CHAPTER 9

(884 B.C.)

JEHU ANOINTED AS KING OF ISRAEL

¹And Elisha the Prophet called one of the children of the prophets, and said unto him, Gird up your loins, and take this box of oil in your hand, and go to Ramoth-gilead (the judgment of the house of Ahab now commences; Jehu is the Divine instrument chosen to execute that judgment; we will find that Jehu illustrates how zealous an unconverted man can be for God when it suits his personal interests and ambitions to attack national evils; what he did on behalf of Righteousness he did well and with energy; however, his zeal was carnal; he utterly destroyed Baal but permitted the golden calves to remain; this fact alone shows that his heart was a stranger to Divine Faith; he was an instrument of Gods wrath, carrying out Gods Will, at least in the destruction of Ahab and his family; but he never had a personal knowledge of God; so, now the second part of Elijahs Prophecy those years earlier, concerning the anointing of Jehu as king over Israel, comes to pass [I Ki. 19:16]):

²And when you come thither, look out there Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi, and go in, and make him arise up from among his brethren, and carry him to an inner chamber (secrecy was of extreme importance, lest Joram should get knowledge of what was happening, and prepare himself for resistance; had he not been taken by surprise, the result might have been a long and bloody civil war);

³Then take the box of oil, and pour it on his head, and say, Thus says the LORD, I have anointed you king over Israel. Then open the door, and flee, and tarry not (the conference was to be behind closed doors, that no one might either hear or see what took place; and then the messenger was to leave instantly).

⁴So the young man, even the young man the prophet, went to Ramoth-gilead.

⁵And when he came, behold, the captains of the host were sitting; and he said, I have an errand to you, O captain. And Jehu said, Unto which of all us? And he said, To you, O captain (Jehu was thus singled out as the object of the message).

⁶And he arose, and went into the house; and he poured the oil on his head, and said unto him, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, I have anointed you king over the People of the LORD, even over Israel (even though Israel was in a sad state spiritually, the Lord still longingly referred to them as His People).

⁷And you shall smite the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of My servants the Prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the LORD, at the hand of Jezebel.

⁸For the whole house of Ahab shall perish: and I will cut off from Ahab him who urinates against the wall, and him who is shut up and left in Israel:

⁹And I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah:

¹⁰And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there shall be none to bury her. And he opened the door, and fled (all of this is plainly a command, and not a prophecy; Jehu is expressly ordered by God to smite, to utterly destroy, the whole house of Ahab; in fact, Elijah had prophesied, years before, of the awful end of Jezebel [I Ki. 21:23]).

¹¹Then Jehu came forth to the servants of his lord: and one said unto him, Is all well? wherefore came this mad fellow to you? And he said unto them, You know the man, and his communication (the sudden appearance and disappearance of the messenger had evidently created an impression that all was not well).

¹²And they said, It is false; tell us now. And he said, Thus and thus spoke he to me, saying, Thus says the LORD, I have anointed you king over Israel (Jehu reveals to the others present what the young Prophet had said to him).

¹³Then they hasted, and took every man his garment, and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying, Jehu is king (it seems that the captains threw themselves with ardor into his cause).

JEHU KILLS JEHORAM (JORAM)

¹⁴So Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi (not the same Jehoshaphat who had been the king of Judah) conspired against Joram. (Now Joram had kept Ramoth-gilead, he and all Israel, because of Hazael king of Syria.

¹⁵But king Joram was returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him, when he fought with Hazael king of Syria.) And Jehu said, If it be your minds, then let none go forth nor escape out of the city to go to tell it in Jezreel (as soon as he is proclaimed king, Jehu addresses himself to the captains, denoting that he has the military behind him, and proposes a policy; he swears everyone to secrecy).

¹⁶So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay there. And Ahaziah king of Judah was come down to see Joram (the great object of Jehu was to surprise Joram, and to kill or capture him before he could take any steps to organize a defense).

¹⁷And there stood a watchman on the tower in Jezreel, and he spied the company of Jehu as he came, and said, I see a company. And Joram said, Take an horseman, and send to meet them, and let him say, Is it peace?

¹⁸So there went one on horseback to meet him, and said, Thus says the king, Is it peace? And Jehu said, What have you to do with peace? turn you behind me. And the watchman told, saying, The messenger came to them, but he comes not again (in other words, the messenger was not allowed to take back any message whatsoever).

¹⁹Then he sent out a second on horseback, which came to them, and said, Thus says the king, Is it peace? And Jehu answered, What have you to do with peace? turn you behind me (the same was done with this messenger, as well).

²⁰And the watchman told, saying, He came even unto them, and comes not again: and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he drives furiously (the watchman on the wall conjectures that Jehu must be leading the company, since he had a character for impetuosity).

²¹And Joram said, Make ready. And his chariot was made ready. And Joram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah went out, each in his chariot, and they went out against Jehu, and met him in the portion of Naboth the Jezreelite (Divine Providence has so ordered matters that vengeance for the sin of Ahab was exacted upon the very sin of his guilt regarding Naboth; the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine; in other words, the Lord misses nothing).

²²And it came to pass, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, Is it peace, Jehu? And he answered, What peace, so long as the whoredoms of your mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many? (Whoredoms mean idolatries, as so frequently used in the Old Testament [Lev. 19:29; 20:5; Jer. 3:2, 9; 13:17; Ezek. 16:17; etc.)

²³And Joram turned his hands, and fled, and said to Ahaziah, There is treachery, O Ahaziah (as Joram was king of Israel, Ahaziah was king of Judah).

²⁴And Jehu drew a bow with his full strength, and smote Jehoram between his arms, and the arrow went out at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot.

²⁵Then said Jehu to Bidkar his captain, Take up, and cast him in the portion of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite: for remember how that, when I and you rode together after Ahab his father, the LORD laid this burden upon him (Jehu and Bidkar, who had personally ridden in the same chariot with Ahab, had heard the sentence of punishment addressed toward this evil king, as spoken by Elijah the Prophet [I Ki. 21:17-26]);

²⁶Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth, and the blood of his sons, says the LORD; and I will requite you in this plat, says the LORD. Now therefore take and cast him into the plat of ground, according to the Word of the LORD (the evil prophesied against Ahab had been formally and expressly deferred to the future days of his son, because of Ahabs Repentance [I Ki. 21:29]).

JEHU SLAYS AHAZIAH, KING OF JUDAH

²⁷But when Ahaziah the king of Judah saw this, he fled by the way of the garden house. And Jehu followed after him, and said, Smite him also in the chariot. And they did so at the going up to Gur, which is by Ibleam. And he fled to Megiddo, and died there (from a spiritual point of view, Jehu felt he could justify this act; the commission given to him [Vs. 7] was to smite all the house of Ahab, and Ahaziah was Ahabs grandson).

²⁸And his servants carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem, and buried him in his sepulchre with his fathers in the city of David (Ahaziah had reigned but a year [8:26]).

²⁹And in the eleventh year of Joram the son of Ahab began Ahaziah to reign over Judah.

JEHU KILLS JEZEBEL

³⁰And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired (tiered) her head, and looked out at a window (she looked out to see, but more so to be seen; it would not turn out well for her).

³¹And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Had Zimri peace, who killed his master? (Ever how the question asked by Jezebel is to be interpreted, it seems that it is in a conciliatory attitude rather than that which is threatening.)

³²And he (Jehu) lifted up his face to the window, and said, Who is on my side? who? And there looked out to him two or three eunuchs (the eunuchs who looked out to Jehu were probably the chief eunuchs of the palace, who had authority over the others, and indeed over the court officials generally).

³³And he said, Throw her down. So they threw her down: and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses: and he trode her under foot (there appears to have been no hesitation; the boldness of Jehu communicated itself to those whom he addressed; Jehu had his chariot driven over the prostrate corpse, so that the hoofs of his horses, and perhaps his own person, were sprinkled with her blood).

³⁴And when he was come in, he did eat and drink, and said, Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a kings daughter (he calls Jezebel a cursed woman, not inappropriately; she had brought a curse on her husband, on her sons, and on her grandsons, as well as on the entirety of Israel and Judah; she had been the prime mover in a bloody persecution of the worshippers of Jehovah; so now, she must answer to the Lord, and that she has).

³⁵And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands (evidently, she was eaten by wild dogs).

³⁶Wherefore they came again, and told him. And he said, This is the Word of the LORD, which He spoke by His servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel (the Prophecy referred to is that recorded in I Kings 21:23):

³⁷And the carcase of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel; so that they shall not say, This is Jezebel. (The fragments of the body were so scattered that there could be no collective tomb, no place where admirers could congregate and say, Here lies the great queen here lies Jezebel. To rest in no tomb was viewed as a shame and a disgrace Pulpit. And so concludes the life of this woman who had wrought such evil in both Israel and Judah. In one way or the other, all who reject Jesus Christ have an ignoble end. To die without God is the death of eternal darkness.)