Then he wrote a letter the second time to them, saying, If ye [be] mine, and [if] ye will hearken unto my voice, take ye the heads of the men your master's sons, and come to me to Jezreel by to morrow this time. Now the king's sons, [being] seventy persons, [were] with the great men of the city, which brought them up.
Ver. 6. Then he wrote a letter the second time.] Not with black, but with blood; like that letter of Mithridates, king of Pontus, written to the ruin of fourscore thousand Romans trading in his dominions. But it was just in God, that as Ahab and Jezebel, by a letter sent to the elders of Jezreel, shed the blood of Naboth and his sons; so they should have the blood of all their sons shed by a letter sent from Jezreel to the elders of Samaria. God loveth to retaliate.
Take ye the heads of the men.] This was but policy to root out all Ahab's seed, that there might be no avenger. The poet could say,
“ Nηπιος ος κατερα κτεινας, παιδας υπολειπει. ” - Arist., Rhet., lib. i. cap. 15.
i.e., He is a fool who killeth the father, and yet suffereth his children to survive.