Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Driving of Jehu
2 Kings 9:14-29
14 So Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi conspired against Joram. (Now Joram was defending Ramoth Gilead, he and all Israel, because of Hazael king of Syria; · WEB
Two messengers ride out and do not come back, a watchman recognizes a driving style, and two kings meet the executioner on Naboth's ground.
"The driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously" 2 Kings 9:20.
The watchman identifies the man by how he drives, from a distance, before anyone can see his face. Jehu is a man of velocity, and the whole coup runs at the speed of a chariot team.
Before that, two horsemen are sent out one after the other with the same question — is it peace? — and neither returns 2 Kings 9:17–19. Joram, wounded and convalescing, keeps asking about peace and keeps getting silence, and the watchman's running report from the tower builds the dread better than any description could.
"What do you have to do with peace? Fall in behind me!" 2 Kings 9:18.
Jehu's answer to both messengers is the same, and it is not a refusal to negotiate so much as a redefinition of the question. There is no peace available; there is only which side of the column you are on.
They went out to meet Jehu, and found him on Naboth the Jezreelite's land 2 Kings 9:21.
The two kings ride out to meet him — Israel's king and Judah's, both descendants of Ahab — and the meeting point is specified. Of all the ground around Jezreel, they encounter him in the vineyard Ahab took after Jezebel had its owner stoned 1 Kings 21:16. The narrative does not say providence arranged it. It simply names the field.
"What peace, so long as the prostitution of your mother Jezebel and her witchcraft abound?" 2 Kings 9:22.
Joram asks the same question his messengers carried and gets the answer they did not bring back. Jehu names the cause as the queen mother's religion — the sexual imagery is standard prophetic language for covenant unfaithfulness Hosea 2:2, and the sorcery charge is literal enough. There can be no peace while the thing that provoked the sentence is still being funded from the palace.
Jehu drew his bow with his full strength, and struck Joram between his arms; and the arrow went out at his heart 2 Kings 9:24.
The king who cried treason 2 Kings 9:23 and turned to run is shot in the back at close range. It is an execution rather than a duel, and Jehu treats it as one.
"Pick him up, and throw him in the plot of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite; for remember how, when you and I rode together after Ahab his father, Yahweh laid this burden on him" 2 Kings 9:25.
And here is the chapter's hinge. Jehu and his officer had been young men riding behind Ahab's chariot on the day Elijah pronounced the sentence in this vineyard, and he has remembered it for twenty years. The body goes onto Naboth's ground deliberately, with the oracle quoted from memory — I will repay you in this plot of ground 2 Kings 9:26 — including the detail that Naboth's sons died with him, which the earlier account did not record.
"Strike him also in the chariot!" 2 Kings 9:27.
Ahaziah of Judah is run down and wounded on the road, reaches Megiddo , and dies there. He was in Jezreel on a family visit, and he dies because his grandfather arranged a marriage. His servants carry him to Jerusalem and bury him properly with his fathers, which is more than the northern king receives — the lamp of David flickers even here, and a son of Athaliah is buried in David's city while his uncle lies in a stolen vineyard.
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