Elisha and the partially fulfilled prophecy of 2 Kings 3

[tyndale]

Was thinking about this the other day. When Elisha prophecies that the Moabites will be given into the hands of the Israelites.

If you read the passage, it says that the Israelites were beating the Moabites and nearing a complete victory, and then it says:

When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him 700 swordsmen to break through, opposite the king of Edom, but they could not. Then he took his oldest son who was to reign in his place and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. And there came great wrath against Israel. And they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.

What is the theological explanation for this? It was bothering me a bit. Thanks.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Regardless of the specific meaning of those verses, it is abundantly clear that the word of the prophet (vv18-19) was fulfilled. The Moabites were routed, they were delivered into the hands of Israel's, Judah's, and Edom's armies.

The most curious words in the final v. are these: "and there came great wrath upon Israel...," which is followed by the report that the combatants returned to their own land(s).

What is the nature of this description? We have other examples of this kind of speech elsewhere, e.g.,
2Chr.24:18, "And they left the house of the LORD God of their fathers, and served groves and idols: and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this their trespass."

Zech.7:12, "Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the LORD of hosts."

Num.1:53, "But the Levites shall pitch round about the tabernacle of testimony, that there be no wrath upon the congregation of the children of Israel: and the Levites shall keep the charge of the tabernacle of testimony."

It seems that typically, this kind of language in the Bible implies that the object of the sentence receives (or is threatened) the wrath, frequently from God or his agents as subject.



Perhaps this text offers a helpful parallel, Josh.22:20, "Did not Achan the son of Zerah commit a trespass in the accursed thing, and wrath fell on all the congregation of Israel? and that man perished not alone in his iniquity."

From this text, which refers to an earlier event, we have a background of prophesied success (Ai was expected to fall, as was Moab in 2Ki.3); we have a sin (Achan's theft; compare with the king of Moab's human sacrifice); and the report that wrath came upon Israel.


I won't say this is the definite true conclusion, but I think it is reasonable to infer that in the case of 2Ki.3, the attacking armies (a punitive expedition, and a coalition led by the idolatrous king of Israel) simply felt sick and dread--which are ordinary effects of the wrath of God--at the appalling extreme to which the formerly-vassal Moabite king went in resisting the sovereignty of Israel's king.

Dt.18:10 seems to expressly forbid anything like the human sacrifice that took place on the wall. Such an act was a horror--not one that invoked either God's wrath on Israel/Judah/Edom, or the wrath of demons that answered Moab's desperate sale of it's soul, its future, in return for a deliverance. No such measure would have any effect on the holy strength of an expedition founded on faith and the justice of Jehovah.

Elijah has been willing to speak to them, to give them a divine word, only for the sake of the earnest (but frequently naive) Jehoshaphat. Perhaps Jehoshaphat was the first to question what he and his men were now doing here in this foreign land, at the bidding of Jehoram. Was it a righteous cause that led this coalition to push the king of Moab to this hideous resistance? What sort of reaction were the Edomites having? Were they now ready to pack up and go home, unwilling to test the battlefield for another day? Perhaps the cost of a total annihilation of Moab would be a bridge-too-far?

I suggest that a sense of dread (of wrath, whether true or false) overtook the coalition which made pursuit of the course of war any further undesirable. What objectives had been gained? Nothing, so far as we can see. Only the ruin of a poor land's remaining productivity, which had already reneged on tribute due to Israel (the northern tribes). God really wasn't leading this fight, howbeit his prophet spoke a word of success for them.

 

[SolaScriptura]

So Bruce, if I understand your interpretation correctly, what happened there was similar to what happened in 1462 when Mehmed II and his army of invading Ottomans turned back from their attempted conquest of Vlad the Impaler's capital in mortified disgust when they beheld the 20,000 impaled corpses lining the road?

 

[Peairtach]

We've to thank "Count Dracula" that Europe wasn't swamped by Musselmen!

 

[tyndale]

Rev Buchanan: I do appreciate your explanation and it's well thought out. I agree that an immediate demonic response from the sacrifice of a human, does not hold anything to the Almighty God....

Trying to see how to correlate this to the Mesha Stone, which could be (and probably is) a gross self-exalting exaggeration of how King Mesha was able to "overthrow" the northern kingdom and remove itself from vassal status.