CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2 Kings 10:19. But Jehu did it in subtilty—His subterfuge for the destruction of Baal’s priests and votaries must not be regarded as proof of Jehu’s attachment and loyalty to Jehovah, but because he knew these priests and prophets were adherents to Ahab’s dynasty, and would be unfriendly to his own. He used religion for his own guilty ends, as 2 Kings 10:29 proves.
2 Kings 10:22. Vestments for all the worshippers of Baal—These priestly vestments were white robes, and kept within the temple by the master of the wardrobe; as, indeed, the holy garments of the priests of Israel were kept in the temple at Jerusalem.
2 Kings 10:26. Images out of the house of Baal—See Note on 1 Kings 14:23.
2 Kings 10:27. A draught-house—A sink or filth-closet, in order to cover the scene with infamy and detestation.
HOMILETICS OF 2 Kings 10:18-28
THE PUNISHMENT OF IDOLATRY
JEHU’S thirst for blood is not yet satiated. There remains one more power that menaces his peaceful and safe possession of the throne. The Baal-idolatry was so closely interwoven with the fortunes and prestige of the dynasty of Ahab, that Jehu must feel his crown insecure while that cultus was allowed to predominate. He rapidly matures a scheme by which the priests and worshippers of Baal shall be utterly exterminated, and the very name of the great Phœnician deity degraded and made an abomination for ever. It was a horrible conception. But Jehu was in the temper of mind, in the fever-flush of slaughter, when such conceptions had nothing revolting in them. He had shed too much blood already to shrink for a moment from shedding more. He was the more confirmed in his resolution, as he had the countenance and co-operation of the God-fearing Jehonadab, who saw in this subtle plan the necessary and deserved punishment of idolatry.
I. That the punishment of idolatry is in harmony with Divine law. Judged in the light of Mosaic ethics, the destruction of idolaters was a righteous and laudable work. The law commanded that the devotees of idolatry should be punished with death (Deuteronomy 13:1-15; Deuteronomy 17:2-4; Deuteronomy 18:20). There is nothing clearer in the history before us than this—that all the calamities that fell upon Ahab were in consequence of his idolatry. Two of the grandest prophets of Old Testament times were sent to instruct and warn him and his people. Their counsels and miracles were unheeded, and the chosen people of God were in danger of being irredeemably lost in idolatry, and His gracious purpose concerning the race of being frustrated or indefinitely postponed. As a just punishment for disobedience and rejection of Jehovah, and in the widen interests of the nation and of the world, the Baal-worship must be utterly destroyed. In this respect Jehu was the instrument of just and righteous vengeance.
II. That the punishment of idolatry may be accomplished by false and unjustifiable methods. Here we cannot but blame Jehu, and here the Old Testament morality rebukes him. He interposed the cunning and plotting of the military stategist into the carrying out of a righteous work. His Divine commission doubtless authorised him to cut off the worshippers of Baal, but not by guile. God praised his zeal in rooting out idolatry, but not his subtlety. His craft and guile on this occasion were in fearfulness equal to the duplicity and baseness which prepared the way for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Truth never requires a lie. The end does not justify the means. It is unjustifiable to do a right thing in a wrong way. And yet what a large class of people there is in the world who do this! There is an evil that is damaging society; the more licence it has, the more it grows; it must be put down; let all possible force be put into operation to crush it; irrespective of the rights and feelings and opinions of others, root it out. It is the right thing to do; but in the majority of instances it is done in the wrong way. There’s a friend yonder going wrong; he has no longer the humility and zeal and power he used to have; he must be remonstrated with. It is the right thing to do; but in nine cases out of ten it is done in the wrong way, and more harm is done than good. A rude, impulsive, unsympathetic spirit hurried Jehu into acts of unnecessary severity and cruelty while he was seeking to do what was right, and he has many imitators in that respect in modern times.
III. That the punishment of idolatry should nevertheless be thorough and final. “Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel” (2 Kings 10:28). In slaying the priests and worshippers of Baal, the sword of Jehu completed the work which Elijah began at the brook Kishon (1 Kings 18:40). The deep corruption into which this idolatry had sunk the nation is evident in the fact that there was not one man with spirit and bravery enough to dispute the usurpation of Jehu, and in the cowardice and cruelty with which men of the highest rank assisted in the murder of the king’s sons. It was time that a system that could produce such utter moral degradation as this should be extinguished. Jehu was at home in such work; it was everyway congenial to his instincts. The images of Baal are shattered, the sacred citadel of Baal himself is invaded, his colossal figure is broken in pieces, the massive temple is pulled down in ruins, and the very site made a place of filth—a degradation which would cover the name of Baal with everlasting infamy and reproach. Such must be the fate of all that seeks to oppose and substitute itself for God. Every age of shams and unrealities has its Iconoclast who will shatter them in pieces. The world should be wiser and better as it reads the history and fate of all false systems.
LESSONS:—
1. Jehovah cannot tolerate a rival.
2. All idolatries must perish.
3. In the midst of the deepest degeneracy God is preparing the instrument of its punishment.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2 Kings 10:18-28. Idolatry a national curse. I. Demoralizes the people. II. Is hateful to Jehovah. III. Not to be abolished by deceitful and unjust methods. IV. Witnesses in its destruction no greater enormities than it generates itself. V. Its complete uprooting essential to national growth and prosperity.
—In an objective light the slaying of the servants of Baal was quite in harmony with the law, and quite legitimate on theocratic grounds; but the subjective motive which, irrespective of the artifice, influenced Jehu was thoroughly selfish. As the priests and prophets of Baal in the land of Israel, with all their interests and their whole existence, were bound up with the dynasty of Ahab, they might be dangerous to Jehu, if he did not, from political considerations, earnestly promote their objects; whereas by their extermination he might hope to bring to his side the whole of the certainly very numerous party of the earlier legally constituted worship of Jehovah in Israel, and thereby give stability to his throne. But that Jehu used religion only as a means to an end is proved by the circumstance that he continued the worship of the calves.—Keil.
—A work which is in itself pure and holy loses its value when it is accomplished by falsehood and dissimulation. One cannot battle for the truth with the weapons of falsehood. What things one may do by outward acts, and yet be internally a hypocrite! Jehu dissimulated in order to circumvent the hypocrites and idolaters in himself. Jehu destroys the worship of false gods by the sword, and by external violence. He had full justification for this in the law, for under the old covenant idolatry was the worm at the root of the Israelitish nationality; it was high treason to the Israelitish state. Under the new covenant, it is not permitted to make use of fire and sword against heresy and superstition. No other weapon may here be used than that of the Spirit—i.e., the word of God. Christianity is not bound to any people; as it was not brought into the world by violence, so it cannot be extended and nourished by the sword. Even now, every evil power has the right and the duty to proceed to extreme measures against a cultus like that of Baal, which is interwoven with licentiousness and abominations.—Lange.
2 Kings 10:18-21. What a dead paleness was there now in the faces of those few true-hearted Israelites that looked for a happy restoration of the religion of God! How could they choose but think—Alas! how are we fallen from our hopes! Is this the change we looked for? Was it only ambition that hath set this edge upon the sword of Jehu? It was not the person of Ahab that we disliked, but the sins; if those must still succeed, what have we gained? Woe be to us, if only the author of our misery be changed, not the condition, not the cause of our misery. On the other side, what triumphs sounded everywhere of the joyful Baalites! What glorying of the truth of their profession, because of their success! What scorn of their dejected opposites! What promises to themselves of a perpetuity of Baalism! How did the dispersed priests of Baal now flock together, and applaud each other’s happiness, and magnify the devotion of their new sovereign? Never had that idol so glorious a day as this, for the pomp of his service. Before, he was adored singly in corners; now solemn sacrifices shall be offered to him by all his clients, in the great temple of the mother city of Israel. I can commend the zeal of Jehu; I cannot commend the fraud of Jehu. We may come to our end even by crooked ways. He that bade him to smite for Him, did not bid him to lie for Him. Falsehood, though it be but tentative, is neither needful nor approved by the God of truth. If policy have allowed officious untruths, religion never.—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 10:18-19. Duplicity.
1. Should be beneath the dignity of a king.
2. Not allowable, even in the execution of a righteous punishment.
3. All the more detestable when under the mask of religious zeal.
2 Kings 10:19. That it was possible for a large number of persons to be imposed upon by this pretence, after what Jehu had done, painfully evinces the extent of religious corruption in Israel. Something may, however, be allowed for the still imperfect knowledge of the transactions at Jezreel. News travelled but slowly in those days; and the men who had come over with the king to Samaria—his personal followers and guards—had perhaps been instructed not yet to disclose the full particulars of the great tragedy at Jezreel.—Kitto.
2 Kings 10:20-22. The popularity of religion no proof of its genuineness. I. The court set the fashion in religion, and the people followed. II. Whatever pleases the outer senses—in ceremony or vestments—is sure to be popular. III. A national holiday soon gathers a crowd. IV. A crowd is little aware of the peril with which it is sometimes threatened.
2 Kings 10:23. Sincerity in worship. I. Should be encouraged by self-scrutiny. II. Essential to spiritual profit. III. Demanded by an all-seeing God.
2 Kings 10:25. How is the tune now changed! What shrieking was here! What outcries! What running from one sword to the edge of another! What scrambling up the walls and pillars! What climbing into the windows! What vain endeavours to escape that death which would not be shunned! Whether running, or kneeling, or prostrate, they must die. The first part of the sacrifice was Baal’s, the latter is God’s; the blood of beasts was offered in the one, of men in the other. The shedding of this was so much the more acceptable to God, by how much these men were more beasts than those they sacrificed. Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 10:26-28. The glory of Baal
1. Discovered to be empty and deceptive.
2. Powerless to resist the fury of righteous retribution.
3. Dragged down to the most loathsome degradation.
2 Kings 10:28. So ended this great revolution. The national worship of Baal was thus in the northern kingdom forever suppressed. For a short time, through the very circumstances which had destroyed it in Samaria, it shot up afresh in Jerusalem. But in Israel the whole kingdom and church returned to the condition in which it was before the accession of the house of Omri. The calf-worship of Jeroboam was once more revived, and in that imperfect form the true religion once more became established.—Stanley.
—If we attempt with all this light given to us by the text to estimate Jehu’s personal feeling in regard to this revolution, we shall reach the following conclusion—Jehu was a military man to whom the crown presented itself as an object of earthly ambition worth some effort. Supposing him to have been by conviction an adherent of the religion of Jehovah, the call to him to put himself at the head of a reaction in favour of the Jehovah-religion, and the anointment to the royal office by a prophet of Jehovah, might move him to make the attempt. The adherence of the army determined him. When he had won his victory, he carried out faithfully the policy to which he was bound as leader of the Jehovah-party. He put an end to the worship of Baal. The crown, however, was his reward. It was a political reward, and he took political means to secure it. He slew all the possible pretenders to the crown from the house of Ahab, according to the oriental custom in such cases, as a means of securing himself on the throne. He stopped short with his religious reforms, and did not destroy the golden calves. He left them for the same political reasons for which Jeroboam erected them—that the northern kingdom might have its own religious centres outside of Jerusalem. He saw in the revolution principally a gratification of his own ambition. He was willing to be the instrument of the overthrow of a wicked dynasty and a corrupt religion, and he stopped just where his personal interests were in danger of being impaired. It is not strange that his contemporaries rejoiced so much at the rescue of their ancestral religion that they were indifferent to the excesses by which Jehu tried to establish his royal power, nor that later and calmer judges, on the contrary, raised his bloodshed into prominence in judging of his career.—Editor of Lange.