Jehu

Scripture: 2 Kings 9–10; 2 Chronicles 22:7–9

Jehu son of Jehoshaphat son of Nimshi (יֵהוּא, "YHWH is He") was commander of the armies of Israel under Joram son of Ahab when Elisha sent one of the sons of the prophets to Ramoth-gilead with a flask of oil. The messenger found Jehu, drew him aside from his fellow officers, poured oil on his head, and delivered the commission: "Thus says YHWH, the God of Israel, I anoint you king over the people of YHWH, over Israel. And you shall strike down the house of Ahab your master, so that I may avenge on Jezebel the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of YHWH. For the whole house of Ahab shall perish... And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the plot of ground at Jezreel, and none shall bury her" (2 Kings 9:6–10). When Jehu returned to his officers and they asked what the mad fellow (הַמְשֻׁגָּע, the lunatic, the raving one) had said, he told them. They spread their cloaks on the steps and proclaimed him king, blowing the trumpet: "Jehu is king." His driving became proverbial before the campaign was finished: "the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously" (9:20).

The campaign was swift and surgical. Joram king of Israel was at Jezreel recovering from wounds at Ramoth-gilead. He sent horsemen to meet Jehu, "Is it peace?" Jehu: "What have you to do with peace? Turn around and ride behind me" (9:18). Two horsemen. Same question, same answer. Joram and Ahaziah king of Judah drove out themselves. In the field of Naboth the Jezreelite, Joram asked: "Is it peace, Jehu?" Jehu: "What peace can there be, so long as the whorings and the sorceries of your mother Jezebel are so many?" (9:22). Joram cried "Treachery!" and fled. Jehu shot him between the shoulders; the arrow came out at his heart. He commanded Bidkar his aide: throw him on the plot of field belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite, "for I remember how you and I rode side by side behind Ahab his father, when YHWH uttered this oracle against him: 'As surely as I saw yesterday the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons, declares YHWH, I will repay you on this very plot of ground'" (9:25–26). The oracle Elijah had spoken at Naboth's vineyard (1 Kings 21:19) was now being executed on the same ground by a man who had stood there and heard it.

Jezebel painted her eyes, adorned her head, and looked down from the window. Jehu called up: "Who is on my side? Who?" Two or three eunuchs looked out. He said: "Throw her down." They threw her down. Her blood spattered on the wall and the horses, and Jehu trampled her. He went in and ate and drank, and said: "See to this cursed woman and bury her, for she is a king's daughter." They went to bury her and found only her skull and feet and the palms of her hands, the dogs had eaten her body in the plot of ground at Jezreel, exactly as Elijah had prophesied (9:30–37). Then Jehu sent letters to the guardians of Ahab's seventy sons in Samaria: choose the best and set him on the throne. They capitulated. He told them to behead the seventy and send their heads to Jezreel. The heads came in baskets. Jehu stood at the gate: "You are innocent. It was I who conspired against my master and killed him, but who killed all these? Know then that there shall fall to the earth nothing of the word of YHWH, which YHWH spoke concerning the house of Ahab, for YHWH has done what he said through his servant Elijah" (10:9–10).

Jehu's trap for the Baal worshipers was a masterpiece of deception in the service of a divine mandate. He proclaimed a solemn assembly for Baal, "but Jehu did it with cunning in order to destroy the worshipers of Baal" (10:19). He filled the house of Baal from one end to the other, commanded eighty men around it, and had them slaughter every man inside. The pillar of Baal was burned; the house of Baal was demolished and made into a latrine "to this day" (10:27). Then YHWH's word to Jehu: "Because you have done well in carrying out what is right in my eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in my heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel" (10:30). And then the verdict: "But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of YHWH, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel to sin" (10:31). YHWH honored the commission Jehu fulfilled. YHWH noted the threshold Jehu would not cross. He destroyed the house of Ahab and the prophets of Baal; he did not destroy the golden calves at Bethel and Dan. The zeal that leveled Baal's temple did not produce the repentance that would have removed Jeroboam's sin. Jehu knew exactly where he stopped.

Jehu is the figure of instrumental obedience, the man who executes a divine commission with precision and fury, who can name every prophecy he is fulfilling on the spot, who is formally recognized by YHWH for doing what was in His heart, and who never once surrenders his own religious and political calculus to the God who sent him. The Sanctum treats him as a study in the gap between commissioned service and covenantal fidelity: YHWH can use a man fully without that man being wholly YHWH's.