The kings of Israel and Judah

King Joram of Israel

The kingdom of Israel (the north) · Reigned twelve years (2 Kings 3:1) · Also called Jehoram · Evil before God · 2 Kings 3; 6 to 9

Joram, also called Jehoram, was another son of Ahab and the last king of Omri's dynasty. He did evil, yet Scripture notes one qualified improvement: he put away the pillar of Baal that his father had made, though he still clung to the sins of Jeroboam. His reign saw many of the miracles of the prophet Elisha. He was killed by Jehu, whom God had anointed to destroy the house of Ahab, and his body was cast into the field of Naboth. He is not the same man as Jehoram king of Judah.

And he wrought evil in the sight of the LORD; but not like his father, and like his mother: for he put away the image of Baal that his father had made.2 Kings 3:2 (KJV)

Evil, but not like his father

Joram wrought evil in the sight of the LORD, but not like his father, and like his mother, for he put away the image of Baal that his father had made. Nevertheless he clung to the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin; he departed not therefrom. His was a partial and shallow reform: he took down the worst of his father's Baal-worship but kept the golden-calf religion that had corrupted the north from the start.

Scripture gives him this careful, mixed verdict, better than Ahab, still far from God, a reminder that removing one idol while keeping another is no true return to the LORD.

The days of Elisha

Joram's reign is the great age of the prophet Elisha, Elijah's successor, and many of Elisha's miracles fall in these years: water provided for the allied armies in the desert, the widow's oil, the Shunammite's son raised, the healing of Naaman the Syrian leper, the floating axe head, and the deliverance of Samaria from a terrible siege and famine by a miracle Elisha foretold. Again the reign of an ungodly king becomes the setting for God's mighty works through his prophet.

Elisha even guided the king in war, revealing the plans of the Syrians, and when the blinded Syrian army was led into Samaria, the prophet told Joram not to kill them but to feed them and send them home, a startling act of mercy in a violent age.

The end of the house of Ahab

Wounded in battle against Syria at Ramoth-gilead, Joram went to Jezreel to recover. There God's judgment on Ahab's house fell. Elisha sent a young prophet to anoint the army commander Jehu as king with the commission to destroy the whole house of Ahab. Jehu drove furiously to Jezreel, and when Joram rode out and cried, Is it peace, Jehu answered, What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many? Jehu shot him through the heart.

Jehu ordered the body thrown into the plot of ground that had belonged to Naboth, remembering Elijah's prophecy that God would requite Ahab's blood-guilt in that very place. So the dynasty of Omri and Ahab ended, exactly as the LORD had spoken.

The biblical verdict and where it points

Joram is judged evil, though less so than his parents, the picture of a half-hearted reformer who removes what is grossly offensive while holding on to the deeper, more comfortable idolatry. His fall completed the judgment long pronounced on Ahab's house.

His reign, filled with the mercies and miracles of Elisha, shows a God who keeps sending grace and truth even to a wayward people under a compromised king. Elisha's deeds, feeding enemies, cleansing a leper, raising a dead child, point beyond themselves to the greater Prophet who would do all these and more, the true King who does not merely put away one idol but cleanses the heart entirely.

A note on the record: everything here is drawn from the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Kings and Chronicles sometimes tell a reign differently, Chronicles often adding a king's repentance or building works, and where they differ this is said plainly rather than smoothed over. The exact lengths and overlaps of the reigns are genuinely complex, because kings often shared the throne with a son for a time, so the totals in Scripture do not always add up in a simple line. The verdict good or evil is the Bible's own assessment, whether a king did right or evil in the sight of the LORD.

Related: Ahaziah of Israel · Jehu · Jehoram of Judah · All the kings of Israel and Judah