That is why Jesus Christ is not absent from the gloomy adventure in Second Kings. Or very explicitly, this book of Second Kings describes for us God's intervention during a period in the history of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Second Kings is probably the most political of all the books of the Bible.
We are in the world of the political illusion that is of no value or importance. Yet this Assyrian does not see that he is an instrument in the hands of the Lord (how could he see that?).
The Politics of God and the Politics of Man by Jacques Ellul
Naaman
This is not one of the miracles of God's love, which is a sign of the restoration of all things in the kingdom. Regardless of the meaning of the name, he is a man of war, a man of blood. We cannot see it as a stage in Israel's theological elaboration of the concept of God.
It is not the prestige of Elisha, nor the power of the prophet nor his words that will convince Naaman. There is Elisha, who remains anonymous and absent, who does not even see Naaman, who shuts himself up in the secret and mystery of God's will.
Joram
And he - the king who represents the entire people, who is in himself a synthesis of the holy nation - does nothing. If it is common for a man not to discern God's Word, he was a man who is part of God's people. With the king and the officer, however, the problem is quite different.
This freedom of God is also expressed in the choice of the means he uses. What happens to the rejection of the king is what will happen to the true king of God's people.
Hazael
Elijah does not see the execution of the solemn command and the judgment pronounced in the wilderness. And it is again the role of the prophet and the church to show what is bad. He sends a son of the prophets, a young man, a servant of the prophet, perhaps a student of the prophet.
We are once again faced with the question we have already explored, the question of the coincidence between God's plan and man's, God's, plan. There is therefore a perfect coincidence between the usual conduct of the usurper and God's decision. A prophecy is a kind of description of a chain of historical events, but it implies neither God's express will in the event nor God's approval of the one who undertakes it.
He participates in the fulfillment of the prophecy, but he does so, one might say, within the order of political logic. This will, which is the expression of the deepest love, can therefore have a terrible aspect for the person who does not love God. It is only in this way and in these conditions that God's will was the destruction of the house of Ahab.
A century later, during the time of Jehu's third descendant, the prophet Hosea proclaims the condemnation of Jehu and his family. But what it actually says is that I, Jehu, will apply with all rigor what has been a Word of the Lord. He does not allow us to see the work of God and the love of the Lord through these terrible and tragic actions.
But he is also rejected by God because of his command of the Word and the harshness of his loyalty. The real tragedy, however, is that he is ultimately the reason for the rejection of the entire nation.
Ahaz
Jeroboam's sin against the Lord is that he causes Israel to worship the bull. This is undoubtedly true.1 Yet even this does not complete the meaning of Jeroboam's sin. It cannot be exploited in this way because it is the fact of the living God.
It is about the power of the state and the use of religion to achieve it. The Holy Spirit is active in the realm of creation, both the original creation and the new creation at the end of the age. The goals to be achieved today are universal knowledge and enjoyment of the gospel.
It is the presence of the power of the sovereign Christ, the Christ who is already sovereign and active. Efficacy, then, is, so to speak, the result of our means (to which the Holy Spirit gives power), of hope (to which the coming lordship of Jesus Christ gives power), and of the kingdom of heaven hidden in the world. No action can be effective if abstracted from the state of the world.
It means that everyone plays and is their role in the life of the church. The falsification of the Church by power, for example its social conformity in the Middle Ages, corresponds exactly to the action described here. For this incarnate presence of the Whole Other in the heart of the world is in itself our efficacy.
Rabshakeh
33 Did one of the gods of the nations ever save his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? In the eyes of the world, this kind of thing can only be considered as words. Because the church does not have to follow the logic of the world's political lesson.
Although the Assyrian now knows about the reforms, he is fundamentally unable to understand them. The only thing is that the world's wise or solemn declarations about God can disturb Israel, the church and the Christian. The Lord said to me: Go up against this land and destroy it.” This is a logical continuation of the previous point.
This is a well-known political propaganda, but we must remember that it is also the traditional attitude of the world in relation to the church. 34; Poor people, exploited by terrible priests and monks. It was at this time that Micah was forcefully denouncing injustice, hoarding and exploitation of the poor. It is not now because of the wickedness of the great that Israel or Christians must turn away from God.
Has any of them saved his country from the hand of the king of Assyria? The purpose is the same, that is, that Jerusalem should accept these reasonable and visible arguments, which Christians should follow in the train of the world. In the face of the propaganda with which the world attacks the church, the church can only remain silent, because no true witness to God is now possible.
Hezekiah
It is not because the situation is hopeless, nor because he is afraid of the effects of propaganda. The king has caught the prophet and the latter responds with a prophetic word. Hezekiah goes up to the temple with the letter from the king of Assyria in his hand and presents the matter to God.
It is not to be seen in the expansion of the church or in the diaspora, or in the triumph of Christian civilization, or in exerting our energies in the service of God. The only problem, however, is this: "Who is the Lord of the nations?" Now at this level it is impossible to give a political answer to the question. To be sure, one can say that here we have the basis for Isaiah's theopolitics.
What is presented to us in history as a typical explosive miracle representative of the irrational in history - the angel of God destroying the Assyrians -. Now we must always bear in mind that the essence of the problem of miracles must be found in the condemnation and death of Jesus Christ on the cross (rather than in the resurrection, which is radically outside all categories, even that of miracle). This is the meaning of the death of Jesus Christ at the crossroads of history.
It is the incarnation of the Word and the death of the incarnate that interrupts the process of fatality. And it is the fact that God had to die that shows us the gravity and the depth and the pressure of death. When people express freedom, they witness the Creator's action in history.
Postscript: Meditation on Inutility
What are we to make of the long struggle of the Hebrew people, who regard works as necessary for salvation, except that they are all useless. And yet—we are not told that God convinced the wisdom of the world to be foolish. Do we already reap the harvest because the poisonous fruits of wisdom are inextricably linked to the lovely fruits of the same reason.
We must not proclaim their worthlessness before we do or pray or preach. In your freedom, you can make barren as a fig tree any of the works we have undertaken for your glory. The second point to be made in the verse is that it is not God or Jesus who approves the verdict of futility.
We are tempted, because it is a temptation to do only what is useful and to equate Ecclesiastes' judgment on vanity (1:2ff) with the uselessness we have briefly outlined. To be controlled by utility and the pursuit of effectiveness is to be subject to the strictest determination of the real world. When we act, it is because God loves us, because we are saved, because God's Spirit lives in us, because we have done so.
In this way the freedom of our actions, freed from concern for utility or efficiency, may be a type of the freedom of God's love; but not in any other way. The men of Second Kings, each in his own place, played their part for God. None of them decisively served the Father's great plan accomplished in the Son, the mysterious purpose that the angels wanted to see (1 Peter 1:12).