- 63-
and the kingdom - and this at the great critical epoch of Israel's history. It is not
necessary here to emphasize the difference between the Old and the New Testament
- although rather in mode of manifestation than in substance - as we recall the
warning words of our LORD, when two of His disciples would have commanded fire
from heaven to consume those Samaritans who would not receive them (Luke 9:54).
The two cases are not in any sense parallel, as our previous remarks must have
shown; nor can we suppose the possibility of any parallel case in a dispensation
where "the kingdom of God cometh not with observation" (Luke 17:20), "but in
demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Corinthians 2:4).
At the same time we must not overlook that the "captain and his fifty"^119 were not
merely unsympathetic instruments to carry out their master's behest, but, as the
language seems to imply, shared his spirit.
Perhaps we may conjecture that if Elijah had come with them, he would, if
unyielding, never have reached Samaria alive (comp. ver. 15). This hostile and at the
same time contemptuous spirit appears still more clearly when, after the destruction
of the first captain and his fifty by fire from heaven, not only a second similar
expedition was dispatched, but with language even more imperious: "Quickly come
down!" It could not be otherwise than that the same fate would overtake the second
as the first expedition. The significance, we had almost said the inward necessity, of
the judgment consisted in this, that it was a public manifestation of Jehovah as the
living and true God, even as the king's had been a public denial thereof. It seems not
easy to understand how Ahaziah dispatched a third - nay, even how he had sent a
second company.^120
Some have seen in it the petulance of a sick man, or else of an Eastern despot, who
would not brook being thwarted. Probably in some manner he imputed the failure to
the bearing of the captains. And on the third occasion, the tone of the commander of
the expedition was certainly different from that of his predecessors, although not in
the direction which the king would have wished. It would almost seem as if the third
captain had gone up alone - without his fifty (v. 13). In contrast to the imperious
language of the other two, he approached the representative of God with lowliest
gesture of a suppliant,^121 while his words of entreaty that his life and that of his men
should be spared^122 indicated that, so far from attempting a conflict, he fully owned
the power of Jehovah. Accordingly the prophet was directed to go with him, as he
had nothing to fear from him.^123 Arrived in the presence of the king, Elijah neither
softened nor retracted anything in his former message. Ahaziah had appealed to the
"fly-god" of Ekron, and he would experience, and all Israel would learn, the vanity
and folly of such trust. "So he died according to the word of Jehovah which Elijah
had spoken."
(^)