Water in the Wilderness and an Unresolved Ending

The same king is called both Jehoram and Joram in these chapters, the longer and shorter forms of one name, “the LORD is exalted”. His twelve years end with Jehu’s arrow in chapter 9, on the plot of ground that had been Naboth’s.

The “image of Baal” is a matstsebah, a standing stone pillar rather than a carved statue. Removing it was real, but Jehu will still find pillars of Baal to break in the temple of Baal at Samaria (10:26–27), so the reform went only so far.

“Cleaved” is the verb of Genesis 2:24, a man cleaving to his wife: attachment, not mere drift. The sins of Jeroboam are the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, which no northern king ever removed.

“Sheepmaster” renders noqed, the word used of Amos among the herdmen of Tekoa (Amos 1:1). The Hebrew can mean a hundred thousand lambs and the wool of a hundred thousand rams, a yearly tribute on the scale of a whole economy.

Nothing was done about the revolt during Ahaziah’s short reign, which began with his fall through the lattice. The response waits for his brother, which is why Moab’s rebellion is told twice, once as a fact (1:1) and here as the cause of a war.

“The same time” is literally “on that day”. To number all Israel is to muster the fighting men, the first act of a king going to war. Samaria is the base, and the whole kingdom’s levy is called up.

Jehoshaphat nearly died at Ramoth-gilead fighting beside Ahab, and a seer named Jehu rebuked him afterwards for helping the ungodly (2 Chronicles 19:2). Yet he agrees at once to go up again, now with Ahab’s son.

The road through Edom’s wilderness goes around the southern end of the Dead Sea. Mesha’s own inscription names the towns he fortified in Moab’s north, so an approach from the south avoided the defended frontier, at the price of a long march through dry country.

“Fetched a compass” is 1611 English for travelled a circuit, went round. The king of Edom is probably the deputy of 1 Kings 22:47, a vassal ruler bound to Judah. Seven days of wilderness with pack animals and herds exhausted every water source they had counted on.

“Alas” renders ahah, a cry of dismay. Joshua used almost the same complaint after defeat at Ai: why bring us over Jordan “to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites?” (Joshua 7:7). Jehoram names the LORD only to blame him.

The answer comes from a servant, not from the kings or their advisers. Elisha had come with the army unannounced, and no one at the top seems to have known he was there. “Son of Shaphat” is how he was first named in 1 Kings 19:16.

Jehoshaphat needs no more than the servant’s description to recognise Elisha as a true prophet. The king of Edom goes down with the others, named third and silent throughout, the one king in the coalition with no stake in Israel’s God.

“What have I to do with thee?” is literally “what to me and to you?”, an idiom of distance; the widow of Zarephath said it to Elijah (1 Kings 17:18). The prophets of his father and mother were Baal’s and Asherah’s. Jehoram’s “Nay” does not argue; it only repeats his panic.

“Before whom I stand” is Elijah’s oath formula (1 Kings 17:1; 18:15), and Elisha takes it up word for word. The phrase describes a servant standing ready in the presence of his king.

A minstrel is a player of a stringed instrument. Music and prophecy go together as early as the prophetic band Saul met coming down with psaltery, tabret, pipe and harp (1 Samuel 10:5). “The hand of the LORD” also came on Elijah when he outran Ahab’s chariot (1 Kings 18:46).

“Ditches” is the Hebrew noun doubled, gevim gevim, “pits pits”, meaning trench after trench. The valley is probably a wadi on the border between Edom and Moab such as the Zered, a dry streambed that could carry sudden water.

Cattle and beasts are two classes of animal: the herds driven along for food and the pack animals carrying the baggage. Without both, the army could neither eat nor move.

No one asked for victory. The kings asked only for survival, and the promise goes beyond the request: Moab also will be given into their hand.

Deuteronomy 20:19 forbids cutting down fruit trees during a siege. The command here to fell “every good tree” is a specific order for this campaign, and interpreters have long noted the tension between the two.

The morning offering was the grain offering that accompanied the daily morning sacrifice at the temple in Jerusalem. Elijah’s fire at Carmel came at the hour of the evening offering (1 Kings 18:36); Elisha’s water comes at the hour of the morning one.

“All that were able to put on armour, and upward” is literally everyone old enough to gird on a belt, every male of fighting age. They stand at the frontier to meet an army coming from the south.

The Hebrew plays on three sounds: the water came “by the way of Edom”, it looked red, adom, and the Moabites took it for blood, dam. The colour of morning sun on water in red sandstone country is enough for the misreading.

Allied armies falling on each other was not far-fetched; in 2 Chronicles 20:23 Moab, Ammon and Mount Seir destroy one another. “Moab, to the spoil” is a battle cry addressed to the whole nation by name.

The Moabites arrive expecting a camp of corpses and find an army. The pursuit carries the fighting across the border into Moab proper, the land that had paid tribute for a generation.

Kir-haraseth is usually identified with Kerak, a fortress on a steep ridge above the Dead Sea. Only its walls are left standing, and slingers attack it from the slopes. Isaiah later mourns “the foundations of Kir-hareseth” (Isaiah 16:7).

Mesha aims his breakout at the king of Edom, perhaps judging him the weakest link or hoping he would defect. Amos 2:1 later condemns Moab for burning the bones of the king of Edom, a sign of lasting bitterness between the two.

The eldest son, the heir, was the costliest sacrifice imaginable; Micah 6:7 asks whether the LORD would want “my firstborn for my transgression”. A minority reading in Jewish tradition takes the victim as the son of the king of Edom, connecting the scene to Amos 2:1.