CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2 Kings 9:21. Each in his chariot went out against Jehu—Rather, to meet Jehu. They would not have ridden out in royal equipages for a hostile attack on him. This self-indulgent king, who had been idling in his summer palace with Ahaziah, now found himself well enough to exert himself.
2 Kings 9:22. Is it peace, Jehu?—Anxiety in the enquiry; fear of bad tidings as to the war, or of conspiracy against himself. What peace, so long as, &c.—Such a rebuke from a subject would at once convey to Joram Jehu’s revolt. Her witchcrafts are so many—Her many witchcrafts continue נְכו נִים, spiritual whoredom, idolatry, and כְּשׁפַים magical incantations, witchcrafts in general.
2 Kings 9:25. Remember how … the Lord laid this burden upon him—Or “took up this oracle concerning him.” A divine sentence against a person or place is commonly called “a burden” (Isaiah 13:1, &c.) משָׂא means burden; something uttered, a sentence; and נָשָׂא means to take up, lift up; hence גָשָׂא מַשָּׂא אַל took up a sentence or oracle. Jehu and his lieutenant were together in Ahab’s retinue, and overheard the prophet’s sentence.
2 Kings 9:27. Smite him also in the chariot—After these words there is an omission in the MS., which is, however, naturally supplied by inserting the verb of execution, וַיַּכֻּהוּ.
2 Kings 9:30. Jezebel painted her face and tired her head—i.e., decorated herself royally, brightening her eyes, or darkening her eyelids with antimony or lead-ore powder, and building up her head adornments, or put on her crown. Her object was surely less to captivate Jehu than to overawe him with her majesty as queen.
2 Kings 9:31. Had Zimri peace—Warning Jehu of a like fate (1 Kings 16:10-18).—W. H. J.
HOMILETICS OF 2 Kings 9:15-37
THE TERRIBLE WORK OF REVENGE
I. Is entered upon with prudence and decision.
1. The avenger secures a powerful following. “If it be your minds, let none tell it in Jezreel” (2 Kings 9:15). This politic appeal to the army gained its purpose. The brother-officers of Jehu were fully committed to the new order of things, and there was no drawing back. With the army devoted to his cause, Jehu was prepared to carry out his work of vengeance without faltering. It is folly to attempt any enterprise involving risk and difficulty without the most careful and judicious preparation.
2. The avenger acts with promptness and energy (2 Kings 9:16-19). Jehu mounts his chariot and drives towards Jezreel, determined to be the first to confront the deposed king. The messengers sent out by Joram are detained prisoners. Still uncertain of the purpose of Jehu, the two kings drive out of the city to meet him, little dreaming of the fate that awaited them; and there is surely something specially ominous in the fact, mentioned in the narrative with such severe and artless simplicity, that they “meet him in the portion of Naboth the Jezreelite” (2 Kings 9:21). The rapidity and decisiveness of Jehu’s movements gave no opportunity to his victims to protect themselves. They were at once placed in his power. The man of promptness and decision has the advantage in every enterprise.
II. Is committed to one who is every way fitted to carry it out. “The driving is the driving of Jehu, for he driveth furiously” (2 Kings 9:20). In this one reference we have the key to Jehu’s character, a man who having once made up his mind to a certain course, will pursue it with a wild, reckless, madcap energy, utterly indifferent to all sentiment and feeling. It was horrible work that Jehu had to do. An ordinary man would have recoiled from it with fear and loathing. Jehu was cautious, crafty, and perhaps slow in committing himself to a certain course of action; but having done so, he prosecuted it with a hot, hasty, and unrelenting energy, unmoved either by pity or fear. “He did not shrink from difficulties, did not hesitate at harsh means of accomplishing his purpose, did not feel pity in striking down those who stood in his way, did not leave behind him anything that might, at a later time, rise up to mar or overthrow his work. His is not a lovely character. It does not present the amiable virtues—patience, pity, mercy, kindness. It is not a character to be imitated in modern civilised life; neither ought it to be measured or judged by the standards of a society trained to peace and order, fearful of revolution and encased in law. In the providence of God suchmen are often raised up for great crises in church and state. The man is swallowed up in the movement. His personal virtues and faults are lost sight of in the stormy, tumultuous crises in which he lived. He was needed and was called; he responded and accomplished his calling well. That is his place in the history, and that is the judgment on his career.”
III. Falls upon the leading representatives of the wickedness to be punished (2 Kings 9:22-35). Joram, Ahaziah, Jezebel—a royal trio—representatives of the idolatrous curse that had blighted both Israel and Judah, and brought down the judgment of heaven. Jezebel, whose end was so ignominious, and which is described with such dramatic vigour, was at the roof of the nation’s apostasy, and her crimes hastened the catastrophe. Joram, though taking his part in war, as his wound testified, appears in general “in the light of an oriental monarch, indolent, careless, luxurious, fond of ease. His death fulfilled a malediction upon his father. Ahaziah seems to have been one of those weak men who float on in the direction which their education and family traditions have given them. He followed the family traditions down to the family ruin. The two kings appear to be to a great extent the victims of the sins of their ancestors; and as Jezebel had controlled Ahab, we are led back to her as the origin of all this individual, family, and national calamity. She was one of those strong, bold, wicked women who have played such important roles in history. By Ahab’s marriage with this woman, the licentiousness of the worship of Baal and Astarte, the freedom of manners of the Phœnician court, the luxury and sensuality of the heathen nations, were imported into Israel. It became her aim to override and destroy all that was peculiar and national in Israel, but in so doing she was contravening all that belonged to and sustained God’s plan for Israel in human history. She braved the conflict, and re-asserted it in her last hour; and she and her descendants went down in the catastrophe” (Editor of Lange). The stroke of God’s vengeance never misses its object, and never mistakes its victim. The leaders of iniquity are sure to be smitten.
IV. Fulfils the Divine word with significant exactitude (2 Kings 9:36-37). Fifteen years had passed away since Elijah prophesied—“The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel” (1 Kings 21:23); and now the Divine word is fulfilled with such precision that the body of the proud, luxurious Jezebel is not recognizable—not a vestige is left but a few bones. “Though so great a woman by her birth, connexions, and alliances, she has not the honour of a tomb. There was not even a solitary stone to say, Here lies Jezebel! not even a mound of earth to designate the place of her sepulture! Judgment is God’s strange work; but when he contends, how terrible are His judgments!” Thrones totter and fall, but the word of the Lord abideth for ever.
LESSONS:—
1. The triumph of iniquity is short-lived.
2. Jehovah is slow to punish, but when he does so it is with terrible severity.
3. The threatenings of God should lead to repentance and reformation; if disregarded and defied, ruin is inevitable.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2 Kings 9:15. Jehu is no less subtle than valiant. He knew that the notice of this unexpected change might work a busy and dangerous resistance. He therefore gives order that no messenger of the news may anticipate his personal execution, that so he might surprise Jehoram in his palace of Jezreel, whether tending his late wounds, or securely feasting his friends, and dreaming of nothing less than danger. Secresy is the safest guard of any design. Disclosed projects are either frustrated, or made needlessly difficult.—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 9:17-20.—The minister of God’s word, a watchman.
1. He occupies an elevated and conspicuous position.
2. He keeps a vigilant lookout.
3. He is quick to discern the signs of the times.
4. He is faithful in reporting what is good, and in warning of coming danger.
5. He has keen insight into character, and the tendency of human conduct.
2 Kings 9:17. There was usually in ancient times a watch-tower over the royal residence, where a man was always stationed, night and day, to keep a good look-out in all directions from which any sort of tidings might be expected. What he beheld that he deemed of any consequence, he declared below in the courts of the palace.
The Agamemnon of Æschylus opens with the soliloquy of such a watchman—
For ever thus? O keep me not, ye gods,
For ever thus, fixed in the lonely tower
Of Atreus’ Palace, from whose height I gaze
O’er-watched and weary, like a night-dog still
Fixed to my post; meanwhile the rolling year
Moves on, and I my wakeful vigils keep
By the cold star-light sheen of spangled skies.
In the present case, the frequency of reports from the seat of war, and the king’s desire for intelligence, naturally kept the attention of the watchman much in that direction.—Kitto.
2 Kings 9:20. Reckless drivers. “Like the driving of Jehu, for he driveth furiously.” By the flash of that one sentence, we discover Jehu’s character. He came with such speed, not merely because he had an erraud to do, but because he was urged on by a headlong disposition, which had won him the name of a reckless driver, even among the watchmen. The chariot plunges until you almost expect the wheels to crash under it, or some of the princely party to be thrown out, or the horses to become utterly unmanageable. But he always goes so; and he becomes a type of that class of persons to be found in all the communities, who in worldly and religious affairs may be styled reckless drivers.
I. To this class belong all those who conduct their worldly affairs in a headlong way, without any regard to prudence or righteousness. Many a man sits in his pew on Sunday night, and sings Rock of Ages, and rolls up his eyes very piously, who, on coming out at the close of the service, shuts the pew-door and says, “Good-bye religion, I will be back next Sunday!” A religion that does not work all the week, as well as on Sunday, is no religion at all. There are to-day in our midst, many of our best citizens who have come from affluence into straightened circumstances, because there was a partner in their firm, or a cashier in their bank, or an agent representing their house, or one of the largest creditors, who, like Jehu, the son of Nimshi, was a furious driver. Once in a while a swindler is arrested, and if the case be too notoriously flagrant, the culprit is condemned, but the officials having him in charge must take the express train, and get to Sing Sing in briefest time, or the governor’s pardon gets there before him. We have feet of lightning when we get on the track of a woman who has stolen a paper of pins, or a freezing man who has abstracted a scuttle of coals; but when we go out in pursuit of some man who has struck down the interests of a hundred, and goes up along the Hudson to build his mansion, the whole city hangs on our skirts, crying, “Don’t you hurt him!” If a teamster, passing down the street, dashes heedlessly along and runs down a child, the authorities catch him; but for the reckless commercial drivers, who stop not for the rights of others, and who dash on to make their fortunes over the heads of innocence, virtue, and religion—no chastisements. When I see in the community men with largo incomes, but larger outgoes, rushing into wildest undertakings, their pockets filled with circulars about gold in Canada, and lead in Missouri, and fortunes everywhere, launching out in expenditures to be met by the thousands they expect to make, with derision dashing across the path of sober men, depending upon their industry and honour for success, I say, “Here he comes, the son of Nimshi, driving furiously.”
II. Now you may, in worldly affairs, be cautious, true, honourable, and exemplary; but all those who are speeding towards eternity without preparation—flying with the years, and the months, and the weeks, and the days, and the moments, and the seconds, towards an unalterable destiny, yet uncertain as to where they speed, are reckless drivers. What would you think of a stage-driver with six horses and twenty passengers, in the midnight, when it is so dark that you cannot see your hand before your face, dashing at full run over bridges, and along by dangerous precipices? Such a man is prudent, compared with one who, amid the perils of this life, dashes on towards an unknown eternity, not knowing where he goes. If, in driving, you come to the forks of a road, and one goes to the right, and the other to the left, you stop and make enquiry as to which road you ought to take. Tonight, you have come to the forks of a road. One leads to heaven, and the other to hell. Which road will you take? I see multitudes of people who do not even stop at the forks to make enquiry. The coursers behind which they go are panting with the speed, nostrils distended, foam dropping from the bit and whitening the flanks, but still urged on with lash, and shout, and laughter; the reins undrawn, the embankments unwatched, the speed unnoticed. Alas, for the reckless drivers! They may after awhile see the peril and seize the reins, and lay back with all their might, and put on the brakes, and cry for help until the hands are numb, and their eyes start from their sockets, and the breath stops, and the heart chills, as over the rocks they plunge, courser and chariot and horsemen tumbling in long resounding crash of ruin.
III. Some are drawn along by sinful pleasures—a wild team that ran away with all who have persisted in riding behind them. Once fully under way, no sawing of the bit can stop them. They start at every sudden sight or sound, and where it needs a slow step and great care, they go with bound terrific. Their eyes are a flame with terrors, and their hoofs red with the blood of men whose life they have dashed out, and, what is worse, the drivers scourge them into more furious speed. We come out and tell them of dangers ahead, but with jeer they pass on. The wild team smoke with the speed, and their flying feet strike fire, and the rumbling of swift wheels over rotten bridges that span awful chasms is answered by the rumbling of the heavens, “Because I called and ye refused, and stretched out my hands and no man regarded, therefore I will laugh at your calamity, and mock when your fear cometh!” When this world gets full power over a man, he might as well be dead—he is dead! When Sisera came into the house of Jael, she gave him something to drink, and got him asleep on the floor. Then she took a peg from the side of her tent, and a mallet, and drove the peg through the brain of Jael into the floor. So the world feeds a man, and when it has him sound asleep, strikes his life out. Perhaps there are some who say, “Would God I could stop my bad practices! But I cannot stop. I know that I am on the wrong road, and that I have been a reckless driver; but I try to rein in my swift appetites, yet they will not heed.” I tell such that there is an Almighty hand which can pull back these wild racers. He whose beck the stars answer, and at whose mandate the chariots of heaven come and go, is more than a master for these temptations. Helpless yourself, and unable to guide these wild coursers, give Jesus Christ the reins; mighty to save unto the uttermost. Better stop now. Some years ago near Princetown, New Jersey, some young men were skating on a pond around an air-hole, and the ice began to break in. Some of them stopped, but a young man said, “I am not afraid, give us one round more!” He swung nearly round, when the ice broke, and not until next day was his lifeless body found.—Talmage.
—Impetuosity of disposition.
1. A valuable power when used in a good cause.
2. Should be under control without being utterly crushed.
3. Absolutely necessary to accomplish certain results.
4. May hurry one into dangerous excesses.
—Dilatory and careless people do not accomplish anything. Only diligent and energetic persons succeed. Test thyself to see what spirit moves thee. The right motive power is the Holy Spirit, which never guides to folly. One may conduct spiritual affairs and manage the concerns of the kingdom of God with folly, want of judgment, and heat (Romans 10:2). Those only are children of God who are moved by the spirit of God (Romans 8:14).—Osiander.
2 Kings 9:21-37. A terrible day of judgment.
1. It comes with awful suddenness.
2. It brings destruction to three notable monarchs when they little expected.
3. It is irresistible, and leaves no possible way of escape.
4. It fulfils and confirms the Divine threatenings.
2 Kings 9:22-23. Wicked tyrant! What speakest thou of peace with men, when thou hast thus long waged war with the Almighty? That cursed mother of thine hath nursed thee with blood and trained thee up in abominable idolatries. Thou art not more hers than her sin is thine; thou art polluted with her spiritual whoredoms and enchanted with her hellish witchcrafts. Now that just God, whom thou and thy parents have so heinously despised, sends thee by me this last message of His vengeance, which, while he spake, his hand is drawing up that deadly arrow which shall cure the former wounds with a worse. Too late now doth wretched Jehoram turn his chariot and flee and cry, Treason, O Ahaziah! There was treason before, O Jehoram! Thy treason against the majesty of God is now revenged by the treason of Jehu against thee.—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 9:22. “Is it peace?” So it is to-day also: a false peace is demanded of those who are sent to make known the stern truth, in order that hoary evils may not be exposed. Those who have not true peace, generally want an external, shameful peace at any price (Ezekiel 13:16). Ask thyself first of all, “Is there peace in thy heart?” and seek peace from Him who is our peace (Ephesians 2:14). There can be no lasting peace where there is apostasy from the living God and His word; there licentiousness, injustice, tyranny, strife, and war, with all their attendant miseries and horrors, must come. Though His sword rests for a time, yet it does not rest in its scabbard.—Lange.
2 Kings 9:23-29. The death of the kings of Israel and Judah. It was sudden, unforeseen, and fell upon them in their security and blindness. The proverb applies to Ahaziah: “Hunt with the fox, and you will be hung with him.” Refrain from bad companions, if thou wouldst not be punished with them. The one is thrown upon Naboth’s field, and left without a grave; the other is brought indeed to the sepulchre of his fathers, but what is the use of a royal sepulchre to him who has lost his soul?—Wurt. Summ.
2 Kings 9:25-26. The inflexible exactitude of retribution.
1. Is not affected by the changes of time.
2. Is the operation of a Divine law which is startlingly minute in its application.
3. Makes the place of the sin the place of the punishment. “I will requite thee in this plat.”
4. Should lead the evil-doer to pause and think.
—How just are the judgments of God! It was in the field of Naboth wherein Jehoram met with Jehu; that very ground called to him for blood. And now this new avenger remembers that prophecy which he heard out of the mouth of Elijah in that very place, following the heels of Ahab, and is careful to perform it. Little did Jehu think, when he heard that message of Elijah, that his hands should act it. Now, as zealous of accomplishing the word of a prophet, he gives charge to Bidkar his captain that the bleeding carcase of Jehoram should be cast upon that very plat of Naboth. O Naboth’s blood well paid for! Ahab’s blood is licked by dogs in the very place where those dogs licked Naboth’s.—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 9:25. Jehu remembers, and in substance repeats, the word of the Lord by Elijah (1 Kings 21:19; 1 Kings 21:29), and, conscious that he himself is the minister of judgment, he fulfils the word of the Lord. “This,” says Kitto, “completes the first act of this awful tragedy, which reads like the old Greek dramas—but far less old than this—of accomplished fate. The appointed executer of the doom was himself the witness of its being imposed. All is complete.”
2 Kings 9:27. The danger of evil associations.
1. Begets a distaste to that which is good.
2. Leads to apostasy from God, and to excesses of wickedness at one time indignantly deemed impossible.
3. Results in suffering and premature death.
2 Kings 9:30-37. What does the frightful end of Jezebel teach?
1. The transitoriness and nothingness of human might and glory. Jezebel relies upon her might. Before her the people tremble. She controlled and directed three kings. She raged against all who did not submit unconditionally to her will. Now she lies, thrown down from her height, like dung upon the field, so that no one could say, “That is the great and mighty queen Jezebel.”
2. The certainty of Divine retribution. Jezebel was an enemy of the living God and of His word. She seduced old and young to apostasy. She persecuted all who still held firmly to Jehovah. Her terrible end proves that such a temper is certainly punished. Her end has no parallel in Israelitish history. It calls aloud to all unto this day, “Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness” (Jeremiah 22:13), and it is a pledge of the truth of this assertion, “Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked Psalms 91:8).—Lange.
2 Kings 9:30-35. Jezebel: the ignominious fall of pride and beauty.
1. The proud queen, defiant to the last, decks herself with ornaments, not hoping to captivate the impetuous Jehu with the charms of her beauty, but to awe him into submission by her imperious assumption of royal state and authority.
2. Her untamed, undaunted spirit is evident in the stinging reproof she uttered to Jehu as soon as he came within earshot, and which she seemed almost to hiss between her clenched teeth—“Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?” This is her last glory, to remind her enemy of the fate of one who had, like him, usurped the royal power, and killed his king, and, as Kitto says, “to cast one bitter burning word upon the head of the destroyer, such as should haunt and scorch him all his life.” But Jehu was not the man to be intimidated by words, though such fierce expressive words, and from the lips of such a woman.
3. She is instantly deserted and betrayed by those she considered her obsequious and obedient slaves. At the word of command, which they saw it was dangerous to disobey, her decked and painted body is ignominiously flung out of the window, dashed to the ground, and the last spark of life crushed out of it by the horses and chariot of the furious driver, the blood of the royal victim splashing against the wall, and sprinkling the horses. “This is one of the most terribly vivid and fearful pictures in all the annals of tragedy.”
4. Her body is left to be devoured by the pariah dogs, is denied even common sepulture, and, in a short time—quicker than it takes the king to banquet—a few bones are all that is left of the once imperious, queenly, but cruel and idolatrous Jezebel.
—The tidings of the revolution under Jehu, and of the death of Joram, spread with the greatest rapidity throughout Jezreel, and quickly reached the ears of the haughty Jezebel. One would suppose that, on hearing it, she would have trembled with terror, and gone to hide herself in some dark recess of the palace; but her fierce, masculine, vindictive spirit asserts its pre-eminence to the very last, and if she has to perish with the rest of Ahab’s house, she resolves to die the regal mistress she had lived.—Whedon.
2 Kings 9:30. How accurately this description fits many of her sex. The highest occupation they can conceive of is to adorn themselves, to conquer, and produce effects. Thou fool! If God demands thy soul of thee to-day, what shall all paint and powder upon the face avail before Him who tries the heart and the reins? Can velvet and silk cover thine inner stains (Isaiah 3:16)? There could be no sterner reproof of vanity, pride, and coquetry, and no more severe warning to take to heart the apostle’s words (1 Peter 3:3) than the fate of Jezebel. Lange.
—Who would not have looked that Jezebel, hearing of this bloody end of her son and pursuit of her ally, and the fearful proceedings of this prosperous conspiracy, should have put herself into sackcloth and ashes; and now, finding no means either of defence or escape, should have cast herself into such a posture of humiliation as might have moved the compassion of Jehu? Her proud heart could not suddenly learn to stoop; rather she recollects her high spirits, and, instead of humbling her soul by repentance, and addressing herself for an imminent death, she paints her face, and, as one that vainly hopes to daunt the courage of an usurper by the sudden beams of majesty, she looks out and thinks to fright him with the challenge of a traitor, whose either mercy or justice could not be avoided. Extremity finds us such as our peace leaves us. Our last thoughts are spent upon that we most care for. Those that have regarded their face more than their soul, in their latter end are more taken up with desire of seeming fair than being happy. It is no marvel if a heart, obdured by the custom of sin, shut up gracelessly. Counterfeit beauty agrees well with inward uncleanness:—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 9:31. Who can be more perverse and pitiful than a man who boasts and puts on airs in the very face of death, and passes out of the world with abuse and insults against God, instead of begging for pity, and crying, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” Jezebel, who murdered the prophets, and Naboth, who revolted against the Lord of heaven and earth, calls Jehu a murderer and a rebel. The blind and stubborn human heart always finds in others just those sins of which it is itself guilty in a far higher degree.—Lange.
2 Kings 9:34. This scene of hilarity and cheer in the midst of such fearful bloodshed makes one shudder. But the minister of doom to Ahab’s guilty house must needs be such a one as Jehu. Tenderness and sympathy would unfit the avenger of blood for his work of death. Not till after his feast does Jehu reflect that so much royalty and greatness have fallen. He had left the mangled corpse of the once mighty Jezebel on the mounds of offal outside the gate, a prey to the dogs which in the East ever prowl about such spots.—Whedon.
2 Kings 9:35. The vanity of human greatness. I. Its external splendours fade. II. Its wicked and ambitious schemes are overthrown. III. Its boasted and bewitching beauty is represented at last by a few revolting fragments.
—In illustration of this shocking end of the corpse of Jezebel, it remains to remark that the more than half-wild street dogs of the East, living upon their own resources, and without owners, soon make a rapid clearance of the flesh of dead bodies left exposed, whether of human creatures or beasts. An Eastern traveller, describing the remains of some human bodies that had been devoured by dogs, says: “The only portion of the several corpses I noticed that remained entire and untouched, were the bottoms of the feet, and the insides of the hands; a proof of the rooted antipathy the dog has to prey upon the human hands and feet.” Dr. Thomson supposes that the dogs under Jezebel’s palace may have been taught to devour the wretched victims of her cruelty, in which case the retribution would be remarkably striking.
—The dogs have anticipated Jehu in his purpose, and have given Jezebel a living tomb, more ignoble than the worst of the earth. Only the skull, hands, and feet remain—the skull, which was the roof of all her wicked devices; the hands and feet, which were the executioners—these shall remain as the monuments of those shameful exequies, that future times, seeing these fragments of a body, might say: “The dogs were worthy of the rest.” Thus Jezebel is turned to dung and dog’s meat, Elijah is verified, Naboth is revenged, Jezreel is purged, Jehu is zealous. and, in all, God is just.—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 9:36-37. The infallibility of the Divine word.
1. Seen in the precision with which its threatenings are fulfilled.
2. Is acknowledged and declared by those who are called to carry out its threats.
3. Is as precise and full in the fulfilment of its promises of blessing.
—The story of the end of Jezebel is given with particular detail, because therein the prophet’s threat was fulfilled with especial frightfulness. As the sin of the house, Ahab was represented to the fullest extent in Jezebel, the originator and patroness of idolatry, so her terrible end forms the crisis of the Divine punishment. Ahaziah is fatally wounded, and dies in a strange place. Joram falls dead, pierced through the heart; but is thrown upon the field of Naboth, and not buried. Jezebel is thrown down from the window by her own attendants; as she lies weltering in her own blood, she is trodden under foot by horses, and the corpse lies unburied, “like dung upon the fields.” She appears here, in her last moments, such as she had ever been—proud and impudent—arrogant and domineering—defiant and insolent. She places herself at the window, painted and grandly dressed, and presumes upon her assumed majesty. Instead of recognising in the judgment which is failing upon her house the just recompense for her misdeeds, instead of sucing for grace, she, who had shed so much innocent blood, and had exalted herself against the God of Israel, insults the instrument of the Divine vengeance as a murderer and a traitor, demands that he shall submit to her, and threatens him, relying upon her imagined power, with destruction if he persists. Just here, judgment overtakes her; her nearest attendants forsake the hated queen, and hurl her down from her position. She does not reach the rest of the grave, and remains, even in death, marked with infamy for all time—a proof of the truth of the words: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”—Lange.