1 Kings 16:1 - Meaning and Application

Here is the ruin of Baasha’s family foretold. Baasha was the kind of man who might have built up his house and made it secure. He was active, shrewd, and bold, but he was also an idolater, and that brought destruction on his family. God gave him warning before the judgment came. If he had heard and turned from his sins, the ruin might have been avoided, because God warns so that he may not have to strike. If he did not repent, then when destruction came, it would be clear that God’s justice, not chance, had brought it.

The warning came through Jehu son of Hanani. Hanani, Jehu’s father, was also a prophet, and he had been sent to Asa king of Judah (2 Chronicles 16:7). Jehu, younger and more active, was sent on the longer and more dangerous mission to Baasha king of Israel. Jehu was a prophet born of a prophet, and that kind of inherited calling deserved special honor. He remained useful for a long time, since we later find him rebuking Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 19:2) and recording the acts of that king more than forty years later (2 Chronicles 20:34).

Jehu’s message to Baasha is much like the one Ahijah had sent to Jeroboam through Jeroboam’s wife. He first reminds Baasha of the great things God had done for him: “I lifted you up from the dust and made you ruler” (1 Kings 16:2). This is a clear example of God’s power and sovereignty, as in 1 Samuel 2:8. Baasha may have seemed to raise himself by treachery and violence, but God’s providence was at work, carrying out his purpose against Jeroboam’s house. God’s using Baasha’s rise does not mean God approved of his ambition or cruelty. God often puts power into the hands of wicked men and still uses them for his own good purposes, even when they misuse that power.

God had made Baasha prince over his people. Israel is still called God’s people, though they were badly corrupted, because they still kept the covenant of circumcision and there were many godly people among them. They were not called “not my people” until much later (Hosea 1:9). Jehu then charges Baasha with serious guilt. He had led Israel into sin by turning God’s subjects away from their loyalty and making them pay honor to worthless idols that deserved none of it. In this, he followed the way of Jeroboam and acted like Jeroboam’s house (1 Kings 16:2, 1 Kings 16:7).

Baasha had also provoked God by the work of his hands, that is, by worshiping images made by human hands. Even if others made the images, he served them, and by serving them he accepted them as his own choice. Jehu also says that Baasha destroyed the house of Jeroboam (1 Kings 16:7), meaning he killed Jeroboam’s son and all his family. If he had done this in obedience to God, with zeal for God’s honor and hatred of Jeroboam’s sins, he would have been approved as an instrument of justice. But as it was, he acted from his own malice and ambition, so he remained guilty. Those who carry out God’s justice, whether magistrates or ministers, must do it with a right heart and in a holy way, or else the work becomes sin to them.

Jehu then foretells the same kind of destruction for Baasha’s family that Baasha had brought on Jeroboam’s house. Those who copy others in their sins should expect to copy them in their punishments too, especially when they are strict about condemning the sins of others while excusing the same sins in themselves. The house of Jehu was later called to account for the blood of Ahab’s house (Hosea 1:4).

A reprieve is granted for a time. Baasha himself dies in peace and is buried with honor in his own royal city (1 Kings 16:6). He does not live to see or feel the punishment that was announced against his house, even though he was the chief offender. This shows that there must be a future life, where unrepentant sinners will suffer in their own persons and will not escape as they often do in this world. Baasha seems to die without any visible stroke of divine judgment, but God stores up his guilt for his children, as Job says (Job 21:19). This is one way God often visits sin.

Notice too that Baasha is punished after his death through the destruction of his children, and his children are punished in the shame done to their bodies after death. That is the only part named in the warning, that dogs and birds would eat them (1 Kings 16:4). This seems to point quietly to punishments after death, when death has done its worst. Those judgments on the body and family also point to judgments on the soul after it leaves the body, by the One who, after killing, has power to cast into hell.

At last, judgment is carried out. Baasha’s son Elah, like Jeroboam’s son Nadab, reigned two years and was then killed by Zimri, one of his own soldiers, just as Nadab had been killed by Baasha. In this way Baasha’s house became like Jeroboam’s house, exactly as God had said (1 Kings 16:3). His idolatry matched Jeroboam’s, and one of the sins for which God judged him was the destruction of Jeroboam’s family. The more his own house resembled that earlier judgment, the more clearly punishment answered to sin, like a face reflected in a mirror.

As before, the king himself is struck first, but Elah dies even more shamefully than Nadab. Nadab was killed in the field, while he and his army were besieging Gibbethon (1 Kings 15:27). But Elah should have been out with the army too, because they were again trying to take the city (1 Kings 16:15). Instead, he stayed behind, cared more for comfort than duty, and was drinking himself drunk in his servant’s house when Zimri killed him (1 Kings 16:9, 1 Kings 16:10). Let drunkards take warning, especially those who deliberately drink themselves drunk, because they do not know when death may come upon them in that condition.

Death comes more easily on drunk people. Heavy drinking often brings long-term disease that cuts a person off in the middle of life. A person who is drunk is also easier for an enemy to overpower, as happened to Amnon with Absalom, and is more open to accidents because he cannot protect himself. Death also comes more terribly upon people in that condition.

They were found in the very act of sin, with no ability left for any act of worship, and that day came on them suddenly, like a thief (Luke 21:34). In the same way, the whole family was cut off and torn out by the roots. The traitor became the next ruler, and the people blindly gave in to him, as if it did not matter what kind of king they had, so long as they had one.

The first thing Zimri did was kill everyone in Baasha’s family. He kept power by cruelty after gaining it by treason. His violence seems to have gone even further than Baasha’s violence against Jeroboam’s family, because he left Elah with no relatives or friends, no one who would avenge his death (1 Kings 16:11), no one likely to answer for it. Yet God’s justice soon answered so clearly that people still spoke of it much later: “Did Zimri have peace, who killed his master?” (2 Kings 9:31).

In this, God’s word was fulfilled (1 Kings 16:12). Baasha and Elah were also judged for their sins, because they provoked God by their useless idols and empty ways (1 Kings 16:13). Their idols are called vanities because they can do no good and give no help. It is a sad thing to belong to gods that are only emptiness.