Reign of Nadab -- his murder by Baasha -- war between Judah and Israel -- Baasha's alliance with Syria --

Asa gains over Ben-Hadad -- prophetic message to Asa -- resentment of the king -- Asa's religious

decline -- death of Asa, death of Baasha, reign of Elah -- his murder by Zimri -- Omri dethrones Zimri --

war between Omri and Tibni -- rebuilding of Samaria.

1 KINGS 15:16-16:28; 2 CHRONICLES 16

WHILE these things were going on in Judah, the judgment, which the LORD had, through Ahijah,

pronounced upon Jeroboam and his house, was rapidly preparing. After an apparently uneventful reign of

only two years, Nadab, the son and successor of Jeroboam, was murdered while engaged in the siege of

Gibbethon (the Gabatha and Gabothane of Josephus). This border-city, on the edge of the plain of

Es draelon (not many miles southwest of Nazareth, and originally in the possession of Dan, Joshua 19:44),

must have been of great importance as a defense against incursions from the west - to judge from the

circumstance that not only Nadab but his successors sought, although in vain, to wrest it from the

Philistines (comp. 1 Kings 16:15). No other event in the reign of Nadab is recorded.

"He walked in the way of his father, and in his sin," and sudden destruction overtook him. Baasha -

probably the leader of a military revolution - murdered him, and usurped his throne. The first measure of the

new king was, in true Oriental fashion, to kill the whole family of his predecessor. Although the judgment of

God upon Jeroboam and his house, as announced by the prophet, was thus fulfilled, it must not for a

moment be thought that the foul deed of Baasha was thereby lessened in guilt. On the contrary, Holy

Scripture expressly marks this crime as one of the grounds of Baasha's later judgments (1 Kings 16:7). It is

perhaps not easy, and yet it is of supreme importance for the understanding of the Old Testament, to

distinguish in these events the action of man from the overruling direction of God. Thus when, after his

accession, the prophet Jehu, the son of Hanani,262 was commissioned to denounce the sin, and to announce

the judgment of Baasha, these two points were clearly put forward in his message. The sin of Baasha in the

murder of Jeroboam's house, and the fact that his exaltation was due to the LORD (1 Kings 16:7; comp . ver.

Baasha had sprung from a tribe wholly undistinguished by warlike achievements,264 and from a family

apparently ignoble and unknown (1 Kings 16:2). His only claim to the crown lay in his military prowess,

which the neighboring kingdom of Judah was soon to experience.

Under his reign the state of chronic warfare between the two countries once more changed into one of

active hostility. From the concordant accounts in the Books of Kings and Chronicles (1 Kings 15:16-22; 2

Chronicles 16:1-6), we gather what was Baasha's object in this war, and what his preparations for it had

been. It seems, that Asa's father, Ahijah, had formed an alliance with the rising power of Syria under

Tabrimon ("good is Rimmon"),265 with the view of holding Israel in check by placing it between two enemies

- Syria in the north and Judah in the south.

This "league" was, as we infer, discontinued by Asa during the earlier part of his reign, when his confidence

was more entirely placed in Jehovah his God. In these circumstances Baasha eagerly sought and entered

upon an alliance with Syria. His primary object was to arrest the migration of Israelites into the kingdom of

Judah, and the growing influence of Asa upon his own subjects, consequent, as we know, upon his great

religious reformation (1 Kings 15:17). His secondary object was so to overawe Jerusalem, as virtually to

paralyze the power of Judah. The invasion was at first successful, and Baasha penetrated as far as Ramah,

about midway between Bethel and Jerusalem, thus obtaining command of the two roads which led from the

north and the east to the Jewish capital. This, of course, implied not only the re -conques t of the towns

which Abijah had taken from Israel (2 Chronicles 13:19; comp. also 15:8), but the complete isolation and

domination of Jerusalem. Ramah was to be immediately converted into a strong fortress.