The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Kings. Farrar Frederic William

not been a moment ago, with consecrated oil?

      Then Jehu frankly told them the perilous secret. Thus and thus had the young prophet spoken, and had said, "Thus saith Jehovah, I have anointed thee king over Israel."

      The message was met with a shout of answering approbation. That shout was the death-knell of the house of Omri. It showed that the reigning dynasty had utterly forfeited its popularity. No luck had followed the sons of Naboth's murderer. Israel was weary of their mother Jezebel. Why was this king Jehoram, this king of evil auspices, who had been repudiated by Moab and harried by Syria – why, in the first gleam of possible prosperity, was he being detained at Jezreel by wounds which rumour said were already sufficiently healed to allow him to return to his post? Down with the seed of the murderer and the sorceress! Let brave Jehu be king, as Jehovah has said!

      So the captains sprang to their feet, and then and there seized Jehu, and carried him in triumph to the top of the stairs which ran round the inside of the courtyard, and stripped off their mantles to extemporise for him the semblance of a cushioned throne.168 Then in the presence of such soldiers as they could trust they blew a sudden blast of the ram's horn, and shouted, "Jehu is king!"

      Jehu was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. Nothing tries a man's vigour and nerve so surely as a sudden crisis. It is this swift resolution which has raised many a man to the throne, as it raised Otho, and Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. The history of Israel is specially full of coups d'état, but no one of them is half so decisive or overwhelming as this. Jehu instantly accepted the office of Jehovah's avenger on the house of Ahab.169 Everything, as Jehu saw, depended on the suddenness and fury with which the blow was delivered. "If you want me to be your king,"170 he said, "keep the lines secure, and guard the fortress walls. I will be my own messenger to Jehoram. Let no deserter go forth to give him warning."171

      It was agreed; and Jehu, only taking with him Bidkar, his fellow-officer, and a small band of followers, set forth at full speed from Ramoth-Gilead.

      The fortress of Ramoth, now the important town of Es-Salt, a place which must always have been the key of Gilead, was built on the summit of a rocky headland, fortified by nature as well as by art. It is south of the river Jabbok, and lies at the head of the only easy road which runs down westward to the Jordan and eastward to the rich plateau of the interior.172 Crossing the fords of the Jordan, Jehu would soon be able to join the main road, which, passing Tirzah, Zaretan, and Beth-shean, and sweeping eastward of Mount Gilboa, gives ready access to Jezreel.

      The watchman on the lofty watchtower of the summer palace caught sight of a storm of dust careering along from the eastward up the valley towards the city.173 The times were wild and troublous. What could it be? He shouted his alarm, "I see a troop!" The tidings were startling, and the king was instantly informed that chariots and horsemen were approaching the royal city. "Send a horseman to meet them," he said, "with the message, 'Is all well?'"

      Forth flew the rider, and cried to the rushing escort, "The king asks, 'Is all well? Is it peace?'" For probably the anxious city hoped that there might have been some victory of the army against Hazael, which would fill them with joy.

      "What hast thou to do with peace? Turn thee behind me," answered Jehu; and perforce the horseman, whatever may have been his conjectures, had to follow in the rear.

      "He reached them," cried the sentry on the watchtower, "but he does not return."

      The news was enigmatical and alarming; and the troubled king sent another horseman. Again the same colloquy occurred, and again the watchman gave the ominous message, adding to it the yet more perplexing news that, in the mad and headlong driving174 of the charioteer, he recognises the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi.175

      What had happened to his army? Why should the captain of the host be driving thus furiously to Jezreel?

      Matters were evidently very critical, whatever the swift approach of chariots and horsemen might portend. "Yoke my chariot," said Jehoram; and his nephew Ahaziah, who had shared his campaign, and was no less consumed with anxiety to learn tidings which could not but be pressing, rode by him in another chariot to meet Jehu. They took with them no escort worth mentioning. The rebellion was not only sudden, but wholly unexpected.

      The two kings met Jehu in a spot of the darkest omen. It was the plot of ground which had once been the vineyard of Naboth, at the door of which Ahab had heard from Elijah the awful message of his doom. As the New Forest was ominous to our early Norman kings as the witness of their cruelties and encroachments, so was this spot to the house of Omri, though it was adjacent to their ivory palace, and had been transformed from a vineyard into a garden or pleasance.

      "Is it peace, Jehu?" shouted the agitated king; by which probably he only meant to ask, "Is all going well in the army at Ramoth?"

      The fierce answer which burst from the lips of his general fatally undeceived him. "What peace," brutally answered the rebel, "so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?" She, after all, was the fons et origo mali to the house of Jehoram. Hers was the dark spirit of murder and idolatry which had walked in that house. She was the instigator and the executer of the crime against Naboth. She had been the foundress of Baal- and Asherah-worship; she was the murderess of the prophets; she had been specially marked out for vengeance in the doom pronounced both by Elijah and Elisha.

      The answer was unmistakable. This was a revolt, a revolution. "Treachery, Ahaziah!" shouted the terrified king, and instantly wheeled round his chariot to flee.176 But not so swiftly as to escape the Nemesis which had been stealing upon him with leaden feet, but now smote him irretrievably with iron hand. Without an instant's hesitation, Jehu snatched his bow from his attendant charioteer, "filled his hands with it," and from its full stretch and resonant string sped the arrow, which smote Jehoram in the back with fatal force, and passed through his heart.177 Without a word the unhappy king sank down upon his knees178 in his chariot, and fell face forward, dead.

      "Take him up," cried Jehu to Bidkar,179 "and fling him down where he is, – here in this portion of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite. Here, years ago, you and I, as we rode behind Ahab,180 heard Elijah utter his oracle on this man's father, that vengeance should meet him here. Where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth and his sons, let dogs lick the blood of the son of Ahab."181

      But Jehu was not the man to let the king's murder stay his chariot-wheels when more work had yet to be done. Ahaziah of Judah, too, belonged to Ahab's house, for he was Ahab's grandson, and Jehoram's nephew and ally. Without stopping to mourn or avenge the tragedy of his uncle's murder, Ahaziah fled towards Bethgan or Engannim,182 the fountain of gardens, south of Jezreel, on the road to Samaria and Jerusalem. Jehu gave the laconic order, "Smite him also";183 but fright added wings to the speed of the hapless King of Judah. His chariot-steeds were royal steeds, and were fresh; those of Jehu were spent with the long, fierce drive from Ramoth. He got as far as the ascent of Gur before he was overtaken.184 There, not far from Ibleam, the rocky hill impeded his flight, and he was wounded by the pursuers. But he managed to struggle onwards to Megiddo, on the south of the plain of Jezreel, and there he hid himself.185 He was discovered, dragged out, and slain. Even Jehu's fierce emissaries did not make war on dead bodies, any more than Hannibal did, or Charles V. They left such meanness to Jehu himself, and to our Charles II. They did not interfere with the dead king's remains. His servants carried them to Jerusalem,

168

What is meant by the gerem of the staircase is uncertain. The word means "a bone" (Aquila, ὀστῶδες), and is, in this connection, an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. The Targum explains it as the top vane of a stair-dial. The margin of the R.V. renders it "on the bare steps." The Vulgate renders it in similitudinem tribunalis, as though gerem meant tselem. The LXX. conceal their perplexity by simply translating the word ἐπὶ τὸ γαρέμ. Grotius and Clericus, in fastigio graduum. Symmachus, ἐπὶ μίαν τῶν ἀναβαθμίδων.

169

2 Kings ix. 14: "So Jehu conspired against Joram." The same word is used in 2 Chron. xxiv. 25, 26.

170

2 Kings ix. 15, R.V.: "If this be your mind."

171

So far as we know, he never returned to Ramoth-Gilead, of which indeed we hear no more.

172

Tristram, Land of Moab.

173

Heb., Shiph'hath, "a dust-storm" (LXX., κονιορτόν, αἰ. ὄχλον; Vulg., globum), not as in A.V. and R.V., "a company." Comp. Isa. lx. 6; Ezek. xxvi. 10.

174

Clearly the rendering "he driveth furiously" is right. The word "furiously" is beshigga'ôn (Vulg., præceps), and is connected with "mad," ver. 11. LXX., ἐν παραλλαγῇ. Arab. Chald., "quietly." Josephus, "leisurely, and in good order." Such an approach would not, however, have been at all in accordance with the perilous urgency of his intent.

175

Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, is named from his grandfather Nimshi, who seems to have been the founder of the greatness of his house.

176

2 Kings ix. 23: "Turned his hands." Comp. 1 Kings xxii. 34.

177

Ver. 24. Vulg., inter scapulas.

178

LXX., reading צַל בּרְכָּיו.

179

Bidkar, perhaps Bar-dekar, "Son of stabbing." Comp. 1 Kings iv. 9.

180

Heb., ts'madim, "in pairs"; LXX., ἐπιβεβηκότες ἐπὶ ζεύγη. It is uncertain whether Jehu and Bidkar were in the same chariot as Ahab, as Josephus says (καθεζομένους ὄπισθεν τοῦ ἅρματος), or in a separate chariot.

181

2 Kings ix. 26: "Saith the Lord." Ephraem Syrus omits these words. He says that the night before Jehu had seen the blood of Naboth and his sons in a dream. Comp. Hom., Od., iii. 258: Τῷ κε οἱ οὐδὲ θανόντι χυτὴν ἐπὶ γαῖαν ἔχευαν 'Αλλ' ἄρα τονγε κύνες τε καὶ οἰωνοὶ κατέδαψαν Κείμενον ἐν πεδίῳ.

182

A.V., "By the way of the garden-house." LXX., Βαιθγάν.

183

The text is a little uncertain.

184

Thenius supposes "Gur" to mean "a caravanserai." Comp. 2 Chron. xxvi. 7, Gur-Baal; Vulg., Hospitium Baalis.

185

The account of the Chronicler (2 Chron. xxii. 9) differs from that of the earlier historian. It may, however, be (uncertainly) reconciled with it as in the text, if we suppose the words "he was hid in Samaria" to mean in Megiddo, in the territory of Samaria. Obviously, however, the traditions varied. There are difficulties about the story, for Ibleam is on the west towards Megiddo, and not between Jezreel and Samaria.