John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: December 7

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John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: December 7


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The Day of Doom

2Ki_9:1-30

The two kings—Jehoram of Israel, and Ahaziah of Judah—are both at Jezreel. Jehoram had received a bad but not mortal wound in battle, attempting to recover Ramoth-Gilead from the Syrians. So he has left the army in charge of his general, Jehu, the son of Nimshi—the very same whom Elisha had long ago been commissioned by Elijah to anoint as king over Israel, while he goes home to be healed of his wounds, and while thus laid up is visited at Jezreel by his nephew of Judah.

At the camp is a very different scene. Jehu is sitting with the officers of the army, when he is called to see a stranger. It is one of the sons of the prophets, deputed by Elisha; and when he has Jehu alone, he takes out a flask of oil, and anoints him king in the name of the Lord, with a commission to execute the Lord’s judgments upon the house of Ahab. When he had done this he fled, and Jehu returned to his company. This affair had not passed unnoticed, and the officers were curious to know what “this mad fellow”—one whom they must have seen from his appearance to be a son of the prophets—could possibly have wanted with their general. He told them that he was indeed a mad fellow, for he had anointed him king over Israel. On hearing this they rose as one man, and leading him to a place at the top of an external stair, in sight of the troops, they laid their rich robes for him to stand on, and proclaimed: “Jehu is king!”

Their readiness in throwing off their allegiance to Jehoram is something remarkable. But it was known that the house of Ahab was in this generation doomed to extinction. This was a thing people were not likely to forget. It was known that Elisha, who had sent this man, was a commissioned prophet—authorized to declare the will of the Lord, who had reserved the right of appointing whom He saw fit to the kingdom. And it is probable that the military were dissatisfied with the rule of a house, so completely under the influence of one bad woman, and the errors and crimes of which had first and last brought so much discredit upon the nation. Add to this, that in the absence of a fixed succession to a throne which so many successful adventurers had already won, loyalty sits but lightly upon the soldiery; and they are very prone to vote a popular commander into the throne when it becomes vacant, or even to make it vacant for him.

Jehu evinced his fitness to rule, by the promptitude with which he decided on his course of action. He determined to set out at once for Jezreel, and to be the first to declare to Jehoram that his reign had ended.

This relative position of the two parties in the action forms the foundation of perhaps the most striking, forcible, graphic, and yet concise description of a revolution in all literature. If it were not in the Bible—the literary beauties and excellencies of which are to many swallowed up in its higher and holier claims—this is such a piece of writing as would be entered in “Readers,” “Speakers,” “Beauties,” or “Elegant Extracts,” as the most masterly record of a revolution to be found in all the world.

There was usually in ancient times a watch-tower over the royal residence, where a man was always stationed, night and day, to keep a good look-out in all directions, but especially in that direction from which any sort of tidings could be expected. What he beheld that he deemed of any consequence he declared below in the courts of the palace. The “Agamemnon” of Aeschylus opens with the soliloquy of such a watchman-

“Forever thus? O keep me not, ye gods,

Forever thus, fixed in the lonely tower

Of Atreus’ palace, from whose height I gaze

O’er-watched and weary, like a night-dog still

Fixed to my post: meanwhile the rolling year

Moves on, and I my wakeful vigils keep

By the cold star-light sheen of spangled skies.”

In the present case, the frequency of reports from the seat of war, and the king’s anxiety for intelligence, naturally kept the attention of the watchman much in that direction. At length he is heard to call out, “I see a company!” and then the king, in his anxiety for news, sends out a horseman to learn the tidings. Again the watchman reports that the horseman had reached the advancing party, but there was no sign of his return. Jehu had in fact ordered him to the rear. On this another was sent out, whom the watchman follows with his eyes, and then renders the same report as before; but by this time they had all come nearer; and the watchman was able to declare that, from the manner in which he drove, it was probably Jehu himself—“for he driveth furiously.” Hence it is that the name of Jehu has become a by-word for a fast driver. Yet it is perhaps doubtful that it is so intended. Josephus seems to have read it in his copy of the Scripture that Jehu drove not “furiously” but “slowly;” and when we take into account that, in the time between the first appearance of the party, and that of its coming within such a distance as enabled the style of driving to be distinguished, sufficient time had elapsed for two successive journeys to him from the city, there may appear some probability in this interpretation.

On hearing that it was Jehu, the king ordered his chariot and went forth himself to meet them. This he would hardly have done had he any suspicion of the truth; but that the commander should have left the army without orders, seemed so strange a circumstance as excited to the utmost his anxiety and interest. It might be supposed either to imply that the Israelites had been utterly beaten by the Syrians, or that the army had revolted against its commander, who had fled to court. To this, and not, as we apprehend, to any intimations of Jehu, is to be applied his words, when they meet, ominously in the plot of ground that had once belonged to Naboth—“Peace, Jehu!” which may be read as the ordinary salutation of peace in meeting; or, if read interrogatively, “Peace, Jehu?”—or, as given periphrastically in most of the versions, “Is it peace?”—or, “Bring ye peace?”—can indicate no more than the wish to know that he brought no evil tidings front the seat of war. The answer suggests that it was put interrogatively. That answer was: “What peace, so long as the whoredoms [idolatries] of thy mother Jezebel, and her witchcrafts, are so many?” From this it would appear that the fatal predominance of the influence of Jezebel in the reign of her son, as well as of her husband, was the chief ground of public discontent and apprehension; and the most ostensible fault of this king—the least bad of Ahab’s house—was his passive submission to her influence. If there had been anything more flagrantly evil to allege against the king himself, it would most certainly have been thrown in his teeth on such an occasion as this. These words, which no one would dare to utter who had not cast away the scabbard of his drawn sword, disclosed all to the king. Coming as they did from the general of the forces, attended by the chief commanders, their full meaning and awful significance became in a moment plain, and the unhappy king saw that the doom which had been so long impending over the house of Ahab, had come down at last. He said to the king of Judah who had gone with him in his separate chariot, “There is treachery, O Ahaziah;” and forthwith turned his horses for flight, as his only chance. But Jehu was not the man to leave his work unfinished. He drew his bow “with all his strength”—with all the strength which a man throws into the stroke upon which hang his fortunes. His aim was sure, and the winged mischief he sent forth found its rest in the heart of the king, who sank down dead in his chariot.

Jehu had been commissioned to execute the Lord’s judgment upon the house of Ahab; and his relentless nature concurred with his own interest in giving the widest possible interpretation to his commission—while he was careful, in every fresh deed of blood, to declare himself the Lord’s avenger, who did but execute the orders given to him. No doubt, he was the appointed minister of delayed judgment; but we cannot fail to see that he used that commission for the purpose of sweeping away from his path all those from whose vengeance or hate any disturbance might, even by remote construction, be apprehended to his future reign. At this moment he chose to recollect that the king of Judah was Ahab’s grandson, and to suppose that he was included in his commission. This monarch had fled, and, in the pause which Jehoram’s death occasioned, had gained some distance; but Jehu sent his servants in pursuit of him, with orders to slay him. He fled swiftly, but so closely followed as to receive a mortal wound. His chariot, however, bore him off, far westward of Jezreel, to Megiddo, below Mount Carmel. There he died; and was carried by his servants in his own chariot to Jerusalem, where he was buried in the sepulcher of the kings.

Meanwhile, Jehu looked upon his bloody work with grim complacency, and directed the body of his slain master to be taken from the chariot, and thrown into the plot of ground. “Remember,” he said to Bidkar his chief captain—“remember how that, when I and thou rode together after Ahab his father, the Lord laid this burden upon him: Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth, and the blood of his sons; and I will requite thee in this plat, saith the Lord. Now therefore take and cast him into the plat of ground, according to the word of the Lord.”

This reminiscence completes the first act of this awful tragedy, which reads like the old Greek dramas—but far less old than this—of accomplished fate. To it we owe the knowledge of the fact, that the appointed executor of the doom was himself the witness of its being imposed. All is complete.