Christ in 2 Kings

Second Kings 1 turns on a single question, and the question is about where a man looks when his life is failing. Ahaziah has fallen and lies hurt, and with the God of Israel within reach he sends instead to enquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron - darash , to seek, to consult - and the angel of the LORD meets the errand head-on through Elijah: Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to enquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron? (v. 3). It is the folly of se…

Christ Connection - The Ascension and the Outpouring

The image of Elijah taken up in a whirlwind prefigures the Ascension of Christ. In Acts 1:9, the disciples watch Jesus ascend into heaven. And in Acts 2, after the Ascension, the Spirit is poured out at Pentecost. The prophetic mantle passes from Christ to His Church. What the disciples do after the Ascension - what Peter does at the gates of the Temple, what Stephen does before his martyrdom, what the apostles do in healing and preaching - is all done in the name of Jesus…

Second Kings 3 is a story of water given in a deathly wilderness by the bare word of the LORD - without wind, without rain, beyond every natural means - and it leans the whole way toward the One who gives the water that ends all thirst. Three kings march against Moab and find, after seven days, that there is no water for the host or the cattle, and the faithless king of Israel can only accuse: Alas! that the LORD hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into…

Christ Connection - The One Who Multiplies Bread

Jesus would feed five thousand with five loaves and two fishes (Matthew 14:13-21) and four thousand with seven loaves and a few small fishes (Matthew 15:32-39). Both miracles directly echo this moment in 2 Kings: a small offering of bread is placed in the hands of God’s servant, and it becomes abundance for the multitude. But whereas Elisha gives bread to the hungry, Jesus calls Himself the True Bread from heaven (John 6:35, 51). He is not merely the one who multiplies bre…

Christ Connection - The Healing of the Outsider

Christ himself points to Naaman in His first sermon at Nazareth. "Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; none was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian" (Luke 4:27). Why does Christ mention this story? Because Naaman is a Gentile - an outsider, an enemy even - and yet he is healed. He receives what Israel could not. The passage foreshadows the scandal of the Gospel: that grace comes to those outside the covenant, that the Gentiles will be welcomed, tha…

Christ Connection - Opening Blind Eyes

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus opens the eyes of the blind. A man born blind, a man struck blind on the Damascus road, a woman bent double who cannot lift her gaze to heaven - all are healed. But the deepest blindness is spiritual: the inability to see the kingdom of God, the realm where God is present and acting. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). When Christ opens our eyes, He reveals what has always been true but invisible to us: that…

Christ Connection - The Gospel Through the Despised

Paul writes: "Not many of you were wise by worldly standards; not many were powerful; not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong... so that no one might boast in the presence of God" (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). The four lepers - cast out, diseased, the very definition of the despised - are the ones through whom the city learns the good news. They are the witnesses. They ar…

Second Kings 8 looks at first like four loose fragments - a widow’s lawsuit, a foreign king’s murder, two failing kings of Judah - but a single thread runs under all of it: the providence of a God who keeps His word. The Shunammite woman, whose son Elisha had raised from death, returns from a seven-year famine to find her land lost, and comes to plead before the king at the very instant Gehazi is recounting how he had restored a dead body to life ; she walks in as living p…

The engine of 2 Kings 9 is a single phrase that closes it: This is the word of the LORD, which he spake by his servant Elijah the Tishbite (v. 36). Years before, after Ahab and Jezebel took Naboth’s vineyard by judicial murder, Elijah had pronounced a doom that named both the place and the manner of the reckoning - In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel (1 Kings 21). Now that word comes true to the very ground and the very fate God had named: Joram f…

Christ & the True Expulsion of Idols

When Christ came to the temple in Jerusalem, He found merchants and moneychangers turning the house of His Father into a marketplace. He overturned their tables with the words: "It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves" (Matt. 21:13). Yet Christ’s method was not Jehu’s. He did not set a trap. He did not deceive. He simply spoke the truth and acted in authority. When He faced the principalities of darkness, He defeate…

Christ Connection - The Hidden King Who Emerges

In this chapter, we see a pattern that echoes through Scripture and culminates in Christ. The heir to the throne is hunted. He is hidden away. He is protected in secret by the faithful remnant. He grows in hiddenness. And in God’s appointed time, he is revealed and crowned. This is the pattern of Jesus. He came as a child, hidden in Egypt, protected from Herod’s sword. He grew "in wisdom and stature" (Luke 2:52), hidden from the notice of the world. And at His baptism and…

The heart of 2 Kings 12 is a house of the LORD fallen into disrepair and the long-deferred work of restoring it - the breaches of the temple stand unrepaired for twenty-three years until a chest is set beside the altar and the people’s gifts pour in and the work is finally done. That zeal for the LORD’s house, awakened so late and so slowly here, the Gospel shows fully alive in One of whom His disciples remembered the word, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up (John 2:…

2 Kings 13 lays out a half-hearted faith and the half-measure of deliverance it receives, and the whole scene becomes a mirror the New Testament holds up to every believer. The dying Elisha lays his hands on the king’s hands and bids him shoot - The arrow of the LORD’s deliverance (v. 17) - then tells him to strike the ground with the arrows; but the king smites thrice, and stayed (v. 18), and the prophet grieves: thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst t…

Christ Connection - The King Who Bears Our Sins

Amaziah is captured and humiliated. He has lost his army, his city’s defenses, his treasures, his hostages. He bears the full weight of his pride. But the true King bears what we cannot bear. When Christ comes, He comes not to defend Himself, not to assert His strength, but to bear the weight of the world’s sin. Unlike Amaziah, who falls because he tried to bear his own burden, Christ stands because He bears the burden of all. He does not flee. He does not hide. He walks t…

Christ Connection - The True Priest and King

Azariah presumed on an office that was not his. He tried to do the work of a priest without being called to it. Jesus, by contrast, is both King and Priest - called by God, anointed with the Spirit, authorized by heaven to do what no other can do. Hebrews 5:4-5 speaks directly to this: "And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art m…

Christ Connection - Immanuel, God with Us

In the very moment when Ahaz refuses to trust God, when he sends tribute to Assyria, when he is about to build a pagan altar in the temple, the prophet Isaiah is sent to him with an offer. "Ask thee a sign," Isaiah says. But Ahaz refuses. "I will not ask." And the Lord says: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14). Immanuel - God with us. In the midst of Ahaz’s faith…

Second Kings 17 is the obituary of the northern kingdom, and it is written with unusual care, because the narrator pauses the story to explain the reason for the ruin. Samaria falls and the king of Assyria… carried Israel away into Assyria (v. 6); and then comes the long accounting: For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God… (v. 7). At the heart of that accounting stands the LORD’s own long patience: Yet the LORD testifi…

Christ Connection - The King Whose Trust Never Wavered

Hezekiah is tested and nearly fails - paying tribute, compromising his own sanctified temple, nearly losing faith. But Christ - the greater King, the Messiah - faces mockery of a different order. At the cross itself, the rulers jeer: "He saved others; himself he cannot save." The suggestion is the same as Rabshakeh’s: "Your faith is delusion; the evidence proves it." Yet Christ’s trust in the Father is absolute and unshaken even in death. "Father, into thy hands I commend…

Christ Connection - The One Prayer That Always Reaches the Father

Hezekiah’s prayer is a model of the prayer that reaches the heart of God: a prayer that appeals not to personal safety or political advantage, but to the honor of God’s name. In Hebrews 7:25, we read of Christ that He "ever liveth to make intercession for us" - His prayer, His petition before the Father, never fails. Like Hezekiah spreading the letter before the Lord, Christ brings before the Father every accusation against the name of God, every reproach spoken against Hi…

Christ Connection - The Third Day and the Master of Time

Hezekiah is promised healing and is told he will go up to the house of the Lord "the third day." This echoes a greater pattern: Christ, after His crucifixion, rose on "the third day" (1 Corinthians 15:4), ascending to the Father’s house, the true temple not made with hands. Both are delivered from death on the third day. But more: Christ later tells His disciples, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Matthew 28:18). The one who commands the shadow to revers…

Christ Connection - The Innocent Blood Shed For Us

Manasseh sheds innocent blood and fills a city with death. Centuries later, another city will fill with innocent blood - that of the Righteous One, sinless and holy, who will be executed by those He came to save. Yet there is a radical inversion here: where Manasseh’s blood-shedding brings judgment and separation, Christ’s blood brings redemption and reconciliation. The innocent blood shed by and for the guiltiest of kings becomes the basis of their restoration. Manasseh,…

Christ Connection - The King With the Tender Heart

Josiah’s tender heart - capable of being broken by the Word, moved to tears, humbled before God - prefigures the heart of Jesus. "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls" (Matthew 11:28-29). Christ is meek, lowly, tender - not weak, but strong enough to be vulnerable. A king who weeps over the city that will reject him;…

Christ Connection - The Word That Does Not Return Void

The prophecy spoken in 1 Kings 13 is fulfilled exactly, across more than three hundred years. The man of God speaks; the word waits; and in God’s time, a king named Josiah steps forward and does precisely what was foretold. This pattern echoes throughout Scripture: "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I please" (Isaiah 55:11). Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of this principle - every…

Christ Connection - The King Exiled for Our Sake

Jehoiachin goes into exile at eighteen years old, carrying with him the weight of his nation’s sins. He has done evil, yes, but the judgment that falls upon him is heavier than his personal sin warrants - it is the accumulated weight of the nation’s rebellion. This pattern echoes in the New Testament when the sinless King bears the sin of the world. Jesus is taken from His own people and exiled, in a sense, to a cross outside the city - "outside the gate" (Hebrews 13:12),…

The last chapter of Kings is the catastrophe the prophets had foretold for generations, arriving at last in fire. Nebuchadnezzar’s siege starves the city; the wall is breached; they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah (v. 7); the captain of the guard burnt the house of the LORD, and the king’s house (v. 9), broke down the walls, and carried the people into exile, until the narrator pronounces the verdict in a single line: So Judah wa…