Friday - II Kings 3 - Elisha Blesses the Battle

In this chapter, we read about a war that was waged between Moab and a trilateral coalition comprised of Israel, Judah and Edom. Fortunately, Jehoshaphat was wise enough (again) to seek for a word from the Lord.  This time, that word came from Elisha.

Now, the 3 kings were in a desperate situation. Their 3 armies had no water. And, speaking of good fortune, or (to be more accurate with our words) speaking of God's blessings, the kings of Edom and Israel should have been very grateful that Jehoshaphat was with them, because Elisha made it very clear that if Jehoshaphat hadn't been there, he would in no way have been willing to help the other 2 kings.

Now, if you love finding fresh and unusual things in the Bible, you won't be disappointed in reading II Kings 3:15. Elisha asked for music to be played before he prophesied. The verse literally says that "when the minstrel played, that the hand of the LORD came upon him." That is, the music affected the movement of the Spirit.

How unexpected God's creative ways are. Case and point: the message for the kings was truly unusual. Elisha commanded them to fill the valley (where they were camped out) with ditches. God had 2 ideas for those ditches. First, He filled them with water so that all the soldiers and all the animals had something to drink. Second, God caused all the water to look like blood in the eyes of the Moabites as they looked down on the camp of their enemies. As such, the Moabites walked in calmly expecting to find the whole host dead. But, they were terribly surprised when the 3 nations arose immediately and fought against them viciously.

By the way, if you are wondering if the Moabites deserved that kind of harsh treatment, read in II Kings 3:26 & 27 how the king of Moab turned his eldest son into a human sacrifice... hoping to earn help from his god. Looks like they well deserved the defeat that God brought upon them, eh?

Incidentally, according to Elisha, all that God did for Israel, Judah and Edom on that day was a "light thing" for God to do. This seems a little odd. For God every job is a small job, right? Yet, if we take the Bible literally, we will find that when Joshua called for the sun to stand still, that miracle was described as a supreme superlative that had no precedent, nor was it ever repeated... but, comparatively, the defeat of Moab here was a SMALL matter. Not that it was particularly hard for God to stop the sun, nothing is too hard for Him (Genesis 18:14, Jeremiah 32:17 & 27).