All the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was calm, because Athaliah had been slain with the sword at the palace. – 2 Kings 11:20

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 17, 2019): 2 Kings 11

Before the coming of the vampire, there was a king who bore the name Dracula. Dracul means dragon, and the king’s father had received that nickname after becoming a member of the “Order of the Dragon.” His son, Vlad, loved to sign his letters Dracula, meaning Son of the Dragon. But Vlad had another name. It was Vlad the Impaler, a reflection of his habit of impaling his enemies, or probably even those who he thought might be his enemies. According to historians, he liked to drive a stake up through the buttocks of his victims until the stake emerged from the person’s mouth. It is estimated that Vlad the Impaler executed twenty percent of his kingdom, Wallachia, part of modern-day Romania, during his reign.

Dracula’s reign came in three segments. First, upon the murder of his father, the original Dragon, Dracula ruled over Wallachia for parts of October and November 1448, before he was deposed by the man who likely had killed “The Dragon.” Dracula returned to rule over Wallachia from April 1456 until mid-1462. His last opportunity to rule came for a short period near the end of 1476. Vlad the Impaler, or Dracula, was killed in battle either in late December 1476 or early January 1477.

His legacy today is mixed. Some argue that he was a reformer whose violent acts were necessary to protect his kingdom. For others, he is a nightmare that we wish only existed in our dreams. If Vlad the Impaler was as bad as history makes him out to be, it is hard to imagine that the people who lived under his rule, the eighty percent that Dracula hadn’t executed, didn’t breathe a sigh of relief on the day that Vlad the Impaler died. Somehow, when the sun rose the next morning, it seemed to be just a little brighter.

Dracula might have people wanting to rewrite his history, but Athaliah does not. Athaliah was the only non-descendant of David to rule over Judah. And her reign, from the very beginning, was marked with violence. Athaliah was the wife of Jehoram, the King of Judah, and the daughter, or maybe sister, depending on the biblical passage, of Ahab, the King of Israel. When Jehoram died, her son Ahaziah ascended to the throne of Judah, and Athaliah became the Queen mother. But when Ahaziah died, Athaliah decided to take the throne for herself. In the process, she murdered anyone who had any claim to the throne, including her own children and grandchildren. One grandson, Joash, who was only one-year-old at the time of Athaliah’s massacre, and was successfully rescued and hidden from her, and allowed to live and grow in secrecy. But the rest of his family was killed.

Athaliah’s reign was marked with the idolatry of the Northern Kingdom. The worship of Yahweh was prohibited. Athaliah intended to transform Judah in her own image. Until the day when the now seven-year-old Joash was revealed to the people. Athaliah stormed in to finish the job she had started six years earlier by killing her grandson but was stopped by soldiers loyal to the new king.

On that day, Athaliah was executed, and all of Judah breathed a sigh of relief. And, maybe, the sun shone just a little brighter after the death of Athaliah; as the reign of Joash was set to begin.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 22