When Jehu was executing judgment upon the house of Ahab. — The Hebrew phrase strictly means to plead with, or argue a cause with. (Comp. 1 Samuel 12:7.) When God is said to plead with men, the notion of judicial punishment is often involved, as in Joel 3:2; Isaiah 66:16; and such is the meaning here. Jehu was an instrument of Divine vengeance, even when fulfilling the projects of his own ambition, as were the savage Assyrian conquerors (Isaiah 10:5-7).
And found. — Rather, he found.
The sons of the brethren of Ahaziah. — Comp. 2 Kings 10:12-14, where the details are given. The persons whom Jehu slew are there called Ahaziah’s “brethren” — i.e., kinsmen (a common use; so LXX. here), and are said to have been forty-two in number. The Hebrew term is wide enough to include cousins and grandsons as well as nephews of the king. The “princes of Judah” who accompanied them would naturally be members of the court in charge of them, and are perhaps to be included in the total of forty-two persons. Thenius, indeed, in his note on 2 Kings 10:13, alleges that we must understand the real brothers of Ahaziah, whom the chronicler gets rid of (!) on an earlier occasion (i.e., 2 Chronicles 21:17; 2 Chronicles 22:1), because he required a Divine judgment in the lifetime of Jehoram. buch arbitrary criticism hardly deserves refutation; we may, however, remark that Thenius relies on the untenable assumption that Jehoram could not have begotten any children before Ahaziah, whom he begot in his eighteenth or nineteenth year.
That ministered to Ahaziah. — In attendance on Ahaziah — i.e., attached to the retinue of Ahaziah as pages, &c.
He slew them. — And slew them.