2 Kings 13

Today’s Passage: 2 Kings 13

The kingdom of Israel has grown small and battered. Jehoahaz son of Jehu comes to the throne and, like every northern king before him, clings to the old sins of Jeroboam, and so the LORD hands Israel over again and again to Aram until the army is worn down to almost nothing. Yet when the king seeks the LORD’s favor, God hears, and He raises up a deliverer and gives the people relief. Jehoahaz dies and his son Jehoash reigns in his place, no better than his father. Then the story turns to a deathbed, where the aged prophet Elisha, sick with his final illness, gives King Jehoash the strange sign of the arrows, and the king’s half-hearted striking of the ground quietly measures out the limits of his own victory. Elisha dies. And even his bones, when a dead man is hastily thrown into his tomb, become a final witness to the God who gives life. Woven through all of it is one astonishing sentence: the LORD was gracious to Israel because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to this day He has been unwilling to destroy them.

As you read, hold this: Though His people keep failing, the LORD holds back full judgment because of His covenant, gracious and unwilling to destroy them.

2 Kings 13:1–3 (BSB)

¹ In the twenty-third year of the reign of Joash son of Ahaziah over Judah, Jehoahaz son of Jehu became king of Israel, and he reigned in Samaria seventeen years.

² And he did evil in the sight of the LORD and followed the sins that Jeroboam son of Nebat had caused Israel to commit; he did not turn away from them.

³ So the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He delivered them continually into the hands of Hazael king of Aram and his son Ben-hadad.

The account of Jehoahaz opens with the sad refrain the book has taught us to expect. He did evil, he followed the well-worn sins of Jeroboam, and he did not turn away. There is a terrible steadiness in that last phrase. Generations have passed, kings have risen and died, prophets have thundered and wept, and still the road runs in the same direction. And because the sin is steady, so is its consequence: God delivers Israel continually into the hand of Aram. This is not the LORD losing His temper. It is the patient, painful logic of a covenant that has warnings built into it, a people reaping in their own weakness what they have sown in their unfaithfulness.

2 Kings 13:4–5 (BSB)

⁴ Then Jehoahaz sought the favor of the LORD, and the LORD listened to him because He saw the oppression that the king of Aram had inflicted on Israel.

⁵ So the LORD gave Israel a deliverer, and they escaped the power of the Arameans. Then the people of Israel lived in their own homes as they had before.

Here, unexpectedly, the story breathes. Jehoahaz, this evil king, seeks the favor of the LORD, and the LORD listens. Notice the tender reason Scripture gives: God heard him “because He saw the oppression” that Aram had inflicted. It was not that the king had suddenly become righteous, for the very next verse will tell us the sins went on. It was that God looked upon a suffering people and was moved. He gave them a deliverer, and Israel escaped and went home to their own houses. This is grace running ahead of merit, mercy that answers to Israel’s misery rather than to Israel’s goodness, and it sets the note the whole chapter will play in full before it ends.

2 Kings 13:6–7 (BSB)

⁶ Nevertheless, they did not turn away from the sins that the house of Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit, but they continued to walk in them. The Asherah pole even remained standing in Samaria.

⁷ Jehoahaz had no army left, except fifty horsemen, ten chariots, and ten thousand foot soldiers, because the king of Aram had destroyed them and made them like the dust at threshing.

“Nevertheless.” One word carries the whole heartbreak of it. God had heard, God had delivered, God had brought them home, and nevertheless they did not turn. The Asherah pole, an object of pagan worship, still stood in Samaria as if nothing had happened. Grace received had not become grace obeyed. And the chapter lets us see the cost of that hardness in cold numbers: an army reduced to a handful, scattered like the chaff and dust that blows off the threshing floor. Mercy had spared them, yet they would not let mercy change them, and so the kingdom stayed small and exposed. It is a sobering picture of how a heart can be helped by God again and again and still refuse to be turned by Him.

2 Kings 13:8–9 (BSB)

⁸ As for the rest of the acts of Jehoahaz, along with all his accomplishments and his might, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

⁹ And Jehoahaz rested with his fathers and was buried in Samaria. And his son Jehoash reigned in his place.

The reign closes with the book’s familiar formula, and a king passes quietly from the page. He “rested with his fathers,” the gentle old phrase Scripture uses even for men who lived far from God, a reminder that death comes to every reign and every ruler alike. His accomplishments are filed away in the royal annals, and his son Jehoash takes the throne. The kingdom continues, wounded and unchanged, and the story moves on to the next name.

2 Kings 13:10–13 (BSB)

¹⁰ In the thirty-seventh year of the reign of Joash over Judah, Jehoash son of Jehoahaz became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned sixteen years.

¹¹ And he did evil in the sight of the LORD and did not turn away from all the sins that Jeroboam son of Nebat had caused Israel to commit, but he walked in them.

¹² As for the rest of the acts of Jehoash, along with all his accomplishments and his might, including his war against Amaziah king of Judah, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

¹³ And Jehoash rested with his fathers, and Jeroboam succeeded him on the throne. Jehoash was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel.

Jehoash gets the same verdict as his father, in almost the same words. He did evil, he did not turn away, he walked in the sins of Jeroboam. Strikingly, the writer gives Jehoash his full closing formula here, his death and burial, before the story doubles back to tell of something that happened during his reign. Scripture often orders its telling this way, finishing one thread before returning to gather up another. So having laid Jehoash to rest on the page, the narrator now turns back to a scene from his lifetime, a scene at the bedside of a dying prophet, which will hold the true heart of the chapter.

2 Kings 13:14 (BSB)

¹⁴ When Elisha had fallen sick with the illness from which he would die, Jehoash king of Israel came down to him and wept over him, saying, “My father, my father, the chariots and horsemen of Israel!”

Elisha, whose ministry has spanned these reigns and carried God’s word and God’s wonders through decades of Israel’s decline, now lies sick with the illness that will take him. And the king comes down and weeps over him. The words Jehoash cries are worth holding: “My father, my father, the chariots and horsemen of Israel!” These are the very words Elisha himself once cried when Elijah was taken up from him in the whirlwind. It is a confession, from an evil king’s own lips, that this one dying man had been the true strength of Israel, more than all its horses and chariots, more than its worn-down army. The real defense of the nation had never been its weapons but the presence of God’s prophet among them, and the king seems to know it even as he grieves.

2 Kings 13:15–17 (BSB)

¹⁵ Elisha told him, “Take a bow and some arrows.” So Jehoash took a bow and some arrows.

¹⁶ Then Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Put your hand on the bow.” So the king put his hand on the bow, and Elisha put his hands on the king’s hands.

¹⁷ “Open the east window,” said Elisha. So he opened it and Elisha said, “Shoot!” So he shot. And Elisha declared: “This is the LORD’s arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram, for you shall strike the Arameans in Aphek until you have put an end to them.”

Even from his deathbed the prophet is at work, turning a simple bow and arrow into a living sign. He has the king take up the bow, and then he lays his own hands over the king’s hands, a picture of God’s power joined to the king’s action. The window opens toward the east, toward Aram, the old oppressor, and at the prophet’s word the arrow flies. Then comes the promise, spoken with God’s own authority: this is the LORD’s arrow of victory over Aram. What Israel could never win by its own strength, God pledges to give. The deliverance the whole chapter keeps circling back to is announced here in a single loosed arrow.

2 Kings 13:18–19 (BSB)

¹⁸ Then Elisha said, “Take the arrows!” So he took them, and Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground!” So he struck the ground three times and stopped.

¹⁹ But the man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck the ground five or six times. Then you would have struck down Aram until you had put an end to it. But now you will strike down Aram only three times.”

Now the sign turns searching. Elisha tells the king to strike the ground with the arrows, and Jehoash strikes three times and stops. There was no command telling him when to stop, and that is exactly the point. The prophet is grieved, because the striking measured something the king could not see: the reach of his own faith and desire. He had been handed a promise as wide as he was willing to lay hold of it, and he stopped short. He would defeat Aram, but only three times, when he might have finished them altogether. God’s generosity was full, but the king received it in a small and half-hearted way, and so his victory was cut down to the size of his own faint asking. It is a quiet warning to every heart that meets the abundant promises of God with a shrug.

2 Kings 13:20–21 (BSB)

²⁰ And Elisha died and was buried. Now the Moabite raiders used to come into the land every spring.

²¹ Once, as the Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders, so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. And as soon as his body touched the bones of Elisha, the man was revived and stood up on his feet.

Elisha dies and is buried, and Scripture states it simply and soberly, as it should be received. A long life of faithful service closes, and the prophet is laid in his tomb. Then comes one of the strangest scenes in all the Old Testament. A burial party, surprised by raiders, hurriedly throws a dead man into Elisha’s grave, and the moment the body touches the prophet’s bones, the man is revived and stands on his feet. There is no sermon attached, no explanation offered. The point is not the bones themselves but the God whose life had rested so fully on this servant that even his grave testifies to it. In a chapter full of dying kings and a dying prophet and a dwindling nation, God plants one unmistakable sign that He is the God of life, and that death does not have the last word where He is at work.

2 Kings 13:22–23 (BSB)

²² And Hazael king of Aram oppressed Israel throughout the reign of Jehoahaz.

²³ But the LORD was gracious to Israel and had compassion on them, and He turned toward them because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And to this day, the LORD has been unwilling to destroy them or cast them from His presence.

Here is the sentence the whole chapter has been leaning toward, and it deserves to be read slowly. Aram had oppressed Israel throughout Jehoahaz’s reign. That is what Israel’s sin had earned. “But,” the text says, and everything turns on that word. But the LORD was gracious (חָנַן) chanan, pronounced khah-NAHN. Strong's H2603, to show favor, to be gracious to. This is one of Scripture’s great words for the free, undeserved kindness of God: to stoop down and show favor to someone who has no claim on it, the way a person of means bends low to help the helpless. It is the same root that stands behind names like Hananiah, “the LORD has been gracious,” and Hannah, “grace.” In this chapter it is aimed straight at a people who had done nothing to earn it. Israel had walked in sin, kept its idols standing, and turned away again and again, and still the text says the LORD was gracious to them. That is the wonder of grace: it flows not from what we have done to deserve it but from the heart of the One who gives it, bound to His own covenant promise. to them, had compassion on them, and turned toward them. And why? Not because they had changed, but “because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” God reaches back over centuries to a promise He made to the patriarchs, and He holds Himself to it even when His people will not hold themselves to Him. Then the astonishing final phrase: “to this day, the LORD has been unwilling to destroy them or cast them from His presence.” He could have. In justice He might have. But He was unwilling. The judgment they deserved was held back, not by their goodness, but by His faithfulness to His own word.

2 Kings 13:24–25 (BSB)

²⁴ When Hazael king of Aram died, his son Ben-hadad reigned in his place.

²⁵ Then Jehoash son of Jehoahaz took back from Ben-hadad son of Hazael the cities that Hazael had taken in battle from his father Jehoahaz. Jehoash defeated Ben-hadad three times, and so recovered the cities of Israel.

The chapter ends by showing the promise kept, exactly to its measure. Hazael dies, his son takes the throne, and Jehoash recovers the cities Aram had seized. He defeats Ben-hadad, and the number is quietly exact: three times, just as the three strikes of the arrows had marked out. God gave the victory He had pledged through Elisha, and He gave it in full. And yet the boundary the king himself had drawn by his half-hearted striking held too. The cities came back; Aram was not finished. Grace was real and generous and faithful, and it was also received with an open hand only so far. The kingdom lived on, spared and restored, because the LORD was unwilling to let His covenant people go.