1 Kings 22:51-53
"51 Ahaziah the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and he reigned two years over Israel. 52 He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. 53 He served Baal and worshiped him and provoked the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger in every way that his father had done."
The first book of Kings closes on a sombre note. Ahaziah, Ahab's son, clearly intended to follow in his father's footsteps and involve his people still further in Baal-worship. The repeated disasters that had overtaken Israel during his father's reign had seemingly no effect upon him, and no sense of the divine displeasure seems to have been with him. The melancholy, and by now almost monotonous, refrain in 52 stands almost like a preface to the second book of Kings, as if to say 'More chastisement and judgment will surely come upon this continued impenitence and apostacy.' And come it did. This is the mid-way point, so to speak in the headlong rush to doom, and the tempo soon accelerates as evil follows evil. It is useful however to look back as well as forward at this stage, to see how far and how steadily Israel had fallen since the days of David. It is now, at the end of the book rather than at the beginning, that we see the truly fateful consequences of their having been determined to have a king like the other nations. Well, they did become like the other nations, in sin and idolatry, and often worse than them, outdoing their neighbours in the shame of their Baal-worship. The warning given them by Samuel (1 Samuel 8) was abundantly fulfilled; they proved to their cost and to their woe that the way of the transgressor is hard. And the tragedy is, it could have been so different. It need not have been thus with them, for even within the wrong choice they had made in clamouring for a king, God had been prepared to bless them and do them good; even then He sought to gather them to Himself. But they would not. Is it not often so, with men? 'Ye will not come unto Me, that ye might have life.'