Heroes and Villains Explored - Yehosheba

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We continue our HAVE series and today we are investigating Yehosheba. Some translations will have her name as Yehoshabeath.

2 Chronicles 22v11-12 But Yehosheba, the daughter of the king, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king's sons who were slain, and put him and his nurse in the bedroom. So Yehosheba, the daughter of king Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest (for she was the sister of Ahaziah), hid him from Athaliah, so that she didn't kill him. He was with them hidden in God's house six years: and Athaliah reigned over the land.

Yehosheba was a princess, the daughter of King Joram and her name means "Yahweh is an oath". She had married Jehoida, who was the high priest. Yehosheba, although she was a king's daughter and a king's sister, married a descendant of Levi, the head of the priest class in Judah. In the Old Testament, the promised coming of God in human form had been seriously threatened repeatedly. It was threatened by the fact that Sarah and Abraham remained childless for a long time; by Jacob's flight; by the attempts on David's life by Saul; and also by Athaliah attempted massacre of the royal baby Joash. However, as evil as Athaliah was, it cannot be said that she planned that massacre with a deliberate intention of preventing the coming of the promised Messiah from the line of King David. But Satan, however, would most certainly have had this purpose in mind when he prompted Athaliah to do the deed. When Athaliah commanded that the king's sons be slain, she served as a tool in the hand of Satan. Yehosheba saved the life of Joash. By rescuing the life of that little prince she rescued the hope of Israel, and thwarted the plans of Satan. But, just as we have no reason to believe that Athaliah consciously tried to interfere with the coming of Jesus Christ, who was the long awaited for Messiah; so we also cannot presume that Yehosheba's effort to save Joash was a conscious attempt to make sure the coming of the long awaited for Messiah, Jesus Christ in the future Bethlehem was certain. Athaliah was Satan's tool, and Yehosheba was used by God. Athaliah's work was destined to fail, because Satan is impotent against God's purposes, and Yehosheba had to succeed because God's plans are invariably realized.

As Jehoidah's wife, Yehosheba lived in the Temple, not in the Palace. The right to search the Temple was outside the area of the king or queen, and for that reason, once she had determined to save the life of the prince, Yehosheba decided to hide him in one of the bedrooms in the Temple, where even the fearsome and wicked Athaliah could not go.

The Bible does not tell us how Yehosheba happened to get Joash. It seems that the nurse may have helped her. Perhaps this is the best explanation of the circumstances. Yehosheba was the wife of Jehoida, and we have for that reason, to believe that she feared God. She must have learned that Joash's nurse had also kept the faith; and in those difficult times these two women had sought each other's company. This gave Yehosheba an occasion to persuade the nurse to flee to the Temple with the baby. Athaliah, at least, did not detect what had happened, and supposed that the whole of David's family had been killed. So, when Joash was made king 4 years later, Athaliah expressed her surprise by shouting out ''Treason!!! Treason!!!"

Yehosheba, therefore, ought to be kept in grateful remembrance by the Church. She has an appealing character. She did not desire mundane luxuries. Even though Ahaziah was her brother, and though the life of splendour at a royal court could have been hers, Yehosheba chose a secluded life in the Temple, the House of God. Her calm introspective character had developed in her, courage unequalled by men. It was not Jehoida the priest who tried to save the generations of David from being destroyed. For the sake of fear, he would have permitted the whole royal family to be killed. Of all the men in Jerusalem, who at that time still feared the name of Jehovah, not one dared to assert his position and authority. They would have liked to, but they did not dare - they were too frightened. They lacked bravado and courage. And yet - while all these men, including the high priest, feared to act or do what was right, Yehosheba did the brave thing. She saw the significance of the situation, and acted accordingly. It was a dangerous thing to do. If Athaliah had heard of it, she would have tried to kill Yehosheba. But Yehosheba made up her mind, was determined, and after that she never hesitated to do what was right, regardless of the circumstances or consequences.

Her courage and readiness seem to have impressed her husband. So much so, that 6 years later, he showed the same kind of brave initiative. He dared to crown Joash king, and to execute the judgement of God upon Athaliah.

Lessons to learn!

The main lesson to learn from the life of Yehosheba is to love what is right, hate evil, and do what God has commanded. At times that will require courage and bravado, just as it did for Yehosheba. In times like that, it is important to remember not to use sin to promote God's work. Remember that you need to stand up for God. Do no not be afraid even though times are hard, for God's ultimate purpose will work out. Pray for Him to strengthen, lead and guide you so that you too can be seen, as Yehosheba was, a brave and courageous person. In the western world particularly, at this current time, standing up for God and what He has revealed in the Bible is an unpopular thing to do. We are shouted down at every opportunity and considered fools for believing in a living God as revealed in Jesus Christ. What ever situation you find yourself in this week, make a stand for Jesus Christ, whether that is at work, at home, in the supermarket of talking to people online. Show brave initiative; stand up for God regardless of the circumstance or consequence. Yehosheba was a godly person who displayed great courage. Go and do the same - be a Yehosheba for God to all those who come into contact with you.

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Heroes and Villains Explored

Athaliah

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The person we are going to look at in this study, is Athaliah. You can read about her in 2 Kings 11 and 2 Chronicles 22-23. The judges have long gone, and the nation of Israel had become a monarchy under Saul, David and Solomon. Yet soon after Solomon died, the nation splits into north and south - Israel and Judah.

An Evil Scheming Woman

As we have just read, Athaliah was, by all accounts, a terrible woman. The tribes in the kingdom of Israel, tried to lure the kingdom of Judah's tribes into a trap, and prepared it for the Babylonian exile. Athaliah was to cause Judah's moral life to decay. Athaliah was the daughter of that horrible couple Ahab and Jezebel. She somehow inherited all the evil of her wicked parents. Jezebel had brought poison from Sidon and injected it into the life of Israel. Now Athaliah was to give some of that same poison into the life of Jerusalem.

Nothing permits us to think that Judah ever tried to be a good influence upon Israel. But we have good reasons to know that a king of the House of David, so far from choosing to ally himself with God's prophet in the crucial conflict between Ahab and Elijah, chose instead to ally himself with Ahab. He permitted Joram, the crown prince, to marry Jezebel's daughter Athaliah.

Had Jerusalem not already departed from the service of God, the coming of Athaliah and the Baal priests would have caused a holy and violent reaction in Jerusalem. But no such reaction came, and the opposite happened. Athaliah became the ruler of Israel the moment she became Queen. Her every gesture was obeyed immediately.

In order to carry out her plans she exercised her reckless power at will. The Temple of Jehovah was virtually closed. Beautiful Baal temples were built everywhere in Jerusalem at her command. Mattan served as the high priest of Baal. Such innovations changed the life of Jerusalem. Worldliness soon prevailed and the last remnant of the fear of the Lord seemed to leave the walls of Jerusalem. So intriguing and persistent was this woman's designs, that she intentionally sought to give her motives to her son. She hoped that he and his family after him would continue to Baal-ize Jerusalem. Thus she planned that Baal worship would become firmly established in Israel. Had she succeeded in her plans, Jerusalem could not have hoped to escape that curse. But the Lord called Jehu. He destroyed Ahab's generation in Israel and put Athaliah's son, Ahaziah, to death. That catastrophe however, did not stop Athaliah from her evil plans. As the situation was, another of Joram's sons, one not trained by her, would succeed to the throne. This was a circumstance which indeed temporarily paused Athaliah's evil plans. But she soon made short work of that by commanding that all Joram's sons be killed. Had that command been fulfilled, David's generation would have terminated. Athaliah knew that as a queen she could marry a foreign prince. Thus she would make the worship of Baal an eternal thing for Israel.

The Lord Knows Best

The Lord knows better however, and He stopped her progress. By a miracle, the little Joash was rescued from the massacre. Later, the high priest Jehoida seized the courage to publicly crown him king. When Athaliah on that occasion, profaned the temple, he had the captains seize her, drag her out and kill her. Therefore her plans were destroyed. The Messiah was born from Jesse's generation, from David's family line. David's house was not destroyed. But that does not make Athaliah a less evil person. Her evil passion and arrogance induced her to deliberately poison a people with the worship of false gods. She was so wicked that when anything threatened to stop the progress of her wicked plans, she did not hesitate to destroy it, including God's plan in the royal line. Athaliah, not a person to follow in any way.

Lessons to Learn

One of the main lessons we can learn from Athaliah, is that her style of leadership is a god-less style of leadership. She made all the decisions based on her own wicked judgement and the counsel of those equally wicked. She abused power for the sake of power, Athaliah made decisions based on hatred, idolatry and vengeance. When you make decisions, what do you base them on? Do you make a decision based on praying to God our Father and asking Him for guidance? Do you read His written Word, the Bible, to see what guidance you can glean from there? Is there any form of hatred in your life? By hatred, that includes thinking wrongly and badly of others. Is there any form of idolatry in your life? By idolatry, that includes anything or anyone that displaces Jesus Christ from the centre of your life? As for your ambitions, have you submitted them to God and to your Christian friends for counsel and guidance? In all those things - hatred, idolatry and pride, Athaliah exceeded and paid the ultimate penalty. Not even she, however, could stop God's plan of salvation - Jesus Christ, from the line of King David. This Jesus, for those who follow Him, where ever you may work or live, is to be our role model. This Jesus who, existing in the form of God, didn't consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men (Philippians 2v6). Leadership and life based on servanthood & submission to God and others, modelled on that greatest of servants, Jesus Christ. Go and do likewise.

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Heroes and Villains Explored

Yael (Judges 4-5)

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There are in the Bible, both heroes and villains - people of great character, from whom we can learning to apply lessons to life in the 21st Century. An example of those who can be seen to be faithful to God (such as King David - a Hero) and unfaithful to God (such as King Saul - a Villain).

It is perhaps a sad fact of church life (and of church history), that very rarely do we hear the stories about the minor women characters of the Bible. So in this series, we will discover together something about the lesser known characters of the Bible as well as the more famous ones. These people from the Bible are like you and I, and we have lessons to learn from them, in order that God is glorified and honoured through our lives.

Yael (Judges 4&5)

Judges 5v24 - "Yael shall be blessed above women, the wife of Heber the Kenite; blessed shall she be above women in the tent. The first person we are going to look at is Yael. Yael is mentioned in one place and 5 times in all the Bible. Yet as was just read in Judges 5:31, she was accorded great honour and blessing? Why?

Yael's name, like other Bible names, means more than just a name. It means goat, a graceful goat and the term implies that she was an attractive woman.. In the west, comparing your wife to a goat would be an insult, so most translations apparently use the word hind or deer. So we could quite properly, call Yael the name ‘Yael Doe'.

Yael was the wife of Heber the Kenite. The Kenites were not true Israelites, but were the descendants of Moses' non Jewish wife. Because they were a roaming nomadic people they lived in tents. In the days of Deborah they had camped at the foot of Mount Tabor. In fact, they were situated very near the place where Barak and Deborah had destroyed Jabin's mighty army, including his 900 chariots of iron. Jabin had permitted the Kenites to stay in his country because he hoped they would prove to be his ally against the Israelites whom he hated intensely. But they disappointed Jabin's hopes. Perhaps from the beginning, because they remembered Moses's great deeds, the Kenites had occasionally sided with Israel.

Yael was a friend of Israel. She rejoiced when she heard of Jabin's defeat and would have wept when she heard that Sisera had defeated Israel with his chariots. Yael received the honour that Barak would like to have had. By her hand, as though by a judgement of God, Sisera, the enemy of Israel, was killed. Barak would have had that honour if he had not hesitated on the day Deborah had asked him to attack Jabin. But because he hesitated at that time, Deborah, as a prophetess, told him the word of the Lord in Judges 4v9: She said, "I will surely go with you: nevertheless, the journey that you take shall not be for your honour; for Yahweh will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman."

Sisera showed himself to be made of wiser stuff than his soldiers, or so it seemed at first. The survivor in any kind of work, sport or conflict is the person who can keep cool in a crisis and take rational action. Sisera abandons his chariot, which had made him an easily seen target for Barak, as well as of being no use in the mud when it rained, and so he disappears on foot in the direction of Barak's own town which was perhaps the last direction Barak would look for him.

Near Kedesh, there was land which belonged to the Kenites. Their name likens them to Cain, whose family made all kinds of bronze and iron (Genesis 4:22). More recently they had become friends by marriage with the Israelites, through Moses' marriage to a Kenite. But a nomadic group such as the Kenites survived by the friends and allies they made, and in this case with Jabin. Given their expertise, they would be natural chariot makers and repairers. These chariot experts had in the past been the key to Sisera's success but are now the key to his failure.

Then Sisera meets Yael. When Sisera arrives at her home, he expected to be on friendly territory if these Kenites were true allies of his boss Jabin, he has travelled almost fifty miles. Yael comes out to greet him and offers him a warm and smooth welcome. There is a contrast to be seen here. At the time of Yael, when a woman alone, invites a man into her bedroom, in any other context, it would be the act of the seductress in Proverbs 7. Like Yael, she might well be expected to offer a man refreshing drink and comfort, invite him to lie down and relax, reassure him that everything will be all right, and that she will tell him no-one will know of his visit and then be the death of him.

Yael knows the predicament she was in. As a married woman, though at the moment alone and vulnerable, with all the personal insecurity that that means in a time of ware, and as a Kenite wife, she would have been treated by the people of Israel as a traitor on the losing side. At this point, she behaves just like an independent woman, takes her destiny in her own hands, and acts in a way that brings the victory of Israel to its completion in the death of Israel's enemy commander. Because she was a woman she easily won the confidence of Sisera. He relaxed, after being so careful on the run to Yael's house, and it cost him his life. Like Barak, Sisera no longer wanted to be involved and was probably fed up of playing the tough macho hero guy. He was physically exhausted, but when he lets himself fall asleep, it is as if he wants to leave everything behind him for a short time. Perhaps he knew that Kenite people were a very caring people to strangers, because in the desert a mutual commitment to hospitality can mean the difference between life and death. He thought he could trust Yael. But perhaps Yael knew that sometimes this hospitality meant more than just sleep and food, and wanted a role reversal. Sisera made a mistake in telling Yael to lie if anyone asked if he was there. Being a wise woman, she concluded that Sisera was running from the battlefield, which meant that the Jews had won the battle and the Canaanites grip on the land was gone. If she protected Sisera, she would be in trouble with her Jewish relatives.

Yael gets together her woman's weapons - gentleness and consideration, cooking, hospitality and courage. She also had a tent peg and hammer at hand, because it was the job of the woman to put up the tent. She probably gave him milk and not water, because warm milk is known to cause people to become sleepy. So when Sisera shortly falls into a deep sleep, she takes the tent peg & hammer and hits it through the head of Sisera as he sleeps. She must have used a lot of violent force in this horrid incident. Yael joins the role of honour of those who have acted for themselves, and either knowingly or unknowingly acted to free Israel. She becomes a deliverer too. Her story is to be remembered for a long time (Judges 5:31).

However, some questions naturally come to us.

1. Did God answer prayers through this bloody and violent act?

We don't know from what the Bible says. Yael is in the Bible (so the prayer for her to be celebrated for a long time is answered) yet her story is not often read (so the prayer isn't answered). It is not merely that the church has tended to prefer men's stories in Scripture, though that is almost certainly a historical fact. It is that the violence of the story should make us feel uncomfortable. It makes us aware of the violence within each of us, which we prefer to avoid.

2. Should we bless or blame Yael for what she did?

She invited Sisera into her tent, treated him kindly, and told him not to be afraid; so she was deceitful. The Kenites were at peace with Jabin, so she violated a national treaty. She gave Sisera the impression that she would guard the door, so she broke a promise. She killed a defenceless man, so she was a murderess. Yet Deborah sang, "Yael shall be blessed above women, the wife of Heber the Kenite; blessed shall she be above women in the tent.' (Judges 5v24) So how are we to understand this question? To begin with, let us not read into the time of the Judges, the spiritual standards taught by Jesus and the apostles. Also let us keep in mind that the Jews had been under terrible bondage because of Jabin and Sisera; and that it was God's will for the nation to be delivered from its enemies. Both Jabin and Sisera had been mistreating the Jews for years, and if the Canaanite army had won the battle, hundreds of Jewish girls would have been captured, raped and probably killed (Judges 5v30). Yael not only helped to deliver the nation of Israel from bondage, but also she helped protect vulnerable women from vicious enemies. She was a courageous woman, in the middle of a war, and she stopped being neutral and took her stand with the people of God.

3. How is God's purpose realized in the world?

It is achieved; through kings like Jabin who are involved in the fulfilment of God's purpose, without them knowing, in ways they enjoy and in ways they wish they could escape; through the people of God crying out to God in the middle of their suffering (even when the suffering was deserved); through a woman of insight who become a woman of a violent act, using her female wiles to become a traitor and assassin. Yael succeeded because God was with her. She played a part in the purpose of God, and in the introduction of 40 years peace in the land, for the sake of which it might almost seem worthwhile to be a victim.

As we conclude, one question for you to think about and enact upon:

What principles and lessons for living as a Christian, can I learn from God, through the life of Yael?

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