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Re: Melachim II 011: Asalyah and her Murderous Plans
David Goldman asked:
>>Greetings. I was thinking over these issues on Yomtof, and was wondering
what you may think about these matters. I don't find them addressed in
meforshim, especially the Meam Loez..........
1) The killing by Shaul Hamelech was not of ALL Kohanim, only those in Nov,
except for Aviatar, yet the punishment Chazal describe of the House of
Dovid Hamelech was on ALL his descendants for affiliating with the house of
Achav (except for Yehoash). Thus this is lechoyra a lack of symmetry.
This was in addition to the destruction by Yehoram, Asaliah's husband of
all his own brothers, and then subsequently the loss of all his sons in the
war with the Arabs/Emorites, except for Achaziah, the father of Yehoash,
and all their sons (grandsons of Yehoram) by Yehu.
2) The gezeyra given to Yehu ben Nimshi was apparently ONLY on the males of
the house of Achav (aside from Izevel). Likewise, although Asaliah sought
to kill "kol zera hamelucha" she did NOT seek to kill her daughter,
Yehosheva/Yehoshvat, who may equally have had children of Beis Dovid by her
husband, Yehoyada.
Thus, one could certainly ask how Asaliah planned to exterminate the house
of Dovid if her daughter and possibly other females survived and had
children who were descendants of Dovid.
3) Had Achaziah not been killed, presumably Asaliah would not have planned
to destroy all the members of the House of David, so why was it that only
with the death of Achaziah the Sefer Melachim indicates that she decided to
carry out this revenge, and not upon the deaths of her own parents by
Yehu?! Why didn't she seek to destroy Yehu, who was the one who killed them
instead?
4) Why did Asaliah not decide to be the same type of (negative) influence
over a young king Yehoash that she was on his father, her son, Achaziah as
the queen regent?
5) Apparently Yehoash's mother Tsivia was dead when Asaliah took over,
otherwise Tsivia would have become the Queen mother.
6) Why did Asaliah run out to the Beis Hamikdash unprotected by her own
retinue of guards to condemn the crowning of the child instead of accepting
it and waiting for a time when she could affect the child king, especially
since it was her own grandchild, of the house of Achav?? By killing all the
zera hamelucha, who was she planning to succeed after her own death if not
Yehosheva herself or Yehosheva's child?<<
The Kollel replied:
>>...
3. According to the above ideas, we may now also have an answer to question
#3. Asalyah's main aim was not to gain revenge against Yehu but rather to
grab power for herself. (Possibly there was a certain element of revenge
involved, but at any rate it was not the chief motive.) Therefore, as long
as Achazyah was alive, she did not see that the door was yet open to her
gaining power.
Before I go further, I should just note that I forgot to write above that
the explanation of the Abarbanel is quite similar to that of the Yad David
to Sanhedrin 95b that I cited in my earlier reply, namely that the aim of
Asalyah was principally to kill all of the royal seed who might present a
challenge to her claim to the throne, and not necessarily to kill all of
the seed of David.
(It is interesting to note that the Abarbanel was a government minister in
the Portuguese and Spanish government, and that the author of Yad David was
the head of the so-called "Sanhedrin" which Napoleon tried to establish, so
both were familiar with political life.) <<
David Goldman comments:
>>Thank you for your reply. The clarification on #3 is very valuable. I am
ashamed to say I never heard of the Yad Dovid commentary - But it's
interesting that Asalya must not have feared a challenge from other
branches of the family who would certainly have had much more claim than
she did, even if the descendants of Shlomo were killed. And of course it
would seem that had Achaziah not been killed she would have accepted his
child, i.e. Yoash to succeed him, especially since he too was a descendant
of Achav. Indeed, the death of her own mother seemed to play no role in her
behavior as compared to the death of her son, and she apparently had no
plans for her own successor..
And of course it can be assumed that when Yehoshafat married his son
Yehoram to Asalya he thought she was a tsadekes. But then Yehoram became
king and wrongly invoked his authority to kill his own brothers as moredim
bemalchus, probably under the influence of his wife, but may have had
reasons he thought were leshem shomayim.....for which Eliyahu told him his
family after him would be destroyed....<<
The Kollel replied:
>>For the moment I am just going to make a short comment on the motives
behind Yehoshafat marrying off his son, Yehoram, to Asalyah.
We learn in Tana d'Vei Eliyahu Zuta #3 that the Midrash lists different
reasons fir why people get married. The Midrash states, "From where do we
know that if a man marries a woman in order to achieve greatness,
eventually someone will rise up from that family and will decrease his seed
after him, and he will not inherit the world that he aspired to? We learn
this from Yehoshafat, the king of Yehudah. He married into the family of
the king of Yisrael because he saw that Achav had 70 sons, as is said
(Melachim I 22:45), 'And Yehoshafat made peace with the king of Yisrael.'
As a punishment for this marriage, Asalyah rose up and killed all the sons
of Yehoshafat. If not for the covenant that ha'Kadosh Baruch Hu made with
David ha'Melech, Yoash would also have been killed, and the Kingdom of
David would have been abolished entirely."
We see that even though Yehoshafat was a very great Tzadik himself,
nevertheless he was attracted by the power and greatness of Achav, and took
Achav's daughter for his son. Possibly he thought that Yehoram would be a
good influence on her, but at any rate we see that the opposite happened.
There is clearly a lot more still to write on this, but I will close here
for the moment.<<
---
David Goldman comments:
Thanks again. I just spent some time reviewing the sections in Melachim and
looking into Seder Hadoros. In fact, there doesn't seem to be anything to
explicitly say that Achav himself actually BELIEVED or served avoda zarah,
for we know not only how he respected the Torah but how learned he was. I
was thinking that what he did was to ACCOMODATE goyim from Phoenecia in
Eretz Yisroel by letting them have a Baal center and import their priests
for their activities, and this would be as IF he himself worshiped them,
and was deserving of the punishments he got, with the heilige neviim
considered as "fanatics" interfering with his foreign policy (since Achav
was a very important world leader).
Plus, his marriage to Izevel was probably with the original intention of
doing what Shlomo did, i.e. to bring other nations to Hashem, including
marrying the daughter of Paro. It must be the case that Izevel was
considered a real sincere convert, but the interests of international
politics got the best of her and Achav.
Achav became king just 3 years before Yehoshafat, so the big kasha is HOW
could Achav BEFORE being king have 70 sons in Shomron and 70 in Yezreel
(Tirtzah)??!! Only a king would have been in a position to have so many
wives that he could have that many children by the time Achav himself
became king. So did Yehoshafat saw spiritually that Achav would have that
many sons over the next 20 years?
When Yehoshafat made the mistake of allowing his son to marry Asalya, both
were in all likelihood young teenagers (Yehoram was 38 when he became king,
so if he got married just after his father became king, he would have been
around 15 years old). Yehoshafat continued the mistake, allying with Achav
against Aram some years later (perhaps AFTER Asalya married Yehoram), and
was criticized by the prophet Yehu, by which time evidently Achav allowed
baalism, but interestingly was not HIMSELF punished directly.
We can be sure that Yehoshafat meant 100% leshem shamayim with heilige
heshbonos to reunify the tribes, but which was a mistake, even if he
determined that Achav HIMSELF (nor even Izevel) did not worship the baal
(but merely allowed it to develop for reasons of international politics, a
sin that was as if he himself DID worship it, ...."kechut hasaara").
So we see that always in those times the TUM'AH of accomodating goyim or
compromise at that time was a huge klippa that was intolerable in and of
itself, even if Yidden (or even their leaders) did not really directly
associate with it ("lekaf zechus") but merely tolerated it. For tolerating
EVIL can be considered as if one did the evil himself, which even Shlomo
incurred punishment though he was a holy tzaddik 100%. Our neviim were
always considered to be exaggerating fanatics by their opponents who
claimed they themselves were sticking to the basic requirements.
BTW, I wasn't suggesting the notion of "international politics" in the
modern megushamdike way. The erroneous intention of Achav had spiritual
implications lefi shitaso, as related to his greatness in the world even
vis a vis Yehuda.
----------------------------------------------
The Kollel replies:
1) Melachim I 16:31-3 tells us about Achav: "He went and worshipped the
Ba'al and bowed down to it. He erected an altar for the Ba'al... And Achav
built the Asherah...."
2) However, while it seems clear that Achav did worship Avodah Zarah, it
still requires further inquiry into why he did so.
3) The Talmud Yerushalmi (Sanhedrin 10:2) tells us that one of the
Amora'im, Rebbi Levi, spent six months expounding the verse (Melachim I
21:25): "But there was none like Achav who gave himself over to do that
which was evil in the eyes of Hashem." Rebbi Levi continually explained
this verse in a negative way.
The Yerushalmi relates that one night Achav came to Rebbi Levi and said to
him: "What crime have I done to you and what offense have I committed? You
cite the first part of the verse, but why do you not cite the second part:
'Whom Izevel his wife stirred up'?"
4) Here we have a suggestion that Achav's bad deeds did not originate in
himself, but were inticed by his wife.
5) There is another very important factor involved in the worship of Avodah
Zarah by the kings of Yisrael. We learn this from the Gemara in Sanhedrin
102b. The Gemara relates that Rav Ashi, who redacted the Talmud Bavli,
announced once that on the next day he would be going a class about "our
friend" King Menasheh, who is listed in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 90a) as one
of the kings (together with Achav) who did not merit a share in the Next
World. Menasheh came to Rav Ashi in a dream and hinted to Rav Ashi that he
should not have referred to him as his equal in Torah scholarship. Menasheh
asked Rav Ashi a difficult Halachic question which Rav Ashi was unable to
answer. Menasheh explained to Rav Ashi clearly the Halachah involved. Rav
Ashi replied, "Since you are so wise, why did you worship Avodah Zarah?"
King Menasheh replied: "If you would have been there, you would have lifted
up the hem of your cloak so that you could run quickly and follow me to
worship Avodah Zarah."
Rashi explains that the Yetzer ha'Ra to worship Avodah Zarah was so
dominant in those times that it swept almost everyone up with it.
6) Accordingly, I do not think it was international politics that dictated
the activities of Achav, but actually it was something much stronger than
politics, namely the Yetzer ha'Ra.
7) The Chazon Ish (Collected Letters 1:209) expresses it very incisively
when he writes that our understanding of how it can be that people who were
so great in Torah were nevertheless so strongly attracted to Avodah Zarah
can be compared to the understanding that a color-blind man has of colors!
There is still a lot more to write but I will close here for the moment.
Kol Tuv,
Dovid Bloom
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