2 Kings
Introduction

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25

Cruelty and Violence
Contradictions
Absurdities
Injustice
Intolerance
Family Values
Science and History
Language
Interpretation
Prophecy
Women
Homosexuality
Good Stuff

Source Index
-Illustrations

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Cruelty and Violence in 2 Kings

  1. Ahaziah was sick and sent messengers to Baalzebub to ask if he would recover. God was jealous of the attention given to his competitor and tells Ahaziah that he will die for asking the wrong god. 1:4, 17

  2. Elijah shows that he is "a man of God" by burning 102 men to death. 1:9-12

  3. God sends two bears to rip up 42 little children for making fun of Elisha's bald head. 2:23-24

  4. God instructs the Israelites, through the prophet Elisha, to implement a scorched earth policy on the Moabites. "Strike every fortified city and every choice city, and fell every good tree and stop all springs of water, and mar every good piece of land with stones." 3:19-25

  5. In a desperate attempt to halt the slaughter of his people by the Israelites, the king of Moab sacrifices his oldest son as a burnt offering. And it seems to have worked! 3:27

  6. Elisha not only can cure leprosy, he can also dish it out. Here he makes his servant (Gehazi) and all his descendants lepers forever. 5:27

  7. "So we boiled my son, and did eat him." Women killed, boiled and ate their own children because of a plague that God sent, or as the Bible puts it: "Behold, this evil is of the Lord." 6:28-29, 33

  8. A man is trampled to death for disbelieving Elisha. 7:17-20

  9. God sends a famine on the people that lasts for seven years. 8:1

  10. God says that the "whole house of Ahab shall perish," and that he "will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall." 9:8

  11. "And the dogs shall eat Jezebel ... and there shall be none to bury her." 9:10

  12. Jehu shoots an arrow right through poor old Jehoram's heart. 9:24

  13. God has Jezebel thrown off a wall. Her blood is sprinkled on the wall and on the horses, by which she is trampled. Her body is eaten by dogs and all that remains of it is her hands, feet, and skull. God says that she "shall be as dung upon the face of the field." 9:33-37

  14. All seventy of king Ahab's sons are killed, their heads put in baskets, and sent to Jezreel. He says, "Lay ye them in two heaps ..." 10:7-8

  15. Jehu kills all that remained of king Ahab's family. 10:11

  16. Jehu captures and then murders 42 men. 10:14

  17. Jehu shows off his zeal for the Lord by murdering "all that remained unto Ahab in Samaria, till he had destroyed him according to the word of the Lord." 10:16-17

  18. Jehu lied to the followers of Baal so that he could trap and kill them. 10:19

  19. Jehu warns his guards saying, "If any of the men escape, he that letteth him go, his life shall be for the life of him." 10:24

  20. Jehu, when he finishes his animal sacrifices, orders his men to "Go in, and slay them, let none come forth. And they smote them with the edge of the sword." 10:25

  21. God is greatly pleased with all of Jehu's killings, saying "because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes, and hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart [Jehu murdered them all], thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel." 10:30

  22. Jehu captures and then murders 42 men. 10:42

  23. When Athaliah "saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all of the seed royal." 11:1

  24. The priest has Athaliah and her followers killed. 11:15-16

  25. The "Lord's people" destroyed the "house of Baal" and killed "the priest of Baal before the altars." 11:17-18

  26. Amaziah "did that which was right in the sight of the Lord" and killed ten thousand Edomites. 14:3, 7

  27. God strikes king Azariah with leprosy "unto the day of his death" for not removing the high places. 15:5

  28. King Menahem rips up all the pregnant women in Tizzah "because they opened not to him." Does God approve of such acts? It's impossible to tell from this passage; the mass murder is simply reported without editorial comment. 15:16

  29. God sent lions to devour the foreigners in Samaria because "they feared not the Lord," and even worse "they knew not the manner of the God of the land." Well that'll teach them about God's manners. 17:25-26

  30. An "angel of the Lord" kills 185,000 men while they sleep. "And when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." I guess they all woke up and said, "Shucks, I'm dead." 19:35

  31. Josiah, apparently with God's approval, kills "all the priests of the high places" and sacrifices them to God on their altars. Note that this is a guy who "did what was right in the eyes of the Lord" (2 Kg.22:2). 23:20

  32. Even though Josiah did all that God asked of him, God still punished him and all Jerusalem for the acts of his grandfather. 23:26