ESV Global Study Bible :: Footnotes for 2 Kings 10

2 Kings 10:1 Now Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. Jehu now prepares to fulfill Elijah’s prophecy of “cutting off” all the males of Ahab’s house (1 Kings 21:21–22).

2 Kings 10:3 fight for your master’s house. By writing letters to the leading citizens and challenging them to place one of Ahab’s potential heirs on his father’s throne, Jehu forces them to choose sides.

2 Kings 10:5 he who was over the palace . . . he who was over the city. These are the “rulers of the city” mentioned in v. 1. The joint reply of these two officials along with the elders and the other former Ahab loyalists (the “guardians”) reveals that they are now Jehu’s servants.

2 Kings 10:7 they took the king’s sons and slaughtered them. This fulfills the word of the Lord in 9:7–9 and is similar to other situations in which entire groups of people are put to death (see note on 2 Sam. 21:3–6). Such drastic action against a royal household was not uncommon in the ancient world. The number seventy in such contexts may be a round number, or purely figurative, rather than an exact number.

2 Kings 10:8–10 two heaps at the entrance of the gate. Jehu’s aim is to convince the people to make him king. He knows the people struck down all these, but he also tells them the Lord was carrying out his judgment on Ahab’s house through them.

2 Kings 10:12–14 His work in Jezreel complete, Jehu leaves for Samaria. On the way, he encounters some relatives of Ahaziah king of Judah. The Judean royal family keeps being drawn into Jehu’s destruction of the house of Ahab, with whom they have been allied (see 9:27 for the death of Ahaziah). they took them alive and slaughtered them. Jehu is thorough in exterminating all traces of the past.

2 Kings 10:15 Is your heart true to my heart as mine is to yours? The chapter’s theme is “who is on the Lord’s side; who is in the right?” Jehonadab, who is on the right side, reappears in Jeremiah 35 (“Jonadab”) as the founder of a purist religious group committed to Israel’s older ways.

2 Kings 10:18–27 Jehu assembled all the people. Jehu now gives his attention to Samaria, which had been the focal point for the Baal cult (see 1 Kings 16:32–33). He assembled all the prophets and worshipers of Baal by pretending that he himself wanted to worship their false god. Once every single worshiper had come together, Jehu killed them all.

2 Kings 10:20 Sanctify a solemn assembly. This phrase is probably a Canaanite religious term.

2 Kings 10:27 demolished the pillar of Baal . . . the house of Baal. See 1 Kings 16:32–33; 2 Kings 3:2. Baal worship in Israel is officially at an end.

2 Kings 10:29 did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam. Jehu has dealt with Baal worship, but he does nothing at all about the golden calves . . . in Bethel and in Dan that Jeroboam installed after leading Israel in revolt against the house of David (1 Kings 12:25–30).

2 Kings 10:30 Since Jehu does not destroy the golden calves in Bethel and Dan (v. 29; see v. 31), it is surprising to find him described as someone who has carried out what is right in the eyes of the Lord. He also receives the promise of a dynasty, though it will not be an eternal dynasty like David’s (it will last only till the fourth generation). Evidently what Jehu has done right (stopping Baal worship) far outweighs what he continues to do wrong.

2 Kings 10:32–33 the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel. First Kings 19:15–18 pointed to a time when God’s judgment would fall on Israel because of Baal worship. These verses focus on the part that the Syrian king Hazael played in this judgment. Hazael conquered the area east of the Jordan as far south as the Valley of the Arnon, which was the southern limit of Israelite Transjordanian territory (see Josh. 12:2). This military success occurred during a time when Syria was itself free from any threats by its own northern neighbor, Assyria.