Unsung Heroes: The Four Great Men Of Samaria

Introduction: There was war between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, where Israelites on each side fought, died, were captured and who knows what else. In this battle, the northern kingdom of Israel had won a great victory and were headed back home, loaded with the spoils of war. But that joy didn’t last long and we have four great men to thank for that.

Text: 2 Chronicles 28:12-15, KJV: 12 Then certain of the heads of the children of Ephraim, Azariah the son of Johanan, Berechiah the son of Meshillemoth, and Jehizkiah the son of Shallum, and Amasa the son of Hadlai, stood up against them that came from the war, 13 And said unto them, Ye shall not bring in the captives hither: for whereas we have offended against the LORD already, ye intend to add more to our sins and to our trespass: for our trespass is great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel. 14 So the armed men left the captives and the spoil before the princes and all the congregation. 15 And the men which were expressed by name rose up, and took the captives, and with the spoil clothed all that were naked among them, and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon asses, and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm trees, to their brethren: then they returned to Samaria.

Thoughts: Relations between these two kingdoms had remained tense, at best, ever since the days of Rehoboam, son of Solomon (1 Kings 12, 2 Chronicles 10). Sometimes all-out war took place, just like this event here.

Ahaz, king of Judah at the time, was a wicked man and even though the LORD had repeatedly warned him about his evil ways, he ignored it. Now Ahaz faced some terrible consequences: 2 Chronicles 28 also tells how Israel had killed 120,000 “valiant men (verse 6)” in one day. Even worse, Pekah, king of Israel, also had taken 200,000 hostages from Judah and were bringing them to his kingdom. I don’t think they had anything good planned for these fellow Hebrews.

But before anything could happen, God sent a prophet, Oded, and in a three-verse message, warned Israel that “the fierce wrath of the LORD is upon you (verse 11)”. We can be grateful that even though the North was still involved in idol-worship of various kinds (Baal, the golden calf, you name it), there was at least one true prophet of the LORD living there. We don’t know anything about him, except for this message, but that was enough for four of Samaria’s leaders.

Some of us may remember “The Bible Story” books, published years ago. One of the volumes covered this story and the writer mentioned that these four men of Samaria needed to be regarded with the great men of history. Their names are never mentioned anywhere else, and we know nothing of what they did for a living, but we do have this one episode here. They knew that it was wrong to bring hostages to Samaria (200,000!), especially since at least some were naked and barefoot. The people of Judah were in a humiliating condition, to say the least.

Now here’s what makes these men stand out among the rest. They had the courage to say, to whoever was in charge, and said, “No, you aren’t going to bring these people here! We’ve already offended the LORD (and had they ever) and you want to add to it, to make it worse? No! We’re not going to let you do this”.

To their credit, the soldiers left the people and the spoils of war with the leaders and probably returned to their homes. Then, “the men which were expressed by name” gave them clothes, shoes, food, something to drink, and made arrangements for these people of Judah to return home. Were the four leaders among those who personally did this? It’s not certain. But one thing for certain is that none of this would have happened if not for these four great men.

To say the least, it would make the world a better place if leaders, in any capacity or situation, would honor God and His Word by doing the right thing, always. That doesn’t always happen, but it did here, and we can be grateful for these four unsung heroes, some of history’s greatest.

Scripture quotations taken from the King James Version of the Bible (KJV).