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When we deviate from God’s path, it is our duty to bring our deviations back to God’s path, following God’s guidance in doing so. Ba’asha, king of northern Yisrael, was warned by a prophet the danger of his path but refused to address the issue and turn back to God’s path. There is a seven-fold pattern in the lives of Yeroboam (Jeroboam), Ba’asha and Solomon in being God’s instrument but going too far. David provides the correct pattern.
This reading (1st Kings 15:25-16:14) focuses on the kingdom of Israel and not than the kings of Yehudah (Judah). The book of Kings focuses on the spiritual strengths and weaknesses of the kings and their people in the generations from David all the way to the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles.
Ba’asha (בַּעְשָׁא, Strong’s lexicon No. H1201, “Ba’al/master listens intently”1 or “boldness”2), the king of Israel who struck down the entire house of Yeroboam, king of Israel, put up an armory, a fortified city in one of the cities of Yehudah. Asa (אָסָא, H609, “healer” or “God is healer”1), the king of Yehudah, asked the king of Syria to break his alliance with Israel. Asa, king of Yehudah, and Ba’asha, the king of Israel, were in war, either cold war or outright war all their days.
Ba’asha wiped out the family of Yeroboam after Yeroboam’s death when his son Nadab became king of Israel. Ba’asha was no better than Yeroboam, and God set Himself against Ba’asha’s house accordingly.
The first part of 1st Kings 15 goes over the entirety of Asa’s life and this section back tracks a bit into Asa’s earlier years.
We will be discussing three different kings in this chapter: Yeroboam, Ba’asha and Solomon, but we will also discuss Zimri a bit as well. There is a seven-point pattern that occurs in the lives of all three kings.
- Turned hearts away from God
- God declared He would remove the king.
- God raised up a particular individual to remove the prior king.
- The rebellious king died a natural death. (Yeroboam and Ba’asha died natural deaths.)
- The son inherited the throne.
- The son continues in the path or even worse than his father.
- The son takes control of the tribes, then died. The kings of Israel took control of the prior dynasty by wiping out all the male heirs of the original kingdom. The kings of Yehudah did not take control by wiping out the male heirs of their predecessor. The only reason that Solomon’s family did not get wiped out was for the sake of King David.
Many of us have been misled or lied to about God at one point or other. Leadership has great power over people, this is why kings are held to a very high standard by God.
Let’s look at Yeroboam and Ba’asha first. We read in 1st Kings 14:10-11 we read about a prophecy by Abiyah (Abijah) to Yeroboam’s wife that reads almost identically to God’s prophesy against Ba’asha later.
Abiyah tells Mrs. Yeroboam that all of Yeroboam’s male line will be killed. Was Ba’asha doing God’s will or his own? Ba’asha fulfills this prophesy and obeyed God but Ba’asha angered the LORD because he walked in the same path of Yeroboam, incurring the same wrath. Yet, we read in 1st Kings 15 that one of the reason’s that God strikes down Ba’asha is because Ba’asha obeyed Him.
To figure this out seeming paradox, consider David’s flight from Saul. Saul was given into David’s hand in a cave. David could have killed Saul and his entire family, but David refused because he refused to kill the man God had anointed to lead Israel. David also instructed his men not to kill God’s anointed either. When David found out later that Saul was killed, David killed the man who killed Saul.
David would have told Ba’asha that just because God put a prophesy on Yeroboam that all his male line would die, Ba’asha did not have to be the man to do it. Ba’asha should have followed David’s example and resist and wait for God to take care of it. But he didn’t.
Yeroboam was the anointed king of Israel, even though God had placed a death sentence on his family due to his egregious behavior. Ba’asha went beyond his bounds.
The fulfillment of any prophesy is on God’s timetable, not man’s. There is an example where God did chose an assassin to fulfill his prophesy, we see this in King Jehu, who was anointed by God to wipe out the line of Ahab. Ba’asha was not appointed by God to fulfill His prophesy against Yeroboam. Ba’asha acted presumptuously.
David, Yeroboam and Ba’asha all accomplished God’s will but only David did it lawfully.
What stops the pattern of failed kings in Israel? Zimri actions stopped this pattern. How did he do that? Zimri fulfills the same prophesies by killing Ba’asha and his male heirs but also all of Ba’asha’s friends and powerful allies. Zimri stopped the pattern and the curse by killing himself.
Just because a prophesy is bad doesn’t mean that His laws don’t apply. God does not exempt anyone from His laws when He calls someone to perform a task. We can not break God’s law to fulfill God’s will.
The laws of God don’t change, people do. David was different because he waited for God to remove Saul and didn’t try to do it himself.
Speaker: Daniel Agee. Summary: Tammy.
1 Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT). Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands: 2000.
2 John R. Kohlenberger III, and William D. Mounce, eds. Kohlenberger/Mounce Concise Hebrew-Aramaic Dictionary of the Old Testament (KM Hebrew Dictionary). William D. Mounce, Teknia.com: 2012.