THE KING WHO WOULD NOT DIE
THE
KING WHO WOULD NOT DIE
By
Robert Allen
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
As guests
departed from the banquet the king once again noticed the two men in robes from
Samaria. They rose slowly from their
places at the table, moving toward the place where he sat. Neither said a word, but as they bowed very
low before the king he realized they both had very long hair cleverly concealed
under their headdresses.
“Haggith,” the king gasped, “and Beni-Baali.”
The king bowed in return, hiding the
grin that tried to escape. Haggith had
indeed figured out a way to attend the banquet.
He should have known, she always seemed to get her way.
Not even King Joash realized how
much he would miss Jehoiada until he had been dead for several weeks. The counselors seemed hopelessly
divided. They had depended on the high
priest to help them come to the few decisions they did make. Now they refused to agree on anything. Things grew so bad that the king lost his
temper and simply told them to get out of his sight and go home, which they
did. But he still needed advisors. So in place of the old men he chose a group
of fellows his own age who met once a week to help him make decisions. Most of them had grown up with him in
Jerusalem but some were village leaders from the cities round about the
capital. Those cities wanted to choose
their own representatives instead of having the king appoint them, and so Matt
became the advisor from the village of Ramah.
For more than twenty years peace
reigned in the land of Judah. The king’s
family prospered with both Queen Jehoaddan and Queen Haggith presenting the
king with several male heirs. The fear
that he line of David would be at an end gradually diminished.
King Joash maintained his friendship
with King Jehoahaz of Israel so they did not have to worry about attacks from
the north. While Israel continued to
skirmish with Syria the effect on Judah remained minimal. Israel acted as a buffer between them and the
aggressive military might of the Syrian army.
Gradual changes began to take place
in the kingdom of Judah after the death of Jehoiada. The advisor’s, at Matt’s suggestion, voted to
allow people to worship God in their own villages, without constantly coming to
the temple. He assured them of the value
and prosperity it would bring to the land.
“I know God will be pleased,” he
said. “Not everyone has the leisure to
go to the temple every week like those in Jerusalem. Many more people will be worshipping Jehovah
if allowed to do so in their own home towns.
Just think, the day could come when every village in the country would
have its own grove, its own place to bow down to their God.”
Joash did not agree with the
advisors, but he had asked them for advice.
He really didn’t see the danger of such an agreement as long as they
were all still worshipping Jehovah.
A few days after the decision of the
council had been reached, the doors to the throne room swung open and a
solitary figure strode into the room.
“Why transgress ye the commandments
of the Lord,” the man shouted. “The
temple is the house of God, the place where all men are to worship. Unto the place which the Lord your God has
chosen to put his name, there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and
thither thou shalt come. Thither shall
ye bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices and your tithes and your
heave offerings of your hand and your vows and your free will offerings and the
firstlings of your herds and of your flocks.
There ye shall eat before the Lord and ye shall rejoice in all that ye
put your hand to, ye and all your households, wherin the Lord hath blessed
thee. Take heed to thyself that thou
offer not thy burn offerings in every place thou seest. In the place which the Lord shall choose,
there shalt thou offer thy burnt offerings and there thou shalt do all that I
command thee.”
As quickly as he had appeared the
strange figure left the room. Quiet
reigned as if all had been turned into stone by the words of the prophet. Quiet, except for Queen Haggith who always
had something to say.
“I didn’t like him. He wasn’t nice at all. Who was that man, Joash?”
“His name is Zechariah. We knew each other pretty well when we were
kids.”
“Well, who does he think he is? A prophet or something?”
“Zechariah is the son of priest
Jehoiada. Not a prophet.
“Well,” sniffed Haggith. “I think that is no way for a priest to
act. He ought to just stay in the temple
with his sheep and doves instead of coming down here and trying to make us all
feel bad. In fact, I’m feeling so bad
right now that I’m really going to have to have something special to cheer me
up. Will you give me something special,
Joash, really special?”
“What do you want now, Haggith?”
“I want a grove of my own, right
here in Jerusalem. It’s so hard to
worship God in that temple without any pictures at all. And what if I were to run into that terrible
man? I want to worship God out under the
trees like we did back in Ramah.”
“But Haggith, that is exactly what
Zechariah condemned. Don’t you realize
he was quoting Moses? Moses said to
worship God in the temple.”
“Moses? Why do I need to listen to him? He’s been dead for years. You just don’t love me.” The tears began to
flow.
Four weeks later Haggith worshipped
in her own new grove on the top of the Mount of Olives. Technically it had not been built in Jerusalem,
but it was close enough that she could go over there whenever she wanted. Since Joash never joined her at the grove he
had no idea she had moved her golden calf from her room to the new place of
worship. Haggith’s worship did not
involve Jehovah in the least. And in
that she was not alone. From Ramah to
Bethlehem, from Beersheba to En-gedi to Hebron, the people who had started to
worship God in their groves had changed to the worship of the golden calf. Worshipping a calf required so little of them, unlike keeping the law. No prophets and priests tried to tell them
what to do and not to do. When they went
up to the temple, on the other hand, prophets yelled at them from every corner.
“Turn from your wicked ways,” they
yelled at the queen as she rode in her elevated chair up to the top of the
Mount of Olives.
“God’s wrath will fall upon us,” the
shouted to the people leaving the temple and returning to their village groves.
Haggith grew agitated every time she
climbed into her chair, the one which had belonged to Athaliah, and started
through the Kidron Valley toward her personal worship space. Every time she left the palace the same two
men would follow her, screaming at the top of their voices.
“Death and destruction will come to
the grove on Olivet. Follow not the ways
of the wicked, for evil shall not prosper in the land. Repent!
Turn from your wicked ways.”
Haggith’s depression worsened week
by week. “Something must be done,” she
complained to the king. “It doesn’t look
good for those horrible prophets to be following me and saying terrible things
like that. All I want to do is worship
God and they make me feel so bad I could just cry.”
“O no, Haggith. Please, not that. I’ll do something. I promise I will. Only please don’t cry.”
The next time Joash met with the
council he brought up the problem himself.
“It seems we have a great influx of
self-made prophets in the land these days,” he began. “Elisha’s school of the
prophets over by the Jordan River must be flourishing. I remember the day when almost all of the
graduates found work up in Israel where they are definitely needed. But we have the temple and all of our
priests. We have never needed the
interference of prophets. Various
sources have informed me that some of these men have been causing problems for
certain segments of our populace.”
“I know what you mean,” said a
leader from Hebron. “Why, I heard that
somewhere out toward the Great Sea a prophet actually went out at night and cut
down an entire grove and smashed their altar into a million pieces.”
“Wanton destruction of property,”
said another. “And in a grove dedicated
to God at that.”
The king continued. “I had not heard of that destructive act, but
I do know that right here in the capital some have been harassing our people
with unwanted sermons.”
Another counselor nodded in
agreement. “The same in our city as
well,” he said. “One of the prophets has
even built a shelter right by the trail that leads up to our grove. Whenever
people go to worship God he comes out from his booth and yells at them, saying
terrible things.”
“Something has to be one,” said the
king and everyone nodded. They always
agreed with the king but they very seldom had any more solutions that his old
group of advisors. Finally the head man
from Ramah rose to his feet. “The king
speaks wisely,” said Matt. “Something
must be done about all these prophets.
May I suggest taxing them, perhaps a fine of ten shekels for each time
they preach.”
“Most of them have no money,” said
the advisor from En-Gedi.
“That’s the idea. If they cannot pay the tax, we will throw
them into prison. That way they can pay
up or shut up.”
“Maybe we should send men up to the
Jordan to destroy their school,” said the advisor from Hebron who had heard
about the earlier destruction of a grove.
“We could burn any shelters they
build alongside the sacred paths,” said another.
“Good ideas, all of them,” agreed
Matt. “However, there is undoubtedly
only one way to solve the problem for good.”
“What is that? said Joash, anxious
for some answer to his problem with Haggith.
“The only final solution to this
pressing issue would be to convince the prophets the nation finds their actions
reprehensible. The only real answer
would be for someone to die.”
“Die?” gasped several of the men.
“Die?” gasped several of the men.
“Yes, someone must die. We cannot have it look like we planned it and
the nation must never know of any involvement from the king. This must be a state secret.
Many of the advisors were shocked
and looked to the king for some objection, but he remained silent.
Matt looked at the face of every man
in the room before continuing. “We must
make no record of any official action.
As far as each one of us is concerned, this meeting never took
place. When you return to your homes simply
begin spreading the word that the next time one of the prophets gets out of
hand, it may mean a stoning.”
No one dared object to the plan
because the one man who could have changed their minds said nothing
For the next three weeks Haggith
made her trips to the Mount of Olives undisturbed. The rumor passed quickly from mouth the mouth
and the prophets stayed off the streets.
What the king and his counselors did not know, however, was that two of
the guards on duty in the throne room that day had shared an account of the
meeting with the temple priests. The
priests had sent a messenger up to Elisha warning the school of the prophets
about the danger. That initiated an
investigation into whether King Joash could really be complicit in such a plot.
The disappearance of the prophets
thrilled Haggith. In her mind nothing
should ever be done to embarrass a queen, especially when that queen was
her. Everyone in the city knew about her
golden calf on the Mount of Olives. They
knew the king had done nothing about it.
Now when she made her journey she instructed those who carried the chair
to walk slowly through the streets of Jerusalem so everyone could catch a
glimpse of her beauty and know of her dedication to her god. On days of worship she had servants curl and
pin her hair high on her head. A girl
walked behind the chair carrying a huge fan larger than herself which shielded
Haggith’s face from the sun. A boy
playing a flute walked in front, entertaining her with the latest popular tunes
from Egypt and Samaria. Beni-baali had
sent the talented musician to her as a gift.
One day the chair had just reached
the base of the path that wended its way up to her grove when a man in a long
white robe stepped from the crowd. She
recognized him immediately. Zechariah.
“Thus saith the Lord. Why transgress ye the commandments of the
Lord? Ye cannot prosper. Because ye have forsaken the Lord, he also
will forsake you. Let Joash the king and
all Judah know that the wrath of God has fallen upon them for all their
wickedness. Death to the abomination on
the Mount of Olives. May the judgment by
fire fall as it fell on the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.”
Pushing as close as he could to the
chair in which Haggith rode, the priest raised both hands to the sky, imploring
the judgment of God to fall. Terrified,
Haggith started to scream at the top of her lungs. A group of men Matt had planted along the
road for exactly this purpose grabbed for the priest, but he broke through the
angry crowd and headed back in the direction of the temple. Those who had tried to capture him ran behind,
picking up large stones as they ran.
Haggith instructed her servant to turn the chair around and join in the
chase as well. The chair jolted up and
down, nearly unseating her as she continued to scream. “Don’t let him get away. Stop him.
Stop that man.”
Right up the road toward the temple
they chased him, through the triple gates and up the way of the kings into the
courtyards. Once inside the court
Zechariah stopped, convinced no one would dare to harm him in the very presence
of the Lord. But he reckoned without the
hatred of Matt and others who in their hearts had been worshipping false gods. Up the stairs they ran, rocks in their hands,
ready to stone the one who dared to tell them the truth.
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