THE FALL OF THE OMRIAN DYNASTY
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2 Kings 9:1. Elisha called one of the children of the prophets—A prophet-disciple, occupying towards Elisha the same relation he himself once stood in towards Elijah. The rabbis suggest it was Jonah. This anointing of Jehu was a further heritage of duty bequeathed by Elijah to Elisha (comp. 1 Kings 19:17; see Notes on 2 Kings 8:7). Box of oil—Flask or vial, פַּךְ from פָכָה to trickle down. Ramoth-Gilead—A city of peculiar importance to Judah and Israel, as affording a strong defence, east of Jordan, against the Syrians.
2 Kings 9:2. Jehu—Doubtless Joram’s ablest general, and entrusted, so Josephus states, with supreme command of the Israelitish army at Ramoth-Gilead by Joram on his being wounded (2 Kings 8:29). Make him rise up from among, &c.—Do it privately, for sake of thine own safety, and that none may interrupt thine act of anointing him.
2 Kings 9:4. Even the young man the prophet—Or, even the prophet’s young man; or, himself a prophet (see Note on 2 Kings 5:1, supra).
2 Kings 9:8. I will cut off, &c.—Vide Critical Notes on 1 Kings 14:10. The phrase “Shut up and left” stands for those who are of age and those who are minors.
2 Kings 9:10. In the portion of Jezreel—It was formerly Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21:15 sq., and 1 Kings 21:23). The “portion”—חֵלֶק—in its wider sense, refers to the strip of country outside the city’s wall, hence a place for foul deposits, and thus suggests Jezebel’s degradation that upon it her body should be cast.
2 Kings 9:11. This mad fellow—הַמְּשֻׁגָּע—Wild rhapsodist. Soldiers would regard the grotesque appearance and mysterious conduct of this young man as indicating that he was crazy. Prophets were not infrequently regarded as “mad”; the divine fervour in them, and their asceticism, being viewed as proof (Jeremiah 29:26; Acts 26:26). Ye know the man and his communication—Jehu half suspects that they had plotted to hoax him by this man’s action, in order to incite him to revolt, and intimates that they knew more than they appeared to know. Hence their reply, “False!” (2 Kings 5:14). They deny the insinuation.
2 Kings 9:13. Then they hasted … Jehu is king—Their prompt acquiescence in Joram’s overthrow, and their proclamation of Jehu, proves that the army had no respect for Joram, who seems to have quitted the scenes of war on receiving wounds from the Syrians (2 Kings 8:29), but whose wounds were not so serious as to prevent his riding out (2 Kings 9:21), albeit it is said in 2 Kings 5:16, perhaps satirically, that “Joram lay there.” Yet, although able to ride out to meet Jehu, he was much too sick to go back to the scene of war! Such conduct of indulgence or indifference would make his captains contemptuous, which prepared them to welcome Jehu, who was evidently popular with the army, as king. Took every man his garment, and put it under him—Spreading it on the floor for a carpet, as sign of homage (Matthew 21:7).
HOMILETICS OF 2 Kings 9:1-14
THE MINISTER OF DIVINE VENGEANCE
IT was a dark day for Israel when Omri became its king. He imposed idolatry upon the people by the strong hand of law. He was the author of those celebrated “statutes”—celebrated for their infamy—which “made Israel a desolation” (Micah 6:16). Ahab and Jezebel maintained and improved upon this idolatrous policy. Israel became utterly corrupt, and, as an evidence of the vigour and influence of the rule of Ahab, Judah was being infected with the same moral poison. Had this rule continued much longer, there was danger that the Jewish people would be lost in heathenism, and the grand purpose of their being chosen and trained—the maintenance and spread of the religion of Jehovah—would have been frustrated. In furtherance of the Divine designs and in the interest of the world, the dynasty of Omri, after a career of more than forty years, must come to an end. All warnings were disregarded, and every attempt at reformation had failed. Judgment can be no longer delayed, and the minister of Divine vengeance is ready to enter upon his work. It is terrible, sanguinary work that has to be done, and the man who undertakes it must be above all effeminate qualms. He must be a man of iron, of iron will, of iron hand, of iron heart.
I. That the minister of Divine vengeance may be for years unconsciously preparing for his work. More than twenty years before, the Lord revealed to Elijah the agencies by which the wicked house of Ahab should be destroyed, and among them was Jehu the son of Nimshi (1 Kings 19:16-17). This man was familiar with the fearful prediction of Elijah against Ahab when he went to take possession of Naboth’s vineyard, and though fifteen years had rolled away since then, those terrible words of doom were vividly remembered (1 Kings 21:17-24; comp. with 2 Kings 9:25). Jehu little dreamed that he was to be the selected instrument of vengeance, and yet circumstances were preparing him for the office. His warlike training developed the qualities necessary for his stern and sanguinary work. In the court of Ahab was being prepared, all unconsciously to himself, the agent who was to destroy, with unrelenting pitilessness, the whole house of Ahab. Wrong cannot triumph for ever. It generates the power which by-and-bye works its destruction. The very means by which evil gains its ends are used for its punishment. Napoleon, the dictator of Europe, won his power by war, and by war he was defeated and humbled. In the neighbourhood of the bane there grows the antidote.
II. That the minister of Divine vengeance is elevated to a position of power and authority by which he may accomplish his mission.
1. Jehu is solemnly anointed king. It was not customary to anoint kings, except on the disturbance of the succession, as in the case of Solomon; or on the interruption of it, as in the case of Joash (chap. 2 Kings 11:12); or on the transfer of the government to another family, as in this case of Jehu. It seems singular that a man like Elisha should lend himself to conspiracy and rebellion; but the prophet was acting not from any factious spirit, but according to Divine direction. The time to act was come, and the man who had so much to do—so much that ordinary men would shrink from—must be shown by the solemn and significant act of anointing that he is fully called and commissioned. The greater the work man is called to do, the more important is it he should be powerfully impressed he is empowered to do it.
2. His authority is speedily and publicly recognised by those who are ready to help him in his mission (2 Kings 9:13). The validity of Jehu’s appointment to the kinship is at once acknowledged by his companions in arms, and proclamation is made with trumpets and shouting. The army is with him; his authority is unquestioned; his power is supreme; he has the means of carrying out his terrible work of vergeance. The readiness with which the soldiery acquiesce in the new order of things indicates how feeble was their attachment to the house of Ahab, and the power that Jehu must have gained over them. Perhaps the impression was deepening on the popular mind that the doom of the house of Ahab was at hand, and could no longer be delayed. When God arises to judgment, He can make all the powers of heaven and earth contribute to the accomplishment of His vengeful purposes.
III. That the minister of Divine vengeance is clearly informed as to the character of the work he is called to do.
1. It is a work of complete and terrible vengeance (2 Kings 9:7-10). The whole house of Ahab is to be cut off; none are excepted. “When wickedness is ripe in the field, God will not let it shed to grow again, but cutteth it up by a just and seasonable vengeance.” A weak man would have quailed and trembled before such bloody work as now lay before Jehu. He could not complain of ambiguity; he clearly understood what was expected of him. He was braced up for the occasion. His impetuous and callous nature would lead him to do, without the least symptoms of compunction, what other men would have sickened even to contemplate. He was reminded by the reference to the fate of Jeroboam and Baasha (2 Kings 9:9) what would be his own fate if he failed to carry out the Divine commands.
2. The reason for the vengeance is also set forth: “That I may avenge the blood of my servants of the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord” (2 Kings 9:7). God does not forget the sufferings and wrongs of His people. Injury done to them is done to Himself, and His justice will render the recompence. Jezebel has hunted down and destroyed the worshippers of Jehovah, wherever found, until she thought they were extinct, and that the abominations of the Baal-worship were universally adopted. It was a savage disappointment to her that she could not crush Elijah and Elisha. But the day of reckoning has come; the cry of innocent blood is heard; the murdered prophets shall be avenged. It is an addition to the punishment of the punished when they clearly understand the reason of it. Long-forgotten sins are brought back vividly to the memory, and the suffering is increased by the consciousness of its justice. Yet it may be that neither executioner nor victim fully comprehend all the reasons for retribution.
LESSONS:—
1. It is utterly futile to oppose God.
2. Though the patience of God delays the blow, iniquity shall not go unpunished.
3. The ministers of Divine vengeance are ever within call.
ELISHA AND JEHU (2 Kings 9:1-3)
The phrase, “children of the prophets,” in this passage, indicates men who were taught by a prophet or prophets, and who might hope in due time to fulfil the office themselves. The notion of a class of men under this kind of education is very puzzling to some modern readers. “Was not the prophet,” they ask emphatically, “the inspired man? Were not his words false if they did not proceed directly from the mouth of the Lord? How could he be trained or disciplined to utter such words?” The subject is a very important one. Elijah was, in a remarkable sense, the solitary man. “I alone,” he said, “am the prophet of the Lord, while the prophets of Baal are four hundred and fifty. I alone am left, and they seek my life.” On the contrary, his suceessor, Elisha, is nearly always surrounded by companions, disciples, or servants. Every passage of his history makes us understand how great the influence of the previous teacher had been; how true it was that there were numbers who had not bowed the knee to Baal during his stay upon earth; how soon, according to what seems the general law in such cases, they discovered themselves after he had left it. In the particular instance of which the text speaks, a young man out of the schools goes by the direct command of Elisha to execute an errand, which involved nothing else than the overthrow of a dynasty, and a revolution of two kingdoms.
I. If the main work of the prophet was to declare that such an event would, or would not, come to pass, or if he was a mere Æolian harp from which a chance breeze drew forth certain wild and irregular, however beautiful, notes, the idea of preparation involves an absurdity, or something worse than an absurdity. On that supposition it must mean, if it means anything, an initiation of the scholar into certain tricks by which his predecessors had been wont to impose upon the vulgar, or the communication to him of certain facts and principles known to them by which he might acquire a reputation for sudden insight and discovery. No doubt such an education as this was not unknown in the old world, as it is not unknown in the modern. It is the ordinary discipline of adepts and conjurors, of those who practise on men’s fears or upon their curiosity, of those who appeal to their conscience by religious deceptions, or to their sense of mysterious powers in the natural world by philosophical deceptions. But the Jewish prophet was not primarily or characteristically a foreteller. The essence of his office did not lie in what he announced respecting the future. His sole power of declaring that which should be, arose from his knowledge of that which had been and which was. He meditated in the law of the Lord, and in that law did he exercise himself day and night. In this exercise he learnt what was in conformity with the law, what was contrary to it. In this exercise he learnt to believe in a Divine Teacher, and to commune with Him, to believe in Him as a permanent and continual Teacher, as the Guide of his own heart, to believe that all other men’s hearts were right so long as they were under the same guidance, and wrong when they were breaking loose from it. The fruits of revolt, the inward monitor enabled him to foresee and predict. The prediction might take a general form and point to a distant issue, or a number of issues; it might speak of that which was definite and immediate. There would be the same proof in both cases that the word came from a hidden source, and from a moral being; a proof addressed to the conscience of the hearer, seeing that the prediction would always come forth with some warning respecting his actual conduct, some denunciation of an idolatrous or unrighteous act. Everything, then, that was sudden in these utterances, bore witness to previous trains of thought and habits of reflection. So far from wishing to deny the existence of these, as if they interfered with the genuineness of his inspiration, the prophet would be grieved if his hearer did not give him credit for them. The knowledge of passing events, too, would be sought for, not declined, by the true prophet. He had no need to bandage his eyes that the spectator might be sure he derived his insight from some other source than actual observation. All facts were to him signs of a Divine purpose, solemn indications of truths which they could not themselves make known, but which nevertheless lay in the heart of them, and which God could discover to the patient and faithful seeker. Nor can I suppose that the knowledge which the wise king is said to have possessed of trees and plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall, so far as the means of obtaining it lay within their reach, would have been scorned or scouted by these men of God. They might not have had much of it—probably much less than the soothsayers and magicians of Egypt or Assyria—less, perhaps, of traditional information on such matters than the Phœnician priests of Jezebel’s court. But what they had they would make use of, looking rather to the secret powers of things than to their outward mechanism; referring the former in all cases to the government of a Personal Being; believing that in many, perhaps in most, cases they were subject to man as His vicegerent.
II. Supposing the habitual belief and work of the prophet to have been of this kind, it does not seem very strange that he should have been an educator of others, or that one main object of his education should have been to fit them for the exercise of functions like his own.
It would have been the most glaring contradiction to all his professions if he had regarded the prophetical power as something bestowed for his honour, a gift to separate him from the rest of the people. In a prophet of Baal such an opinion would have been most natural; in a prophet of the Lord God of Israel it would have been most detestable. God had given His law to the whole nation; all were under it; therefore all might study it and delight themselves in it. It was a law which imported a government over the inner man. The conscience and heart and will of every man might be awakened to know the nature of this government, to receive light from the source of light. And since light is given that it may be communicated, since it shines into a mind that it may shine forth from that mind, there was no reason why any one of the Lord’s people should not be prophets. The training of the prophet would teach the king the ground of his authority, his relations to those whom he governed, his responsibility for the government of them. It would teach the elders of the city that they were not to obey the commands of an evil woman when she told them to charge an innocent man with blaspheming God and the king, that she might get possession of his inheritance. It would teach the priests that they were not to pollute the sacrifices of God, or offer them to devils and not to Him. It would teach the owners of the land that the land was held by them of Him who had committed it to them in trust for the good of his whole people. It would teach the seller the sin of having the false measure and the bag of deceitful weights. It would teach the master the sin of oppressing the hireling in his wages. It would teach all that they were the members of one commonwealth, over which a higher than Ahab or Jehoram was ruling, and would set aside their rule to assert his own.
III. The sons of the prophets, then, were a continual witness to the Israelites against certain errors into which they were apt to fall respecting the prophetical office. The man of God might have been looked upon as a mere separate being, cut off by the awfulness of his character and dignity from the rest of his countrymen, an object of distant admiration or dread, not an example of what they ought to be. These men, taken from among themselves and associated with him, declared that he was only withdrawn from their communion that he might the better claim privileges for them which they were in hazard of losing; that he was only chosen out by the Lord God of Israel that he might the more clearly understand their national calling. If he did any strange acts, or put forth any marvellous powers, the people would see that they were exercised not in his own name, but in the name of the Lord God; not for his sake, but for theirs, since some very humble person, scarcely distinguished by a name, known only as one of an order, could perform some of the most important and perilous tasks which were committed to his master. If the sons of the prophets were entrusted with messages like that which one of them bore to Jehu, a proof would be given that the prophet was merely declaring and carrying out a purpose which must be accomplished; he did not go himself to plot against an existing order, or to earn the favour of some particular chieftain. The repeated allusions to these sons of the prophets in the story of Elisha are specially worthy of note, because there are more passages in that story which favour the notion that the man of God is a worker of prodigies and portents, than in all the rest of the Bible. Not that there is any great number of those stories. Open at hazard the life of almost any comspicuous saint in the middle ages, and you will find five miracles attributed to him for one that is given to Elisha. The more strong one’s apprehension is of the degradation of the Israelitish people at that time, of their low sensual idolatry, of their reverence for evil powers, the more one feels how acts of this kind must have been needed to counteract their materialism, to undermine their religion of fraud and hatred, to establish, as no words or arguments could, the proof of an actual and a gracious ruler.
IV. Retribution is the main subject of the Scripture narrative. Elijah had told Ahab that the blood of Naboth would be required of his house. His humiliation had delayed the sentence. His enemy, who had found him out, seems henceforth to have left him alone. Perhaps the great prophet passed the remainder of his own days in peace. But there were other prophets to torment Ahab, and a still greater number, freshly brought, perhaps, by Jezebel from her own land, to deceive him. The lying spirit in their mouths drove him to Ramoth-Gilead, and Israel was left, as Micah had foretold, without a shepherd. His son Joram finds Elisha almost as terrible as his master had been to Ahab. Yet their relations were different. Joram is less of a Baal worshipper than his father. He consults Elisha; is asked by him why he does not go to the prophets of his father and mother; still is promised deliverance and victory in a war which he has undertaken with the Moabites, and is saved not once or twice by the prophet’s knowledge from the Syrians. These enemies of Israel look upon the prophet with especial dread. Once he is surrounded by them; but his servant is permitted to see invisible hosts which are on his side. These visions, Elisha’s acts of power, his words of wisdom, the ruin which threatened the land from the Syrians, its unexpected rescue, are all signs that the God who had made a covenant with their fathers was with the king and the people then. Trust was then, as always, what the prophets demanded of them. They could not trust too boldly or unreservedly. To trust, would have been to repent of the calf worship, to rise out of the brutal habits which it had engendered, to begin a new life as men. But the custom of idolatry had destroyed trust in their hearts. They could only worship and tremble. The sin of the father descended upon the son with the weakness and cowardice, which were the fruits of it, increased tenfold. At the appointed day and hour the vengeance came, by just such an instrument as would seem likeliest to carry it out. Jehu the son of Nimshi had been declared to Elijah as the joint successor with Elisha in the work he had left unperformed. No two men in Israel could have been more unlike. One cried to have a double portion of his master’s spirit, the other was known only as a man who drove furiously. Yet Jehu had the kind of faith which might be expected in a soldier, somewhat reckless, but with his sense of right not quenched by religious falsehood. He had heard the burden which Elijah had pronounced on Ahab as he sat with him on his chariot when they entered the plot of ground that had been Naboth’s. He felt that there was an everlasting truth in the sentence, and that it must come to pass. Who should execute it he did not know then. When the anointing oil of Elisha’s messenger had been poured on his head, and his comrades had cried, “Jehu is king,” all the savage impulses of the soldier became quickened and elevated by the feeling that he was commissioned to punish evildoers, and assert justice. Esteeming himself a scourge of God, and rejoicing in the office, he gives full play to all his bloody instincts.
V. It causes great scandal to many amiable and worthy people, that the Scripture does not stop to comment on the atrocities of Jehu, but appears to commend his zeal, and to rejoice that what he began he accomplished. A true portrait can never be a mischievous one, and this is essentially true. Nothing is said to gloss over the ferocity of Jehu; it is exhibited broadly, nakedly. You do not want words to tell you that you must hate it. Your impulse—and it is a right one—is to do so; but there may be in the most ruffianly and brutal characters, not merely strength, not merely a clear distinct purpose, and a steadiness in following it out, but, along with these, an intense hatred of hypocrisy, a determination to put it down, not for selfish ends, but because it is hateful, which determination is good, and inspired by God. We do not meet with these characters in the world—characters with something devilish, going close beside something which is really divine; and, though the devilish is the obtrusive, and may become the pervading, part of the man’s soul, you cannot help feeling that the other is in the very depth of it, and marks out what he is meant to be, and can be. Honour it; confess that it is not of earthly origin; that it does not spring from any dark root in the selfish nature. Say boldly, “that honesty, that zeal, is from above; it has the sign of a celestial parentage; just so far as that governs him, he will be a servant of his kind; aftertimes will bless him.” But it is also true that the grovelling elements of his character, if they are not destroyed by this nobler fire, will only glare the more fiercely for the light which it sheds upon them, and that soon, when the fire begins to burn low, you will see, instead of that glare, nothing but dull, smouldering ashes. “Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord.” It is in the quiet time that a man is tested; then we find out not only what he can do, but what he is; whether his zeal for righteousness means that he will obey it; whether his hatred for what is false implies an adherence to the true. The test in this case failed. Jehu destroyed Baal-worship, for that was foreign. He clave to the calf-worship, for that was the tradition of his fathers; and, therefore, the people went on in the downward course. They sought after evil powers. They could not trust God.
VI. Elisha, the son of Shaphat, and Jehu, the son of Nimshi, did then carry out together the words of the prophet. For these words depended upon no mortal agency. They were the expressions of an eternal law which, in some way or other, would fulfil itself. This is the great lesson which the Bible teaches in every page. The righteous Will moves on steadily and irresistibly towards its own end. The unrighteous will struggles with it, seems to prevail, is broken in pieces; but, seeing that it is Will, and not a blind necessity, which rules in the armies of Heaven and among the inhabitants of men, it is all-important whether those who execute its decrees work in cheerful submission to it, or, in blindness, with base and private designs. This was the great question for the ministers of God’s purpose, whether they were prophets or soldiers, to consider then. It is the great question for us now. Zeal is so precious a gift, is so much wanted for the service of mankind, it is so rare, that the evil spirit is certain to assault those who possess it; and, seeing that, there are a multitude of kindly, compromising men, who represent all energetic indignation against wrong as unnecessary, disturbing, unphilosophical, unchristian, and those who believe that no form of falsehood is to be tolerated, but to be abhorred, are stirred up by the indifference which others exhibit and boast of, to a kind of savageness and fury. They must, if they can, hasten on the purpose of God, and themselves execute part of His wrath. Alas! what are they striving for? “It is the driving of Jehu, for he driveth furiously.” This is the best memorial that will remain of him who has let his zeal become his master, when it was meant to be his servant, and who has counted it a pleasure, instead of a hard necessity, to destroy. “O my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horses thereof!” These are the words which a king of Israel, of Jehu’s house, spoke to Elisha as he lay sick and dying. He felt that a power was passing out of the world which was greater than his and than that of all the kings who had been before him, because it was a power that had, in the main, been consecrated to God, had been used in conformity with His mind, and, therefore, had spread health and peace around it. Was it better to kill the seventy sons of Ahab, or to bring up sons of the prophets? To be the executor of God’s vengeance on the land, or to show that He was the healer of its sicknesses? To make clear that death is the certain wages of sin, or to affirm by acts and words that there is one who raiseth the dead? Which mission was the nobler in the old time? Which must be nobler for those that believe that God gave His only begotten Son, not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved?—Condensed from F. D. Maurice.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2 Kings 9:1-14. Years had rolled away since Jehu’s meeting with Elijah in the vineyard of Naboth. He was now high in the favour of Ahab’s son, as captain of the host in the Syrian war. In that war of chariots and horses he had acquired an art little practised by the infantry of the ancient Israelites. He was known through the whole army and country for driving his horses like one out of his mind. The army which he commanded was at Ramoth-Gilead. That was still the point round which the interest of the Syrian war revolved. The king himself had been present at the siege, had been in personal danger, and had returned home to Jezreel to be cured of his wounds from the arrows of the Syrian archers. It was in his absence that a young man—said by tradition to be the futurer pophet Jonah, son of the widow of Zarephath—arrived at the camp with a small flask in his hand. His garments were girt round him as of one travelling in haste, and his appearance was wild and excited as of a madman. From the midst of the captains he singled out Jehu. Once more there was a consecrated king of Israel. The oil of inauguration had been poured on the head of Jehu. He was to go forth “the anointed of the Lord” to exterminate the house of Ahab. It was as if a spark had been set to a train long prepared. There was not a moment’s hesitation. The officers tore off their military cloaks and spread them under his feet where he stood on the top of the stairs leading down into the court. As he stood on this extempore throne, with no seat but the steps covered by the carpeting of the square pieces of cloth, they blew the well-known blast of the ram’s horn which always accompanied the inauguration of a king of Israel. From this moment the course of Jehu is fixed. The destiny long brooding over him—the design perhaps raised in his own mind from the day when he had first met Elijah—is to be accomplished.—Stanley’s Jewish Church.
2 Kings 9:1-10. The service of God and the young. I. The service of God is the highest service to which youth can be consecrated. II. The service of God teaches the young to reverence and obey the aged good. III. The service of God familiarises the youthful mind with the procedures of Divine justice and equity. IV. The service of God employs youth in enterprises involving great risk and difficulty. V. The service of God teaches youth to act with discretion, rapidity, and decision.
2 Kings 9:1. Old Elisha hath neither cottage nor foot of land, yet, sitting in an obscure corner, he gives orders for kingdoms, not by way of authority—this usurpation had been no less proud than unjust—but by way of message from the God of kings. Even a mean herald may go on a great errand. The prophets of the gospel have nothing to do but with spiritual kingdoms, to beat down the kingdoms of sin and Satan, to translate souls to the kingdom of heaven. He that renewed the life of the Shunammite’s son must stoop to age: that block lies in his way to Jehu. The aged prophet employs a speedier messenger, who must also gird up his loins for haste. No common pace will serve us when we go on God’s message; the loss of minutes may be unrecoverable. He is prodigal of his success that is slow in his execution.
2 Kings 9:3. How is it that of all the kings of the ten tribes none was ever anointed but Jehu? Is it that the God who would not countenance the erection of that usurped throne would countenance the alteration? Or is it that by this visible testimony of Divine ordination the courage of the Israelitish captains might be raised up to second the high and bold attempt of him whom they saw destined from heaven to rule?—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 9:4-10. The prophet disciple. I. His mission. He is one of the humblest in Samaria, a poor insignificant boy, and he carries a kingdom to Ramoth! How great the Lord appears in this incident, but also with what cutting irony He meets all the arrogance of the self-made gods of earth! II. His obedience. He raises no objections, though the task is hard for him. He is to go into a besieged city, to go before the generals of the army, to put his life and liberty at stake. Yet he goes with no sword at his side; without a companion he ventures into the army of the king to anoint another to be king. All human scruples and fears disappear before the duty of obedience. In obedience he does not fear, and lets not danger terrify him. III. His fidelity. He does no more and no less than he is demanded. He has a great commission entrusted to him, but he does not boast. He keeps the secret, and departs as he came. He does not care what may be thought of him, or what people may say, whether they think him a mad fellow or not. So the apostles also carried the secrets of God out into the wide world, and had no other interest than that they might be found true.—Lange.
2 Kings 9:5. The Divine message of mercy. I. Is entrusted to the earnest and faithful, notwithstanding their youth. II. Is often delivered under circumstances of difficulty and peril. III. Is suited to all classes of society. IV. Is personal and direct in its application: “To thee, O captain!”
2 Kings 9:7-10. Oh, the sure, though the patient justice of the Almighty! Not only Ahab and Jezebel had been bloody and idolatrous, but Israel was drawn into the partnership of their crimes: all these shall share in the judgment. Elijah’s complaint in the cave now receives this late answer. Hazeal shall plague Israel, Jehu shall plague the house of Ahab and Jezebel. Elisha’s servant thus seconds Elisha’s master. Ahab’s drooping under the threat hath put off the judgment from his own days; now it comes and sweeps away his wife, his issue, and falls heavy upon his subjects. Please yourselves, O ye vain sinners! in the slow pace of vengeance; it will be neither less certain nor more easy for the delay; rather it were to pay for that leisure in the extremity.—Bp. Hall.
—The world of to-day will not hear that “the Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries,” and declares that this is only an Old Testament notion, and that the Gospel knows only one God, who is a God of love. It is true that God does not seek revenge, but he is a holy, and therefore a just God. who requites men as they have deserved, and repays each according to his conduct (Job 34:2; Romans 2:6). A God without vengeance, who cannot and will not punish, is no God, but a divinity fashioned from one’s thoughts. The same gospel that teaches that God is love, says also, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” and “Our God is a consuming fire.” The same law which says that God is an avenging God towards His enemies, also says that “He is merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.”
2 Kings 9:7. The Divine concern for the martyrs. I. Sustains them in times of trial and suffering. II. Elevates them to sublime examples of heroism and devotion. III. Punishes their tormentors with terrible retribution.
—“The blood of thy servants.” Listen! He has indeed permitted them to lay violent hands upon His servants, but He has not overlooked or forgotten it. Nothing cleaves more irresistibly up through the clouds than the voice of the blood of persecuted saints. Nothing is better adapted to pour oil upon the flames of the Divine wrath against the godless than the sighs which their cruelty forces from a child of God. The blood of the saints has often cried from earth to heaven, and what judgments it has called down! Let the persecutors of all centuries appear and bear witness. Nebuchadnezzer, Belshazzar, Herod, Agrippa, Nero, Inquisitors of Spain, the Louises of France, Charles IX.—bear witness all what a dangerous thing it is to lay hands upon the saints of the Most High! This is not the only instance where God has raised the destroying axe over a dynasty which was morally rotten. He often makes use of royal families which have fallen into moral decay for the discipline of nations, but the time never fails to come when He passes sentence of destruction upon them, and brings speedy ruin upon the condemned. A family tree does not stand firm in gilded parchments and registers: only when it is planted by the waters which flow from the sanctuary of God will it continue to flourish vigorously.—Krumm.
2 Kings 9:10. Work for God.
1. Should be entered upon with due preparation.
2. Should be done expeditiously.
3. Should be left to work its own results.
2 Kings 9:11. “Wherefore came this mad fellow to thee?” Religious zeal. I. Obtains its purest inspirations from the love of God and of His service. II. Often leads the messenger of God to adopt methods which are misunderstood by the world. III. Is regarded by the unbelieving and unspiritual as a species of insanity.
—So God’s prophets were ever counted and called by the mad world, always beside itself in point of salvation (Jeremiah 29:26; Hosea 9:7; Acts 26:24; 2 Corinthians 5:13). These profane ruffians could not name such a one without a flout, because the prophets declaimed against their wickedness, and contemned the world’s vanities which they so much esteemed. But though their tongues thus spake after the wicked guise of it, miscalling the prophet’s innocency, yet their desire to know what he said and did, did abundantly show what credit they gave him secretly; and after, they made him king whom that fellow had anointed, to the hazard of their own lives. God giveth a secret authority to His despised servants, so as they which hate their persons, yet reverence their truth; even very scorners cannot but believe them.—Trapp.
2 Kings 9:12. If the generals, when they heard that God had anointed Jehu to be king, hastened, spread out their garments, and shouted, “Jehu is king,” how much more should all shout Hosanna to Him whom God hath anointed with the Holy Ghost, and has seated Him at His right hand in heaven, who will rule until He has subdued all enemies under his feet.
2 Kings 9:13. Their readiness in throwing off their allegiance to Jehoram is something remarkable. But it was known that the house of Ahab was in the present generation doomed to extinction. This was a thing people were not likely to forget. It was known that Elisha, who had sent this man, was a commissioned prophet, authorised to declare the will of the Lord, who had reserved the right of appointing whom he saw fit to the kingdom. And it is probable that the military were dissatisfied with the rule of a house so completely under the influence of one bad woman, and the errors and crimes of which had first and last brought so much discredit upon the nation. Add to this, that in the absence of a fixed succession to a throne which so many aspiring adventurers have already won, loyalty sits but lightly upon the soldiery; and they are very prone to vote a popular commander into the throne when it becomes vacant, or even to make it vacant for him.—Kitto.
2 Kings 9:14. There are few persons in the sacred history who have been so variously judged as Jehu. To some he is a stirrer up of rebellion and a bloody despot; others see in him a pure and unimpeachable servant of the Lord. Both equally err, for both depart alike from what the sacred record declares, and all depends, especially in the case of Jehu, on allowing ourselves to be led simply by the record. If we restrict ourselves to what is said in this chapter, this much is certain, that he did not make himself king. There is not a word to justify the suspicion that he plotted and conspired before he was anointed king; on the contrary, the story shows clearly that the prophetical calling to be king surprised and astonished him, and also that his fellow-commanders knew nothing of it. He ought not, therefore, to be put in the same category with Baasha, Zimri, Shallum, Menakem, Pekah, and Hoshea, who, instigated by ambition, without authority and in self-will, took the royal power into their hands. He was called to be king by the prophet, by the name of Jehovah. The explanation of the selection of just this man as the instrument for the destruction of the house of Ahab, and for the uprooting of idolatry, is found in the fact that at that time there was scarcely a man who united, as he did, all the necessary qualifications. In the first place, Jehu was a decided opponent of idolatry, and of the abuses which were connected with it (2 Kings 9:22). He was a man of the greatest energy. Pushing onward with boldness and enterprise, decided and pitiless, he shrank back before no difficulty (2 Kings 9:20; 2 Kings 9:24; 2 Kings 9:32). Moreover, he did not lack prudence or wisdom (2 Kings 9:11; 2 Kings 9:15; 2 Kings 9:18). Finally, he stood high in the popular esteem as a military leader. We see from the joy with which his fellow-commanders caught up his nomination and anointment, and from the readiness with which they obeyed his commands, that he enjoyed their fullest confidence (2 Kings 9:14-16). It is true that his subsequent conduct is fierce and soldier-like; that was the natural product of his character, calling, and education.—Lange.
—So much credit hath that mad fellow with these gallants of Israel, that upon his word they will presently adventure their lives and change the crown. God gives a secret authority to His despised servants, so as they which hate their person, yet reverence their truth; even very scorners cannot but believe them. If, when the prophets of the Gospel tell us of a spiritual kingdom, they be distrusted of those which profess to observe them, how shameful is the disproportion—how just shall their judgment be!—Bp. Hall.
—If we see here, and in the succeeding Chapter s, the horrors of revolution on the one hand, none the less do we see when and how revolution becomes a terrible necessity. All authority is a means, not an end. It is established, recognised, and obeyed because it serves those ends. Its rights and privileges are correlative with duties, obligations, and responsibilities, viz., to accomplish the objects for which it was created. Its claims to obedience stand and fall with its fidelity in fulfilling its trust. If it fails in this, if it goes farther, and in the pursuit of its selfish aims and the gratification of its own self-will, threatens to crush and ruin the very interests it was created to serve, the time comes when obedience ceases to be a virtue, and becomes complicity in a crime. In the absence of prophetical authority to fix the time and designate the leaders for renouncing allegiance, it is difficult to see who is to judge of these, save the nation whose interests are at stake.—Editor of Lange.