"And the destruction of Ahaziah was of God, by coming to Joram; for,
when he was come, he went out with Jehoram against Jehu the son of
Nimshi, whom the Lord had anointed to cut off the house of Ahab."--2
CHRON. xxii. 7.


We rarely read this part of the Bible. And I do not wonder at it. For
those particular chapters are undoubtedly dreary and monotonous. They
contain the names of a number of incompetent and worthless kings who
did nothing that was worth writing about, and who were singularly
alike, so that when you have heard the story of one of them you know
pretty well the story of all. It is the good lives that furnish
attractive reading, because there is so much individuality and variety
in them, so many pictorial lights and shadows. A novel in which all
the characters are mean, would be read by nobody. The blackness needs
to be relieved by something good, for darkness is always monotonous.
Bad men show a dreary sameness in their thoughts and doings, their rise
and fall. The godly are like nature illumined by the sunlight,
manifold and infinite; the wicked are like nature when the darkness
covers it, uniform and dismal. Nearly all that is said in the Bible
about these bad kings, is that they walked in the ways of Ahab or
Jeroboam or some other wicked person, that they closely imitated the
doings of their model. The Bible does not waste space in describing
them more accurately. One or two specimens do for all.

But certain things are said about Ahaziah which afford room for
reflection, and may, perhaps, be useful to us if we take them in a
right way.