It’s one thing to defeat the big, bad foe on the battlefield, quite another to vanquish the idol inside.
We’re introduced at the beginning of 2 Kings 13 to another time link in history’s chain. Earlier we read that “by the twenty-third year of King Jehoash,…the priests had not repaired the damages of the temple” (12:6), and so Jehoash was stirred to holy action. Now we read, “In the twenty-third year of J[eh]oash the son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, Jehoahaz the son of Jehu became king over Israel in Samaria, and reigned seventeen years” (13:1). Jehu, his father, had “a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge” (Rom 10:2), as Paul wrote in another context. Not so Jehoahaz. “He did evil in the sight of the Lord” (2 Ki 13:2). In discipline, the Lord sent Hazael of Syria to chasten Israel. But unlike Jehoash of Judah, who trusted in the arm of his own flesh when Hazael showed up at his gate, “Jehoahaz pleaded with the Lord, and the Lord listened to him…Then the Lord gave Israel a deliverer, so that they escaped from under the hand of the Syrians” (vv 4-5). But this is like Judges redux. Externally the people were delivered from a marauding army, but internally they remained enslaved to their idols (see v 6). How solemn a warning to us today! It’s possible to appear to be victorious externally, but still captive to idols in the heart. As a reminder of their vulnerability and so their dependence on the Lord to deliver them, their army was greatly diminished, as it was in the days of Gideon. Like the dust on the threshing floor after the harvest is gathered in, “He left off the army of Jehoahaz only fifty horsemen, ten chariots, and ten thousand foot soldiers” (v 7). Showing up to battle with that would either be a joke leading to disaster or Jehovah leading to victory. How thrilling to remember when we feel outnumbered: you plus God are always a majority.