Politics and religion;-- Jehu and the death of Jezebel

“What peace can there be, so long as the as the harlotries and the sorceries of your mother Jezebel are so many?” (2 Kings ch9 v22)
When Jehu challenged the king of Israel, he acknowledged that his revolt was really directed against the power and influence of the dynasty’s Queen Mother.
He had been told that the Lord wanted to avenge on Jezebel “the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord” (ch9 v7).

Jezebel’s power in Israel began with her marriage.
She was born in Sidon, daughter of Ethbaal the king. When the king of Israel received her as his wife, he would have seen the event as a diplomatic coup. It was an obvious counter to the long-standing connection between the house of David in Jerusalem and the city of Tyre.
But Jezebel also brought with her an attachment to the Sidonian version of Baal, which the king began to adopt.
“Ahab went and served Baal and worshipped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria” (1 Kings ch16 vv31-32).
Jezebel encouraged the prophets of Baal, who ate at her table.
Therefore Elijah, as a prophet of the Lord, was obliged to oppose the encroachments of the incoming god, resulting in the well-known friction between the prophet and the royal couple.

When Ahab died, he was succeeded in turn by his sons Ahaziah and Jehoram, who continued the worship of Baal. Though Jehoram, at least, tried to combine this with consulting the Lord through Elisha.
Meanwhile Ahab’s daughter Athaliah had been married into the house of David. This was part of the terms of reconciliation between Ahab and Jehoshaphat.
Athaliah’s husband Jehoram duly succeeded to the throne of Judah. On his death he was followed by their son Ahaziah, who married another member of the house of Ahab.
(The double coincidence of names may have been deliberate, the result of the practice of adopting throne-names)

Thus Jezebel’s influence was now dominant in both kingdoms. One kingdom was ruled by her son, under her direct guidance. The other was ruled by her grandson (or step-grandson), influenced by his mother and his wife. In both cases, the effect was continued royal promotion of the worship of Baal.

Not for the first time, there was war with the Syrians about the frontier town of Ramoth-Gilead (2 Kings ch9).
King Jehoram took his army there, accompanied by his royal nephew Ahaziah. When Jehoram was wounded, he withdrew to Jezreel while his wounds healed, and the king of Judah went with him.
The army in Gilead was left under the command of Jehu, son of Nimshi.

Elisha the prophet chose this moment to launch a coup by naming Jehu as the new king of Israel. That was the instruction which was originally given to Elijah (1 Kings ch19 v16). Elisha presumably inherited the command along with Elijah’s mantle.
The timing of this move must have been inspired by the political circumstances.
This was a point of crisis for the worshippers of the Lord.
With two dynasties in place tending to promote the worship of Baal, the religious allegiance of both kingdoms was in jeopardy.
The withdrawal of the two kings to Jezreel offered the Lord’s party a good chance, and possibly their last remaining chance, of retrieving the situation by overthrowing both kings at the same time.

In the interests of secrecy and speed, Elisha sent a younger man, “one of the sons of the prophets”, to Ramoth-Gilead.
His instructions were to take Jehu aside and anoint him as king over Israel, in the name of the Lord. He was then to make a swift exit, before anyone could think of arresting him for treason.
The young man duly anointed Jehu and passed on the Lord’s message.
“Then he opened the door and fled”.
Jehu knew that he was now risking his own life. Returning to his fellow-officers, he tested the waters by treating the matter as a joke;
“What did that madman say?” “Oh, you know what these people are like”.
But the report of the prophet’s words filled them with enthusiasm, and they blew the trumpets and proclaimed Jehu as king.

However, they were still in the middle of a war. They could take steps to prevent the news getting back to Jezreel, but they could not take the army away and open up the land to the Syrians. Jehu would have to go there on his own. He must have been justifiably confident that nobody in Jezreel would be giving the king much help.
When he was first observed from Jezreel, he was “driving furiously”.
The narrative describes how the anxious king sent messengers to the approaching chariot, and finally went out himself, to ask “Is it peace?” (Or “Is everything well?”)
He got the emphatic answer which I quoted at the beginning.
The two kings were shot with arrows even as they fled in their chariots.
Meanwhile Jezebel was defiantly adorning her head and face, wanting to look her best as she met her death. As Jehu entered the gate, she taunted him by calling him “Zimri, murderer of your master”.
This was an allusion to the events which had brought her husband’s dynasty to the throne. But even her own palace staff (in the form of two eunuchs) were more than willing to throw her out of the window at Jehu’s request.

Thus the main purpose of the rebellion had been fulfilled.
The royal chariots of two kingdoms now had fresh hands guiding the reins.
While the former “back-seat driver”, Jezebel, had been removed from the scene.

The killing of kings in kingdom Israel

When the kingdoms of Israel and Judah separated, Judah remained under the single dynasty of David, as his God had promised.
That anchor was not provided for Israel. What we find instead is a succession of short-lived dynasties, each one overthrown in a bloody coup.
“They made kings, but not through me.
They set up princes, but without my knowledge” (Amos ch8 v4).

Jeroboam had been offered the throne by a prophet of the Lord and reigned for more than twenty years.
His son Nadab had received no such promise, and he also “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord”.
He and the army of Israel were besieging the Philistine city of Gibbethon, when Baasha, of the tribe of Issachar, killed him and reigned in his place (1 Kings ch15 vv25-28).
But the prophet Jehu warned Baasha that his own house would be swept away by the Lord.

In the second year of Elah, son of Baasha, Israel’s army was once more encamped against Gibbethon.
Omri was left in charge, while Elah himself stayed in Tirzah, “drinking himself drunk”.
But a king who stays at home and does not lead his own army makes himself superfluous.
There was a conspiracy against him. Zimri, commander of half his chariots, chose that moment of drunken vulnerability to kill Elah and the rest of his family, and seize the throne.
He reigned for just seven days, for the army in the field also wanted a say in the matter.
The camp at Gibbethon elected Omri, who besieged and captured Tirzah.
Zimri ended his life by shutting himself in the king’s house and setting fire to it.
Omri finally secured the kingdom by fighting and overcoming the supporters of another candidate, Tibni son of Ganath (ch16 vv8-20)

It was Omri who built Samaria to be the kingdom’s new capital.
His son Ahab strengthened his political power by an alliance with the king of Sidon.
Unfortunately this involved marriage with Jezebel, and therefore the great controversy with Elijah.
The climax of his reign came in battle, as he was fighting to regain Ramoth-Gilead from the Syrians.
The Syrian chariots had been told to go for the king of Israel in person. Ahab had been warned of the outcome of the battle, and tried to avoid his fate by switching clothes with Jehoshaphat. But he was killed anyway by an arrow shot almost at random (ch22).

Ahab’s elder son, Ahaziah, died as a result of a domestic accident (fell through a lattice in his upper chamber).
The opening post has described what happened to the next son, Jehoram.
The elimination of the immediate royal family would have been the predictable by-product of a political coup, but the violence did not stop there.
“Jehu slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, all his great men, and his familiar friends, and his priests, until he left him none remaining” (2 Kings ch10 v11).
This included the beheading of seventy “sons of Ahab” in Samaria, carried out at Jehu’s request by those who had custody of them.
It also included the slaughter of “all the followers of Baal”, gathered together by a deceitful invitation.

Jehu and his first three successors (Jehoahaz, Jehoash, and Jeroboam) seem to have died peacefully, or at least in ways that were not worth recording.
However, the dynasty was not as comfortable as it might appear.
They might claim to be following the Lord exclusively, but they were not governing the land as he would have wanted.
The prophecies of Hosea and Amos make that clear.
The Lord himself disapproved of the level of Jehu’s violence, and was threatening to withdraw protection;
“Yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel” (Hosea ch1 v4).
Also the house was not secure in its control of “the princes”, the next level of government.
“For like an oven their hearts burn with intrigue…
All of them are as hot as an oven and they devour their rulers” (Hosea ch7 vv6-7).
That is the natural result of usurpation. The other leaders of the nation believe themselves just as good as the family that seized control, and think they might do better.
We see that in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, when some of the nobles are not content to “serve as ladders for the mounting Bolingbroke”.

Intrigue came out into the open again in the reign of Zechariah son of Jeroboam.
Zechariah was killed and replaced by Shallum, son of Jabesh.
Shallum reigned only for one month, as Menahem son of Gadi launched a civil war, killing Shallum and spreading massacre over a swathe of the kingdom.
Pekahiah, the son of Menahem, was killed by his own captain, Pekah the son of Remaliah, who “conspired against him with fifty men of the Gileadites”.
Pekah got over-ambitious and took it into his head to join the Syrians in an invasion of Judah, hoping to establish his own puppet ruler there. The king of Judah called in the Assyrians, who came and took into captivity the northern part of the kingdom, Galilee and the land of Naphtali.
This would have been regarded as a failure in kingship, and Pekah was overthrown by another conspiracy, led by Hoshea the son of Elah (2 Kings ch15).
Finally Hoshea himself made the mistake of refusing tribute to the king of Assyria, who naturally came back and abolished the kingdom, taking the rest of it into captivity.

The explanation of the fall of the kingdom given in Kings is “They went after false idols… They forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God and made themselves molten images of two calves; and they made an Asherah and worshipped all the host of heaven and served Baal. And they burned their sons and daughters as offerings and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger” – 2 Kings ch17 vv15-18

Was it a coincidence that this kingdom which rejected God’s guidance had been chronically unstable?

Lets also not forget from the book Dune
Bene-gesseret:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

And:
Maud-dib:
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

Also good stuff from pure fiction to base your entire existence on.

I'm sorry perhaps I'm a little thick ? But was the question this......?

"Was it a coincidence that this kingdom which rejected God’s guidance had been chronically unstable?"
Please clarify..?

According to the Hebrew Bible, Jezebel incited her husband King Ahab to abandon the worship of Yahweh and encourage worship of the deities Baal and Asherah instead. Jezebel persecuted the prophets of Yahweh, and fabricated evidence of blasphemy against an innocent landowner who refused to sell his property to King Ahab, causing the landowner to be put to death. For these transgressions against the God and people of Israel, Jezebel met a gruesome death – thrown out of a window by members of her own court retinue, and the flesh of her corpse eaten by stray dogs.

There is a lot of sorting out going on in 'Kings' and frankly It seems very unlikely or one might say impossible any coincidences happening.

The key word 'coincidence'

a reply to: Plotus
Or, alternatively, you can reflect on the interaction between God's plans and human politics, as illustrated by the events in the first post.
Both angles are worth discussing.
(The second post was originally going to be the main thread, but got demoted)

originally posted by: Plotus
There is a lot of sorting out going on in 'Kings' and frankly It seems very unlikely or one might say impossible any coincidences happening.

The conduct of the rulers provoked a rebellion against their rule. How is that unlikely? It's happened in other places and times.

I admit I'm a bit rusty on 'Kings', it's been over a year since I read it... 'last winter', ...so To be fair, I'd have to refresh a bit to give any fair answers.

Nice analysis. My own study of the same material shows that Judah had a few kings God approved of, but Israel had none, zip, nada.

a reply to: Plotus
Later threads are going to take the history further into Kings, so you will have time to refresh your memory.

originally posted by: DISRAELI

originally posted by: Plotus
There is a lot of sorting out going on in 'Kings' and frankly It seems very unlikely or one might say impossible any coincidences happening.

The conduct of the rulers provoked a rebellion against their rule. How is that unlikely? It's happened in other places and times.

That's not what I was exactly replying to.. I was saying more in the context of God's displeasure and the concequences paid by those subverting his authority/wishes....

a reply to: Lazarus Short
Yes, that's probably right. Jehu made a good start, but then took violence into excess.
Joash the son of Jehu deserves credit for at least recognising the value of Elisha, grieving over his deathbed.

Jezebel miss stepped on many occasions, and to worship Baal, well God would intervene on that. The politics 'fell into place' and Some was gained, but much was lost in the form of Kingdoms being overthrown.

Again, I'm going to stop here, I'm simply straining too hard to remember and would certainly not want to misspeak the scriptures. I will bow out for now....

originally posted by: Plotus
That's not what I was exactly replying to.. I was saying more in the context of God's displeasure and the concequences paid by those subverting his authority/wishes....

But the episode in the OP could be taken as an example of the two things coming together;
God's displeasure expresses itself by prompting a prophet to spark off a rebellion which is apparently in tune with the feelings of the people.
So this appears to be God working through human action.

Yes..... True.

originally posted by: DISRAELI

Was it a coincidence that this kingdom which rejected God’s guidance had been chronically unstable?

Look at the world. Is it a coincidence that the world is in chaos when many of the world's leaders are sociopaths who believe that killing and weaponizing murders in the middle east was a good idea?

I would say the US and a good portion of the planet appear to be in the same type of turmoil that existed then.

We really don't change. The Babylonians/Ball Worshipers (AKA Narcissistic Sociopaths) always rise to the top.

Obama, Trump, Clinton, Bush, ext....... All cut from the same self serving self righteous cloth.

the question is, how much of Jehu's actions were motivated by Godly righteousness, and how much pure politics.

fascinating account of him getting all the Baal worshippers together ('Ahab served baal a little; Jehu will serve baal much') to take them out.

the bloodshed was unfortunate, but they brought it on themselves. the wages of sin...

a reply to: ElGoobero
Yes, Jehu himself might not have been sure of the answer to that question, though he probably kept it out of his mind.
If he was recognisable by his habit of "driving furiously", that could be symptomatic of his character. If he had a "driving" personality, that would make him a better general officer, and a more useful tool in God's hands.

The anecdote of the encounter with Jehonadab is meant to advertise his zeal for the Lord.
In the similar case of Oliver Cromwell, I lean towards genuine zeal as the dominant motive.

I'm not sure how many of these deaths are included in the "blood of Jezreel" which the Lord is threatening to punish, in Hosea ch1.
Having set the coup in motion, the Lord could not consistently complain of the deaths of Ahab and Jezebel- "He who wills the end also wills the means".
I think it very likely that he means the "70 sons of Ahab", together with Ahab's "great men and familiar friends" (ch10 v11), and possibly also the followers of Baal.

originally posted by: Plotus
According to the Hebrew Bible, Jezebel incited her husband King Ahab to abandon the worship of Yahweh and encourage worship of the deities Baal and Asherah instead.

Interesting fact, archeologists have found ancient inscriptions that say Yahweh and his Asherah, so that makes sense of the fact that Asherah was a major part of Temple worship until some extremist decided that Asherah and the Brazen Serpent were idolatry and forever changed the way people view the Goddess wife of El, then Baal (who is confusingly the exact same deity as Yahweh just under a different name).

Jezebel persecuted the prophets of Yahweh, and fabricated evidence of blasphemy against an innocent landowner who refused to sell his property to King Ahab, causing the landowner to be put to death. For these transgressions against the God and people of Israel, Jezebel met a gruesome death – thrown out of a window by members of her own court retinue, and the flesh of her corpse eaten by stray dogs.

There is a lot of sorting out going on in 'Kings' and frankly It seems very unlikely or one might say impossible any coincidences happening.

The key word 'coincidence'

I hope everyone realizes that the Bible is not a history book but a book originally only for the people who worshipped the god of Israel, who is not the same as The Most High and therefore not God.

Just a fictional god who behaves like a malevolent dictator and quite frankly treats his so called chosen people like rodents.

Just because the Catholic Church included the Old Testament in the Bible I can't take it seriously as everything that the RCC has ever done has been corrupt and devious.

The only reason it was included was to combat the works of Marcion, one time financier of the church turned unwelcome heretic (once they got his money and his Pauline letters that he wrote himself).

originally posted by: Taxiarch

Interesting fact, archeologists have found ancient inscriptions that say Yahweh and his Asherah, so that makes sense of the fact that Asherah was a major part of Temple worship until some extremist decided that Asherah and the Brazen Serpent were idolatry and forever changed the way people view the Goddess wife of El, then Baal (who is confusingly the exact same deity as Yahweh just under a different name).

I hope everyone realizes that the Bible is not a history book but a book originally only for the people who worshipped the god of Israel, who is not the same as The Most High and therefore not God.

Just a fictional god who behaves like a malevolent dictator and quite frankly treats his so called chosen people like rodents.

Just because the Catholic Church included the Old Testament in the Bible I can't take it seriously as everything that the RCC has ever done has been corrupt and devious.

The only reason it was included was to combat the works of Marcion, one time financier of the church turned unwelcome heretic (once they got his money and his Pauline letters that he wrote himself).

WHERE do you get this stuff???