Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 1-2.

When King Ahaziah, Ahab’s son, fell and injured himself, he sent messengers to the god of Ekron, Baal-Zebub to find out if he would get better.  I did a little searching to see what information we had from other sources about Baal-Zebub and there wasn’t much.  However, scholars believe from the etymology of Baal-Zebub and a few other ancient references that Baal-Zebub was a god of healing.  Which explains why Ahaziah sent messengers to Ekron rather than just consulting the prophets of Baal in his own court.  I’ve mentioned before that I see evidence that the worshipers of Baal in Israel tried to present Baal worship as worshiping God, just with different worship practices.  Ahaziah sending to the Baal of Ekron runs counter to that idea, because God was clearly God of healing (as well as being God of everything).  Then, after Elijah intercepts his messengers and sends them back to him, Ahaziah orders Elijah brought to him.  The first two captains, along with their troop of fifty men, call Elijah a “man of God” and order him, under the king’s authority, to come with them.  Both of them discovered that, in a dispute between the government and God, they had taken the wrong side.  The third captain also called Elijah a “man of God”, but this third captain recognized that Elijah’s authority as an agent of God exceeded his authority as an agent of the king.

Ahaziah claimed that in worshiping Baal he was worshiping God.  Yet when he sought healing, he did not ask for healing from either the Baal he worshiped or from God.  Instead he sent to a foreign god, a Baal other than the one he worshiped.  Since God claimed dominion over the whole earth, this put the lie to Ahaziah’s claim that Baal was just another name for God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.