¹After Ahab died, Moab rebelled against Israel. ²During the rebellion King Ahaziah fell through a window lattice in his upstairs room in Samaria and injured himself. So he sent messengers ⸤to Ekron⸥. He had told them, “Go ask Baalzebub, the god of Ekron, if I will recover from this injury.”

³Then the angel of the Lord said to Elijah from Tishbe, “Meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and ask them, ‘Do you seek advice from Baalzebub, the god of Ekron, because ⸤you think⸥ there is no God in Israel? ⁴This is what the Lord says: You will not get up from the bed you are lying on. Instead, you will die there.’ ” Then Elijah left.

⁵When the messengers returned, the king asked them, “Why have you come back so soon?”

⁶They told him that a man came to meet them and said to them, “Go back to the king who sent you. Tell him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Do you send messengers to seek advice from Baalzebub, the god of Ekron, because ⸤you think⸥ there is no God in Israel? You will not get up from the bed you are lying on. Instead, you will die there.’ ”

⁷The king asked them, “What was the man who told you this like?”

⁸They replied, “He was hairy and had a leather belt around his waist.”

“That’s Elijah from Tishbe,” the king answered.

⁹The king sent an army officer with 50 men to Elijah. When the officer found Elijah sitting on top of a hill, he told Elijah, “Man of God, the king says, ‘Come down.’ ”

¹⁰Elijah answered the officer, “If I’m a man of God, fire will come from heaven and burn up you and your 50 men.” Then fire came from heaven and burned up the officer and his 50 men.

¹¹The king sent another officer with 50 men to Elijah. The officer said, “Man of God, this is what the king says: Come here right away!”

¹²Elijah answered the officer, “If I’m a man of God, fire will come from heaven and burn up you and your 50 men.” Then God’s fire came from heaven and burned up the officer and his 50 men.

¹³The king sent a third officer with 50 men. The officer of the third group went up the hill and knelt in front of Elijah. The officer begged him, “Man of God, please treat my life and the lives of these 50 servants of yours as something precious. ¹⁴Fire has come from heaven and burned up the first two officers and their 100 men. But treat my life as something precious.”

¹⁵The angel of the Lord told Elijah, “Go with him. Don’t be afraid of him.” So Elijah got up and went with him to the king. ¹⁶Elijah told the king, “This is what the Lord says: You sent messengers to seek advice from Baalzebub, the god of Ekron. Is this because ⸤you think⸥ there is no God in Israel whose word you can seek? You will not get up from the bed you are lying on. Instead, you will die there.”

¹⁷So Ahaziah died as the Lord had predicted through Elijah. Joram succeeded him as king because Ahaziah had no son.^a¹⁸Isn’t everything else about Ahaziah—the things he did—written in the official records of the kings of Israel?

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Footnotes

a 1:17 Greek; Masoretic Text “… succeeded him in Jehoshaphat’s son Jehoram’s second year as king of Judah, because Ahaziah had no son.”