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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 King 10:12 - 10:12
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Extermination of the Brothers of Ahaziah of Judah and of the Other Members of Ahab's Dynasty. - 2Ki 10:12. Jehu then set out to Samaria; and on the way, at the binding-house of the shepherds, he met with the brethren of Ahaziah, who were about to visit their royal relations, and when he learned who they were, had them all seized, viz., forty-two men, and put to death at the cistern of the binding-house. וַיֵּלֶךְ וַיָּבֹא, “he came and went,” appears pleonastic; the words are not to be transposed, however, as Böttcher and Thenius propose after the Syriac, but וַיֵּלֶךְ is added, because Jehu did not go at once to Samaria, but did what follows on the way. By transposing the words, the slaying of the relations of Ahaziah would be transferred to Samaria, in contradiction to 2Ki 10:15. - The words from וגו בֵּית הוּא onwards, and from וְיֵהוּא to יְהוּדָה מֶלֶךְ, are two circumstantial clauses, in which the subject יֵהוּא is added in the second clause for the sake of greater clearness: “when he was at the binding-house of the shepherds on the road, and Jehu (there) met with the brethren of Ahaziah, he said...” הָרֹעִים בֵּית־עֵקֶד (Βαιθακάθ, lxx) is explained by Rashi, after the Chaldee רָעַיָּא כְנִישַׁת בֵית, as signifying locus conventus pastorum, the meeting-place of the shepherds; and Gesenius adopts the same view. But the rest of the earlier translators for the most part adopt the rendering, locus ligationis pastorum, from עָקַד, to bind, and think of a house ubi pastores ligabant oves quando eas tondebant. In any case it was a house, or perhaps more correctly a place, where the shepherds were in the habit of meeting, and that on the road from Jezreel to Samaria; according to Eusebius on the Onom. s.v. Βαιθακάθ, a place fifteen Roman miles from Legio (Lejun, Megiddo), in the great plain of Jezreel: a statement which may be correct with the exception of the small number of miles, but which does not apply to the present village of Beit Kad to the east of Jenin (Rob. Pal. iii. p. 157), with which, according to Thenius, it exactly coincides. עֲחַזְיָהוּ אֲחֵי, for which we have אח אֲחֵי בְּנֵי, Ahaziah's brothers' sons, in 2Ch 22:8, were not the actual brothers of Ahaziah, since they had been carried off by the Arabians and put to death before he ascended the throne (2Ch 21:17), but partly step-brothers, i.e., sons of Joram by his concubines, and partly Ahaziah's nephews and cousins. לִשְׁלֹום, ad salutandum, i.e., to inquire how they were, or to visit the sons of the king (Joram) and of the queen-mother, i.e., Jezebel, therefore Joram's brothers. In 2Ch 22:1 they are both included among the “sons” of Ahab.