2 Kings10chapter 10

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.”

2 Kings 10:1-4

“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.”

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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

2 Kings 10:15-18

“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.”

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.”

2 Kings 10:17

“Compare 2Ki 10:11. Thus was finally completed the political revolution which transferred the throne from the house of Omri to that of Nimshi, the fifth of the royal families of Israel. According to the saying of the Lord - This emphatic reiteration (compare 2Ki 10:10) marks, first, how in the mind of the writer all this history is viewed as deriving its special interest from its being so full and complete an accomplishment of Elijah’s prophecies; and, secondly, how at the time Jehu carefully put forward the plea that what he did had this object.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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).”

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

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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).”

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.”

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 10:29

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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

“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.”

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.”

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

“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?”

2 Kings 10:34-36

“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.”

2 Kings 10:34-36

“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.”

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.”

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.”