2 Kingschapter 10
36 verses · Jeremiah, by tradition · 6th century BC · History
Then Jehu brought all the people together and said, “Ahab served Baal a little, but Jehu will serve him a lot.
Introduction
Jeremiah, by tradition, History, 2 Kings Overview.
This chapter finishes the revolution the chapter before it began and then gives the new king a mixed verdict. Its first hearers knew how a usurper bound the leading men of a city to himself. They knew the clan in tents that refused wine and vineyards, and they knew the shrines at Bethel and Dan that every king of Israel kept. Listen for the praise and the blame the narrator gives in the same breath. The chapter asks a reader to weigh zeal against obedience. Its close shows the eastern lands beginning to fall away.
Context
- Who
- Israelites who saw Baal's state temple torn down and the calves left standing
- What
- An account of Jehu destroying the rest of Ahab's house and the worship of Baal in Samaria, while keeping the golden calves.
- Where
- Jezreel, the road to Samaria, and the temple of Baal in the capital.
- When
- 841 BC and the twenty-eight years of Jehu's reign that followed.
- Why
- To show God's judgment on Ahab's house completed, and to weigh a king who obeyed in part and without his whole heart.
Historical context
The chapter belongs to Jehu as king, to the guardians of Ahab's seventy sons in Samaria, and to Jehonadab son of Rechab. The year is 841 BC and the reign that follows runs twenty-eight years.
Show the rest of the historical context, 5 more paragraphs
The places are Jezreel, the road south to Samaria, and the temple of Baal inside the capital. The occasion is a new king with a sentence to finish and a city that has already surrendered.
A first hearer read the letters as a political trap. Jehu dares the guardians to pick a candidate and fight, and they answer that they are his servants. He then makes them do the killing, so the leading men of Samaria are implicated and cannot turn on him later.
The heads sent in baskets and stacked in two heaps at the gate follow Assyrian practice, where reliefs show exactly this display of counted heads at a captured city.
A first hearer knew who the Rechabites were. Jehonadab's clan lived in tents, planted no vineyards and drank no wine, as a standing protest against settled Canaanite ways. Jeremiah 35 holds them up centuries later as the one group in Israel that kept its father's command.
The trap at the temple works through religious machinery a reader today has to be told about. Attendance at a great sacrifice was compulsory, so the whole network identified itself, and the vestments issued from the temple wardrobe were a real feature of such shrines. Here the robe that marked a worshipper marked a target. The demolition was as complete as the age allowed, the pillar burned, the house pulled down and the site made a latrine, so that it could never be reconsecrated.
Significance
The first hearers were told outright that Jehu did what was right in God's eyes in this matter and was promised four generations on the throne, the longest-lasting dynasty the north ever had.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
They were told in the same breath that he took no heed to walk in the law of the LORD with all his heart. A man can demolish the idol that costs him nothing and keep the one that holds his kingdom together.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
How it is read
The corpus keeps fourteen notes on this chapter, all of them Rashi in the Metsudah Tanach translation of Lakewood, New Jersey, under a CC-BY licence. Most are short work on words and on who is meant. The men addressed in the first letter Rashi identifies as those who brought up the king's children (Rashi on II Kings 10:1:1). The strength the letter grants them Rashi spells out as the strength to wage war (Rashi on II Kings 10:2:1). The two kings the officials remember Rashi names as Joram and Ahaziah (Rashi on II Kings 10:4:1). On the second letter he sets out how much of the verse stood in the letter itself, giving its wording as far as the elders raising the princes, with the Metsudah footnote carrying Radak's alternative that the rest of the verse is a comment by the author of the book rather than part of the letter (Rashi on II Kings 10:6:1). What the heads were carried in he glosses as pots, with Ralbag's alternative of loosely woven baskets in the footnote (Rashi on II Kings 10:7:1), and the two heaps at the gate he renders as mounds through the Targum, with an Old French word beside it (Rashi on II Kings 10:8:1).
The speech at the gate is the one long note in the chapter, and it is the passage a Christian reader should weigh most carefully. Rashi expands what Jehu says to the crowd into a connected argument in the man's own mouth. In their eyes they are righteous and they count him wicked for killing the king, and he grants that he revolted against his master and killed him. He then asks who killed all of these, and answers that he did not, so that from these they may know it is a decree of the King upon them, and that whoever kills them is righteous and does what the Omnipresent commanded (Rashi on II Kings 10:9:1). What stands there is Rashi's reconstruction of Jehu's defence of himself, and the tradition prints it as the argument a man made for his own purge. The site states no verdict on that argument and points a reader who wants the estate's posture on this kind of material to /featured/reading-rabbinic-sources-as-a-christian.
The ride south and the trap that follows are read in short glosses. The place where Jehu met the brothers of the southern king Rashi renders through the Targum as the house where shepherds gather (Rashi on II Kings 10:12:1). The queen whose sons they name Rashi identifies, with Radak's observation in the footnote that they were unaware Jehu had killed the northern king, since otherwise they would have fled (Rashi on II Kings 10:13:1). At the meeting with Jehonadab he settles who is speaking, which is Jehu (Rashi on II Kings 10:15:1).
The destruction of the temple of Baal is read as a deception the text itself names. Rashi glosses the word for how Jehu acted as guile, tracing it to the verb used of Jacob at the stolen blessing (Rashi on II Kings 10:19:1), so the tradition marks the whole assembly as a trap from the first word of it. The call to a solemn assembly he reads as an announcement that they gather in the temple of Baal, with an alternative in the footnote about a cessation of work (Rashi on II Kings 10:20:1). The keeper of the vestments Rashi explains through the Targum as the one appointed over the wardrobe, and he describes the chests and boxes the ceremonial garments of the worshippers were wrapped and stored in (Rashi on II Kings 10:22:1). The order to the guard he reads as a direct exchange, the life of the guard for the life of any man who escapes, with the footnote adding Metzudat David's reason, that it would be the guard's negligence (Rashi on II Kings 10:24:1).
Ten further notes stand on this chapter with no English text in the corpus and are cited here unquoted. They are Metzudat David on II Kings 10:5:1, 10:10:1, 10:16:1, 10:18:1, 10:21:1 and 10:23:1, and Radak on II Kings 10:3:1, 10:11:1, 10:14:1 and 10:17:1. The promise to Jehu of four generations on the throne, at the thirtieth verse, carries no kept note and no linked commentary, which is worth stating plainly, because that promise is discharged at chapter 15 and a reader tracing it through the classical commentators has to begin from the rabbinic locators below.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries nineteen rabbinic locators on this chapter, eleven Midrash and eight Talmud, and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. The seventy sons and the letters draw Esther Rabbah 1:12, Kohelet Rabbah 6:3:1 and Midrash Shmuel 2:1, and the first of those expounds a king's letters sent to the provinces, which is the shape the tradition sees here. The heaps at the gate draw Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 8:10:1, which expounds the heaps of frogs in Egypt, and the pairing is made on the word rather than on the subject, as the kept note above shows when it traces the Targum's rendering to that same verse.
Jehu's gathering of the worshippers draws Sanhedrin 102a:2. The vestments brought out of the wardrobe draw Ein Yaakov, Gittin 5:26 and Gittin 59a:16. The breaking of the pillar and the use made of the temple afterwards draw four, Berakhot 8a:15, Megillah 25b:15, Megillah 25b:16 and Tractate Soferim 9:8, and those sit in the law of how a place and a word connected with idolatry are handled, which is where the tradition files the last verse of the purge.
The promise of four generations carries the heaviest run in the chapter, seven locators, and it is the only place where the classical material on this chapter concentrates. They are Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:70, Jerusalem Talmud Horayot 3:2:21, Otzar Midrashim, Baraita of The 32 Midot of Aggadah 1:33, Sanhedrin 102a:1, Seder Olam Rabbah 19:2, Tanna DeBei Eliyahu Zuta 7:1 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 743:26. The verdict on Jehu at the next verse, that he kept the calves, draws Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayechi 7. A reader who wants the tradition's judgment of a man whose purge was real and whose reform stopped short has those eight locators to work from. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on II Kings 10:1:1 to 10:24:1, fourteen notes, the Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J, CC-BY; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on II Kings 10:5:1, 10:10:1, 10:16:1, 10:18:1, 10:21:1 and 10:23:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; and reported inside the Metsudah footnote at 10:24:1; Radak, Radak on II Kings 10:3:1, 10:11:1, 10:14:1 and 10:17:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; and reported inside the Metsudah footnotes at 10:6:1 and 10:13:1; Ralbag, Ralbag reported inside the Metsudah footnote at Rashi on II Kings 10:7:1, on what the heads were carried in; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/2-kings/10.json, the 19 rabbinic locators of this chapter, 11 Midrash and 8 Talmud.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Two heaps of heads at the gate of Jezreel
2 Kings 10:1-3
Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria: Jehu's first letter dares Samaria's rulers to select the best and most worthy son of your master and fight for your master’s house. It tests whether they will resist him at all. The letter forces the guardians to name their loyalty before Jehu draws a sword against them.
2 Kings 10:1
“Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria--As it appears (2Ki 10:13), that grandsons are included it is probable that this number comprehended the whole posterity of Ahab.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
2 Kings 10:1
“Ahab had seventy sons - As he had several wives, he might have many children. The Israelites, from the earliest part of their history, were remarkably fruitful. How amazingly did they multiply in Egypt, even under the hand of the severest oppression! And as to the individuals of whose families we have an account, they are quite remarkable: Rehoboam had thirty-eight sons; Abdon had forty; Tola had thirty; Ahab, seventy; and Gideon, seventy-one.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
a fortified city and weaponry: Adam Clarke took the fortified city to be Samaria itself, where the stores and tools of war were kept. He read the whole letter as irony. Behind the list of chariots, horses and walls, Clarke heard a threat: all Israel stood with Jehu, and resistance meant the sword.
2 Kings 10:2
“A fenced city also - All here seems to refer to Samaria alone; in it were the magazines and implements of war, etc. No reader need be told that these letters were all ironical. It was the same as if he had said, “Ye have no means of defense; Israel is with me: if you yield not up yourselves and the city, I will put you all to the sword.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
select the best and most worthy: Jehu tells the guardians to choose the ablest of Ahab's sons, as if inviting a fair contest. Albert Barnes saw the soldier setting out his enemies' advantages in their best light and making them decide. He found in Jehu a sharp wit alongside a bold heart.
2 Kings 10:3
“Jehu, placing his adversaries’ advantages before them in the most favorable light, called upon them to decide what they would do. The unscrupulous soldier shows shrewdness as well as courage, a sharp wit as well as a bold heart.”
2 Kings 10:4-5
Two kings, Joram and Ahaziah, had already fallen before Jehu in one day, and the palace officers of Samaria reason from that record. Their surrender is total: they will crown no one, and they hand Jehu their servitude in his words, Do whatever is good in your sight.
2 Kings 10:4
“Therefore they sent him a surrender of themselves: " We are thy servants, thy subjects, and will do all that thou shalt bid us, right or wrong, and will set up nobody in competition with thee." They saw it was to no purpose to contend with him, and therefore it was their interest to submit to him.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
the palace administrator, the overseer: Four offices answer Jehu: the palace administrator, the overseer of the city, the elders and the guardians. Albert Barnes matched the first two with the palace office at 1 Kings 4:6 and the city governor at 1 Kings 22:26. He took them as the officials named at verse 1.
2 Kings 10:5
“The officer who had the charge of the place (1Ki 4:6 note) and the governor of the town (1Ki 22:26 note) seem to correspond to the “rulers” of 2Ki 10:1.”
2 Kings 10:6-7
bring the heads of your master’s sons to me: Jehu's second letter turns loyalty into an order, bring the heads of your master's sons by tomorrow. The men who raised these seventy princes obey without hesitation. Their swift compliance answers Elijah's old sentence on Ahab's line with human hands willing to carry it out.
2 Kings 10:6
“The heads of rivals, pretenders, and other obnoxious persons are commonly struck off in the East, and conveyed to the chief ruler, in order that he may be positively certified that his enemies have ceased to live. In the Assyrian sculptures we constantly see soldiers conveying heads from place to place, not, however, in baskets, but in their hands, holding the head by the hair.”
put their heads in baskets: John Gill cites Abarbinel, the Jewish commentator, who saw the heads in baskets as a gift to Jehu, carried the way worshippers carried the firstfruits. In Gill's count the seventy were the whole number of the king's sons. The guardians obeyed at once.
2 Kings 10:7
“And it came to pass, when the letter came to them,.... They did not in the least hesitate, but immediately complied with the contents of it: that they took the king's sons, and slew seventy persons; which was the whole number of them: and put their heads in baskets, and sent them to Jezreel; as a present to Jehu, just as they carried the firstfruits, as Abarbinel observes.”
2 Kings 10:8-10
Jehu admits his part: It was I who conspired against my master and killed him. Then he asks who killed all these, laying the blame on the men who obeyed his letter. He declares that not a word the LORD has spoken against the house of Ahab will fail.
2 Kings 10:8
“Lay ye them in two heaps - It appears that the heads of these princes had arrived at Jezreel in the night time: Jehu ordered them to be left at the gate of the city, a place of public resort, that all the people might see them, and be struck with terror, and conclude that all resistance to such authority and power would be vain.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 10:8
“Lay ye them in two heaps at the entering in of the gate, &c.--The exhibition of the heads of enemies is always considered a glorious trophy. Sometimes a pile of heads is erected at the gate of the palace; and a head of peculiarly striking appearance selected to grace the summit of the pyramid.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Albert Barnes read the opening words as an appeal to the crowd as fair judges, able to weigh what had happened. Jehu admits the killing of Joram and sets the seventy heads before them as a question. Barnes faults him for keeping back that the order came from his letter.
2 Kings 10:9
“Ye be righteous - i. e., “Ye are just, and can judge aright.” Jehu unfairly keeps back the fact that he had commanded the execution.”
not a word the LORD has spoken: Albert Barnes, working from the older wording shall fall to the earth, glossed the phrase as a word left unfulfilled. In his reading Jehu and his men were carrying out the word of the LORD. Jehu claims the killing as the LORD's work.
2 Kings 10:10
“Shall fall to the earth - i. e., “Shall remain unfulfilled” (compare the marginal reference). Jehu and others were but executing the word of the Lord.”
everyone in Jezreel who remained of the house of Ahab: The purge in Jezreel widens to every great man, kinsman, and priest attached to Ahab's court, a category Barnes reads as the household clergy. Nothing of the house is left standing. The dynasty Ahab built on Naboth's blood is closed out in the same place it was built.
2 Kings 10:11
“So Jehu slew - Rather, “And Jehu slew.” The reference is to fresh executions (compare 2Ki 10:17). He proceeded on his bloody course, not merely destroying the remainder of the kindred of Ahab, but further putting to death all the most powerful of Ahab’s partisans. His priests - Not the Baal priests generally, whose persecution came afterward 2Ki 10:19, but only such of them as were attached to the court.”
Come with me, and see my zeal for Jehovah
2 Kings 10:12-14
At Beth-eked of the Shepherds: , Jehu meets relatives of Ahaziah king of Judah. He orders, “Take them alive,” then has all forty-two killed at the well of Beth-eked, a slaughter reaching into David's own line. Athaliah's attack on Judah's royal line in chapter 11 shows the same totality.
2 Kings 10:12
“The shearing-house - literally, as in margin. Perhaps already a proper name, Beth-eked, identical with the Beth-akad of Jerome, which is described as between Jezreel and Samaria; but not yet identified.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 10:12
“To make a clear riddance there of all that belonged to Ahab, as at Jezreel, and abolish idolatry there: and as he was at the shearing house in the way; or, "the house of the binding of the shepherds", who, in shearing their sheep, bind their legs together; the Targum is,"the house of the gathering of the shepherds;''where they used to meet and converse together; with some it is the proper name of a place, Betheked, a country village between Jezreel and Samaria.”
Albert Barnes took these relatives to be Ahaziah's nephews, the sons of his brothers. The brothers themselves had been killed by the Arabs before Ahaziah took the throne, as 2 Chronicles 21:17 and 22:1 record. The nephews ask after a family already destroyed.
2 Kings 10:13
“The brethren of Ahaziah - Not the actual brothers of Ahaziah, who had all been slain by the Arabs before his accession to the throne 2Ch 21:17; 2Ch 22:1; but his nephews, the sons of his brothers (marginal reference). It is remarkable that they should have penetrated so far into the kingdom of Israel without having heard of the revolution.”
Adam Clarke took the well at the shearing place to be where the sheep were washed before shearing, or the fleeces after. The forty-two princes of Judah are killed there beside the water. Jehu spares none of them.
2 Kings 10:14
“The pit of the shearing house - Probably the place where they washed the sheep previously to shearing, or the fleeces after they were shorn off.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 10:15-16
Jehonadab son of Rechab is met and taken up into Jehu's own chariot. Jeremiah 35 later holds up his descendants' unbroken obedience to his vow of tent life and abstinence against unfaithful Judah. Jehonadab in the chariot gives Jehu's coming purge a witness of undisputed integrity.
2 Kings 10:15
“Jehonadab the son of Rechab--(See 1Ch 2:55). A person who, from his piety and simple primitive manner of life (Jer 35:1-19), was highly esteemed, and possessed great influence in the country.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 10:15
“Jehonadab (compare the margin) belonged to the tribe of the Kenites, one of the most ancient in Palestine Gen 15:19. Their origin is unknown, but their habits were certainly those of Arahs. Owing to their connection with Moses (Num 24:21 note), they formed a friendship with the Israelites, accompanied them in their wanderings, and finally receivcd a location in the wilderness of Judah Jdg 1:16. The character of this chief, Jonadab, is best seen in the rule which he established for his descendants Jer 35:6-7 - a rule said to be still observed at the present day.”
Jehu invites Jehonadab to watch his zeal. Clarke called the invitation hypocrisy and judged a man who calls for a witness to his zeal has only as much as serves his turn. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that Jehonadab carried great weight in the country.
2 Kings 10:16
“Come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord - O thou ostentatious and murderous hypocrite! Thou have zeal for Jehovah and his pure religion! Witness thy calves at Dan and Bethel, and the general profligacy of thy conduct. He who can call another to witness his zeal for religion, or his works of charity, has as much of both as serves his own turn.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
according to the word that the LORD had spoken to Elijah: Samaria receives the same treatment Jezreel already received, every survivor connected to Ahab's house put to death. The narrator echoes verse ten, tying the whole campaign back to the sentence pronounced in the vineyard at Naboth's death.
2 Kings 10:17
“This was bloody work, and is not now, in any case, to be drawn into a precedent. Let the guilty suffer, but not the guiltless for their sakes. Perhaps such terrible destructions as these were intended as types of the final destruction of all the ungodly.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ahab served Baal a little: a trap inside the house of Baal
2 Kings 10:18-19
Jehu's proclamation that Ahab served Baal a little but Jehu will serve him much is theater aimed at gathering every worshipper into one place. Clarke and the commentators read it as calculated deception, since Jehu has already sworn allegiance to the Lord's word through Elijah and Elisha.
2 Kings 10:18
“Ahab served Baal a little - Jehu had determined to have no worship in Israel but that of the golden calves at Dan and Bethel; therefore he purposes to destroy all the worshippers of Baal: and that he may do it without suspicion, he proclaims a great sacrifice; and that he may do it the more easily, he gathers them all together into one place.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
all the prophets of Baal: Albert Barnes drew from the list that the prophets of Baal and his priests were two orders, and his servants were the ordinary worshippers. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown judged the plot to destroy them a measure in keeping with the Law of Moses. The narrator names the summons as deception.
2 Kings 10:19
“It appears from this verse that the “prophets” and “priests” of Baal were not identical. The former would correspond to the dervishes, the latter to the mullahs, of Muslim countries. By the “servants” of Baal are meant the ordinary worshippers.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 10:19
“Jehu's appointment of a solemn sacrifice in honor of Baal, and a summons to all his worshippers to join in its celebration, was a deep-laid plot, which he had resolved upon for their extinction, a measure in perfect harmony with the Mosaic law, and worthy of a constitutional king of Israel.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 Kings 10:20-21
Jehu borrows the Law's own vocabulary for his summons, a solemn assembly, the phrase Leviticus and Numbers reserve for the Lord's own appointed feasts. Every worshipper of Baal answers the call, and the temple fills from one end to the other. The completeness of the gathering is the whole point.
2 Kings 10:20
“A solemn assembly - Jehu applies to his proposed gathering the sacred name assigned in the Law to the chiefest festivals of Yahweh (see Lev 23:36; Num 29:35; Deu 16:8).”
filled from end to end: Albert Barnes explained how one temple could hold every worshipper of Baal in Israel. Ancient temples stood within vast courts, and those courts held many thousands. Jehu's word had gone out through the whole land.
2 Kings 10:21
“In order to understand how such numbers could find room, we must remember that the ancient temples had vast courts around them, which could contain many thousands.”
2 Kings 10:22-24
Jehu orders out garments for all the servants of Baal, so that Baal's own people can be told apart. The mark that seems to protect them will condemn them, since no one wearing that robe leaves the building alive. Eighty men are posted outside on pain of their own lives.
2 Kings 10:22
“He said unto him that was over the vestry - The word vestry comes from vestiarium, and that from vestes, garments, from vestio, I clothe; and signifies properly the place where the sacerdotal robes and pontifical ornaments are kept. The priests of Baal had their robes as well as the priests of the Lord; but the garments were such that one could be easily distinguished from the other.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
no servants of the LORD here: Jehu has the crowd searched for any servant of the LORD. Albert Barnes notes the ancients counted an outsider at their rites a profanation, and the Greek mysteries are said to have punished intrusion with death. The order sounded like care for Baal's rites and raised no suspicion.
2 Kings 10:23
“The presence of persons belonging to another religion was usually regarded by the ancients as a profanation of the rites. In the case of the Greek mysteries such intrusion is said to have been punished by death. Consequently Jehu could give these injunctions without arousing any suspicion.”
to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings: The priests of Baal performed the sacrifices themselves, in Albert Barnes's reading, and Jehu counted as the offerer because he had supplied the animals. Barnes compared Solomon's offerings at 1 Kings 8:62-63. Eighty men wait outside the doors.
2 Kings 10:24
“And when they went in to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings,.... To Baal, all things being ready for them: Jehu appointed eighty men without; without the temple of Baal, at the several doors and avenues of it: and said, if any of the men whom I have brought into your hands escape, he that letteth him go, his life shall be for the life of him; should be put to death for it in his room; the life of a watchman set to guard should go for the life of one that escaped.”
2 Kings 10:25-27
Once the burnt offering is finished, Jehu tells the guards, “Go in and kill them,” and Baal's worshippers are struck down inside the house. They brought out the sacred pillar of the temple of Baal and burned it. The temple becomes a latrine, which it is to this day.
2 Kings 10:25
“As soon as he had made an end of offering - The actual sacrificers were no doubt the priests of Baal; but Jehu is considered to have made the offering, since he furnished the victims. Compare 1Ki 8:62-63. The guard - literally, “the runners.” This name seems to have been given to the royal body-guard as early as the time of Saul (1Sa 22:17, margin). It was their duty to run by the side of the king’s chariot as he moved from plaze to place.”
the sacred pillar of the temple: Albert Barnes took the pillar burned here to be of wood. The Phoenician pillar idols, he explained, were bare columns, obelisks or posts without a human form. Fire destroyed this one.
2 Kings 10:26
“The images - Or “pillars” of wood. The Phoenician pillar idols were mere columns, obelisks, or posts, destitute of any shaping into the semblance of humanity (compare 1Ki 14:23 note).”
made it into a latrine: John Gill lists what Baal was taken to be: Belus to some, Saturn to others, and the sun, which Gill thought the likeliest. The Berean's latrine renders the older draught house, a common sewer in Gill's gloss. Gill called it a fit end for the temple of a dunghill god.
2 Kings 10:27
“And they broke down the temple of Baal,.... Which some take to be Belus, others Saturn, others the sun, which seems most probable: and broke down the house of Baal; his temple, demolished it: and made it a draught house until this day; a common sewer, a jakes; a fit place for dunghill gods to be thrown into, and an idol temple to be turned into.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 10:27
“And they brake down the image of Baal - The other images, it appears, were not images of Baal, but of inferior deities. The image of Baal, which was “broken down,” and not burned, would seem to have been of stone, perhaps erected in front of the temple.”
2 Kings 10:28-29
Thus Jehu eradicated Baal from Israel: The words Thus Jehu eradicated Baal from Israel close one purge in a sentence. The next verse sets its limit: the worship of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan goes on. Jehu's reform reaches every altar built by a queen and stops at the one built by a king.
2 Kings 10:28
“Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel. His images and temples being served thus in all places, throughout the land of Israel, where there were any.”
Jehu departed not from the calves of Jeroboam
the golden calves at Bethel and Dan: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown traced Jehu's keeping of the calves to policy. Albert Barnes thought the idea of ending the calf worship never entered Jehu's mind. He found in Jehu enough religion to hate the worship of Astarte and too little to reach the pure worship of the LORD.
2 Kings 10:29
“Howbeit from the sins of Jeroboam . . . Jehu departed not from after them--Jehu had no intention of carrying his zeal for the Lord beyond a certain point, and as he considered it impolitic to encourage his subjects to travel to Jerusalem, he re-established the symbolic worship of the calves.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 10:29
“To abolish the calf-worship was a thought which had probably never occurred to Jehu. He had religious feeling enough, and patriotism enough, to detest the utterly debasing Astarte worship; but the pure worship of Yahweh was altogether beyond and above him.”
four generations of your sons will sit: The Lord's own commendation credits Jehu for doing what was right in executing judgment on Ahab's house, and promises four generations on Israel's throne. That promise is kept to the letter: Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam the second, and Zechariah reign in turn before the line ends at 2 Kings 15:12.
2 Kings 10:30
“Thy children of the fourth generation - These four descendants of Jehu were Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam the second, and Zechariah; see 2 Kings 14 and 15. This was all the compensation Jehu had in either world, as a recompense of his zeal for the Lord.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 10:30
“He departed from the sins of Ahab, but not from the sins of Jeroboam--discarded Baal, but adhered to the calves. The worship of Baal was indeed the greater evil, and more heinous in the sight of God, but the worship of the calves was a great evil, and true conversion is not only from gross sin, but from all sin--not only from false gods, but from false worships.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Jehu was not careful to follow the instruction of the LORD: , the God of Israel, with all his heart. Zeal that executes judgment on another man's house differs from a heart that keeps the law in its own. Spurgeon preached on this verse in a sermon titled Heedlessness in Religion.
2 Kings 10:31
“JEHU was raised up by God to be a great reformer in the kingdom of Israel. No sooner did he receive his commission than he was at his work with a daring and a perseverance never excelled. He was commanded to cut off the whole house of Ahab, and the task was a very congenial one—he slew right and left and spared none. Unlike Saul with the Amalekites, who spared Agag and the best of the cattle, Jehu utterly exterminated the race whom God had doomed.”
2 Kings 10:32-33
the LORD began to reduce the size of Israel: Judgment does not stop at Ahab's house; it turns next on Jehu's own kingdom. Hazael begins stripping Israel's eastern territory, fulfilling what Elisha had already wept over. The same chapter that records God's promise to Jehu's line records the first cost of the sins that promise did not erase.
2 Kings 10:32
“The Lord began to cut Israel short - The marginal reading is best: The Lord cut off the ends; and this he did by permitting Hazael to seize on the coasts, to conquer and occupy the frontier towns. This was the commencement of those miserable ravages which Elisha predicted; see 2Ki 8:12. And we find from the next verse that he seized on all the land of Gilead, and that of Reuben and Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh; in a word, whatever Israel possessed on the east side of Jordan.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 10:32
“Now the Reubenites and Gadites smarted for the choice which their ancestors made of an inheritance on that side Jordan, which Moses reproved them for, Num. xxxii. Now Hazael did what Elisha foresaw and foretold he would do. Yet, for doing it, God had a quarrel with him and with his kingdom, as we may find, Amos i.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
from Aroer by the Arnon Valley: Albert Barnes read the verse as the loss, or at least the full ruin, of Israel's land east of the Jordan. That country lay more open to Damascus than west of the river. Barnes took this Aroer on the Arnon as the best known of several towns of that name.
2 Kings 10:33
“The loss of the entire trans-Jordanic territory seems to be intended, or at any rate its complete ruin and devastation (compare marginal reference “y”). This was the home of the tribes of Reuben and Gad, and of the half tribe of Manasseh Jos 22:1-9. It was more accessible from Damascus than the region west of the river. Aroer - There were several places of this name. The one here mentioned is the most famous (compare Deu 2:36 note).”
2 Kings 10:34-36
the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?: The closing formula credits Jehu with all his might, worthy of a fuller record, yet the record itself stays thin. Jehu rested with his fathers and was buried in Samaria, among the kings whose house he destroyed, and his son Jehoahaz reigned in his place.
2 Kings 10:34
“Are they not written in the book of the chronicles - We have no chronicles in which there is any thing farther spoken of this bad man. His reign was long, twenty-eight years; and yet we know nothing of it but the commencement. For barbarity and hypocrisy Jehu has few parallels; and the cowardliness and baseness of the nobles of Samaria have seldom been equalled. Ahab’s bloody house must be cut off; but did God ever design that it should be done by these means?”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 10:34
“Left none - In that place and kingdom; for he did leave some of the royal seed of Judah. Rechab - A Kenite, 1 Chron. ii, 55, and a man of singular prudence and piety. Coming - To congratulate with him, for the destruction of that wicked family; and to encourage him to proceed in fulfilling the will of God.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 10:34
“Notice is taken, in general, of his might; but, because he took no heed to serve God, the memorials of his mighty enterprises and achievements are justly buried in oblivion.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
his son Jehoahaz reigned: John Gill notes that Samaria held the graves of Omri and Ahab, citing 1 Kings 16:28. Jehu's son Jehoahaz followed him and, by Gill's count from 2 Kings 13:1, reigned seventeen years. He is the first of the four generations promised at verse 30.
2 Kings 10:35
“And Jehu slept with his fathers,.... Died as they did: and they buried him in Samaria; where Omri and Ahab, his predecessors, were buried, 1Ki 16:28. and Jehoahaz his son reigned in his stead; who reigned seventeen years, 2Ki 13:1.”
over Israel in Samaria: Albert Barnes observed that Ahab's family had made Jezreel a second capital and reigned there in part. Jehu and his line kept their court in Samaria alone, as the notices at 2 Kings 13:1, 14:23 and 15:8 record. Jehu reigned there twenty-eight years.
2 Kings 10:36
“In Samaria - The family of Ahab had made Jezreel a sort of second capital, and had reigned there, at least in part 2 Kings 9:15-30. Jehu and his descendants seem to have fixed their residence wholly in Samaria 2Ki 13:1, 2Ki 13:10; 2Ki 14:23; 2Ki 15:8.”
How this psalm is built
The form: Historical narrative closing with the narrator's own two-sided verdict on the king it has just followed, as Clarke classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| According to the word of the LORD spoken to Elijah | The phrase closes the killing at Jezreel in verse 10 and closes the killing at Samaria in verse 17. Albert Barnes marks the near repetition, which ties the whole campaign back to the sentence pronounced at Naboth's death. The narrator measures the purge against that word rather than against Jehu's own ambition.Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832 to 1869, on 2 Kings 10:17. | 2 Kings 10:10, 2 Kings 10:17 |
| Jehu served Baal much, and Jehu took no heed | Two sentences of the same shape stand nine verses apart and say opposite things about the same man. At verse 18 Jehu says he will serve Baal much, which Adam Clarke reads as calculated deception. At verse 31 the narrator says Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the LORD, and Clarke answers that he never made it his study. The chapter puts the king's own words and the narrator's verdict in one frame.Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1832, on 2 Kings 10:18 and 10:31. | 2 Kings 10:18, 2 Kings 10:31 |
| A solemn assembly for Baal | Jehu summons the worshippers with the Law's own term for the LORD's appointed feasts, and John Gill marks the borrowing. The vocabulary of Leviticus and Numbers is turned against the god it was never meant to serve. The vestments at verse 22 work the same way, since the robe given for the worshippers' distinction is what marks them out to be killed.John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, 1748 to 1763, on 2 Kings 10:20. | 2 Kings 10:20, 2 Kings 10:22 |
| Seventy sons, forty-two kinsmen, eighty guards | The chapter counts its dead in round numbers and lets the totals carry the scale. Seventy sons of Ahab in Samaria, forty-two kinsmen of Ahaziah at the shearing house, eighty men posted outside the temple of Baal on pain of their own lives. Matthew Henry reads the first letter as a dare rather than a demand, designed to make the guardians name their loyalty before a sword is drawn.Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on 2 Kings 10:1. | 2 Kings 10:1, 2 Kings 10:14, 2 Kings 10:24 |
The debated concept
7 more paragraphs on the patterns
The first question is what to make of Jehu's deception at verses 18 to 19. Adam Clarke and the commentators read the proclamation as calculated theatre rather than any change of heart, since Jehu had already acted on the word given through Elijah and Elisha. The text itself gives no comment on the method, and the estate states no verdict on it here.
The second is how the commendation at verse 30 stands with the verdict at verse 31. Albert Barnes holds that Jehu's measures were acts of obedience to a certain extent, for which God might assign a temporal reward. Matthew Henry reads the pair as a lesson about the reach of repentance. Jehu discarded Baal and kept the calves, and true conversion turns from all sin rather than from the grossest sin alone. Adam Clarke puts the reward at its plainest, that four descendants on the throne was all the compensation Jehu received. Charles Spurgeon preached verse 31 as heedlessness, a reformer at work on another man's house with his own heart ungoverned.
The third is the size of Ahab's house at verse 1. The exposition of this chapter notes that some of the seventy were likely grandsons, given the reckoning at verse 13, and the text uses sons in the wider sense of descendants. Seventy is a round number for a whole dynasty, and the chapter's point is the completeness rather than the arithmetic.
Where the chapter reaches
The promise of verse 30 is discharged inside this book. Adam Clarke names the four in order, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam the second and Zechariah, and Albert Barnes adds that no other family sat that long on the northern throne. The guide's ledger records the end of it at 2 Kings 15:8 to 9, where Zechariah is assassinated after six months, with the cross-reference to 10:30 and 15:12. Promise and discharge stand five chapters apart.
Jehonadab's house reaches Jeremiah 35, where the Rechabites' refusal of wine is set against Judah's refusal to hear.
The half reform of verses 28 and 29 is the pattern the rest of the northern kingdom follows to 2 Kings 17. Every king after Jehu is measured by the calves he left standing.
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1832, on 2 Kings 10:31; Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 685, Heedlessness in Religion and the guide's ledger for this book, `src/components/book/guides/2-kings/Book2KingsGuide.tsx`, the kings ledger, Jehu at 10:28 and 10:31, verdict mixed.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 685: Heedlessness In Religion; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.