1 Kings 15 - civil war

Civil war is the most horrible kind of war. Of course all war is horrible and to be avoided. The word "civil" has an ironic second meaning of friendly. But in the sense of civil war it mean something different. Coming from a Latin word where our word city comes from.

I bring this up because in chapter 15 and others around it the formulaic verse "Now there was war between < > king of Judah and < > king of Israel all their days. This is civil war. It is not civil at all. It means people were fighting close relatives. They may have friends or in-laws who are avowed enemies.

In the book Sarum by Edward Rutherford there is a story set at the time of the War of the Roses, a civil war in England. One man kills, without knowing it until he had done it, his brother-in-law. The sight of him dying before his eyes is indelibly printed on his mind for all of his life. For the longest time he kept the secret from his sister. Finally he does tell her and she is, by now, able to forgive him. She is wise about the conditions of war. Further she can see the suffering this has caused her brother for all the ensuing years. She has worked through a lot of the grief by now.

I recently saw an old movie that was set in 1920 America and features an old American Civil War veteran as a cantankerous hero. He went through the horror of war, so fear of organized crime bosses was tempered because he had been through worse. He is able to save the day because fear did not cripple him.

I was just musing but the point is we probably gloss over these verses. But ever present civil war is a horrible thing. It tends to involve civilians in a way that other wars don't. It occurred over many years through several regimes on both sides.