God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible (23 page)

Sure enough, God was forced to put a hit on Baasha’s son, Elah and he organized one of Elah’s generals to carry out the coup de tat. And, one evening whilst Elah was drunk, his head of the military slashed his throat and then in accordance with God’s orders he murdered Elah’s entire family. His name was Zimri and in the twenty-seventh year of Asa’s reign over Judah, he became the new king of Israel. Zimri’s reign lasted just seven days, as God also killed him for following in the footsteps of Jeroboam. God had the throne of Israel working like a turnstile and as such Ahab became the new king.

Ahab married a woman by the name of Jezebel, a name that has become symbolic throughout the ages as a derogatory term for a sexually promiscuous woman. That’s hot! With Jezebel as his wife, she and Ahab encouraged pagan worship of Baal; a local god responsible for natural climatic events such as rain, thunder and lightning. As such, they displeased God Almighty with their actions. Thus, enter a simple man named Elijah, who makes his entry into the Bible without any hoopla. In fact, very little is known of Elijah, as the text includes no reference of his background or origins.

The backdrop to this story is that the king and queen of Israel had set out to kill or exile all prophets of the God of Israel and replace them with prophets of Baal. During this time, God offers protection for Elijah outside of Israel. After forty days and forty nights taking refuge in a small valley to the east of Jordan, God whispers to Elijah to return to Israel in order to offer Ahab a challenge. The challenge being to tempt Ahab in pitting 450 of Baal’s prophets against 400 of God’s on top of Mount Carmal, in a contest to prove the existence of their respective god.

The rules and playing conditions of the contest included that both teams build a respective altar made of wood, with two slaughtered oxen placed on each. The winner of this challenge would be the team whose BBQ themed altar lit on fire using prayer as the only accelerant. The Baal team won the coin toss and elected to start. Their 450 prophets danced and sang loudly around the altar, but after many hours it would not light. As the hours passed by, their desperation grew and they began shouting wildly at the sky with their swords drawn upwards, but still no fire.

It was Team God’s turn to pursue victory and with that Elijah stepped towards the altar and placed twelve stones down, each stone representing one of the twelve tribes of Israel. A few cries of, “O Lord, O Lord, O Lord,” and abracadabra Elijah had himself a fire with God sending down a fireball directly on to the hotplate. The prophets of Baal flee in terror and Elijah seizes the moment to demand that they be put to death. But Queen Jezebel becomes enraged that this ‘no’ would order such a thing against her chosen prophets and demands that Elijah himself be executed.

Elijah flees for his life to Beersheba in Judah. At some stage on the run, he falls asleep under a juniper tree and whilst in a deep slumber, an angel touches him on the shoulder and tells Elijah to wake up and eat. Upon wakening he finds that the angel has brought quite a picnic hamper of all sorts of goodies. Elijah eats all its contents, and then falls back to sleep. The angel wakes him a second time and recommends that he eat some more as he has a long journey ahead of him. Elijah continues on his flight of safety for a further forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb, where he seeks shelter in a cave. Whilst seeking refuge in the cave, God’s voice was heard by Elijah, “What are you doing here Elijah?” asked God

Elijah replied:

God said:

Cool, a holy fly-by promised. But God, being the prankster he is, sent a tornado, then an earthquake, followed by a fire. God was not in any of those natural occurring events and at the conclusion of the rumbling and flames, and in complete paradox to the preceding phenomena God spoke again in a wee small voice, telling Elijah to return to Damascus with the orders to anoint Hazael as king of Syria and Jehu as king of Israel, whilst he (Elijah) himself is to be replaced by Elisha.

Elijah has no difficulty in finding his new attendant, Elisha, locating him in his field ploughing with twenty four oxen. Elijah informs Alisha that he has been assigned a mission from God and the pair set out to fulfill their heavenly master’s orders.

Meanwhile, Ben-Hadad, king of Aram, planned an attack on Israel, warning that he will kill all men, women and children of Israel if they did not surrender. The Aram king gave three such warnings, before mobilizing his vast army in readiness to launch Operation Rolling Thunder V1, but God sent down a messenger to pass on a telegram from his heavenly holiness to the king of Israel, Ahab. God’s telegram read:

Ahab summoned 7,000 of his best soldiers and sprung a surprise attack on the Arameans whilst they drank booze in their tents on the eve of their would-be attack on Israel. The Arameans suffered huge losses and fled on horseback into the night.

The prophet returned to visit Ahab, the Israelite King and passed on another warning from God:

King Ben-Hadad of the Arameans, evolved a new strategy to expose what he believed to be the Israelite weakness, that weakness being that the Jewish God only had power to assist the Israelites if they fought on the hills. The prophet passed on this vital piece of military intelligence to Ahab, saying:

For the next seven days, the opposing armies camped opposite each other before throwing their full military might at one another. God, true to his word, this time, ensured that the Israelites ran up a huge total on the scoreboard, inflicting more than 100,000 dead Arameans on day one of the battle. A fair effort considering the Israelite army only totalled a mere 7,000!

King Ben-Hadad is taken prisoner-of-war by Ahab and begs for his mercy. In a plea for self-preservation, he offers Ahab a treaty that meant that Israelites could have access to the commercial districts of Damascus to sell their goods, if his life be spared. Ahab signs the surrender treaty and allows Ben-Hadab to walk away a free-man.

Well, God wasn’t happy with this pact between the two rival kings and dished out one of his all too familiar unforgiving death sentences, with further implication for the Israelites sometime in the near future:

This is God’s reward for forgiveness, clemency and mercy? The punishment of death!

For the moment anyway, Ahab is placed on figurative death row and continues to reign over Israel. But Elijah encounters Ahab again, after Ahab had acquired a blue chip piece of real estate, a vineyard, by murder.

Ahab’s villainous plot required the conspiring of his wife Jezebel, who writes to the owner of the vineyard, Naboth of Jezreel. But Naboth refuses to sell the vineyard on the basis that God had told him not to sell his land. That pesky God even works hard to put commercial deals to death.

Ahab becomes disillusioned that he will not get to own the piece of property he so deeply desired and spends the next seven days sulking in his bedroom, even refusing to eat. But the feisty Jezebel writes to all of the town’s elders and priests, using Ahab’s letterhead and forged signature. Her letter claims that Naboth had committed a great number of sins and crimes, all of which were false accusations. But the town elders believe the claims and have poor old Naboth stoned to death, thus enabling her husband, Ahab, to acquire his dream property without hindrance.

God calls on his prophet Elijah to confront Ahab with a question and a simultaneous prophecy:

Elijah then adds some of his own venom to God’s decree and via his own accord he adds that not only will his entire kingdom reject his authority, but that his wife, Jezebel, will be eaten by dogs by the gates of Jezreel. Ahab drops to his knees in cold sweated fear and pleads for forgiveness and offers his penance. God, with a softening heart, decides to spare Ahab, but keeps the death option open for his wife and son, Ahaziah.

Ahab continued as king of Israel, but in a third battle against the Arameans, Ahab was struck between the protective shields of his armor by an arrow wielding marksman and died on the battlefield as a result of his wounds. His was brought back to Samaria, where he was dressed for burial and just as God had prophesized, dogs licked up his blood that had fallen from his .

Kings 1 Count: 1,000

The town of Baasha was destroyed by God = 1,000.

Cumulative Count: 31,749,532

Andrew Young

With Ahab’s son, Ahaziah, in Israel’s throne, his first act as new commander-in-chief was to send out a small platoon to hunt and kill the prophet Elijah. Ahaziah ‘misunderestimated’, to borrow President G.W. Bush phraseology, God’s role and power in assisting Elijah. As such, Elijah called down from heaven two fireballs to incinerate the first of two patrols. When the third patrol locates Elijah, the prophet agrees to meet with Ahaziah, where he gave his prophecy in person:

And just as prophesized, King Ahaziah went to bed and never woke up. And because Ahaziah had no son, Joram became the new king of Israel in the second year of Jehoram’s reign over Judah.

The story of Elijah’s ascension to heaven is interesting in so far as it is unique for several reasons. Firstly, this is the first time in the Bible that tells of a prophet’s rise into heaven, as Moses, Abraham and all those after them died like mortal men and were buried as mere mortals. However, Elijah who had appeared on the Biblical scene with little or no fanfare, his background unknown, is elevated to the sky above in quite a miraculous fashion. With Elijah and his lieutenant Elisha by his side, the two approached the river Jordan. Yes, get ready for another of water parting. Like Moses with his staff, Elijah strikes the water with his mantle and the river divides allowing both men safe passage to the other side. Once on dry ground again, a chariot and horses on fire appear before Elijah. Elijah casually steps aboard and is whisked away into heaven in a whirlwind. As Elijah takes his horse flight to join God, his mantle falls to the ground for Elisha to pick up.

There is some fantastic comedy within this passage of the Bible, as it attempts to tell of the mythical biography of the prophet Elisha. His first achievement was to convert polluted drinking water, which was killing the crops of a local town, into a crystal clear drinkable solution, by throwing a pinch of salt over his shoulder into a nearby waterhole. And then as he was walking along the road to the town of Bethel, a bunch of rebellious teenagers came running up to Elisha and jeered him with the following hysterical taunts:

Elisha with his feelings hurt, called on God for some tender loving care and with that, two grizzly bears emerged suddenly from out of the woods and mauled the forty-two youths to death. I guess Elisha was the first person to ever have the right to bear arms. Sorry.

Surely a warning to all others that you put your life in your own hands in humming the tune of the Advanced Hair commercial to any bald-headed blokes that frequent your pub.

Mesha the king of Moab had a contract to supply the king of Israel with one hundred thousand lambs and with the wool of one hundred thousand rams, but after Ahab had died and had been succeeded by Joram as the new king of Israel, Mesha refused to honor the terms and conditions and thus rebelled against Israel. The king of Israel, on war footing, called on Jehoshaphat the king of Judah for his support and the formation of a new Jew alliance. Jehosphaphat replied obligingly: