2 Kings 8:24-29
"24 So Joram slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David, and Ahaziah his son reigned in his place.
25 In the twelfth year of Joram the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Ahaziah the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, began to reign. 26 Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Athaliah; she was a granddaughter of Omri king of Israel.27 He also walked in the way of the house of Ahab and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as the house of Ahab had done, for he was son-in-law to the house of Ahab.
28 He went with Joram the son of Ahab to make war against Hazael king of Syria at Ramoth-gilead, and the Syrians wounded Joram. 29 And King Joram returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds that the Syrians had given him at Ramah, when he fought against Hazael king of Syria. And Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to see Joram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick."
One lesson we can gather from these somewhat uneventful verses is the dullness of the life of sin. This is something we also learned in our studies in Genesis, where long lists of names appear in seemingly dreary succession, without any kind of comment - a fact from which we deduced the significant lesson that so far as the Scriptures are concerned, the only really interesting life is the spiritual life. This can be proved in experience. It is true that boredom and weariness are a characteristic of life without God - one thinks of the despair and frustration of the ancient world before the glad light of the Gospel broke upon it. But whatev- er else may be said of the true life of the Spirit, it could never be called dull - it is the most exciting thing in the world, and so full of exhilarating surprises.
We note the mention of the mother of Ahaziah, Athaliah, the daughter of Omri. This is a name fated to play a sinister role later in the story of 2 Kings, as we shall see. The historian introduces it here significantly, without comment, to prepare us, as it were, for what is to come. It is as if he were setting his stage for the next part of the unfolding drama. We should not miss the striking fact that two of the most desperately evil and bloody periods of Old Tes- tament history were dominated by evil women who usurped authority over their men!