1 Kings 16:1-7

FOURTH SECTIONthe kingdom of israel under nadab and his successors until ahab

1 Kings 15:25 to 1 Kings 16:28

A.—The reign of Nadab and Baasha

1 Kings 15:25 to 1 Kings 16:7

25And Nadab the son of Jeroboam began to reign over Israel in the second year of Asa king of Judah, and reigned over Israel two years. 26And he did evil in the sight of the Lord [Jehovah], and walked in the way of his father, and in his sin 27[sins13] wherewith he made Israel to sin. And Baasha the son of Ahijah, of the house of Issachar, conspired14 against him; and Baasha smote him at Gibbethon, which belonged to the Philistines; for Nadab and all Israel laid siege to Gibbethon. 28Even in the third year of Asa king of Judah did Baasha slay him, and reigned in his stead. 29And it came to pass, when he reigned, that he smote all the house of Jeroboam; he left not to Jeroboam any that breathed,15 until he had destroyed him, according unto the saying of the Lord [Jehovah], which he spake by his servant Ahijah the Shilonite: 30because of the sins of Jeroboam which he sinned, and which he made Israel sin, by his provocation wherewith he provoked the Lord [Jehovah] God of Israel to anger. 31Now the rest of the acts of Nadab, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel? 1632And there was war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all their days.

33In the third year of Asa king of Judah began Baasha the son of Ahijah to reign over all Israel in Tirzah, twenty and four years. 34And he did evil in the sight of the Lord [Jehovah], and walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin [sins] wherewith he made Israel to sin.

1 Kings 16:1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jehu the son of Hanani against Baasha, saying, 2Forasmuch as I exalted thee out of the dust, and made thee prince over my people Israel; and thou hast walked in the way of Jeroboam, and hast made my people Israel to sin, to provoke me to anger with their sins; 3behold, I will take away the posterity of Baasha, and the posterity of his house; and will make thy house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. 4Him that dieth of Baasha in the city shall the dogs eat; and him that dieth of his in the fields shall the fowls of the air eat. 5Now the rest of the acts of Baasha, and what he did, and his might, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel? 6So Baasha slept with his fathers, and was buried in Tirzah: and Elah his son reigned in his stead.17 7And also by the hand of the prophet Jehu the son of Hanani came the word of the Lord [Jehovah] against Baasha, and against his house, even for all the evil that he did in the sight of the Lord [Jehovah], in provoking him to anger with the work of his hands, in being like the house of Jeroboam; and because he killed him.

Exegetical and Critical

1 Kings 15:25-26. In the second year of Asa. We see clearly from this verse, compared with the time given in 1 Kings 15:28; 1 Kings 15:33, as in all the statement regarding the length of reigns, that years not fully complete are considered as whole ones. “For if Nadab ascended the throne in the second year of Asa’s reign (1 Kings 15:28), and Asa ascended the throne in the twentieth year of Jeroboam’s (1 Kings 15:9), Jeroboam could not have reigned quite twenty-two years, but only twenty-one and some months; and if Baasha succeeded to Nadab in the third year of Asa’s reign (1 Kings 15:28; 1 Kings 15:33) Nadab could not have reigned two years (1 Kings 15:25), in fact not much more than one and a half year or perhaps a little shorter time” (Keil).

1 Kings 15:27-31. Baasha … of the house of Issachar,i. e., of the tribe of Issachar; he cannot therefore have been the son of the prophet Ahijah, as Menzel supposes, for he was an Ephraimite of Shiloh. The city of Gibbethon belongs to the tribe of Dan (Joshua 19:44), and was one of the four cities of the levites which belonged (i. e., the cities) to this tribe (Joshua 21:23); it must have been on the borders of Philistia. It is very doubtful if it had always been occupied by the Philistines, and was now for the first time besieged by the Israelites (Winer); it rather appears that the Philistines, after the partition of the kingdom, again took possession of it as an important border fortress; whereupon the Israelites under Nadab and Elah (1 Kings 16:15) tried to recover it. As Nadab met his death on this occasion, it seems that Baasha’s conspiracy was of a military description, and that the latter was an army chief like Zimri (1 Kings 16:9). Thenius supposes that Gibbethon was the same as the modern Muzeiri’ah, or Elmejdel (Tower) (cf. Robinson, Pal. III. p. 282). How the conspiracy arose is not stated; perhaps Nadab was still very young, and not a match for Baasha, who was very enterprising. It seems that he was not satisfied with exterminating the male relatives of Jeroboam, but murdered the whole of his race. The כִּדְבַר 1 Kings 15:29, does not, of course, mean: as the Lord had promised him, but: so that the word of prophecy was fulfilled. For 1 Kings 15:29-30 see above on 1 Kings 14:10 sq.

1 Kings 15:32-34. And there was war … all their days. 1 Kings 15:32 is a literal repetition of 1 Kings 15:16, and does not seem suitable to the context here, for even if we were to read Nadab instead of Baasha (Ewald), this does not agree with “all their days,” for Nadab did not reign much longer than a year, and had war with the Philistines during that time. Nadab, too, should be named first; between Nadab and Asa; and finally Asa, whose year of accession coincided with the short period of Nadab’s reign, had, according to 2 Chron. 13:23, no war at that time. Thenius thinks that the repetition of 1 Kings 15:16 arose through a mistake of the copyist, but there is certainly no necessity for this easy but at the same time violent solution of the difficulty. Keil’s view is better. He finds (1845) the reason of the repetition in the excerptive character of these books, and in the manner of theocratic historical writing, namely, in the want of strict order in the arrangement of the historical matter. 1 Kings 15:16 is taken from the book of the acts of the kings of Judah; 1 Kings 15:32 from that of the kings of Israel. In the first instance the remark is given beforehand, because there was something special to be said about the war between Asa and Baasha; here, though it would certainly be more suitable after 1 Kings 15:33-34, it is not put in on account of Asa, but on account of Baasha, and is the regular mode of expression for the conditions of the State under the different reigns. For Tirzah see 1 Kings 14:17.

1 Kings 16:1-6. The word of the Lord came. The chapter is not here divided according to the accession of the king, but according to the prophetic sentence which proclaimed ruin to the whole reigning dynasty, and therefore was the beginning of all the subsequent period. The prophet Jehu is mentioned in 2 Chronicles 19:2 sq. as well as in 1 Kings 15:1; 1 Kings 15:7; 1 Kings 15:12; in the above passage ho blames the conduct of the Judah-king Jehoshaphat, the successor of Asa; and in 2 Chronicles 20:34 he is named as the author of the “acts of Jehoshaphat in the book of the kings of Israel.” There is no doubt that his father Hanani was the same as he who was thrown into prison because of his censure of king Asa (2 Chronicles 16:7; 2 Chronicles 16:10). According to this, he must have belonged to the kingdom of Judah, and either pronounced his sentence there (1 Kings 15:2; 1 Kings 15:7), or have gone over, for the purpose, into the northern kingdom. It is also uncertain whether he pronounced the threatening to Baasha personally and directly. For out of the dust (1 Kings 15:2) 1 Kings 14:7 gives “from among the people,” from which “we might conclude that Baasha had raised himself from a very low position to be a commander of the army and finally king” (Thenius). What Baasha did, of himself and by crime, the prophet ascribes in so far to Jehovah, that he could not possibly have executed his plans had they been contrary to the purposes of Jehovah. The entire sentence is evidently modelled after that of the prophet Ahijah against Jeroboam (1 Kings 14:7-11) (see Hist. and Eth. there, 1). 1 Kings 15:6 says that Baasha died a natural death, but Zimrl (1 Kings 15:12) exterminated all “his posterity” (cf.אַחֲרֵי, 1 Kings 15:3). For גְּבוּרָח, see on 1 Kings 15:23.

1 Kings 16:7. Came the word, &c. The וְגַם is not equal to and also, or yes (De Wette), neither does it mean that Jehu himself bore the message, but rather “any former thought or excuse that might be brought forward was strongly rejected” (Ewald, Lehrbuch § 354). The whole of 1 Kings 16:7 is not, as the Rabbins say, a new and further prophecy, but a supplementary remark to the prediction 1 Kings 16:2, which might be misinterpreted as meaning that Baasha had a divine commission to murder Nadab and his race. No! the word, 1 Kings 16:2, spoken by Jehu was called forth by the fact that Baasha had of his own accord destroyed the whole house of Jeroboam, and yet himself had adhered to Jeroboam’s sin. This very word “clearly shows that the extermination of the house of Jeroboam was not done by divine commission, but from selfish motives.” For הִכְעִים, see above on 1 Kings 14:15. “The work of his hands” denotes, according to Deuteronomy 4:28, Dii factitii, whether images of Jehovah (calves) or idols.

Historical and Ethical

1. We have much less concerning the two Israelitish kings Nadab and Baasha and the acts of their reigns than of the two Judah-kings Abijah and Asa. The narrative merely says of Nadab that he walked in the ways of his father Jeroboam; i. e., that he retained unlawful institutions, and after a reign of scarcely two years was murdered in a conspiracy, by Baasha. But of the reign of Baasha, which lasted twenty-four years, our only narrative says that he destroyed all the whole house of Jeroboam after he (Baasha) became king, as was threatened to Jeroboam by the prophet Ahijah (1 Kings 14:7 sq.); that he also persisted in the sin of Jeroboam, and had the same fate as the latter announced to him by the prophet Jehu. We can see plainly from this what the principle which guided our author in his historical writing was. He does not care to give a complete account of all the facts and events of the reign of each king,—for these he refers to the authorities that lay before him,—but the thing rather which concerned him most of all, was the position each king took with regard to the Israelitish fundamental law, i. e., the covenant, which was the soul of the entire Old-Testament theocracy; and how the promises and threatenings of this law itself, or of the prophets charged with its announcements, and who spoke as the servants and ambassadors of Jehovah, became fulfilled (see Introd. § 5). The heavy judgment which overtook the house of him who first openly broke the fundamental law of the entire people, and made the image-worship (so strictly forbidden in that law) the religion of the State and people; that heavy judgment, we say, was a practical historical prediction for every royal house which persisted in “the sin of Jeroboam.” No less than nine dynasties of the kingdom of Israel, with whom this was the case, perished in like manner with the house of Jeroboam, until at last the kingdom itself was destroyed, whilst the dynasty of David continued uninterruptedly in Judah.

2. The little that is told of Baasha is sufficient to show that he was an ambitious, rough, and violent, indeed even a blood-thirsty man. He did not conspire against his lord and king, and usurp the throne, in order to bring the fundamental law of Israel into force again, and to make an end to the sin of Jeroboam, for he himself adhered firmly to it all his life, in spite of all the warnings and threatenings of the prophets. He only cared for dominion thereof, and for this he esteemed the sin of Jeroboam as necessary as the latter himself had done; in short, he seems to have been a rough soldier who cared little or nothing about religion. We see from his enterprise at Ramah (1 Kings 15:17), which he wished to fortify “to reduce Judah utterly, through complete obstruction of trade” (Ewald), that he hated Judah and wished to destroy it, and therefore to reign over it also. He was the first king-murderer in Israel, and led the way, as It were, to this crime, which was afterwards so often imitated. He was the first, too, who exterminated an entire royal house with violence, and not only killed the males, but “every one that had breath,” an unheard, of cruelty, even in throne-usurpations in the ancient East. Menzel (s. 171), who wrongly takes him to have been the son of the prophet Ahijah (see above on 1 Kings 15:27), intimates that he was therefore under prophetical influence, and then says that he “disappointed the hopes which the prophets of Jehovah had placed in him.” This, however, is pure fancy. The conspiracy of Baasha was completely a military insurrection, as 1 Kings 15:27 indubitably proves, while there is not a word to show that he was influenced by the prophets. He was, no doubt, one of the leaders in Nadab’s army, but there is no evidence in the history that he was “a man distinguished for his valor” and a “skilful warrior,” as Ewald calls him (III. s. 446 sq.); the general term, too, used in 1 Kings 16:5 is no proof. There is still less ground for the further supposition, that besides the growing discontent of the prophets, the fact that the house of Jeroboam had not been able to conquer the kingdom of Judah, and other enemies, was evidently the chief root of the insurrection against it; that Baasha thought he could perform more, and in this hope he seized the throne. The text does not say the least word of all this. For the sentence announced to Baasha by the prophet Jehu, see above, Hist. and Eth. on 1 Kings 14:1-20 (4).

Homiletical and Practical

1 Kings 15:25-31. The ruin of the house of Jeroboam proclaims these two great truths: sin is the destruction of a people (Proverbs 14:34), and: He who heareth not my word, of him will I require it (Deuteronomy 18:19). God does not punish the innocent children for the sins of their fathers, but those who, despising the divine patience and long-suffering shown to their fathers, perpetuate, without any shame, the sins of the fathers (Exodus 20:5-6). A given example of evil is rarely without imitation; as Jeroboam rebelled against the house of David, so did Baasha against the house of Jeroboam. Desire for rule and envy beget first dissatisfaction with the condition in life ordained by God, lead then to breach of faith, and end at last with murder and homicide.

1 Kings 15:29. Conspirators and rebels profess to overthrow tyranny and to throw off its yoke; but when they attain power and sovereignty they are themselves the most violent and cruel tyrants.

1 Kings 15:34. Calw. B.: Baasha trod in the footsteps of Jeroboam just as if Jeroboam had been good and upright. And yet Baasha himself was an instrument in the hands of God to punish Jeroboam on account of his sins. What folly! When Jeroboam’s son, Nadab, did as his father, we can explain it by paternal influence;—but that Baasha should have pursued the same course is a proof of monstrous blindness. The world does not allow itself to be interrupted in its purposes; vain conduct after the way of those who lived before, is always inherited (1 Peter 1:18).—Chap 1 Kings 16:1. The word of the Lord in the mouth of a true servant of God is, for the pious, sweeter than honey and the honey-comb (Psalms 19:11), for the wicked and impious it is a consuming fire, and like the hammer which breaketh the rock in pieces (Jeremiah 23:29).

1 Kings 16:2-4. Osiander: The sins of the common people which they have learned from their princes, as well also as those which these do not restrain when they can, are charged to them. Those who are lifted up out of the dust are often the proudest and most arrogant because they think they must thank only themselves for their exalted position, and they forget what is written in 1 Samuel 2:7 sq. For Baasha, also, the hour struck when it was said, Behold, oh! most proud, &c. (Jeremiah 50:31). The throne which has been obtained by lying, deceit, and falsehood and bloodshed has no stability. The judgment of God, though delayed for a time, will not always tarry (Psalms 5:6-7). Robbers and murderers are not always in caves and the hidden recesses of forests, sometimes they are seated upon thrones; but the Lord will “sweep them away,” and their end will be with horror: before His tribunal no people, no crown is a protection.

Footnotes:

1 Kings 15:26; 1 Kings 15:26.—[It is better here and in 1 Kings 15:34, &c., to retain the plural form of the Heb. Sin was doubtless intended to be understood collectively in the A. V.

1 Kings 15:27; 1 Kings 15:27.—[The Heb. וַיִּקְשֹׁר from the root קָשַׁר, to bind or tie together, is correctly translated conspired, and implies that others were concerned with Baasha in the plot.

1 Kings 15:29; 1 Kings 15:29.—[לֹא־הִשְׁאִיר כָּל־נְשָׁמָה, “he left not any that had breath,” i.e., he destroyed all, both male and female, of the house of Jeroboam, in contrast with the expression in 1 Kings 14:10, &c. Cf. Joshua 11:11; Joshua 11:14.

1 Kings 15:32; 1 Kings 15:32.—[The Vat. Sept. omits 1 Kings 15:32, which has occasioned so much perplexity from its being an exact repetition of 1 Kings 15:16. For the reasons of its insertion see Exeg. Com.

1 Kings 16:6; 1 Kings 16:6.—[The Alex. Sept. adds “in the twentieth year of king Asa”—an impossible date. Cf. 1 Kings 15:33.—F. G.]