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alone the unnatural meal, matters not for our present purpose. But we recall that such
horrors had been in warning foretold in connection with Israel's apostasy (Leviticus
26:29; Deuteronomy 28:53); that they seem to have been enacted during the siege of
Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (Lamentations 4:l0); and lastly, that we have historical
evidence of their occurrence during the last siege of Jerusalem by Titus (Jos. War, 6.,
3, 4). Even if it had not reminded the king of the predicted Divine curse, such a tale
could not have fallen on his ear, especially in existing circumstances, without
exciting the deepest and strongest feelings. The story itself was sufficiently
harrowing; but that a mother should, even in the madness of self-reproach, make
public appeal to the king, that her neighbor should be kept to her part of the compact,
revealed a state of matters and of public feeling which called for that universal
mourning which the king, as head of the state, inaugurated, when almost instinctively
"he rent his clothes." And so, too often, they that will not mourn for sin have to
mourn for its consequences.
But as the people watched their king as, with rent clothes, he passed on his way, they
took notice that he wore other token of mourning - that "he had sackcloth within
upon his flesh." And yet, strange as it may seem, there is not any inconsistency
between this and what immediately follows in the sacred narrative. There is no
reason to doubt his outward penitence, of which this was the token - perhaps, alas,
the main part. Nor do we require to suppose, as has been suggested, either that he had
put on sackcloth in obedience to a general command of Elisha, or else that his anger
against the prophet was due to the advice of the latter that Samaria should hold out in
expectation of Divine deliverance, and that he (the king) had put on sackcloth in the
belief that thereby he would secure the promised help. For similar conduct may still
be witnessed as regards its spirit, although the outward form of it may be different. A
man experiences the bitter consequences of his sinful ways, and he makes sincere,
though only outward, repentance of them. But the evils consequent upon his past do
not cease; perhaps, on the contrary, almost seem to increase, and he turns not within
himself, for humiliation, but without, to what he supposes to be the causes of his
misfortunes, perhaps often those very things which are intended ultimately to bring
spiritual blessing to him. The sudden outburst of the king's anger against Elisha
indicates that he somehow connected the present misery of Samaria with the prophet;
and the similarity of his rash vow of Elisha's death with that of his mother Jezebel in
regard to Elijah (1 Kings 19:2) would lead to the inference that Joram imagined there
was a kind of hereditary quarrel between the prophets and his house. This, although
he had but lately experienced personal deliverances through Elisha (2 Kings 6:9, 10).
Perhaps, indeed, we may hazard the suggestion that one of the reasons for them may
have been to show that the controversy was not with the members of the house of
Ahab as such, but with them as alike the cause and the representatives of Israel's
apostasy.
(^)