We start out with Ahab dead, The tribe of Moab decided to go their own way. Ahaziah, Ahab’s son and the new king, injured himself and sent messengers to check out Baalzebub. Who is apparently a different god than just plain Baal. It’s starting to look like names of gods and people were written solely for a three stooges sketch. Anyways. Ahaziah sent messengers and they ran into Elijah on the way. Elijah said, “I know who you are and why you’re traveling through. Fuck you and fuck your king. Tell him he’s going to die of his injuries, because god hates him.” The messengers went back and told Ahaziah that and he sent wave after wave of his soldiers to kill Elijah, but every time Elijah would just stand on top of the mountain commanding god to burn them all to death with a firestorm. Finally Elijah decided to stop killing random soldiers and went down and let them know that Ahaziah was fucking doomed. Sure enough, Ahaziah died and Joram took over as king. Then the bible says verbatim “As for other events of Ahaziah’s reign. Are they not written about in the annals of the kings of Israel?” I don’t know, bible. I just don’t know.
Elijah and Elisha went on down to Bethel and then they went to Jericho. Elijah knew he wasn’t long for this world and kept telling Elisha that, but Elisha kept telling him to stop saying it. Eventually they wandered down to Jordan and Elijah just casually split the Jordan river. Like in the middle of a conversation. Then a chariot made out of fire and two horses made out of fire swooped on down and grabbed Elijah and taxied his ass right up to heaven without having to die first. Elisha was so amazed by this, that he tore all of his clothes off like a lunatic. Luckily Elijah dropped his robe down from the fire-chariot, so Elisha put that on instead. A search party started for Elijah, but eventually came up flat. Because he got carried away by fire, because Elijah was god’s boss and also he fucking loved fire.
So Elisha wandered around doing prophet stuff like miracles. One day he went to a village with a shitty water supply and put some salt in it and it fixed everything. Side note: Don’t put salt in water if you want to use it to grow things. It won’t work. Anyways, then Elisha decided to go back to Bethel. On his way there a bunch of kids made fun of his bald spot. He was a good man who didn’t let his insecurities affect the well being of other people. Just kidding. He summoned 2 goddamn bears to come out of the woods and maul 42 of the kids making fun of him.
So the tribe of Moab went to war with Israel, Judah and Edom. Joram, Israel’s new king and Jehosaphat, Judah’s king decided to contact a prophet before war would start. Of course they chose Elisha and of course Elisha was a total dick to them. He said, “Check this shit out. If you wanna win this war, you’d better have god on your side. in order for that to happen you have to irrigate a canal to turn the desert kingdom of Edom into a fertile area. Also, fuck up all Moab’s trees and dam up all their water. Then god will let you win.” This sounds more like they just did a logical thing and cut off their enemies water supply, but it also worked out that that’s what god wanted. The next day, because it only takes one day to do all that apparently, Moab attacked with every man they had to fight with. All of their water turned into blood for some reason and Israel slaughtered the shit out of them. They ended the war by sacrificing the king’s son to god. Because human sacrifice was still a thing back then.
So apparently Elisha was the head prophet, but there were a bunch of other ones that worked under him. One of them died and his wife approached Elisha being like, “My fucking husband died and now people who loaned us money are coming to take our children away as slaves!” Say what you will about banks today, and I will too, but at least they don’t have that kind of power. So Elisha told her to get a shitload of jars together and pour her jar of olive oil into the other jars. The olive oil turned into magic and she filled all the jars up and sold them so she could pay back her creditors. Then Elisha just told some random old lady that she was gonna have a baby soon, and she did. Then the baby died and Elisha raised him from the dead, because he could apparently do that. Then he made good stew out of poisoned stew, which is kind of a shitty miracle after raising a kid from the fucking dead. Also, he turned 20 loaves of bread into enough food for 100 people. Which doesn’t really seem like a miracle at all. Just good rationing.
Then there was this guy named Naaman. Naaman was a commander in the Aramean army, but he had leprosy. One of his wife’s slaves recommended that he go check out Israel for his cure. Naaman listened to his slave and went to the king of Israel for help. The king of Israel got so mad that he tore his clothes off, which is starting to look like the standard thing to do when you’re feeling any kind of strong emotion at all. Elisha told him to go wash his body off in the Jordan, and Naaman told him to fuck off. He said, “That’s fucking stupid. I thought you were gonna heal me, instead you just told me to go bathe in that nasty ass river?” Well he did it anyways and it worked out for him. Good for him. But then one of Elisha’s servants asked Naaman for 2 shekels. 2 fucking shekels and Elisha decided to give his servant leprosy.
After curing leprosy on one guy and cursing another guy with it, you’d think Elisha was good with his miracles for one day, but then he topped it all off and made an iron axe head float in the river for some guy who’d dropped it in there. Oh and also, he decided to blind the entire Aramean army when they decided to raid Israel. He eventually restored their sight and sent them on their way, on the condition that they don’t attack again. I know I wouldn’t.
So eventually, they attacked again and laid siege to Samaria and at the same time a horrible famine hit. The most notable part of this was a lady freaking out to the king of Israel crying, “Me and my neighbor ate my son yesterday! Now it’s her turn to cook up her son for dinner and she won’t do it!” That shit is fucked up. Her complaint wasn’t that she ate her son, it was that she wanted to eat another kid and she couldn’t. The king decided that this was all Elisha’s fault and that it was time to kill him.
When a guy from the military came to kill Elisha, Elisha slammed the door on him. Then he said, “Check it, tomorrow there’s gonna be a bunch of food in Samaria. Don’t worry about it.” The king’s soldier was like, “There’s no fucking way, man.” Elisha was like, “There totally fucking is, and you won’t get to eat any of it.” Apparently Elisha occasionally turned into a bratty child. Well sure enough, the Aramean army got spooked by what they thought was the sound of chariots coming from the Hittite and Egyptian armies, so they left. A couple of lepers found this out first and after snagging a bunch of their stuff that they’d left behind, they heroically decided to go tell everyone else who were eating their kids and acting generally fucking nuts. When the soldier went down to Samaria to check this out, he got trampled to death.
Elisha sought out the old lady whose son he’d raised from the dead and decided to give her a bunch of land and money, because he liked her. Then, Ben Hadad, the king of Aram got sick and sent his servant Hazael to talk to Elisha. Elisha told Hazael that Ben Hadad would get better and then die anyways. Then Elisha started freaking out and crying. Hazael was like, “What the fuck?” And Elisha said, “I’m crying because you’re gonna kill a lot of Israelites.” Hazael said, “How the fuck am I gonna do that?” Elisha was like, “Because you’re gonna be the next Aramean king.” Hazael took this as instruction to go and murder Ben Hadad in his sleep and take over the kingdom. Not quite sure where he got that idea.
So Jehoram, Jehosaphat’s kid, became the new king of Judah and married one of Ahab’s daughters. For some reason this pissed god off so he killed him. Then his kid, who was also named Ahaziah, succeeded him. A bunch more war broke out between the Arameans and The Judah/Israel alliance. Then Elisha made Jehu the new king of Israel because he apparently had that power. Jehu went on a good old fashioned biblical grade bloodbath. He killed Joram, Ahaziah, Jezebel, and literally any person that had come from Ahab. Slaves, too. Any slave that had been raped into existence by Ahab or his kids had to die. I’m not sure why. Then he sought out all the Baal priests and told them he wanted to have a giant party in Baal’s honor. When they all showed up, he fucking murdered all of them. Eventually, though, he pissed god off. It doesn’t say how, but there are so many ways to do it, that I can assume it was anywhere between eating a rabbit, to wearing two kinds of linen at the same time, to raping his own children. He pissed god off, and god shrunk Israel a little bit. Then Jehu died.
So, Ahaziah’s mom, Athalia, found out her son had been murdered by Jehu and decided to slaughter her entire family. Because once you lose one kid, you’d better kill all of the rest of them. A few of her kids got away, though, with her grandson Joash. They put Joash in his nurse’s bedroom and he stayed there for six years and for some reason Athalia never bothered looking for him there. When he was old enough he became the king of Judah. He donned his high-up military folk with a bunch of armor that had belonged to king David and was still just laying around or whatever. When Athalia found out about all of this, she started screaming “Treason! Treason! I’m in fucking charge here.” Joash decided the best action was to have his mother dragged out of the temple and killed in the fucking street. Then Joash fixed the temple up so it was pretty. Then he got assassinated.
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