The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Chronicles — Section 297

lived; that under which Zechnriah lived, e. dispensation (I) of law and penalty, (2) of wrath and condemnation; that under which Stephen flourished, a dispensation (1) of grace and mercy, and (2) of forgiveness and justification (2 Cor. iii.. 7-11). LESSONS. 1. 'fhe danger of listening to flattery; it °;lakes men, even kings, foolish. 2. The duty of resisting the first approaches of temptat10n. Obata principiia. 3. The downward course of sin-Facilis descensus Averno (Virgil,' lEneid,' vi. 126). 4. The folly of forsaking God; it can only end in being forsaken by God. 5. The courage needed to be a true servant of God in any age. He who would speak for God will often require to speak against man. 6. The surest evidence of original and innate depravity is the fact that men do not naturally care for, but rather dislike, and are averse to, God's Word. 7. The certainty that they who will live godly must suffer persecution. God's witnesses are often slain (Rev. xi. 7). 8. The baseness of ingratitude towards God; inferred from that of ingratitude towards man. 9. The contrast between the Law and the gospel; illustrated by Zechariah's imprecation and Stephen's invocation. 10. The certainty of Divine retribution: God will avenge his saints (Luke xviii. 7, 8).-W. Vers. 23-21.-Divine retri"butions; or, the predictions and prayers of a dying man coming true. I. JUDAH INVADED BY THI!: SYRIANS. (Ver. 23.) Zechariah had pre- dicted that prosperity should no longer attend Judah in consequence of her apostasy from Jehovah (ver. 20); and, before breathing his last, had prayed, and so practically predicted (Jas. v. 16), that Jehovah would avenge his murder upon the king, his princes, and people (ver. 22). That this incursion of Hazael (1 Kings xix. 15), who had first assassinated Benhadad II. and seized upon the throne (2 Kings viii. 7-15), and whose historicity is guaranteed by an inscription on Shalmaneser's black obelisk, which says, "In my eighteenth year, for the sixteenth time the Euphrates I crossed. Hazael of Damascus to battle came. . . . In my twenty-first campaign, to the cities of Hazael of Damascus I went. Four of his fortresses I took" (' Records,' etc., v. 34, 35; Schrader, ' Keilinschriften,' p. 206)-that this incursion of the Syrian monarch into Judrean territory, as far even as to Jerusalem, was an instalment of the wrath which the nation's apostasy had stirred up against itself, several things convinced the Chronicler. 1. The time when it happened. "At the end," or revolution, "of the year." No doubt Divine judgment often tarries, and when it does men are apt to question its existence (Ps. 1. 20). But sometimes it hastens on the heels of crime, as it did in the cases of Cain (Gen. iv. 8, 9), Pharaoh (Exod. xiv. 27), Israel in Shittim (Numb. xxv. 4), the murderers of Ishbosheth (2 Sam. iv. 12), Ahab (1 Kings xxii. 34-37), Haman (Esth. vii. 10), Judas (Acts i. 18; Matt. xxvii. 5), and others; and their observers instinctively exclaim, "Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth" (Ps. !viii. 11). 2. Tlte success it attained. (1) The Syrian army, having probably conquered Israel, succeeded in capturing Gath, one of the five cities of the Philistines (Josh. xiii. 3), which David annexed to Judah (1 Chron. xviii. 1), and which may still have belonged to the kingdom of Joasb. (2) Next it moved upon Jerusalem, which was not far distant, and defeated the Judrean troops in a pitched battle, in which al~ the princes of Judah were cut off, and Joash himself seriously wounded. (3) As an induce- ment to make peace and withdraw his forces from the capital, Ha.zael obtained from Joash "all the hallowed things that Jehoshaphat, and Jehoram, and Ahaziah his fathers, kings of Judah, had dedicated," which had been recovered from the temple of Baal (ver. 7), "and his own hallowed things, and all the gold that was found in the treasures of the house of the Lord and in the king's house" (2 Kings xii. 18). (4) That which specially revealed the hand of God iu this disaster was not so much the extent as the incidence of it. The blow descended, indeed, upon the co=on people, who are chief sufferers in most wars; but in this instance a striking fitness was visible in the cutting off of the princes who had instigated the sovereign and his subjects to idolatry, and in the despoliation of the temple, which they had desecrated by their idolatries. 3. The weapon it employed. A small army, which had routed J udah's large host. This was reversing the experience of Judah, as, e.g., when Asa with five hundred and eighty thousand soldiers defeated Zerah with a million of infantry and three hundred charioteers (eh. xiv. 10). As Asa's victory was due to Jehov?-h's help, so Joash's surrender was explicable only on the supposition that Jehovah hall. forsakell him and llazael been commissioned to execute wrath 11pon him.  298 THE SECOND BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. [en, xxv. 1-28,