And the LORD said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.
Call his name Jezreel - i:e., God will scatter (cf. Zechariah 10:9, "I will sow them among the people"). The similarity in sound of Jezreel to Israel (which was originally pronounced Yisrael) marks the connection between the sin and its punishment. They who had been by God's grant "princes with God" (so Israel means) shall be now by God's sentence, "scattered by God" (Jezreel). It was the royal city of Ahab and his successors, in the tribe of Issachar. Here Jehu exercised his greatest cruelties on the house of Ahab and Ahaziah king of Judah (2 Kings 9:16; 2 Kings 9:25; 2 Kings 9:33; 2 Kings 10:11; 2 Kings 10:14; 2 Kings 10:17).
For yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu. Sir H. Rawlinson and Dr. Hincks separately deciphered the name 'Jahua [Yaahu'], son of Khumri' as one who paid tribute for his throne to the King of Assyria, in the cuneiform inscriptions upon the black obelisk in the British Museum. This prophecy, given in the reign of Jeroboam II, was fulfilled in the slaughter, by the conspirator Shallum, of Zachariah, the great-grandson of Jehu, the fourth and last from that monarch (2 Kings 15:8-12). Zachariah reigned only six months. The prophecy of Hosea was a fresh proclamation of the word of the Lord, originally spoken to Jehu himself, 2 Kings 10:30, "Thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel." That Jehu sent tribute to the King of Assyria, to secure to himself the throne which God had given him, falls in with his character and his half belief, using all means, human or divine, to establish his own end. In one and the same spirit he destroyed the Baal worshippers as adherents of Ahab, retained the calf-worship, courted the ascetic Jonadab son of Rechab, spoke of the death of Jehoram as the fulfillment of prophecy, and sought help from the King of Assyria (Pusey). Though Jehu shed the blood of the house of Ahab in external obedience to God's command, yet because his motive was only regard to his own political ends, as was proved by his adherence to Jeroboam's sin in worshipping the golden calves, while he was rewarded temporarily for his measure of external obedience, the blood which he so shed to further his own ambition, and not from the pure principle of obedience to God, was counted as sin to him, and was ultimately visited with judgment on his descendants.