Jehu Is Anointed
1 Elisha the prophet called one of the sons of the prophets, and said to him, “Put your belt on your waist, take this vial of oil in your hand, and go to Ramoth Gilead. 2 When you come there, find Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi, and go in and make him rise up from among his brothers, and take him to an inner room. 3 Then take the vial of oil, and pour it on his head, and say, ‘Yahweh says, “I have anointed you king over Israel.”’ Then open the door, flee, and don’t wait.” 4 So the young man, the young prophet, went to Ramoth Gilead. 5 When he came, behold, the captains of the army were sitting. Then he said, “I have a message for you, captain.” Jehu said, “To which one of us?” He said, “To you, O captain.” 6 He arose, and went into the house. Then he poured the oil on his head, and said to him, “Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, ‘I have anointed you king over the people of Yahweh, even over Israel. 7 You must strike your master Ahab’s house, that I may avenge the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of Yahweh, at the hand of Jezebel. 8 For the whole house of Ahab will perish. I will cut off from Ahab everyone who urinates against a wall, both him who is shut up and him who is left at large in Israel. 9 I will make Ahab’s house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah. 10 The dogs will eat Jezebel on the plot of ground of Jezreel, and there shall be no one to bury her.’” Then he opened the door and fled. 11 When Jehu came out to the servants of his lord and one said to him, “Is all well? Why did this madman come to you?” He said to them, “You know the man and how he talks.” 12 They said, “That is a lie. Tell us now.” He said, “He said to me, ‘Yahweh says, I have anointed you king over Israel.’” 13 Then they hurried, and each man took his cloak, and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew the trumpet, saying, “Jehu is king.”
A young prophet runs in, empties a flask of oil on a general's head, delivers a sentence and bolts — and the officers put their cloaks on the stairs.
1 Elisha the prophet called one of the sons of the prophets, and said to him, “Put your belt on your waist, take this vial of oil in your hand, and go to Ramoth Gilead. 2 When you come there, find Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi, and go in and make him rise up from among his brothers, and take him to an inner room. 3 Then take the vial of oil, and pour it on his head, and say, ‘Yahweh says, “I have anointed you king over Israel.”’ Then open the door, flee, and don’t wait.”
The commission is an act of treason against a reigning king carried out by a messenger with instructions to run. Elisha does not go himself, and the errand is delegated to an unnamed member of the prophetic community — the sort of person this book keeps using for its most consequential moments.
The anointing also discharges the last of the three commissions given at Horeb 1 Kings 19:16. Hazael has taken Syria; Elisha holds the prophetic office; and now the third name is anointed, a generation later, by a young man in a hurry.
When he came, behold, the captains of the army were sitting. Then he said, “I have a message for you, captain.” Jehu said, “To which one of us?” He said, “To you, O captain.”
The scene is a staff meeting, and the exchange is deliberately public before it becomes private. Jehu is taken into an inner room, oil is poured on his head, and the oracle is delivered in full.
You must strike your master Ahab’s house, that I may avenge the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of Yahweh, at the hand of Jezebel.
The commission is stated as judicial execution, and its stated grounds are the murdered prophets — Jezebel's program of killing them, which Obadiah's hundred in two caves had survived 1 Kings 18:4. This matters for reading what follows: Jehu is given a warrant, and the book will later hold him to its limits Hosea 1:4. A commission is not a blank check, and the difference between executing a sentence and enjoying it runs through the next two chapters.
The wording repeats Ahijah's oracle against Jeroboam and Jehu son of Hanani's against Baasha, verbatim 2 Kings 9:8–9 1 Kings 14:10 1 Kings 16:3. The third dynasty falls under the same words as the first two.
When Jehu came out to the servants of his lord and one said to him, “Is all well? Why did this madman come to you?” He said to them, “You know the man and how he talks.”
The officers' term for a prophet is worth noticing. In a professional army in the northern kingdom, a man in prophetic dress is a lunatic, and the assumption is casual rather than hostile — everyone knows how the man and how he talks. It is a small measurement of what two centuries of state religion had done to the prophetic office's standing.
They said, “That is a lie. Tell us now.” He said, “He said to me, ‘Yahweh says, I have anointed you king over Israel.’”
Jehu deflects once and then tells them, and the response is immediate and physical: cloaks thrown on the bare steps to make a throne dais, a trumpet, and a shout 2 Kings 9:13. There is no deliberation. The army has been fighting Syria for a wounded king in Jezreel and is ready in a heartbeat to follow the man in front of them.
but King Joram had returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him when he fought with Hazael king of Syria.) Jehu said, “If this is your thinking, then let no one escape and go out of the city to go to tell it in Jezreel.”
And Jehu's first order as king is a news blackout. Before anything else, he understands that his advantage is surprise — the trait that defines him for the rest of his life. The prophetic word has been spoken, the oil is on his head, and what he brings to it is speed.
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