1 Kings 15:25 - Meaning and Application

Now we see the sad condition of Israel, while Judah was blessed with Asa’s good rule. God had warned that Israel would be like a reed shaken in the water (1 Kings 14:15), and that warning came true. During Asa’s one reign, the northern kingdom passed through six or seven different rulers, as this chapter and the next show. Jeroboam was king at the start, and Ahab at the end, with Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Tibni, and Omri rising up and tearing one another down in between.

This came because they abandoned both the house of God and the house of David. Here we first see the ruin of Jeroboam’s family, exactly as the Lord had spoken through Ahijah. Jeroboam’s son Nadab took his place. If the death of his brother Abijah had truly moved him toward godliness, and if the honor given at his death had led him to follow that good example, his reign might have been long and good. But he walked in his father’s ways (1 Kings 15:26), kept up the worship of the calves, and kept people from going up to Jerusalem to worship. He sinned and led Israel into sin, so God brought him down quickly, in the second year of his reign.

Nadab was besieging Gibbethon, a city the Philistines had taken from the Danites, and he was trying to take it back. There, while his army was gathered, Baasha and others plotted against him and killed him (1 Kings 15:27). Nadab had so little support from the people that his army did not even avenge his death. Instead, they made his killer king in his place. We are not told whether Baasha acted out of personal hatred toward Nadab, revenge against Jeroboam’s house, a claim of freeing the nation from a bad ruler, or plain ambition to reach the throne. But he killed Nadab and ruled after him (1 Kings 15:28).

The first thing Baasha did after becoming king was to destroy the whole house of Jeroboam, so he could strengthen his own unlawful rule. He thought it was not enough to imprison or exile them. He wiped them out completely, leaving not only no males, as had been foretold (1 Kings 14:10), but no one alive at all. In this he acted with cruelty, but God was still righteous. Jeroboam’s sin was punished (1 Kings 15:30), because those who stir God’s anger do it to their own shame, as Jeremiah says (Jeremiah 7:19). Ahijah’s prophecy was fulfilled (1 Kings 15:29), because no word from God ever fails. God’s warnings are never empty threats.

Then we see Baasha’s rise to power. He was allowed to reign for a time, just as Jeroboam had been. He ruled twenty-four years (1 Kings 15:33), but his actions showed that he did not destroy Jeroboam’s family because he hated Jeroboam’s sin. He did it out of malice and ambition. After removing the sinner, he clung to the same sin himself and walked in Jeroboam’s ways (1 Kings 15:34), even though he had seen where that path ended. His heart was strangely hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.