The Death of Joram of Judah

Now Joram king of Jerusalem — for we have said before that he had the same name as the king of Israel — as soon as he had taken the government, set about killing his brothers and his father’s friends who were governors under him, and so made a beginning and a display of his wickedness. He was no better at all than those kings of Israel who first transgressed against the laws of their country and of the Hebrews, and against the worship of God. And it was Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab, whom he had married, who taught him to be a bad man in other ways too, and to worship foreign gods. Yet God would not root out this family entirely, because of the promise he had made to David. Joram, however, did not stop, day after day, bringing in new kinds of customs, to spread impiety and to ruin the customs of his own country. About that time the Edomites revolted from him, killed their former king, who had been subject to Joram’s father, and set up one of their own choosing. Joram fell on the land of Edom by night with the horsemen around him and the chariots, and destroyed those who lived near his own kingdom, but went no further. This expedition did him no good, however, for they all revolted from him, along with those who lived in the country of Libnah. He was indeed so mad as to force the people to go up to the high places of the mountains and worship foreign gods. [a]

While he was doing this, and had cast the laws of his own country entirely out of his mind, a letter was brought to him from Elijah the prophet. It declared that God would execute great judgments on him, because he had not imitated his own fathers but had followed the wicked ways of the kings of Israel; because he had forced the tribe of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem to abandon the holy worship of their own God and worship idols, as Ahab had forced the Israelites to do; and because he had killed his brothers and put good and righteous men to death. In this letter the prophet told him what punishment he would undergo for these crimes: the destruction of his people, with the ruin of the king’s own wives and children; and that he himself would die of a disease of the bowels, with long torments, his bowels falling out from the violence of the rotting within, so that, though he would see his own misery, he would not be able to help himself at all, but would die in that way. This is what Elijah declared to him in that letter. [c]

Not long after this an army of the Arabians who lived near Ethiopia, together with the Philistines, fell on Joram’s kingdom and plundered the country and the king’s house. They also killed his sons and his wives. Only one of his sons was left him, who escaped the enemy; his name was Ahaziah. After this disaster Joram himself fell into the disease the prophet had foretold, and it lasted a long time — for God, in his anger against him, inflicted this punishment on him in his belly — and so he died miserably, and saw his own bowels fall out. The people also treated his dead body with contempt. I suppose this was because they thought such a death had come on him from the anger of God, and that he was therefore not worthy of the kind of funeral that suited kings. So they did not bury him in the tombs of his fathers, nor give him any honors, but buried him like a private man. He had lived forty years and reigned eight. And the people of Jerusalem handed the government to his son Ahaziah. [d]