on this occasion’. It is worth noting that Jesus was a descendant of Moab through Ruth the great grandmother of David.
God’s condemnation concerning his association with Ahab could not have been clearer and yet, unbelievably, Jehoshaphat makes exactly the same mistake again.
2Chronicle 20 35 Later, Jehoshaphat king of Judah made an alliance with Ahaziah king of Israel (Ahab’s son), whose ways were wicked. 36 He agreed with him to construct a fleet of trading ships. After these were built at Ezion Geber, 37 Eliezer son of Dodavahu of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying, “Because you have made an alliance with Ahaziah, the Lord will destroy what you have made.” The ships were wrecked and were not able to set sail to trade.
I am sure the desire in Jehoshaphat’s heart was noble. It would have been good for Israel and Judah to again join in the worship of Yahweh in the Temple at Jerusalem. But it was not God’s timing. Many years later the prophet Ezekiel was to speak of a time in the future when the two houses of Judah and Israel would be united but it was not to be in the time of Jehoshaphat.
A lesson for us. We may have noble plans – but never ‘bend’ God’s commands to make things happen which we think are right. The end never justifies unrighteous or questionable means.
This is a table of the timeline of the Arab-Irael wars over the last 120 years. It was written for an “English as a Second Language” course, so it is simplified
Arab Israeli WARS Last 120 Years
World War 1 happened, Turkey lost and much of the land they had owned was now ruled by Britain (England) and France. England now ruled Palestine. Many more Jews came into Palestine. The Arabs did not like this and so trouble began.
ONE LAW
Jonah’s Assyrians
“I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but a widow in Zarephath in the 
Only two humans that we know of have ever gone up Mount Horeb and talked to God.
One of them represents those saved through The Law, those faithful people of Israel who were saved under the law of Moses.
But he’s got a long journey and then he goes to sleep and does the same thing again.
Renewed 