Second Chronicles 35:20-26 adds a footnote  to the terse account of Josiah’s defeat in II Kings 23:

After all this, when Josiah had set the temple in order, Neco of Egypt went up to fight at Carcemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah went out to meet him in battle. But Neco sent messengers to him, saying, “What quarrel is there between you and me, O King of Judag? It is not you I am attacking at this time, but the house with which I am at war. God has told me to hurry; so stop opposing God, who is with me, or he will destoy you.”

Josiah, however, would not turn away from him, but disguised himself to engage him in battle. He would not listen to what Neco had said at God’s command but went to fight him on the plain of Megiddo.

Archers shot King Josiah, and he told his officers, “Take me away; I am badly wounded.” So they took him out of his chariot, put him in the other chariot that he had and brought him to Jerusalem, where he died.

Did Josiah suffer defeat for opposing God?

That appears to be an open question, considering Josiah’s piety and Neco’s arrogance in claiming to speak for God. Neco lied, and the last of the Assyrians, weakened as they were, soundly defeated Neco in  battle at Carcemish. Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon subsequently demolished the Assyrians and set about appropriating their former dominions, including Judah.

Devout as Josiah was, I would like to think that he followed Hezekiah’s example in consulting God about what to do about the Egyptians. Considering his family history, it’s not improbable that he acted in haste and vanity.

Josiah certainly knew Neco lied. Perhaps Josiah recognized God’s hand in the downfall of the Assyrians brief rise of the Babylonian Empire and hoped to ally himself with them. However, he simply lacked the means and tactical skill to fight the Egyptians on their own terms and would have been better advised to use guerilla tactics in the hill country as opportunities arose.

Whatever the case, Josiah’s defeat at Megiido broght about the occupation and eventual obliteration of Jerusalem and Judah.

Josiah’s batlle was not the last to be fought on the plains of Megiddo, but it and earlier battles provided the prototype for later prophecies of a final day of reckoning in a climactic battle at Armageddon.

Jeremiah composed laments for Josiah, … These became a tradition in Israel …

Judah’s King Josiah (641 -609 BC) was a godly man whom 2 Kings 23:25 rates as Judah’s finest king.

Josiah inherited the throne at the age of 8 after the murder of his father, Amon. At the age of twenty, Josiah began asserting himself as ruler and initiated  religious reforms in Judah and even parts of Israel.  He benefited from the ministries of the prophetess Huldah and the prophets Zephaniah and Jeremiah. Josiah and Jeremiah were born about the same time, though Scripture does not record that the two ever met.

The Assyrian Empire, which had destroyed Israel, ravaged Judah during the reigns of Hezekiah and Manasseh, and subdued Egypt, fell into internal turmoil about two years after Josiah began his reforms and one year after Jeremiah answered God’s call to the prophetic ministry. The Empire fell apart when Nabopolassar freed Babylonia and Cimmerian and Scythian hordes stormed into the western portion of the empire. The Babylonians took the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, in 612 BC,  fulfilling the  prophecies of Zephaniah and Nahum.

Josiah’s reforms spared Judah from Assyria’s fate, however, and the power vacuum following the downfall of Assyria gave Judah a respite and a brief interlude of prosperity and freedom from paying tribute. Josiah began to take control of the former territory of Israel and may have had ambitions of building a new United Kingdom of Israel and Judah.

The power vacuum did not last long enough. Nabopolassar began to take control of the remnants of the Assyrian Empire and its former tributaries. Egypt had thrown off the Assyrian yoke within twenty years. Pharaoh Psammetichus I (Psamtik) rebuilt Egypt’s army and fleet. His son,Pharaoh Neco (609-593 BC), dispatched ships to circumnavigate Africa and set about reclaiming Egypt’s former territories in Palestine and Syria ahead of the Babylonians. His fleet landed troops at Gaza in Philistia, where Neco assembled a large army and proceeded to lead them north along the ancient coastal warpath, the Highway of the Sea.

Against the advice of his counselors, King Josiah decided to block Neco’s “peaceful” passage though the pass of Megiddo. The Egyptians overwhelmed Josiah’s force. Wounded in action, Josiah died in Jerusalem.

With Josiah’s death, the independence of Judah ended and it became a vassal first of Egypt and then, in 605 BC, of Babylonia until Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest and destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

King Ahab of Israel humbled himself in response to God’s judgment against him and his family following his appropriation of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 22).

Ahab’s elder son Ahaziah succeeded him but died two years later after falling through the lattice of an upper room of his palace in Samaria.  Whether Ahaziah’s fall was a true accident or not, 2 Kings 1 does not say, and further speculation belongs to the realm of fiction.

Ahab’s younger son Joram inherited Ahaziah’s place and his father’s enemies, notably Ben-Hadad and then Hazael, kings of Aram (Syria).  Joram and the king of Judah joined forces to attack Hazael at Ramoth Gilead, possibly on the same battle ground where Ahab died in action (1 Kings 22:29-40). When the Arameans wounded Joram, he returned to his palace at Jezreel to recover (2 Kings 8:28-29).  King Ahaziah of Judah followed Joram while the armies of Judah and Israel stayed behind to defend Ramoth Gilead.

The prophet Elisha, Elijah’s successor, chose this opportunity to send a younger prophet to anoint the Israelite commander, Jehu, king over Israel in Joram’s place. Once anointed, Jehu wasted no time in leading his troops to Jezreel to carry out Elisha’s command to wipe outAhab’s family,  Joram went to meet him, accompanied by Ahaziah of Judah, each in his own chariot,

The three met at the plot of ground that had belonged to Naboth the Jeszreelite.

When Joram saw Jehu, he asked, “Have you come in peace, Jehu?”

“How can there be peace,” Jehu replied, “as long as all the idolatry and witchcraft of your mother Jezebel abound?”

Joram turned about and fled, calling out to Ahaziah, “Treachery, Ahaziah!”

Then Joram drew his bow and shot Joram between the shoulders. The arrow pierced his heart and he slumped down in his chariot.

Jehu said to Bidkar, his chariot officer, “Pick him up and throw him on the field that belonged to Naboth the Jezreelite. …”

Amaziah of Judah fled west, pursued by Jehu and his men.

They wounded him in his chariot on the way up to Ibleam, but he escaped to Megiddo and died there.

Jehu meanwhile returned to Jezreel to dispose of Jezebel. He ordered her servants to throw her out of her palace window. Horses trampled her underfoot and dogs devoured her remains, leaving nothing but a skull, hands and feet.

For Joram and Jehu, as Jehu said, their grisly deaths came about according the the word of the Lord that he spoke through his servant Elijah the Tishbite.

The ancient battle ground of the plain of Meggido thus became a place of reckoning–a place where injustice and evil meet final defeat,  The deaths of Joram, and Jezebel anticipate the outcome of the final battle at Armageddon.

Taste and see that the LORD is good;
blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
– Psalm 34:8 (NIV)

Psychologists tell us that fragrances arouse deep emotions in the olfactory regions of our brains. The smells of Christmas cooking made a believer out of me at an early age—in the Dickensian style of Christmas. The way to a small boy’s heart and soul leads through his nose to his stomach, and I became a devotee of traditional English Christmas fare.

Belief in Jesus Christ was different. Our parents never took us to church. They had forsaken their upbringing in Christian homes that were too devout for my mother’s liking. They called the Nativity accounts in the gospels fairy tales.

That life lasted until I visited a church on my own at the age of nineteen. Discovering the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God weaned me from my allegiance to the secular Christmas and replaced it with commitment to the Christ of Christmas.

Christmas without Christ amounts to a commercial winter festival that invites overindulgence. I could not bear the emptiness of life without Jesus Christ and the blessings he brings throughout the year.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for opening my eyes to the light of your salvation. Amen

Thought for the Day
Seek the blessings of life in Christ rather thanReflection
the cultural attractions of religious holidays.

Prayer Focus: WORKERS WHO MUST GIVE UP THEIR HOLIDAYS TO GET BY

The farming village of Shunem sat on the west end of the Hill of Moreh, south of Mt. Tabor and within the plain of Jezreel,  the scenes of Israel’s early battles with Canaanites, Midianites and Philistines.

Shunem became the scene of a very different battle during the ministry of the prophet Elisha. Second Kings 4:8-37 relates this charming interlude in Elisha’s turbulent career.

The prophet’s activities regularly took him through Shunem on his way to Mt Carmel. A wealthy woman of the village showed the prophet such gracious hospitality that he felt moved to ask how he could show his gratitude. On learning that the woman and her husband had no son, Elisha called for the woman and said,  “At this season, when the time comes round,  you shall embrace a son.”

Elisha went about his affairs and the Shunammite gave birth to her son the next spring– God’s gift of a new life in the season of new life. The little family celebrated a victory over the shame of barrenness, and all went well until the first year the boy was old enough (maybe seven years) to to into the fields to help his family with the harvest.

Heat exhaustion or sunstroke overcomes the lad, however, and he dies in his mother’s arms.

Not one to surrender a God-given gift, the woman lays her son on Elisha’s pallet and asks her husband for a donkey so she could find Elisha. 

Her husband hesitates, because he still has a harvest to gather.

The woman will not abide by his fatalistic acceptance of her loss; she has her way and leaves for Elisha’s retreat at Carmel.

The prophet observes her approach from his vantage point and sends his servant to greet her with the words, “Look, yonder is the Shunammite; run at once to meet her, and say to her, Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband? Is it well with the child?”

The Shunnamite tells him merely, “It is well,” and  hastens to meet the waiting prophet.

Dismounting, she kneels and clasps Elisha’s feet.

The officious servant tries to protect his master from indecency and pushes the Shunammite. Elisha, however, feels her distress although God has not told him about it.

He listens  to her tale, which concludes, “Did I ask my lord for a son? Did I not say, Do not deceive me?”

Tears come to Elisha’s eyes, but he ignores them as he directs the servant to take his staff, run ahead of him to Shunem, and lay the staff of the boy’s face.

He escorts the woman back to Shunem, where his waiting servant reports, “The child has not awaked.”

Either the prophet’s shepherd staff in the hands of an unbeliever has no value or Elisha has no telepathic healing powers. 

Elisha does not hesitate. He goes straight to the roof chamber the Shunammite had built for him, where the boy lies lifeless. He and the Shunammite pray together. Then, closing the door behind him, the prophet stretches himself out over the boy’s body, mouth to his mouth, eyes to his eyes, and hands to his hands.

Some would say that Elisha administered a form of mouth-to-mouth resucitation.  We can recognize elements of that procedure in the biblical account, but here must have been more to Elisha’s ministrations. He and the Shunammite, waiting downstairs, must have continued their silent prayers, for warmth returns to the boys body and then breath–in a fit of sneezing that clears his head and airways of congestion. 

The boy opens his eyes, and Elisha’s voice shakes as he returns the boy to his grateful mother.

We have witnessed  a battle of faith and prayer against forces as virulent as death itself–the human weaknesses of fear, fatalism, disbelief, and failure of trust and faith–forces that evil will exploit until the final battle at Armageddon. That battle will have the same outcome as Elisha’s.

Strengthened by the bread prepared by God’s messenger, Ahab journeyed to Horeb, as instructed.

The Lord appeared to Elijah, as you will find in 1 Kings 19:9-18, Elijah told the Lord why he had fled from Jezebel’s wrath.

You might expect that God would send Elijah right back to Jezreel to confront Jezebel again.

Not a word about the woman. As far as we know, Elijah never met her.

God gave Elijah instructions that would bring his judgment on Ahab and Jezebel. First, God told Elijah to anoint  Hazael as king of Syria in place of Ben-Hadad. Second, Elijah was to anoint Ahab’s successor, and, third, a successor for himself.

The first two appointments seem logical enough, for they lead to Ahab’s eventual defeat and the end of the Omride Dynasty.  But why the third appointment?

I consider it a validation of Elijah’s life and ministry that he was permitted to anoint his successor, Elisha, a man who would follow him for a few more years and have a powerful prophetic witness of his own.

Ben-Hadad and Ahab had no say about their successors.

In any case, Elijah returns to Jezreel a few years later–after the affair of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21:1-16). Only then does God send Elijah back to Jezreel with a message for Ahab:

“‘This is what the LORD says: Have you not murdered a man and seized his property?’ Then say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: In the place where dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, dogs will lick up your blood–yes, yours!’” (1 Kings 21:19).

For good measure, Elijah adds the same sentence for Jezebel (1 Kings 21:19),

God defers Ahab’s sentence after he repents (1 Kings 21:19), but the confrontation with Elijah has humbled him–albeit briefly. Nevertheless, blood soaks the ancient battle ground of Armageddon once more–the blood of Naboth and his sons and then Jezebel’s blood (2 Kings 9:30-36).  Ahab dies in battle at Jabesh Gilead, east of the Jordan, however. The washing of  his blood-soaked chariot occurs at the prostitutes’ pool in Samaria, where dogs licked Ahab’s blood.

Although Elijah’s second confrontation with Ahab lacks the drama of Mount Carmel, it shows us the nature of the emerging struggle between the Lord’s prophets and paganism. Their struggle focuses increasingly on matters of social justice, in which the aristocracy supports Baalism. Throughout, God intercedes for the weak and helpless against their faithless oppressors.

In the moment of his triumph over the pagan prophets at Mount Carmel Elijah has let himself be bluffed out of finishing the war against the disgraced cult of Baal. Jezebel, the Phoenician wife of King Ahab, merely sent a messenger to tell him, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that on one of them.”  Elijah gave in and fled in disgrace.

     Even now, alone and far away in the Negev, beyond Beersheba and beyond the clutches of the queen, Elijah trembles. Fear has chilled his heart and self-pity has sapped his strength. The farther he goes, the more hopeless his plight appears to him. At last he collapses in the scant shade of a spindly broom shrub and sobs, “I have had enough, LORD. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.”

     Elijah has hit rock bottom, as we say.

     Instead of granting his death wish, The Lords sends his messenger to light a fire on that proverbial rock bottom while Elijah sleeps. Thick, dry roots from a dead broom tree heat smooth, flattish stones from the wadi floor to nearly red heat while the messenger grinds wheat and barley between two flat stones, mixes dough with water and a dash of salt and olive oil, and pats the dough into flat loaves. He rakes the fire off the hot stones and lays the loaves on them to bake.

As soon as the first loaf has baked to perfection on both sides, the messenger takes it to Elijah. The aroma of fresh bread is enough to arouse most of us, but Elijah has fallen so sound asleep that the angel has to shake him.

“Rise and eat,” he tells the prophet.

“He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a pitcher of water. He ate and drank and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came again and touched him a second time, saying, ‘Rise and eat; the journey is too much for you.’ He rose and ate and drank and, sustained by this food, he went on for forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.”  – 1 Kings 19:6-8, NEB

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet,” as William Blake wrote. God entered into this equation at Horeb, and the Bible records that greater things were done. The Lord could have granted Elijah his death-wish, for that matter, but it is his way to give us garlands of flowers to replace signs of mourning (Isaiah 61:3). His angels may have ministered to Jesus after in the in much the same manner, but that happened only after his victory over the Tempter. The fact that he sent an angel to minister to Elijah in the depths of his defeat tells us of the depth of God’s concern for his servants. When they do hit rock bottom in spite of everything, he bakes bread on the rock to bring them closer to him on the mountain.

Among God’s servants today, ministers do suffer from an occupational liability to hitting rock bottom in the line of duty. We need not dwell on case histories but we should bear in mind that God has given us a share in the angels’ ministry of bearing up his servants (Psalm 91:11-12).

The apostle Paul wrote to the Christians at Philippi, “Now I have everything I want – in fact I am rich. Yes, I am quite content, thanks to your gifts received through Epaphroditus. Your generosity is like a lovely fragrance, a sacrifice that pleases the very heart of God” (Philippians 4:18, Phillips).

The fragrance of that generosity may very well have resembled the aroma of freshly baked bread, surely one of the most irresistible fragrances on earth.

We left Elijah the gates of King Ahab’s palace at Jezreel, which is within the ancient battleground  called Armageddon in the Book of Revelation.

But Ahab has a wife, Queen Jezebel, waiting for him, refreshments, and a warm dry bed.

Elijah has no friends here, especially after the slaughter of the 850 royal priests at Carmel.  Wet, muddy, and chilled, Elijah is in no shape for his next confrontation — a battle of wills with Jezebel, the brains behind King Ahab.

The queen is furious–as much with Elijah as with Ahab for letting Elijah get the better of him and her prophets, servants of the Phoenician god Baal-Melqart. She could have sent an underling to assassinate Elijah and dispose of his remains before daylight. Instead, she chooses to torment her victim while she prepares an exquisite public humiliation for him

Jezebel sends a messenger to the bedraggled prophet waiting outside Ahab’s palace: “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like one of them.”

Shivering and feverish, Elijah, knows all about Jezebel’s cruelty and the Phoenician practices of human sacrifice. He runs for his life. His fear drives him south, all the way through Israel and Judah. He does not pause to look behind him until he reaches the Negev — the wilderness south of Beersheba.

Jezebel has won her first battle with Elijah. God has not forsaken him, however. He has rescued runaways before and knows how to make something of them.

Just wait and see!

The prophet Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal and Asherah at Mount Carmel ends below in the Kishon Valley. The Kishon (during the rainy season) flows west below the north face of Mt Carmel and within the plain of Esdraelon, the west sector of the ancient battleground of Armageddon.

While Elijah’s confrontation was not a battle in the military sense, his struggle was a battle against 850 false prophets backed by Israel’s King Ahab and his harpy of a queen, the infamous Jezebel.

The struggle came about after three years of drought and famine, which Ahab blamed on Elijah, who replied that Ahab’s idolatry had brought on the drought; He challenged the king to bring his heathen prophets to Mount Carmel.

1 Kings 18:16-45 tells the story of Elijah’s struggle and how the Lord fought for him. It ends in total victory:

“Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench” (verse 38).

The onlookers, people summoned from all over Israel, fell on their faces at beholding the impotence of the false prophets and cried, “The LORD–he is God! The LORD–he is God” (verse 39). Elijah turned the false prophets over to the onlookers and ordered them to take the impostors and slaughter every one in the Kishon Valley.

The narrative does not pinpoint the location of Elijah’s struggle. However, it was just far enough inland from the Great Sea and the peak of Carmel that intervening trees and elevations to be out of Elijah’s sight at the high point where he went to pray for rain. He had to send his servant seven times for a weather report The seventh time, the servant reported the first signs of a rising storm.

As Elijah’s servant went down to warn Ahab of the coming storm, the wind rose and the sky behind him grew black with clouds. Ahab fled east to Jezreel as a blinding rain broke upon him. The rain and mud mired his chariot and frightened his horses, however, while Elijah outran him all the way, about 16 miles, to Ahab’s country palace in Jezreel, close to the the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite (1 Kings 21).

The biblical narrative does not describe Ahab’s reaction at seeing the prophet waiting for him. God has defeated Ahab’s prophets and humiliated him with a storm that was supposed to be under the control of Baal, lord of storms, and now Elijah has outclassed him. Who knows what excuses Ahab makes to Jezebel? Yet 1 Kings 19 records Jezebel’s anger and its effect on Elijah. But that’s another story about Armageddon for another day.

A magnitude 7.2 tremor devastated the Turkish city of Ercis on October 23, 2011. The casualty figure is approaching 250 souls at this time.

Ercis is located in eastern Turkey in the district of Van and on the northeast shore of Lake Van. The area is part of the mountainous region of Anatolia, now divided between Turkey and Armenia. The region lies within a belt of within a belt of active mountain building and volcanism that extends from the Mediterranean region, through Turkey and southern Asia to the circum-Pacific Ring of Fire. This active belt also links to the active fault system running south through Lebanon and the Jordan rift valley to the Red Sea and the East African rift valleys.
The Ercis Earthquake accompanied movement of the Ercis Fault, which runs roughly ENE-WSW along the northeast shore or Lake Van.

Ercis lies about 110 km (70 miles) southwest of Agri Dagi (39° 42′ 0″ N, 44° 16′ 48″ E), elevation 5,165 meters (16,945 ft), which is the traditional Mount Ararat and the target of several hopeful expeditions to recover remains of the Ark.

Agri Dagi itself is a snow-clad strato-volcano that lost its original summit (around 6,000 meters) in a relatively recent explosive eruption. A blister dome has partially filled the resulting asymmetrical summit crater. This late phase of volcanism ended in 1840.

The identification of the mountains of ‘Ararat (Genesis 8:4) with the ancient mountain kingdom of Urartu (2 Kings 19:37) depends on linguistic evidence of its derivation through Assyrian from the Akkadian Urastu. The Urartians named their home Bianili.

The kingdom of Urartu flourished between about 1200 and 575 BC, and extended at its peak southeast into the Caucasus Mountains and east into Iran. Although hostile to Assyria, Urartians adopted Assyrian cuneiform script.

The historian Philostorgius (ca. 425 AD) receives credit for originally placing Noah’s landing site at Agri Dagri on the basis of his research in Constantinople’s libraries. Turkish authorities recognize a nearby site with a more congenial elevation of about 6,000 feet.