Jehu and the fall of Israel

Then the LORD said to Hosea, "Call him Jezreel,
because I will soon punish the house of Jehu
for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end
to the kingdom of Israel.

Now this is one for the grey matter. The headline is a quote from Hosea 1:4 as it is rendered in the ESV these days. The verse refers to a passage in 2 Kings 9 and onwards. It's quite an intricate text with a king of Judah ruling together with his father, while having the same name as his rival king of Israel, and there are many here sharing names and titles, and there are rival kings to the same throne of Israel, there is a bogus prophecy involved signed Elijah and Elisha, and one of Elisha's disciples who just can't keep himself from extrapolating on the gory details of the divine display. We meet Jezebel, the mysterious priestess, and the house of Jehu and the house of Akhab is not the only houses here, there is the house of the Arameans and there is the house Jehu brought down, killing all the Ba'al priests in Israel and making an end to Ba'al worship all together. At least for a while.

A cryptic and riddled story indeed, so good luck in trying to follow my lead. And I may not even make it through to a conclusion fully adequately, it is a story that has puzzled me since I dreamed about it the night before I was baptised, and I just can't get it out of my mind. King Jehu of Israel was quite a piece of work, and the intrigues and conspiracies he put in motion is a study in evil or what should I say extreme zealousy. The horror from his workings at Jezreel send shivers to people's spines even to this day.

Story goes: With his band of horses, Jehu went to Jezreel, to the field of Nabot (which was the site of another terrible conspiracy earlier on), soon after he had been anointed king of Israel by a loose-mouthed young prophecy student acting on behalf of the prophet Elisha, while there was already a sitting king to the throne, Joram, son of Akhab.

With the prophecy of his still future atrocities kept at mind and hand, he seeked out the sitting king Joram of Israel, Jehu's rival to the throne of Israel, son of queen-mother Jezebel and former king Akhab of Israel and shot him in the heart. The Aramean King Akaziah who was with Joram was wounded in the same attack, and died shortly after in Megiddo.

Driven by his desire to further fulfil his prophecy he has Jezebel, Joram's mother, thrown off the balcony of the castle, with blood splattering up the walls and on the horses, which then trampled her down and she is left for stray dogs to devour her so that only the feet, hands and head remained after her.

Later Jehu slaughters and decapitates Akhab's 70 sons in a conspiracy and piles up their heads in the courtyard, before he continue by killing everyone else of Akhab's house, together with friends and relatives. As if that wasn't enough, he turns the other way and piles up 42 new heads in Samaria, belonging to Judah's king Ahasha with all his house.

Now, what the bleeder did next was truly spectacular and may I say, creative. With deceit and lies a serpent worthy, he managed to lure in all the Ba'al priests and officials in the Ba'al religion throughout Israel to gather under one roof, only to storm the building and slaughter them all. The LORD thanked Jehu for his murderous rampage, and Jehu died an old man and his son took over his throne after him. But the LORD wasn't fully content with Jehu's work, so he gives a clause in his blessings, and promise that Jehu's house should rule the throne of Israel for four generations.

That's how the story goes. Now, back to the Hosea verse in the beginning of this OP. It says shortened): "I will punish the house of Jehu, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel." Now, what kind of God first orders a 9th century BC king to commit genocide, only to avenge his victims a couple of hundred years later and punish Jehu's descendants for what Jehu did on orders from the LORD? THIS is where it gets really tricky. For one of the oldest dilemmas in the Torah comes from the verse found in Deuteronomy 24:16:

“Fathers shall not be put to death because
of their children, nor shall children be put
to death because of their fathers."

How can the LORD then punish the House of Jehu and put an end to his kingdom a century later, as revenge for the atrocities he himself ordered? As it turns out, and like I mentioned earlier on, the LORD gave a promise to Jehu towards the end of his reign in 2Kings 10:28: “Your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.” A promise which was fulfilled in the time of Hosea (the prophet), when Jehu's last descendant is removed from the throne, and when the prophet's namesake, Hosea (an antichrist sitting on the throne of Israel) entered the throne, the LORD had the Assyrians invade Israel and Samaria and enslaved all of Israel and brought them to Assur, to Media, Halah and along river Habor.

This is when we loose track of the ten lost tribes. Well, they weren't lost, they moved to present day Syria and the areas around, Iraq and Iran and so on. Most chose to stay and practically became Assyrians, while some moved elsewhere, difficult to keep track after that.

It is safe to assume that a great number of Muslims in the Middle East are descendants of either Israelis ("ten lost tribes" when Assyria invaded) or the Jews (tribe of Judah), when also the Judah kingdom falls, this time to Babylon, and the exile which for some reason often totally overshadows the Assyrian campaign earlier on, takes on and history carried on.

I noticed that the book of James was addressed ... James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Greetings. just saying

I always found the Old Testament interesting to study. Amazing what came forth from the imagination of the son of a Chaldean mage.

a reply to: the2ofusr1

If it is my note about king Hosea (NOT prophet Hosea) being an antichrist, this has nothing to do with James, but an expression used about kings of Judah and Israel who "did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD". In Kings and Chronicles we meet quite a few of them. In comparison, the Vatican also works with the word anti-pope to discribe earlier popes who screwed up.

originally posted by: boomerdude
I always found the Old Testament interesting to study. Amazing what came forth from the imagination of the son of a Chaldean mage.

Son of a Chaldean mage? I'm all ears Please explain, sounds like something I have to look into....

A detail to know about here was that Israel and Judah had managed to trigger long term Leviticus 26 curses.

Ezekiel 4
4 Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity.
5 For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
6 And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.


When the Assyrians dragged off the Israelites in the 720-730 BC era it was to serve the 390 year curse. And when the Babylonians conquered Judah it was for the 40 year curse.

The reason for the curses is the Leviticus 26 compact made between the Israelites and their God when they were in the desert with Moses. Essentially per the agreement there is a list of benefits for being in this compact. And a list of punishments for violating it. Essentially God threw the book at the Jews and Israelites for all the sins that they had committed up to that time. Destroyed their nations and hauled the remnants away as slaves.

The curses were for the evil the Israelites had committed even though there were occasional kings that tried to rule correctly and stamp out the pagans.

See Ezekiel 8

a reply to: ntech

Nice info. Never saw it that way. Guess you could be right. 40 is a number that shows up everywhere in Semitic languages. It is to be understood as 'many' or 'more' or is used to express a long period of time, or even a higher amount of years, or to show that a group is a big one. Compare to it raining fourty days and nights during the Flood, Moses was 40 years in the desert, Jesus fasted 40 days, Muhammed's wife was in her fourties, Baba Ali and his 40 thieves and it goes on and on.

Abraham's father was a Chaldean priest/mage. They had a falling out over religious views and hereditary


rights.a reply to: Utnapisjtim

a reply to: boomerdude

Ah, get it. Thought it was something more juicy. Ur in Chaldea, Abraham leaving with a bunch of his father's books and livestock. How rude. And looking at Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, and others, this behavioural pattern might actually be genetically dependent It certainly repeats itself in a most peculiar fashion....

originally posted by: Utnapisjtim
a reply to: boomerdude

Ah, get it. Thought it was something more juicy. Ur in Chaldea, Abraham leaving with a bunch of his father's books and livestock. How rude. And looking at Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, and others, this behavioural pattern might actually be genetically dependent

It certainly repeats itself in a most peculiar fashion....

Going back instead of forward you can see the progression from Sumeria to Assyria to Babylon. Same stories, same myths. Then Abraham comes along and meets up with the Sea People - Canaanites and B'aal becomes Yahweh. The Apocrypha written about these times is really interesting. However, the best read of all is The Book of Lilith, a modern invention. It tells how the Earth, after Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, was given under the purveyance of the Seven Governors appointed by Lucifer. Really a fun read.

a reply to: boomerdude

Indeed. The guy in my avatar is Utnapishtim, the Sumerian Noah. I chose him since the name of the Norse version of Noah, Heimdall, was already taken.

Didn't Gilgamesh pay a visit to him to save his sidekick?

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

originally posted by: boomerdude
Didn't Gilgamesh pay a visit to him to save his sidekick?

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Hehe, well, guess you can say it like that. Enkidu lived anther day, Gilgamesh met the Angel of the Waters and we got to learn how many miles the Black Sea is adcross and where Eden was situated. Those kinds of things.

BTW, Hosea is a variant of Jehoshuah, like Isajah and Joshua, and Jesjuah (Lat. Jesvs), and the text of Hosea is a well of teachings in between it's lines, like how it is hard not to keep a bias when God tells you to gather some hoes and have children with them and give them funny names. And Yezreel is used as a prophetic or messianic name of Israel after the rebuilding of the Temple and return from 'diaspora'. Terrible things happened at Yezreel, once the home of 'Nabot's vines' that turned into the scene of religious and politically motivated genocide and careless slaughter of unarmed civilians of all genders and ages.