Sometimes men will invent Gods of their own. This is what was done, practically, by Ahaziah. Men will go out after novel deities. This is what is being done every day—not under that name, but the mere name makes no difference in the purpose of the spirit. Say new enjoyments, new entertainments, new programs, new customs—these, being interpreted as to the heart of them, mean new altars, new helpers, new gods.
It is said of Shakespeare that he first exhausted worlds, and then invented new. That was right. It was but of the liberty of a poet to do so. But it is no part of the liberty of the soul. Necessity forbids it, because the true God cannot be exhausted. He is like His own nature, so far as we know it in the great creation; He is all things in one, gleaming and dazzling as noon-tide, soft and gentle as the balmy wind, strong as the great mountains and rocks, beauteous as the tiny fragrant flowers, musical as the birds that make the air melodious, awful as the gathered thunder which hovers above the Earth as if in threatening.
Who can exhaust nature?
Who can exhaust nature’s God?
Still, the imagination of man is evil continually. He will invent new ways of enjoying himself. He will degrade religion into a mere form of interrogation. This is what Ahaziah did in this instance: “Go, inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this disease.” All that we sometimes want of God is that He should be the great fortune teller.
How true it is that Ahaziah represents us all in making his religion into a mere form of question asking—in other words, into a form of selfishness!
The messengers have now come. They have taken their speech from their king, and they are on the road to consult Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron. But who is this who meets them, and who asks:
“Is it not because there is not a God in Israel that ye go to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?”
The men had said nothing about their errand. Who is it that reads the heart night and day, to whom the darkness and the light are both alike, and from the fire of whose eye nothing is hid? How do we get the impression that when we have perfected our lie it is in some sense public property? We are sure the man whom we meet knows it. He looks as if he did.
Elijah is an abrupt speaker. The “hairy man” and “girt with a girdle of leather” did not study the scanning of his sentences. He struck with a battering ram; his interrogations were spears that quivered in the heart; his looks were judgments. What an effect he produced upon these men! Why did they not go past him and say: “Keep thy speeches to thyself, thou hairy man, nor interfere with the king’s messengers”?