The Revolving Door of Rebellion Text: 2 Kings 15:23-26
Introduction: The Fruit of a Poisonous Tree
We come now to a short and bloody paragraph in the chronicles of Israel's kings, a story that is easy to skim over as just another palace intrigue, another messy succession in a long line of them. But to do so would be to miss the point entirely. These verses are not just a historical footnote; they are a theological diagnosis. We are watching the slow, inexorable rot of a nation that has cut itself off from its root. What we see in the brief and violent reign of Pekahiah is the logical and spiritual consequence of a foundational rebellion that occurred generations before.
The Northern Kingdom of Israel was founded on a principle of rebellion against the house of David, which was a rebellion against God's revealed will. Jeroboam, the first king, did not want his people going down to Jerusalem to worship, for obvious political reasons. If they worshipped where God commanded, their hearts might follow their worship, and his little kingdom would dissolve. So, in an act of what we might call syncretistic pragmatism, he set up golden calves in Dan and Bethel. He told the people, "Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." He did not deny Yahweh, not entirely. He simply made Him convenient. He made Him manageable. He made Him into a god who would serve the state, rather than a God whom the state must serve.
This act became a permanent, constitutional sin. It was woven into the very fabric of the Northern Kingdom. And what we see in our text today is the long-term fruit of that poisonous tree. When you reject God's authority in the highest things, you cannot expect to maintain human authority in the lesser things. When you teach a nation to rebel against the divine King, do not be surprised when they learn to rebel against their earthly kings. The chaos in the palace is a direct reflection of the idolatry at the altar. Pekahiah's short reign and bloody end are not an isolated tragedy; they are a symptom of a terminal disease. That disease is called apostasy.
The Text
In the fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah, Pekahiah son of Menahem became king over Israel in Samaria and reigned two years.
And he did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin.
Then Pekah son of Remaliah, his officer, conspired against him and struck him in Samaria, in the castle of the king’s house with Argob and Arieh; and with him were fifty men of the Gileadites, and he put him to death and became king in his place.
Now the rest of the acts of Pekahiah and all that he did, behold, they are written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel.
(2 Kings 15:23-26 LSB)
The Inglorious Reign (v. 23-24)
We begin with the summary of this king's tenure.
"In the fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah, Pekahiah son of Menahem became king over Israel in Samaria and reigned two years. And he did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin." (2 Kings 15:23-24)
Notice the brevity of it all. Two years. In the grand scheme of things, a mere blip. His father, Menahem, had seized the throne through bloodshed, and now Pekahiah inherits it. He inherits the crown, the palace, and the national debt of sin. The historian, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives us the only evaluation that matters: "he did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh." Human courts may have found him passable. The people may have been indifferent. But the ultimate Judge, the one whose opinion constitutes reality, rendered His verdict. The evil is not defined by a list of personal peccadilloes, but by one great, overarching sin.
He "did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin." This phrase is a recurring refrain in the book of Kings, a tolling bell that signals judgment. The sin of Jeroboam was state-sponsored idolatry. It was the establishment of a counterfeit worship system designed for political expediency. It was a declaration of spiritual independence from God. By continuing this tradition, Pekahiah was not just being a bad man; he was being a bad king. He was perpetuating the foundational lie of his nation. He was leading his people in covenant unfaithfulness, which the prophets consistently describe as spiritual adultery.
A king's first duty is to the King of kings. His first responsibility is to see that the nation rightly worships the one true God. Everything else, political stability, economic prosperity, military security, flows from this. Pekahiah, like all his predecessors, failed this primary test. He maintained the convenient, man-made religion of the state. He kept the calves. And by doing so, he was teaching his people that God's commands are negotiable and that worship can be tailored to fit our political ambitions. This is a fatal lesson, because a god you can control is no god at all. It is an idol, a projection of your own will. And when men worship their own will, they will inevitably be consumed by it.
The Inevitable Conspiracy (v. 25)
When the vertical relationship with God is broken, the horizontal relationships between men will shatter. Verse 25 is the predictable result.
"Then Pekah son of Remaliah, his officer, conspired against him and struck him in Samaria, in the castle of the king’s house with Argob and Arieh; and with him were fifty men of the Gileadites, and he put him to death and became king in his place." (2 Kings 15:25 LSB)
The rebellion comes from within his own administration. Pekah, his officer, one of his trusted men, turns on him. This is the nature of sin. It breeds distrust and treachery. A king who is unfaithful to his God cannot expect faithfulness from his subjects. He has modeled rebellion at the highest level, and now he reaps the whirlwind. The very sin he tolerated, the sin of rebellion against the ultimate authority, has now come home to roost in his own palace.
The details are stark and brutal. He was struck down "in the castle of the king's house," the very seat of his power, the place where he should have been most secure. His security was an illusion. Along with him, two others, Argob and Arieh, are killed. We don't know who they were, likely other loyal officials or bodyguards. Sin is never a private affair; its consequences always spill over onto others. Pekah is not alone; he has fifty men from Gilead with him. This was not a spontaneous act of passion; it was a calculated military coup. Gilead was a rugged, frontier region, and its men were known for their martial prowess. This was a hostile takeover.
And so, Pekahiah, who inherited a throne won by violence, loses it by violence. The revolving door of rebellion keeps spinning. This is what happens when a nation is untethered from God's law. Might makes right. The man with the most swords gets the crown, at least for a little while. This is a picture of anarchy. It is a political illustration of the last verse of Judges: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes." Israel had a king, but because that king was not submitted to the true King, the principle of anarchy reigned.
The Unceremonious Conclusion (v. 26)
The final verse is a standard formula, but in this context, it feels particularly empty.
"Now the rest of the acts of Pekahiah and all that he did, behold, they are written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel." (2 Kings 15:26 LSB)
This points to a secular source, a state record. But what was there to write? A two-year reign, marked by the same old idolatry, ending in a bloody assassination. "All that he did" was not much. He simply kept the machinery of apostasy running for another twenty-four months. His legacy was to maintain the spiritual poison that was killing his nation. His life is a warning against the sin of passive continuation. He did not invent the sins of Jeroboam, he just failed to renounce them. He went with the flow, and the flow was heading straight for the waterfall of God's judgment.
God gave him the throne. God gave him the opportunity to repent, to tear down the calves, to call the nation back to true worship. He could have been a Josiah for the North. But he did not. He chose the easy path of tradition, the comfortable path of apostasy. And so his story ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper and a referral to a lost book of records. He is a historical dead end, a cautionary tale, a king whose only memorable act was getting murdered for being just like all the kings who came before him.
The Gospel in the Chaos
It is tempting to read this story and see only the depressing cycle of sin and judgment. And that is certainly there. This is a stark picture of the wages of sin. When a people, and especially their leaders, reject the lordship of Christ, the inevitable result is chaos, violence, and decay. Our own nation should take careful note. When we institutionalize rebellion against God, whether through idolatrous worship or the idolatry of the secular state, we are sowing the seeds of our own destruction. Political solutions will not fix a spiritual disease.
But in the midst of this dark history, we see the profound need for a different kind of King. Israel's problem was a series of kings who perpetuated sin. What they needed was a King who could break the cycle. What they needed was a King who would be perfectly faithful to His Father, even unto death. What they needed was a King who would not be overthrown by a conspiracy, but who would lay down His own life willingly to overthrow the conspiracy of sin and death itself.
Jesus Christ is that King. He came into a world of rebellion, a world where every man does what is right in his own eyes. He did not continue in the sins of Adam; He perfectly obeyed. He did not fall victim to a conspiracy in a way that thwarted His plan; He sovereignly walked into the conspiracy of the chief priests and the Romans to achieve our salvation. They struck Him down in the capital city, but unlike Pekahiah, He did not stay dead. He rose again, securing a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
The story of Pekahiah shows us the instability of all earthly thrones built on rebellion. The story of the gospel shows us the eternal stability of the throne of grace. We are all, by nature, citizens of a rebellious kingdom, doing what is right in our own eyes. But the true King, Jesus, has staged a coup of grace. He invades our rebellious hearts, puts to death the old man of sin, and establishes His own righteous reign. He does not depart from the will of His Father, and He makes us to be a holy nation, a people for His own possession. The chaos of 2 Kings drives us to the cross, where we find the only King who can bring true and lasting peace to the rebellion in our own hearts.