Untitled Sermon (18)

The Holy Bible: King James Version Chapter 3

And they beat down the cities, and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone, and filled it; and they stopped all the wells of water, and felled all the good trees: only in Kirharaseth left they the stones thereof; howbeit the slingers went about it, and smote it. And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took with him seven hundred men that drew swords, to break through even unto the king of Edom: but they could not. Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.

25 And they beat down the cities, and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone, and filled it; and they stopped all the wells of water, and felled all the good trees: only in Kirharaseth left they the stones thereof; howbeit the slingers went about it, and smote it. 26 And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took with him seven hundred men that drew swords, to break through even unto the king of Edom: but they could not. 27 Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land. 11 The Holy Bible: King James Version., electronic ed. of the 1769 edition of the 1611 Authorized Version. (Bellingham WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995), 2 Ki 3:25–27.

“The Last Stand at Kir-Hareseth”

In the dry wilderness of Edom… three kings marched to war.

Israel. Judah. Edom — united against Moab's rebellion.

But the desert fought back. Seven days. No water. No hope…

Until the prophet Elisha spoke:

“You shall see neither wind nor rain… yet this valley will be filled with water.”

And it was.

Strength restored, the armies advanced on Kir-Hareseth… the Moabite stronghold.

Cornered, desperate — King Mesha did the unthinkable.

He sacrificed his own son… on the city wall.

The skies burned with horror. A wave of wrath swept over the battlefield…

And the alliance, shaken to its core… withdrew.

An ancient war. A brutal sacrifice. A haunting end.

3:1–27 Words of Victory over Moab

3:1–27 WORDS OF VICTORY OVER MOAB Second Kings 3 records how Israel campaigned with Judah and Edom against rebellious Moab (3:4–7). Kir-hareseth (3:25) is identified with Kerak on the Transjordan highlands, east of the Dead Sea. With his capital under siege, Mesha sacrificed his oldest son to Chemosh in a final desperate attempt to induce the god to give him victory (3:27). The “anger against Israel” may have been the Lord’s anger because the siege resulted in human sacrifice, or the anger of the Moabites, who were challenged to rally against Israel. The three kings of Israel, Judah, and Edom were victorious.

Tyndale Concise Bible Commentary, 2 Ki 3:1–27, p 138 (1 time)

  C. The Emergence of a Leader (3:1–27)

SUPPORTING IDEA: When we are available to the Lord, he will provide his platform for our ministry.

3:1–3. For a time we appear to leave Elisha behind and to move to the stage of international affairs. Joram son of Ahab (reigned 852–841 B.C.) had become king of Israel upon the death of his brother Ahaziah (1:17–18). His actual name was Jehoram, but the NIV translators have chosen to call him “Joram,” to avoid confusion with Jehoshaphat’s son, also named Jehoram (8:16). Joram was a son slightly better than his father Ahab (he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, but not as his father and mother had done). He moderated their Baal worship: he got rid of the sacred stone of Baal. He apparently did not destroy this stone, since it reappeared later (10:26–27). Although he tolerated baalism, he apparently did not participate in it personally. Nevertheless he clung to the sins of Jeroboam. Things had changed for the better, but only marginally.

3:4–12. We were informed of the rebellion of Moab in 2 Kings 1:1. Ahaziah had done nothing to deal with the situation, and the responsibility now fell upon King Joram. The rebellion of Moab under Mesha king of Moab represented a huge economic loss for Israel. The size of the yearly tribute had been immense: a hundred thousand lambs and … the wool of a hundred thousand rams. The death of Ahab was an opportune time to break free of such an oppressive burden. So Mesha had rebelled. Joram determined to crush the rebellion, so he summoned his ally, King Jehoshaphat of Judah, to join the campaign. Jehoshaphat’s response echoed his earlier response to Ahab (1 Kgs. 22:4): I will go with you … I am as you are. After the disastrous conclusion of that former venture, one would think there would have been some restraint or prayerfulness on Jehoshaphat’s part. But not so.

The plan of attack was unconventional. Because the northern approach to Moab was well defended, the allies, joined by Judah’s vassal, the king of Edom, circled south through the desert to attack from an unexpected, undefended direction. The plan, devised by King Joram with no divine input, was creative and clever. But a serious problem soon emerged: the march took longer than expected, and the armies found themselves stranded in the desert without adequate water.

Joram’s response was audacious and predictable for a son of Ahab: he blamed God: Has the Lord called us three kings together only to hand us over to Moab? Where was any indication that God had called them? It is amazing how quickly people who ignore God attack him when their plans go wrong! Jehoshaphat ignored this attack on God, but did ask, Is there no prophet of the Lord here, that we may inquire of the Lord through him? He learned that Elisha was with the army. Elisha was unknown to both kings, so a servant described him by his relation to Elijah: Elisha … used to pour water on the hands of Elijah (as his servant).

That association was sufficient for Jehoshaphat. Because of the urgency of the situation, the kings did not follow the normal pattern of summoning the prophet. The three of them went down to him.

3:13–19. This was Elisha’s first engagement in political affairs, but he did not receive his three royal visitors with any sense of inferiority. Quite the opposite. His words to Joram were biting: Go to the prophets of your father and the prophets of your mother. His disrespect for the family of Ahab was clear. King Joram persisted in his attack on the character of God, claiming that the calamity was due to the Lord’s misdirection. Elisha ignored this, declaring that only the presence of Jehoshaphat would lead him to seek a message from his Lord. Elisha was like Elijah, a man not given to deference or flattery of the rich and powerful. He was a man totally committed to the Lord.

But Elisha did agree to consult the Lord. He asked for a harpist, probably to quiet his spirit because of the inner turmoil caused by his confrontation of King Joram. The hand of the Lord came upon Elisha, and he brought God’s promise to the kings. The Lord would provide water in abundance, although there would be no visible storm (wind nor rain) to supply it. The water would be sufficient to supply the needs of the soldiers as well as your cattle and your other animals, even though they were in a desert place. In addition, the Lord would give them victory over Moab, in spite of their precarious situation.

2 Ki 3:20–26. At dawn the next morning (the time for offering the sacrifice), the prophecy began to be fulfilled. A flash flood, with water coming from an unseen storm on higher ground in the west (from Edom), supplied all the water the kings needed. It also threw Moab into confusion. Mesha had mobilized the entire nation, but they were camped west of the alliance army. So when they arose and looked directly into the rising sun, they saw it reflecting red—like blood—off the water and the red soil (the words red, Edom, and blood sound alike in Hebrew). They jumped to the conclusion that the red was the blood of enemies, who had turned on one another and charged toward the camp of Israel. Their reckless charge was met by an assault of the alliance army, which slaughtered the Moabites and then invaded the land.

2 Ki 3.26. The remaining Moabites were forced to retreat to their capital at Kir Hareseth. The city was surrounded. When Mesha realized that the situation was desperate, he made a final attempt to break through to the king of Edom, presumably because he was the weakest of the three armies or because Moab and Edom had been allies on occasion. The attempt failed, and Moab’s destruction seemed inevitable. God had miraculously provided the water, as his prophet had declared he would, and Israel had won a crushing victory. Elisha had demonstrated that he was Elijah’s true successor and that the Lord spoke through him.

2 Ki 3:27. But the story does not end the way we would expect. The pagan king turned to his god, Chemosh. He took the crown prince, his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall, where the act could be seen by his enemies. This brutal act leads to a statement that has proven extremely difficult to interpret: the fury against Israel was great. This cannot be the fury of Chemosh, since he, like all pagan gods, was a fraud. Nor would the Lord respond to such an act. The fury must be either the aroused fury of the Moabites or the indignation of the Israelites at such an act that terminated any will to continue the battle: they withdrew and returned to their own land.

This strange ending meant that the fulfillment of Elisha’s prophecy had taken an unexpected turn. His word had rescued the nation and predicted the events. He had been authenticated as the Lord’s prophet, God’s new man for the times. Elijah would be missed, but God was just as present with his people as he had always been. Israel’s spiritual state, however, kept the nation from receiving all that God had promised.

MAIN IDEA REVIEW:

When God’s leader is removed, everything of God remains.1

1 Gary Inrig, I & II Kings, ed. Max Anders, vol. 7, Holman Old Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman, 2003), 208–210.