Ahaziah of Israel Sends to Baal-zebub

Ahaziah, son of Ahab and Jezebel, reigned two years. He fell through the lattice of his upper chamber in Samaria and took to his bed. He sent messengers to Baal-zebub, the god of Philistine Ekron: "Shall I recover from this illness?"

Elijah met them on the road and turned them back with the question that in this book sounds like a verdict: "Is there no God in Israel, that you go to inquire of Baal-zebub?" From the description—"a hairy man, with a leather belt around his waist"—the king knew who it was.

What follows is a scene repeated three times: a captain of fifty comes with his fifty to fetch the prophet. The first demands, "Man of God, the king says: come down." The second repeats it. The third falls on his knees and begs for his own life and his men's—and lives. Elijah goes down with him himself.

Ahaziah died childless and was succeeded by his brother Jehoram. It was in his reign that Moab, tributary to Israel since the days of Omri, revolted—the same rebellion told from the other side on the Mesha Stele.

Academic history dates this event differently. In the age of the kings the divergence is not the one familiar from the Persian period, where Seder Olam runs about a hundred and sixty-five years short. Here academic chronology reckons some reigns as overlapping — father and son on the throne together — so its span from the division of the kingdom to the destruction of the Temple comes out nearly three decades shorter. The gap therefore grows: a hundred and thirty-five years at the division, a hundred and fifty-four at Sennacherib, a hundred and sixty-four at the destruction. The anchors of the academic count are external documents: the battle of Qarqar (853), Jehu's tribute on the Black Obelisk (841), the fall of Samaria (722), Sennacherib's campaign (701), Megiddo and Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns in the Babylonian Chronicles (609, 605, 597). Both dates appear on the timeline when the divergence layer is on.