An Ironic God

I was struck today by how ironical strait forward the Bible can be about major stories. I have always noticed this when I read in I and II Chronicles and I and II Kings, but I was really nearly laughing as I read today. I had to retell the story to myself, and even then the irony and humor of it was inescapable.

Here we have this king, Ahaziah, who is not a good king at all. He somehow manages to fall through the latices in his house and hurt himself (I suppose it might have been common to fall through latices at the time, but it does sound a little strange.) Anyway, being as he was evil and rather stupid he decided to send messengers to Ekron to ask Baal-Zebub if he would get better or not. Well, his messengers never actually get to Ekron because on the way they are met by Elijah who asks them, "Is there no God in Israel that you send to Baal-Zebub to see if you'll get better or not? You blew it, now your going to die!"

The messenger, being a wiser man then the king, doesn't bother to continue to Ekron, he just turns around and goes back to the king and says, "We met this guy in the wilderness and he said you would die." It appears the messenger didn't actually find out Elijah's name because the king has to ask him to describe this guy who said he would die. So the messenger describes him as this man wearing a furry coat with a leather belt. (sounds like such an obvious good source!) and the king says, "Oh, I know who that is, that is Elijah the Tishbite." (I really haven't read up much on Isreali fashion in this era, but I suppose it is safe to say that hairy coats were not in vough).

Anyway, the king doesn't like Elijah very much (mostly because he tends to tell people things they don't want to hear), so he sends fifty men to arrest him. Now, the fifty men come to a hill and Elijah is sitting on the top of the hill looking down. Picture it, this man in a hairy coat with a leather belt sitting up on top of this hill watching fifty men come to arrest him. The captain of the fifty yells, "Hey you! Man of God! We are here to arrest you!" And Elijah, from his mountain top yells back, "If I'm a man of God you will be consumed by fire!" Immediately the entire fifty men were burnt to ash. Someone goes back to the silly and evil king and tells him, "Hey King. Hows it going? ... You know those fifty, well of course you know the fifty men you sent to arrest Elijah. It seems they kinda had an accident. It seems they all got burned up..." Now, one would suppose that if your fifty men were burnt up by fire from the sky you might realize it was a bad idea to arrest this fellow, but did Ahaziah do this? No. He immediately order another fifty men to go and arrest Elijah.

So off march the next fifty till they come to this hill, and there is Elijah, sitting on top in his hairy coat and leather belt. So this captain yells up, "Hey, You, Man of God. The King wants us to arrest you!" What does Elijah do? He yells back, "If I am a man of God you will all be burnt by fire!" And again, whoosh, there go all the kings men into little piles of ash. SO... once again some poor person has to tell the king that his army has been burnt by falling fire. Now, if one is silly and foolish and doesn't catch on very fast they can often ignore fifty men being burned by fire from the sky. But this was more serious, it was one hundred men burned up by this prophet. The King immediately says, "Send another fifty men to go and arrest this prophet. (I suppose as an aside he might have said, I can keep doing this all day!)" So another fifty men all say goodbye to their wives and sweathearts and go walking up to the hill that Elijah is still sitting on.

Now, this captain was much smarter than the others, so instead of yelling up about Elijah being a man of God, he throws himself on the ground and says, "Please don't kill us!!!" So God tells Elijah, "It's okay, you can go with this guy." So Elijah comes down off the mountain and goes with the fifty men to see the king, and he tells the king (again) that he is going to die. Sure enough, the king dies a few days later......

Wow, what a story!