Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Kings · About this commentary
Dig This Valley Full of Trenches
2 Kings 3:1-20
1 Now Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned twelve years. · WEB
Three kings march into a waterless wilderness, and the prophet who despises two of them calls for a musician and orders the army to dig.
He did that which was evil in Yahweh's sight, but not like his father and like his mother, for he put away the pillar of Baal that his father had made. Nevertheless he held to the sins of Jeroboam 2 Kings 3:2–3.
Jehoram is the book's portrait of partial reform. He removes his father's Baal pillar — a real act with real political cost — and keeps the calves, which is to say he cleans up the foreign import and leaves the domestic corruption in place. The verdict not like his father and like his mother is genuine credit, and it does not change the outcome for his house.
"The king of Moab has rebelled against me. Will you go with me against Moab to battle?" He said, "I will go up. I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses" 2 Kings 3:7.
Jehoshaphat gives the identical answer he gave Ahab before Ramoth Gilead 1 Kings 22:4, word for word, and it produced a disaster the last time. Good men repeat their characteristic mistakes, and Judah's alliance with Ahab's house is his.
"Alas! For Yahweh has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab" 2 Kings 3:10.
Seven days into a circuitous desert route the water runs out, and Jehoram's instinct is to blame God for a march God was never consulted about. It is his father's reflex exactly 1 Kings 18:17. And it is Jehoshaphat, again, who asks the question nobody has asked yet: isn't there a prophet of Yahweh here? 2 Kings 3:11 — again after the decision rather than before it.
The servant who answers identifies him as the man who poured water on the hands of Elijah — known in the army as somebody's assistant, which is what he had been for years.
"What have I to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father, and to the prophets of your mother" 2 Kings 3:13.
Elisha's contempt is total and it is aimed precisely. The king who kept Jeroboam's shrines and grew up in Jezebel's house has a full establishment of prophets available; he wants Yahweh's man only when the canteens are empty. Were it not that I respect the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward you 2 Kings 3:14 — the oracle is given for the sake of the one man present who has any claim on it.
"But now bring me a musician." When the musician played, Yahweh's hand came on him 2 Kings 3:15.
The detail is unexplained and unique. A prophet whose anger is up calls for music before he can hear, and the account simply reports it. Whatever else it means, it says the prophetic word did not arrive on demand and that the man receiving it had a state to be settled into.
"Make this valley full of trenches... You will not see wind, neither will you see rain, yet that valley will be filled with water" 2 Kings 3:16–17.
The instruction requires an exhausted, thirsty army to spend a night digging pits in a dry wadi for water that will arrive without weather — flash flooding from a storm somewhere out of sight. They are asked to prepare for provision they cannot see coming, which is what the digging means. And God's own estimate of the difficulty is the passage's best line: this is an easy thing in Yahweh's sight 2 Kings 3:18. What the three kings regard as their crisis is filed as the minor half of the promise; the campaign comes with it.
The orders about felling trees and stopping springs 2 Kings 3:19 describe the standard devastation of ancient warfare, and Deuteronomy limits exactly this in Israel's own campaigns Deuteronomy 20:19. The book reports the instruction without comment and lets the reader hold it beside the law.
In the morning, about the time of offering the sacrifice, behold, water came by the way of Edom 2 Kings 3:20.
The timing is liturgical — the hour of the morning offering, the same hour Elijah prayed on Carmel 1 Kings 18:36 — and the water arrives from the direction nobody was watching.
settled What this mark means