1 Kings 15:30

15:25-34 During the single reign of Asa in Judah, the government of Israel was in six or seven different hands. Observe the ruin of the family of Jeroboam; no word of God shall fall to the ground. Divine threatenings are not designed merely to terrify. Ungodly men execute the just judgments of God upon each other. But in the midst of dreadful sins and this apparent confusion, the Lord carries on his own plan: when it is fully completed, the glorious justice, wisdom, truth, and mercy therein displayed, shall be admired and adored through all the ages of eternity.

Because of the sins of Jeroboam which he sinned, and which he made Israel sin, by his provocation wherewith he provoked the Lord God of Israel. Not that Baasha destroyed the family of Jeroboam because of his sins, which did so much mischief to Israel, and were so provoking to the Lord, from any dislike or hatred of them, for he walked in the same, 1 Kings 15:34 , but the Lord threatened this by his prophet, and suffered it to be done because of his abominations.

30 . because of [R.V. for ] the sins ] In 1 Kings 14:16 , words very like this clause are found, but the preposition there is a strong compound word, and ‘because of’ was there left as the translation. Here the original gives another and lighter preposition. Hence the seemingly unnecessary change, by which however the English reader is made to notice a difference of the Hebrew. by [R.V. because of ] his provocation ] Cf. Deuteronomy 32:19 ; 2 Kings 23:26 .

Baasha ... of the house of Issachar - It is curious to find Issachar furnishing a king. Tola, its one very undistinguished Judge Jdg 10:1, on obtaining office had at once settled himself in the territory of Ephraim. The tribe was as little famous as any that could be named. The "ass crouching between two burthens" was a true symbol of the patient, plodding cultivators of the plain of Esdraelon Genesis 49:14-15 . Baasha probably owed his rise neither to his tribe nor to his social position, but simply to his audacity, and his known valor and skill as a soldier 1 Kings 16:2 .

An exact repetition of 1 Kings 15:16 . From the book before him 1 Kings 15:31 the writer extracts a passage which happens to correspond exactly with one which he has already extracted from the "Book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah." He does not object to repeating himself (compare 1 Kings 14:21 , 1 Kings 14:31 ; 1 Kings 14:30 ; 1 Kings 15:6 ; 2 Kings 17:6 ; 2 Kings 18:11 ).

He walked in the ways of his father (Jeroboam) and in his sin, i.e., in the calf-worship introduced by Jeroboam ( 1 Kings 12:28 ). When Nadab in the second year of his reign besieged Gibbethon, which the Philistines and occupied, Baasha the son of Ahijah, of the house, I the family or tribe, of Issachar, conspired against him and slew him, and after he became king exterminated the whole house of Jeroboam, without leaving a single soul, whereby the prediction of the prophet Ahijah ( 1 Kings 14:10 .) was fulfilled. Gibbethon, which was allotted to the Danites ( Joshua 19:44 ), has not yet been discovered. It probably stood close to the Philistian border, and was taken by the Philistines, from whom the Israelites attempted to wrest it by siege under both Nadab and Baasha ( 1 Kings 16:16 ), though apparently without success. לא השׁאיר כּל־נשׁמה as in Joshua 11:14 (see the Comm. on Deuteronomy 20:16 ).