Bible Study - 2 Chronicles 16:4-6 "Ben-hadad's Attack"

According to your will, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. All right, we are in 2 Chronicles 16, beginning in verse 4. But I will read for us here a larger passage than that. 2 Chronicles 16, beginning in verse 1.

In the 36th year of the reign of Asa, Basha, king of Israel, went up against Judah and built Ramah, that he might permit no one to go out or come in to Asa, king of Judah. Then Asa took silver and gold from the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the king's house, and sent them to Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, who lived in Damascus, saying, there is a covenant between me and you, as there was between my father and your father.

Behold, I am sending to you silver and gold. Go, break your covenant with Basha, king of Israel, that he may withdraw from me. And Ben-Hadad listened to king Asa and sent the commanders of his armies against the cities of Israel.

And they conquered Ajan, Dan, Abel, Mayim, and all the store cities of Naphtali. And when Basha heard of it, he stopped building Ramah and let his work cease. Then king Asa took all Judah, and they carried away the stones of Ramah and its timber, which Basha had been building.

And with them, he built Geba and Mizpah. Amen. All right, first verse we're looking at here, verse 4 says, and Ben-Hadad listened to king Asa and sent the captains of his armies against the cities of Israel.

So if you remember, Ben-Hadad is king of Syria. And he has an alliance with Israel, Israel being the northern kingdom. And what Asa has told Ben-Hadad, and this is essentially where things start to go south for him because he has not simply trusted the Lord in this matter.

But he says, look, my fathers were always your allies. And now you're allies with Israel that is no longer really Israel. It was really my fathers that you were allies with. So just break off your alliance.

Go ahead and attack Israel instead of being their friends, instead of defending them. Go plunder them. And I will pay you. I will pay you to attack your current ally and make them not an ally anymore.

And so that is what he does. Ben-Hadad listens to him, sends the captains of his armies against the cities of Israel. So yeah, and he does that to get Judah's money, but then also you can get extra plunder on top of that.

So it seems like a win-win for Ben-Hadad if you don't have any concern about your own word or your alliances. 4b, and they defeated Ijon and Dan and Abel-Mayim and all the store cities of Naphtali.

So if you read that passage that's listed there in Joshua, Joshua 19, 32 to 48, we don't have to read that right now. And then the 2 Samuel passage as well, you would see that Dan and Naphtali are in the northeast of the land of Canaan.

Okay, so that can be seen in Joshua. And then, and that's even idealized in Ezekiel's vision where if you know the final chapters of Ezekiel after having described the temple, he describes the land being reapportioned.

So kind of like Joshua portioned up the land, but then Ezekiel in his vision, the land is portioned in perfect horizontal slices. You know, if you were to look at a map, they'd be these perfect horizontal slices.

Just like, you know, if you look at a New York map, it looks very, or you know, New York City, it looks very different than other cities because it's all like perfect New York, Manhattan blocks or whatever, right?

So that's how their tribes are, these perfect horizontal blocks. And who's at the top? It's Dan and Naphtali. So they're the ones in the far northern most parts. Okay, and then Abel, also a city, likewise in the Northeast, which can be seen in this 2 Samuel passage where you have Sheba's departure from Benjamin, traveling through all the tribes until he reaches Abel.

And Ijon is only mentioned in similar kinds of context. So it seems to be the same sort of place. Okay, and interestingly, these places by name are later taken by the King of Syria in Assyria in 2 Kings 15, 29.

So if you remember the story, Syria attacks Judah, and then eventually Assyria comes and attacks Syria and swallows them up. So all these cities that they secured end up being taken by Assyria eventually anyway.

All right, and then in, if we read the parable passage here in 1 Kings, excuse me, 1 Kings chapter 15, and he brought into the house of the Lord the sacred gifts of his father and his own sacred gifts of silver and gold and vessels.

All right, so what are the, excuse me, that was not the right passage. That was five verses back. Verse 20 of chapter 15. And Ben-Hadad listened to King Asa and sent the commanders of his armies against the cities of Israel and conquered Ijon, Dan, Abel, Beth, Maaka, and all Chinneroth with the land of Naphtali.

Okay, there are a few differences in this passage. First of all, in 2 Chronicles, the army attacks rather than Ben-Hadad. It's not clear if that does have meaning, but if you put it together with some of the other things, in particular, there's another part where there's indirection that's changed.

So the, if you remember in the previous passage, the chronicler removed the indirection in describing Asa's action of giving silver and gold into the hands of the servants, right? So he takes silver and gold away from the palace and away from the temple.

And the chronicler had taken away the language that would make that a very indirect action. And here he takes away, he makes the language more indirect to speak about Ben-Hadad's actions, right? Instead of Ben-Hadad attacking, it's the army attacking.

So it seems like he's making Asa's actions against God more direct, and he's making Ben-Hadad's more direct. He's making Ben-Hadad's actions more indirect. So it's just a way of framing the guilt so it's more clear that Asa is acting in a guilty manner.

All right, the second part of this, why does the chronicler replace the mention of Shinneroth with Storcities? So that's the other thing, is that this passage in First King talked about Shinneroth. Here, the chronicler speaks of Storcities.

So I think it's just to emphasize the strategic failure here, right? The amount of damage that's being done by the Storcities being destroyed, right? It's just a significant blow against Israel, who is in effect, the brothers of Judah.

You know, they're not supposed to be turning against each other like this so much. It's one thing to defend against invasions from Israel. It's another thing to attack them. If you remember, Rehoboam wanted to attack them and God told him no.

So they can't just go and unprovoked, just because of fear, go attack them. All right, why does the chronicler replace Abel Beth Maacah with Abel Mayim? So Abel Beth Maacah is Abel of the house of Maacah and Abel Mayim means Abel of the sea.

I'll just read my notes here. In order to compensate for omitting mention of Shinneroth, that is Shinneroth refers to the Sea of Galilee. And you can see that in Joshua 11 .2 and 12 .3. And Abel Mayim describes Abel's proximity to the same body of water.

So because Shinneroth was replaced with store cities and Shinneroth is near the sea, he's describing the city of Abel in a different way to explain its proximity to the sea since before Shinneroth was serving that function.

So this is just to accommodate for the fact that he's emphasizing the store cities but doesn't want to lose the geographic proximities that he was describing, that were being described in Kings. That seems to be the answer anyway, yes.

Is there any, I guess, difference between land of Naphtali and store cities of Naphtali?

Right, I think it's, let's see. If we look at verse, and the store cities of Naphtali. Yeah, the store cities is, that's instead of Shinneroth. That's not really instead of land. Right, okay. It's all the land of Naphtali.

Yeah, maybe there's something there with the word land not being present. I don't know. I haven't thought about that. Okay. Moving on here. So yeah, just the, these little details are ways that Chronicler is emphasizing how much Asa is harming his brothers.

He's taking out the store cities. That wasn't mentioned before. He is credited with destroying the store cities and credited with the action more directly. And Ben-Hadad is less directly credited with the action.

It's not Ben-Hadad that's attacking. It's the armies that are attacking. All right. Verse five. And it came to pass when Baasha heard thereof that he left off building Ramah and let his work cease. Okay, so why does Baasha cease to build?

Well, he lacks the military strength to build. Right, Baasha is the king of Israel at this point. Building is something that you do during times of peace. That's why Solomon was able to build so much is because he was a king during a time of peace.

Baasha is being attacked so he's not able to build anymore. He dwells in Tirza because that's his, that's the seat of his reign. Remember when you swap out kings, you're also free to swap out cities. And that's kind of what's happened here is the line of kings coming.

Jeroboam's been destroyed, now it's Baasha. And so you kind of have a new capital. And then, yeah, the chronicler, why does he not mention it? Because he's not as interested in the kings of Israel. He's not mentioning these details.

Also, he's less focusing on Baasha's role in the strife. Right, he's more interested in pointing out Asa's role in the strife. Okay, so let's go ahead and read this associated passage in 1 Kings 16, 8 through 14.

I'll go ahead and read this. In the 26th year of Asa, king of Judah, Elah the son of Baasha began to reign over Israel in Tirza and he reigned two years. But a servant Zimri, commander of half his chariots, conspired against him.

When he was at Tirza, drinking himself drunk in the house of Arza, who was over the household in Tirza, Zimri came in and struck him down and killed him in the 27th year of Asa, king of Judah, and reigned in his place.

When he began to reign, soon as he had seated himself on his throne, he struck down all the house of Baasha. He did not leave him a single male of his relatives or friends. Thus Zimri destroyed all the house of Baasha according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke against Baasha by Jehu the prophet.

For all the sins of Baasha and the sins of Elah his son, which they sinned and which they made Israel to send, provoking the Lord God to anger with their idols. Now the rest of the acts of Elah and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?

Okay, so who succeeds Baasha? Well, there's Elah, but then quickly destroyed by, quickly destroyed by Zimri. So he does not have a lasting reign, right? In Judah, it's son of Judah, son of Judah, son of Judah, et cetera, and it keeps going with the line of David with small exceptions of intrusions from Ahab's line, for example, but then you still go back to the son of David.

In Israel, it's much more chaotic. They keep switching lines. So there's Jeroboam and then there's Baasha and Elah and then there's Zimri, right? So we've gone through three lines in Israel in this very short period of time, not just one line.

Yeah, and so he's destroyed. And why does this happen? Well, because he led the people in the idolatry of Jeroboam, is the, yeah, he committed all these evils in the sight of the Lord. It said in verse seven, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Jehu, the son of Hanani, against Baasha and his house, both because of all the evil that he had done inside the Lord, provoking him to anger with the work of his hands and being like the house of Jeroboam.

And also because he destroyed it. That is that he destroyed the house of Jeroboam. Okay. Let's see. And that prophet Hanani, I believe he was mentioned before as coming from the land of Israel to speak to the king in Judah.

But I can verify that. Yeah, right. That was what we saw at the previous passage. At that time, Hanani, the seer, came to Asa, king of Judah, and said to him, et cetera, because you relied on him. Oh, okay.

Yeah, no, that's actually the next passage. So this is the, I believe this is the same prophet here. So that one prophet spoke to the king of Israel, and now he's about to, in the next verse, or sorry, in this, yeah, in the next verse, verse seven, speak to Asa.

All right, it goes on here. Then Asa, the king, took all Judah, and they carried away the stones of Ramah and the timber thereof with which Baasha had built. And with it, he built Geba and Mizpah. Okay, so while Ben-Hadad is plundering the cities, there's building material left over that's close enough by that they can grab it and come carry it away.

So Judah comes and carries away a lot of the building material, and they use it to build up their own city. All right, so, and it describes it as all Judah doing this. So this is a very large effort. This is not just a small effort in the northern part of the land.

They carry, yeah, they carry this away in order to build stuff up. And once again, there's a difference in emphasis. Let's see, yeah, the chronicler omits the mention of Num being exempted and then simplifies Geba of Benjamin to Geba.

There's not too much, very significant there, just some simplifications. A lot of it could just be attributed to brevity. The chronicler does cut a lot of things out to make it shorter. All right, and then where are Geba and Mizpah located?

They are in Benjamin. Why does Asa build these up? In order to defend the people. And then what particular feature of this construction is mentioned in Jeremiah? Did anybody find that? Something that he built.

Jeremiah 41, nine through 10. I will read that. Yeah, cistern, exactly, a well. Now the cistern into which Ishmael had thrown all the bodies of the men whom he had struck down along with Gedaliah was the large cistern that King Asa had made for defense against Baasha, king of Israel.

Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, filled it with the slain. Then Ishmael took captive all the rest of the people who were in Mizpah, the king's daughters, and all the people who were left at Mizpah whom Nebuzad and captain of the guard had committed to Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam.

Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, took them captive and set out to cross over to the Ammonites. So yeah, there's a, yeah, King Asa is making a large cistern here in Gedaliah. Right, so he says, takes the stones away, takes them to Gedaliah to build, and what's one of the things we find out that he built?

Well, it's this giant well, and they throw a bunch of dead bodies into it in Jeremiah. Okay, any questions? Yes. How did you make that connection? In Jeremiah 41, it says that this is in Gedaliah, oh no, sorry, it says with Gedaliah, many instructing along with Gedaliah.

Oh yeah, sorry, that's a name. But the large cistern that King Asa had made for defense against Basha, king of Israel. Let me see, oh, then Ishmael took captive all the rest of the people who were in Mizpah, that's the geographic connection, excuse me, Mizpah.

Is that the same thing as Tizpah? I don't know, if you're looking at a different translation, it might be. Okay, well, yeah, it says Mizpah here in Jeremiah 41. Okay, so yeah, here in Mizpah, there is a well that Asa made to defend against Basha.

Okay, all right, any other questions? All right, reflection questions, what enemies do you face? How should you respond to your enemies in determining whether your actions are pleasing God? What role does success from those actions play?

Now, we're gonna see the divine interpretation of this in the next passage. I've been saying that this was bad, but you kind of just had to take me at my word for it or understood the kind of covenantal dynamics that are going on here, but that is interpreted in the next passage with Hanani, who rebukes Asa for his sin.

So on one hand, you know, God was watching out for the people of He. There's some material gain that comes out for this, but if they had relied on God more directly, it would have been better for them.

They didn't have to rely on Syria to go against Israel. There is no need for that. They could have just relied on God. And so likewise, we can just rely on God. I don't think people realize how often that is the case.

I've heard all throughout my Christian life, I feel like the example of Abraham going into Hagar as being an example of, you know, not trusting God, not waiting on the Lord and using your own means. But whenever I heard anyone apply that, it almost always referred to just anxiety and nothing else, no actual actions, which I feel like is a shame because so often people do have actual actions that they are taking because they don't trust the means that the Lord has provided.

So often people have a very pragmatic ethic where they think that they're following the Lord's priorities if they say, okay, God values these things in this order. And so I'm allowed to pursue these things in this order with whatever means I see fit.

And they don't really care about the means. They just care about the end. And as long as their end is aligned with God's end, then the means are just fine. And that's very common. How often do you hear in conversations about either worship or evangelism, basically something to the effect of, well, if it gets more souls saved, or people will have a conversation about worship, about reformed churches, et cetera.

And I'm like, well, you know, it's these kinds of churches where all the people are getting saved or something like that, or they're having more baptisms or whatever the case may be. And so it's very much, okay, let's forget about the means.

The means don't actually matter as long as the goal is good. You know, look, we defeated Israel. We're defending ourselves from them. That's good, et cetera. And there are just so many countless ways that people do this in their life.

Get short-term gains, short-term peace. You know, God wants peace. So therefore I'm gonna pursue peace by just not bringing up difficult issues, by not talking about difficult issues, by doing only those things which are gonna be the most palatable to people, et cetera.

That would be another example that often happens. Yeah, there's so many, so many examples, but yes.

I guess, would this be a good passage to point out? We need to avoid unholy alliances. Yes, yeah.

We should avoid unholy alliances. I have a, yeah, I think there's a little bit to sort out here with what he was talking about with his father's having an alliance with Syria. It seems like some of these alliances in as much as they are outside of the land may have been permitted.

I need to look into some of the law on that. But yeah, this way of going about it where they're attacking their own brothers certainly wasn't permitted like this. And they should have just trusted, yeah, trusted God to defend them and then taken back their own cities as needed, not just attack them needlessly.

Yeah. Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. And they're serving him. They're like bringing him tribute and everything. But this is something where he's taking money out of the house of the Lord and giving it to other nations.

That's clearly, yeah. Right, right. Yeah, they're not allowed to make themselves servants of other people. That's a common one too, right? 1 Corinthians 7 says that you are bought with a price. Don't make yourself slaves of men.

Like believers and unbelievers, is that the kind of thing you're talking about? What was the last part? Stupid, okay, all right. Well, yeah, I wanna speak more charitably to that. But I don't know what you have in mind.

Yeah, there's certainly some wisdom about not getting involved in a business thing where you don't trust the character of someone else and their character might be determined by their Christian profession and the validity of it.

Yeah, I know I'd much prefer to be in business with a good Christian than with someone who doesn't have the same kind of commitments to God. As far as not becoming a slave to man though, I do think of that passage from 1 Corinthians 7, I'll read that again.

You are bought with a price to not become bond servants of men. But a lot of people do that very willy-nilly and they don't think much about it. I know it's a more complicated issue than just this, but people get into debt so easily, not realizing that that is exactly the kind of thing this passage is talking against, right?

If the debtor is slave to the lender, then you should not easily, without sufficient cause, go into debt and people make all kinds of excuses for it. I'm sure Asa has all kinds of excuses for why it's okay to become a servant to Ben-Hadad, but that's not a, yeah, he didn't have any good reason.

And here, yeah, as we make ourselves slaves to others so that we owe them, and then we aren't free with our own resources to serve God as He would call us, that really limits us in our service to Him.

So that's something that you should consider before going into any kind of debt, okay? Is that a question?

Because I know it's like, I would see these feeds on YouTube or on Facebook where, oh, I'm a pastor of so-and-so and I'm in partnership with this book, you know, Christian book publishing company, and if you buy it through me or through my minister, you get it cheaper or something like that.

Would you consider that like an unholy alliance? I'm not sure what you're describing. Oh, because they're selling spiritual things, but if you buy it, but since it's in partnership with a pastor or a well-known figure, you buy it through us, you'll be buying Christian commentary to be cheaper.

Maybe.

Yeah, maybe. I'm not exactly sure how it fits into unholy alliances, but.

Because so-and-so is partying up with this company. I see, yeah. Yeah, you wanna be careful.

Yeah, what you're being complicit in, certainly. Okay. All right, anything else? Okay, Jesus is a sufficient King. He is leading us. He doesn't, Jesus does not get nervous and think, oh, maybe I need to trust somebody else.

Maybe I need to take things away from the storehouse of God and give them away. You know, every time the church loses some of its resources, loses some of its spiritual health, that's never Jesus giving it away.

Okay. It's always people making the compromises, taking things out of God's house. So yeah, let's not do that. Let's build up His body, trusting in Him, not thinking that we need to deprive Him of anything, whether it be even financial or, you know, your time, et cetera, things that He's called you to give.

Okay, let's go ahead and pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for the great King that You have placed over us, Jesus Christ. We ask that He would lead us into all victory.

In Jesus' name, amen. Go ahead.