2 Kings 9:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

I have anointed thee king over Israel— According to the Jews, none of the kings of Israel were anointed but those of the house of David, and these only when there was a question about their succession; as Solomon, they say, needed not to have been anointed, had it not been for the faction of Adonijah. But in the case of Jehu, in whom the succession of the kingdom of Israel was to be translated out of the right line of the family of Ahab, into another family which had no right to the kingdom, but merely the appointment of God, there was a necessity for his unction, in order both to convey to him a title, and to invest him with the actual possession of the kingdom. For if that which some imagine from 1 Kings 19:16 be true, that the prophet Elijah did before this time anoint Jehu, that unction conferred upon him only a remote right to the kingdom, in the same manner as Samuel's unction did upon David; see 1 Samuel 16:13.