banner

Last Updated on :
Saturday, November 22, 2014

 

sp spacer

Table of Contents__Chapter 18__ Chapter 20___

spacer
spacer
spacer
chapter 19

spacer
spacer

CHAPTER XIX.
The divided house of Israel.—First, the Ten Tribes.—Jeroboam, their first king.—His great opportunity.—His misuse of it.—A low prudence. — Running into the very destruction he feared. — Baasha's sedition.—The destruction coming about in a perfectly natural way, yet divinely caused.—The principle in its modern form—Smiting of the Ten Tribes Jehovah's work, yet apparently natural.—The nature of a divine " command " to the unwitting instrument in such a case.—Elijah's maintenance.—The command to the widow.— Other instances.— The only drawback to the application of the principle now.—Ahab and Jehu.—Necessity oj human co-operation with the plans of providence.—Explanation of this at first sight extraordinary fact.
N the history of the two sections into which the kingdom of Solomon was divided at the beginning of the reign of Rehoboam (as alluded to in the last chapter)—the house of Israel and the house of Judah,—there are many scattered illustrations of the ways of providence, on which we may rely as implicitly as on any, because of their occurrences in a divinely authorised record of events. If it could be maintained that Kings and Chronicles were not inspired, their value would be gone ; but this cannot be maintained in the face of Christ's endorsement of " the Scriptures " as a compilation of which they formed a part: not to speak of other evidences of their divinity. We propose
Page. 225
to gather the principal of the scattered illustrations referred to, taking first the history of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, and secondly that of the Two. The latter history is the larger^ and brings us down to the days of the crucifixion. This looks like a yet extensive programme. It will be found, however, that the materials will not spread over a very large ground, and that in a very few more chapters, we may hope to reach the end of the subject as far as these chapters are concerned.
Jeroboam was the leader of the national deputation to Rehoboam, on the death of Solomon, to obtain a remission of the national burdens. We have seen Rehoboam's answer, and its effects in the revolt of the Ten Tribes from the house of David. We follow the Ten Tribes in their revolt, and find them elect this same
Jeroboam king over them, in accordance with what Ahijah the prophet had said to him. Jeroboam had a splendid opportunity before him. He was head of the principal part of the house of Israel: and he had only to govern wisely to secure a great and established position. Of this he had been assured by divine message as follows: —" It shall be if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in My ways and do that is right in My sight, to keep My statutes and My commandments as David My servant did, that I will be with thee and build thee a sure house as I built for David, and will give Israel unto thee."
How did Jeroboam use his position ? In the worst way. He acted with a certain kind of prudence, but of a low order. He acted from natural fear and not from a
Q
226 Page.
perception of right. He did not give himself to the obedience of the law of Moses. He looked at things as a mere politician, and fearing the effect of Israel's continued observance of the feasts at Jerusalem, he appointed institutions of his own, in opposition to the law of Moses. " If this people go up to sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah." He ought to have argued the other way, in view of the divine guarantee he enjoyed. He ought to have said, " So long as I guide this people to walk obediently to the commands of Jehovah, and send them to do sacrifice at the place where He has placed His name, my position will be safe." But he evidently lacked faith in the word of Jehovah to him, and was not concerned to be subject to the commandments. Distrusting the effect of obedience, " he made two calves of gold, and said unto the people, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." " And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan. And he made an house of high priests, and made priests of the lowest of the people which were not of the sons of Levi."
Expediency instead of principle is a poor rule of action. So Jeroboam found. His departure from the commandments of the Lord led to the very destruction of his house which he feared might result from an
Page. 227
obedient course. Ahijah the prophet was instructed as follows : " Go, tell Jeroboam, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Forasmuch as I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my people Israel, and rent the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it thee : and yet thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments, and who followed me with all his heart, to do that only which was right in mine eyes; but hast done evil above all that were before thee. . . . Therefore, behold I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam. Moreover the Lord shall raise Him up a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam." The history of the fulfilment of this denunciation reveals or illustrates the ways of providence—ways in which God works without appearing to work—in which human actors impelled by human motives, under an invisible guidance, work out results that are divinely-caused results, though apparently results due to chance and human caprice.
Jeroboam dies : his son Nadab succeeds him. In his second year, Nadab undertakes a military expedition against the Philistines, and while engaged in the siege of Gibbethon, one of Nadab's captains gets up a conspiracy against him, and seizing a favourable moment, assassinates him, and gets proclaimed king in his place. Baasha, the successful conspirator, then performed the part against the house of Jeroboam thus recorded : " It came to pass, when he reigned, that he smote all the house of Jeroboam : he left not to Jeroboam any that breathed, until he had destroyed him, according unto the
228 Page.
saying of the Lord, which He spake by His servant Ahijah the Shilonite, because of the sins of Jeroboam which he sinned, and which he made Israel to sin, by his provocation wherewith he provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger."
The point in the case lies in the fact that a divine purpose was executed by the hand of an unwitting military conspirator, and that what this conspirator did, Jehovah says, " I did." Baasha promoted himself by his own conspiracy against Jeroboam; yet thus was fulfilled the intimation, " THE LORD SHALL RAISE HIM UP a king which shall destroy the house of Jeroboam." And the perfectly natural agency was not considered inconsistent with the following message afterwards to Baasha himself: " I exalted thee out of the dust, and made thee prince over my people" (I. Kings xvi. 2) ; whence we learn that the events in contemporary history, such as the coup d'etat of a Louis Napoleon, or the Zulu massacre of his son, are not excluded from the category of divinely-caused events by the circumstance that they are humanly explicable in their occurence. The perfect naturalness of an event, and its perfect obviousness as to its cause is not inconsistent with an occult regulation of that cause, which may impart to a natural event a divine character as regards the divine object aimed at in the result. It does not follow that all human events are divinely caused: very few are. On the contrary the bulk of human action may be classified under the statement, that " God in times past suffered all nations to walk IN THEIR OWN WAYS " (Acts xiv. 16),
Page. 229
and that the common run of men are " filled with the fruit of their own devices."—(Proverbs i. 31.) Still, there are events that are divinely caused, though apparently having only a human origin, and the perception of this fact enables us to commit our way to God, and accept natural occurrences as the guiding of His hand.
Another of the results of Jeroboam's disobedience yields a further illustration of the same principle. Ahijah had said in denouncing Jeroboam's transgression, " The Lord shall smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water, and H E SHALL root up Israel out of this good land, which He gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond the river."—(I. Kings xiv. 15.) This was the Lord's message to Ahijah, in which it is declared the smiting of the Ten Tribes and their deportation to trans-Euphratean countries, would be Jehovah's work. So it was. The calamity came in due course, but let the form of it be observed. " In the days of Pekah, king of Israel, came Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria. . . In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away into Assyria and placed them in Halah and Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt. . . . Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them
230 Page.
out of His sight The Lord rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hands of spoilers."—(II. Kings xv. 29 ;
xvii. 6, 7, 18, 20.)
When a natural event is divinely used as the instrument of a divine purpose, the thing done is said to have been commanded of Jehovah, even when the doer of the work has received no known command. This peculiarity of divine language is signally illustrated in the case of Elijah. Famine had prevailed for a time, and the brook Cherith, by which the prophet had been sustained, having dried up, he was ordered to remove to another place, where he would be provided for. " The word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there : behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee." Superficially read, we should conclude from this that a message had been sent to the widow woman on the subject of supporting Elijah. It transpires, however, that nothing of the sort had taken place. When Elijah went to Zarephath, he found the woman in the depth of want from the famine, and arranging for a last meal with her son.—(I. Kings xvii. 12.) How comes it then that Jehovah should say, " I have commanded a widow woman to sustain thee," when in the ordinary sense He had not done so ? Because of another sense, more powerful than the ordinary sense. The ordinary sense is to give orders by word of mouth, written or pronounced: this is the only mode in which one
man can cause another to carry out his wishes. But
Page. 231
with God there is another mode, which is as high above the human mode as heaven is high above the earth. Speaking of the creation, David says, " He spake and it was done : He commanded, and it stood fast." If we ask, how ? we are informed, " By His Spirit." What He wills, He accomplishes by His Spirit. For this reason, the fiat of His will executing itself by the Spirit is described as His word—His command. What God wills or appoints, He can say, " I have commanded." He had arranged that this widow of Zarephath should sustain Elijah. Therefore, in divine language, He commanded her, though she knew nothing about it. In the same way, the God-hating Assyrian had received a charge against Israel, though he knew nothing of it.— (Isaiah x. 6, 7, 13-16.) In the same way, Cyrus had been called, surnamed, and guided, and addressed by Jehovah, although it is expressly testified that Cyrus knew not Jehovah.—(Isaiah xlv. 1-5.) In the same sense, the Lord is said in special cases to command the sword (Amos ix. 4), the serpent (verse 3), the clouds, &c.— (Isaiah v. 6). Causation and command are equivalent
ideas in relation to God.
The only drawback to the practical application of this in our own lives, lies in our ignorance of when a matter may be of divine causation or otherwise. But this is largely offset by the testimony that " all things work together for good to them that love God," and that if we commend our way to the Lord, He will direct our steps.—(Romans viii. 28 ; Proverbs iii. 6.) These two assurances of the word will enable us, if we make an
232 Page.
enlightened use of them, to take our whole experience from God, and to patiently wait the evolution of events for the discernment of the divine purpose, ever remembering that that purpose has reference more to our standing in the kingdom of God when it comes than to-present results.
I. Kings xx. 13—(" Hast thou (Ahab) seen all this great multitude ? Behold I will deliver it into thine hand this day") is another instance of human action being divinely influenced. The matter in question was approaching battle, which proximately is a contest of natural force in which the stronger prevails. Battle ensued, and the Syrians fled : they did their best, but they could not succeed because of the paralysing effect of the divine purpose operating upon them. But there was a singular and suggestive exception. The king of Syria surrendering to Ahab and taking a very suppliant attitude, was spared by Ahab and dismissed with a treaty. In reference to this, he received the following message: " Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life and thy people for his people."—-(I. Kings
xx. 42.) Here is an apparent frustration of the ways of providence through human weakness. God meant the destruction of the king of Syria, and he escapes through Ahab's misplaced lenity. The case reveals the fact that there is no mechanical coercion of the human will in the working out of the divine purpose by means of men j co-operation of man in such a case is necessary, and that where the result aimed at is not attained through the
Page. 233
failure of that co-operation, the purpose will be accomplished by another instrument, for divine purposes will never ultimately fail.
A case in the opposite direction—a case of thorough co-operation with the divine intentions, eliciting divine approbation—is to be found in the reign of Jehu, the executioner of divine vengeance on Ahab's house. Jehu's mission was to extirpate the house of Ahab. He received express instructions to that effect. " Thou shalt smite the house of Ahab, thy master, that I may avenge the blood of My servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord, at the hand of Jezebel."—
(II. Kings ix. 7.) And right thoroughly he carried out the programme. Let the dreadful narrative be perused in chapters ix. and x. It is condensed into the statement that "Jehu slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and his kinsfolks, and his priests, until he left him none remaining, and when he came to Samaria, he slew all that remained unto Ahab in Samaria.'" See also the account of his slaughter of the worshippers of Baal after drawing them into a trap. What was the divine comment on these proceedings ? " Because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in Mine eyes and hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in Mine heart, thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel."—(II. Kings x. 30.)
Here was a case of God's purpose being thoroughly carried out by the instrument selected. The idea that anything else is possible—the idea that a divine purpose
234 Page.
can be humanly opposed and delayed, may seem anomalous and impossible; but the fact is beyond question. The case already cited of Ahab's release of the doomed king, is conclusive proof. It is further illustrated in the angel's words to Daniel: " The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one-and-twenty days: but lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia. Now I am come to make thee understand, and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia; and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come."—(Daniel x. 13, 20.) The explanation of this, at first sight, extraordinary fact—that man can antagonise the divine purpose in the hands of the angels, " who execute His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word," is probably to be found in the nature of the process by which that work has to be carried out. Human rulers, to whom the angels are unknown and invisible, have to be led by them into certain courses of action, without any interference with that law of intelligent volition which distinguishes intelligent from merely physical life. Men, whose actions the angels have to guide, are allowed the unfettered exercise of their wills, and the angels have to influence them to exercise those wills in a given direction, by regulating the circumstances around them. If you set fire to a house, you cause all its inmates to leave, without interfering with their free wills. It is the exercise of their free wills that leads them to endeavour to escape the fire. So the angels, by disposing of circumstances, can influence
Page. 235
men to act in a certain way without interfering with their volitions. Such a mode of carrying out the work entrusted to them makes their work a delicate and interesting one, and provides scope for the possibility of that kind of human antagonism which requires careful and persistent arrangement to overcome, as in the case of the Persian emperor, who unwittingly was fighting against an angel in the particular policy he pursued.


spacer