CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2 Kings 10:29. The golden calves that were in Bethel—Political reasons led to the origin of calf-worship (1 Kings 12:28), and doubtless for political reasons Jehu continued it.
2 Kings 10:32. To cut Israel short—Instead of לְקַצּוֹת, to cut off from, the Targum and others read לִקְצוֹף, to be enraged, wrath. In all the coasts of Israel—i.e., along the entire frontier, the land beyond Jordan belonging to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh.—W. H. J.
HOMILETICS OF 2 Kings 10:29-36
THE IMPERFECTIONS OF A GREAT REFORMING WORK
THE fearless and energetic efforts of Jehu at the beginning of his reign, while they filled many with dismay, excited in others the highest hopes. There were the hidden ones, the secret worshippers of Jehovah, who mourned over the degeneracy of the times, and sighed and prayed for a brighter day to dawn. It seemed as if their prayers were heard, and they recognised in the man who had dealt such fierce and summary justice to the adherents of Baal, one who would again establish the worship of Jehovah, and thus save the nation from the whirlpool of ruin into which it was rapidly sinking. It was therefore a bitter disappointment to all lovers of the truth when Jehu stayed his reforming hand, and gave his public sanction to the calf-worship of Jeroboam, putting back the nation to where it was ninety years before. The paragraph suggests the imperfections of a great reforming work.
I. That reform is imperfect when it does not thoroughly root out the evil against which it is directed (2 Kings 10:29). If the worship of the golden calves was not so gross as that of Baal, still it was idolatry, and as such should have been abolished. It was a standing insult to Jehovah, a violation of the Divine law, and a source of moral enfeeblement to the people, weighing upon them like chains of habit which are generally too small to be felt till they are too strong to be broken. It was an opportunity for Jehu to rid the nation once and for ever of the terrible curse. The hand that struck down Baal could also crush the calves of Dan and Bethel It was here the reformer failed; his work was ineffectual because it lacked thoroughness. Half reforms are always unsatisfactory. An admitted evil can be cured only by complete eradication.
II. That reform is commendable as far as it goes (2 Kings 10:30).
1. It has the Divine approval. “The Lord said unto Jehu, thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes.” Every attempt at reformation is encouraged by the Divine favour. It is this that sustains the courage of the reformer in the midst of formidable difficulties. We may well hesitate to touch any work of reformation that has not the Divine sanction, and on which we cannot ask the Divine blessing. Jehu was an instrument of Divine vengeance on the house of Ahab, and was commended so far as he carried out his commission.
2. It has the Divine reward. “Thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.” This was a favour not vouchsafed to any other king of Israel since the division of the kingdom. Lange supposes that the succession is limited to the fourth generation because Jehu still retained the calf worship; but we prefer the prima facie teaching of the text, which clearly indicates a promise of reward, rather than a threat of limitation. God will not be indebted to any man, nor shall those who do or suffer aught for Him complain of a hard bargain. The final reward of the Christian victor will be to share the throne and honours of his Lord (Revelation 3:21).
III. That reform is imperfect when it is not personal and sincere (2 Kings 10:31). “Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart.” It was not with him so much a question of religion as of politics. He was not anxious first to have his own heart right with God, and to render sincere obedience to His law, as he was to secure a firm footing as king, and to compel obedience to his authority. Jehu, as Kitto justly remarks, “was one of those decisive, terrible, ambitious yet prudent, calculating, passionless men whom God from time to time raises up to change the fate of empires, and to execute His judgments on the earth. He boasted of his zeal—Come and see my zeal for the Lord—but at the bottom, it was zeal for Jehu. His zeal was great so long as it led to acts which squared with his own interests, but it cooled marvellously when required to take a direction in his judgment less favourable to them.” All true and permanent reformation begins with the individual. If the heart be renewed, the whole man is reformed: the heart right with God is the motive-force that effects all necessary outward reformation.
IV. That reform is imperfect when it is not national and general (2 Kings 10:32-33). Had the nation been wholly delivered from idolatry, neither Hazael nor any other enemy would have been permitted to invade the kingdom and harass the people. The national spirit was broken, its prestige dimmed, even the love of fatherland was not strong enough to bind all the people together to resist and repel invasion. In the latter part of Jehu’s reign, Israel began to suffer those fearful punishments of invasion and conquest from the North and North East, which finally ended in the total captivity of the land. Jehu’s name occurs on the Assyrian monuments among others who paid tribute to the king of Assyria, and Rawlinson inclines to the opinion that from this date both the Jewish and the Israelitish kings held their crowns as fiefs, dependent on the will of the Assyrian monarch, with whom it formally lay to confirm each new prince in his kingdom (chap. 2 Kings 14:5). Partial and incomplete reforms always leave elements of weakness and discord behind them. When a nation is united in acknowledging and serving God, it is invincible; it is respected and feared by its enemies.
V. That reform is imperfect when it is employed for selfish ends (2 Kings 10:34-36). Jehu carried on the revolution, and wrought out reforms with an Iron hand, to serve his own purposes—that he might reign securely and peacefully—might acquire fame and power—might establish his throne for years, and be able to leave his own son in unquestioned and undisturbed possession of the kingdom. He reigned longer than any of his predecessors, and his successors reigned seventy-six years. If his zeal and ambition were expended in founding a royal dynasty, he gained his end; but that was all he did gain. The nation was not permanently benefited, nor was it long arrested in its downfall. It destroys the dignity and efficacy of reform when it is carried on from selfish motives; and yet God can work out His just retribution upon evil-doers through the violence and selfishness of human passions.
LESSONS:—
1. It is a solemn responsibility to be a public reformer.
2. It is disappointing and disastrous when reform is not radical.
3. Every step of reform in the right direction is pleasing to God, and shall not go unrewarded.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2 Kings 10:29-33. Jehu is a type of those who show great zeal in tearing down and destroying superstition and false worship, but do nothing to build up the faith, because they themselves have no living faith, and do not walk before God with all their hearts. Jehu did indeed destroy idolatry, but he did not touch the chief sin of Israel, because he considered it the chief support of his own authority. So many a one renounces gross, external sins, but will not think of denying himself, of sacrificing his own interests, and of turning his heart to the living God. He who remains standing half-way goes backward in spite of himself. Jehu would not desist from the sins of Jeroboam because he thought it would cost him his crown, but on that very account he lost one province after another.—Lange.
2 Kings 10:29. The exigencies of government.
1. Cannot ignore the influence of religion upon a people.
2. Will sanction an imperfect religion rather than lose power.
3. In danger of placing politics and dynastic interests above religious reformation.
2 Kings 10:30. Zachariah, of the fourth generation, was slain by Shallum, and thus was this word of the Lord fulfilled (compare chap. 2 Kings 15:12); and thus, too, according to the prophecy of Hosea (2 Kings 1:4), did the Lord “avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu.” For when the minister of Divine judgment himself turned to idolatry, the very blood of his guilty victims might well call for vengeance on him for doing the same things for which he had executed the Divine judgment on them (Romans 2:1).—Whedon.
—The strict impartiality of Divine Justice.
1. Recognises and commends what is good in the worst characters.
2. Apportions to every action its exact measure of reward.
3. Does not interfere with the exercise of individual freedom.
—Jehu first receives praise for the work which he has done, and afterwards is denounced, in his posterity at least, for the same action (compare 2 Kings 10:30 and Hosea 1:4). The first of these two points throws much light upon the second. The defection of Jehu showed that he had other ends in view than the pleasing of God Personal ambition had been at the bottom of his heart, and he had destroyed that form of idolatry which was identified with the house of Ahab. But having achieved his end, he took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord. The vengeance which had fallen upon Ahab’s house had been the righteous retribution upon Ahab’s sins; but the executioner gloated over and rejoiced in his work. He had his reward in the establishment of his dynasty for four generations. What was righteous in his spirit—his steadiness of purpose and hatred of injustice—all this God blessed. But the brutal ferocity, the remorseless indifference to agony and bloodshed, these evil elements prevailed over the better, and when the fire against Baal had burnt itself out for want of fuel, nought was left but dull ashes. His zeal for righteousness did not turn inwards and burn up his own sins. When there was nothing left to destroy, his occupation was gone. The same thirst for blood which had marked him, passed down, a ghastly bequeathment, to his children, and brought the Divine curse upon them.—The Bible Educator.
2 Kings 10:31. The seductive power of unbelief.
1. Arrests and paralyzes the efforts of the most zealous reformers.
2. Creates indifference to the most sublime revelations of God’s word.
3. Unfits the soul for the highest spiritual experiences.
4. Leads to the practice of the basest idolatry.
—It is an entire goodness that God cares for. Perhaps, such is the bounty of our God, a partial obedience may be rewarded with a temporal blessing, as Jehu’s severity to Ahab shall carry the crown to his seed for four generations; but we can never have any comfortable assurance of an eternal retribution if our hearts and ways be not perfect with God. Woe be to us, O God, if we be not all thine! We cannot but everlastingly depart from Thee, if we depart not from every sin. Thou hast purged our hearts from the Baal of our gross idolatries. O clear us from the golden calves of our petty corruptions, also that Thou mayst take pleasure in our uprightness, and we may reap the sweet comforts of Thy glorious remuneration!—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 10:32-33. National apostacy from God.
1. Will be Divinely punished.
2. Leaves the nation a prey to violent enemies.
3. Brings national loss and degradation.
—The reign of Jehu closed in disaster. The Syrian invasion, from combating which he had hastened on becoming king, had been vigorously pushed forward by Hazael, and was now successful. The whole country east of Jordan, comprising half of the kingdom of Israel, was wrested away. And this had been done with the accompaniment of horrible cruelty on the part of Hazael (2 Kings 8:12-13). The reign of Jehu, therefore, was one of misery and calamity. He was the first Israelite king, too, who is recorded to have paid tribute to the king of Assyria. But one feature of his reign we must not forget. While he stands before us the one figure in the picture, red-handed and remorseless, we might, at first sight, take him as the embodiment of the whole monarchy and people. But he is not so. There was another emissary of God at work in the kingdom, though his name does not appear, his hand doubtless busy with healing and binding up the broken places. Elisha, the son of Shaphan, was he. Many years afterwards he lay dying, and Jehu’s grandson came to bid him farewell. “My father,” cried the king, “the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof;” that is, the defence and protection of the kingdom art thou, and thou art passing away. Joash was hereby confessing the truth that deeds of violence and oppression like Jehu’s have no power, and leave no advantage, but the Lord’s delight is in them that fear Him and put their trust in His mercy.—The Bible Educator.
—The character of Jehu is not difficult to understand, if we take it as a whole, and consider the general impression left us by the Biblical account. He is exactly one of those men whom we are compelled to recognize, not for what is good or great in themselves, but as instruments for destroying evil and preparing the way for good; such as Augustus Cæsar at Rome, Sultan Mahmond II. in Turkey, or one closer at hand in the revolutions of our own time and neighbourhood. A destiny, long kept in view by himself or others—inscrutable secresy and reserve in carrying out his plans—a union of cold, remorseless tenacity, with occasional bursts of furious, wayward, almost fanatical zeal; this is Jehu, as he is set before us in the historical narrative, the worst type of a son of Jacob, the “supplanter,” as he is called, without the noble and princely qualities of Israel—the most unlovely and the most coldly commended of all the heroes of his country. It is a striking instance of the gradually increasing light, even in the Jewish dispensation, that in the wider and more evangelical revelations of the later prophets the commendation on Jehu’s acts is repealed. It is declared through the voice of Hosea, that for the blood even of Jezebel and Ahaziah an account must be rendered; “I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu” (Hosea 1:4). Their blood, like the blood which has been shed again and again in the convulsions of nations and churches, was a righteous retribution, is at last exacted by the just judgment which punishes the wrong-doer, not only of one party in the church or state but of both. And the accursed spot of the ancient dynasty, the very title and site of Jezreel, seemed to draw down upon itself a kind of Divine compassion. The innocent child of the prophet was to bear the name of Jezreel, and “the vow” of Jehu’s house “was to be broken.… in the great “day of Jezreel” (Hosea 1:4-5; Hosea 1:11). It is the same touching thought of life growing out of death which has so often forced itself on those who have seen the rich harvest springing up out of a battlefield, that out of that time and place of humiliation the name is to go back to its original signification as derived from the beauty and fertility of the rich plain, and to become a pledge of the revived beauty and richness of Israel. “I will hear and answer the heavens, and they will hear and answer the earth, and the earth shall hear and answer, and the wine and the oil of that fruitful plain, and they shall hear and answer Jezreel (that is, the seed of God), and I will sow her unto me in the earth.” And from this time the image seems to have been continued as a prophetical expression for sowing the blessings of God, and the people of Israel, as it were broadcast, as though the whole of Palestine and the world were to become, in a spiritual sense, one rich plain of Jezreel.—Stanley.