TEXT [Commentary]
I. Prophetic Stories about the Coup of Jehu (2 Kgs 9:1–10:36)
1. Jehu anointed king of Israel (9:1-13)
1 Meanwhile, Elisha the prophet had summoned a member of the group of prophets. “Get ready to travel,”[*] he told him, “and take this flask of olive oil with you. Go to Ramoth-gilead, 2 and find Jehu son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi. Call him into a private room away from his friends, 3 and pour the oil over his head. Say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: I anoint you to be the king over Israel.’ Then open the door and run for your life!”
4 So the young prophet did as he was told and went to Ramoth-gilead. 5 When he arrived there, he found Jehu sitting around with the other army officers. “I have a message for you, Commander,” he said.
“For which one of us?” Jehu asked.
“For you, Commander,” he replied.
6 So Jehu left the others and went into the house. Then the young prophet poured the oil over Jehu’s head and said, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I anoint you king over the LORD’s people, Israel. 7 You are to destroy the family of Ahab, your master. In this way, I will avenge the murder of my prophets and all the LORD’s servants who were killed by Jezebel. 8 The entire family of Ahab must be wiped out. I will destroy every one of his male descendants, slave and free alike, anywhere in Israel. 9 I will destroy the family of Ahab as I destroyed the families of Jeroboam son of Nebat and of Baasha son of Ahijah. 10 Dogs will eat Ahab’s wife Jezebel at the plot of land in Jezreel, and no one will bury her.” Then the young prophet opened the door and ran.
11 Jehu went back to his fellow officers, and one of them asked him, “What did that madman want? Is everything all right?”
“You know how a man like that babbles on,” Jehu replied.
12 “You’re hiding something,” they said. “Tell us.”
So Jehu told them, “He said to me, ‘This is what the LORD says: I have anointed you to be king over Israel.’”
13 Then they quickly spread out their cloaks on the bare steps and blew the ram’s horn, shouting, “Jehu is king!”
NOTES
9:1 Meanwhile. We are now back to the prophetic traditions, probably part of the Elisha cycle, or even part of the Elijah materials, since the Hazael pericope may have served to close the Elisha cycle proper (see the second note on 8:11), and since the anointing of Jehu is the only part of the Elijah recommissioning in 1 Kgs 19:15-17 that is fulfilled literally. In any case, we once again (and for the last time) hear about the “group of prophets” that is so often connected with Elisha.
the group of prophets. Lit., “sons of the prophets”; cf. notes on 2:3.
Get ready to travel. See the note on 4:29 concerning the colorful Hebrew idiom underlying this phrase.
this flask of olive oil. Heb., pak [TH6378, ZH7095] hashemen hazzeh; the only other use of the word pak in the MT is in 1 Sam 10:1, where it also designates a flask of oil used for anointing a king (in that case, Samuel anointing Saul). “Anointing” (mashakh [TH4886, ZH5417]; cf. 9:3, 6, 12) involves the pouring of seemingly copious amounts of oil upon the head (cf. Ps 133); probably it was originally a hygienic rite (to kill head lice; cf. Stuart 1987:360), but it came to denote the ceremonious transferal of sanctity from God to the “anointed one” or “messiah” (mashiakh [TH4899, ZH5431]; cf. McCarter 1980:178).
Ramoth-gilead. Obviously the warfare against Aram described in 1 Kgs 22:1-38, as well as that mentioned in 2 Kgs 8:28, still raged on. It does appear that for the moment, Israel has the upper hand. (For the location and significance of the site, see the note on 1 Kgs 22:3.)
9:2 Jehu son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi. Typically appearing as “Jehu son of Nimshi,” the use of this threefold name is unusual (Cogan and Tadmor 1988:106). Perhaps the grandfather was better known in the community, or else the third generation was included so as to preclude confusion with King Jehoshaphat of Judah. The name Jehu probably means “Yah(weh) is the (true) one” (Wiseman 1993:219), but the meaning of Nimshi is less certain (Gray [1970:540], citing Noth, suggests the nickname “weasel”; Penner [2009] suggests “drawn out”). (See the note on 1 Kgs 22:41 for the meaning of the name Jehoshaphat. For the irony of the repeated Assyrian identification of Jehu with the House of Omri, see the commentary below.)
private room. Heb., kheder bekhader [TH2315, ZH2540] (“a room [with]in a room”); see the notes on 1 Kgs 20:30 and 22:25. Leithart (2006:220) points out how the private nature of this action is reminiscent of other aspects of the ministry of Elisha—healing behind closed doors (4:32-35), remaining inside when Naaman comes for healing (5:9-10), knowing what the king of Aram says in his bedroom (6:12; and I would add the reference in 6:32 to Elisha being at home when the king’s messenger arrives). But there was a private aspect to Elijah’s ministry as well—e.g., when he healed the son of the widow of Zarephath in the upper room in 1 Kgs 17:19-23 (and to a lesser degree, his remaining aloof and alone at the Kerith Brook [1 Kgs 17:2-7], and when he fled to the wilderness near Beersheba and eventually to Mount Sinai [1 Kgs 19:4-15]). However, Babylonian coronation ceremonies also partly took place in an inner room (Wiseman 1993:219).
9:3 I anoint you . . . king over Israel. See the fourth note on 9:1 concerning the nature and significance of this action. Possibly the original concept of such anointing was for the prophetic representative to identify an appropriate “king-designate,” which would have been later ratified by the tribal leadership after clear military success (see the commentary on 1 Kgs 1:5-27 for details). In any case, the nearly immediate, spontaneous approval of Jehu’s fellow officers certainly confirms the popularity of this originally private procedure. As the Israelite army brought Omri to power (cf. 1 Kgs 16:15-16), the army will also bring about the downfall of his dynasty (Wiseman 1993:218).
run for your life! The precariousness of this totally unanticipated action will be evident, as will its drastic implications concerning Jehu’s future career as usurper of the Omride dynasty (cf. Queen Jezebel’s words in 9:31). It is thus entirely up to Jehu as to how to proceed publicly at this point (9:11-12).
9:5 Commander. Heb., hassar [TH8269, ZH8569]; the plural has been used for the other army officers previously in the verse, with the indication that Jehu is, as it were, first among equals.
9:8 every one of his male descendants, slave and free alike. See the first two notes on 1 Kgs 14:10 regarding the two Hebrew idioms found here. The expression is also found in the Elijah diatribe against Ahab in 1 Kgs 21:21; in fact, most of the rest of 9:7-10 in the present passage finds parallels in 1 Kgs 21:20-24, giving further support for its origin in the Elijah (rather than the Elisha) cycle.
9:11 What did that madman want? Lit., “Why did this madman (meshugga‘ [TH7696, ZH8713]) come to you?” For the larger significance of this comment, see the commentary. At this point, the tenor of the give-and-take between Jehu and his fellow officers is akin to locker-room banter ridiculing prophets in general.
Is everything all right? Lit., “is it peace?” (hashalom [TH7965, ZH8934]), a Leitwort (recurring word or word root; cf. Olyan 1984:653, citing Martin Buber; also cf. Hendel 2008:93) that will be repeated some nine times throughout the chapter (see commentary on 9:14-29).
9:12 You’re hiding something. Lit., “a lie!” (sheqer [TH8267, ZH9214]). The NLT is paraphrastic here (contrast NIV, “that’s not true!”), although it does convey effectively the overall ebb and flow of the conversation.
9:13 spread out their cloaks. This is akin to what the crowd did when greeting Jesus on his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on the day that has become known as Palm Sunday (Matt 21:8; Mark 11:8; Luke 19:36). A similar gesture of profound respect was also given to Cato of Utica (Cato the Younger) by his fellow soldiers when he was about to leave military service (Plutarch Cato Minor 12.1). I have come to wonder if the Palm Sunday gesture was more military in nature than I would have originally surmised.
blew the ram’s horn. See the second note on 1 Kgs 1:34.
COMMENTARY [Text]
Some years ago Saul Olyan (1984:652-668) wrote an important article on the entirety of chapter 9; we will have occasion to analyze in some detail his work concerning the shalom refrain (or better, Leitwort; cf. the second note on 9:11) in the next section of commentary. Yet there is another important observation Olyan made concerning the double use of the Hebrew root sh-g-‘ (“to be mad or crazy” [TH7696, ZH8713]) in this chapter that must be discussed at this point: He highlighted the intriguing parallel between the “crazy” actions of the prophetic emissary in 9:11 (“that madman”) and Jehu’s later driving his chariot “like a madman” to Jezreel in 9:20. As Olyan pointed out (following Robert Wilson [1980:204-205]), the ecstatic prophets would often have been seen as crazy or mad by the more conservative circles such as the army and the governmental bureaucracy (which explains the bemused reactions of Jehu’s fellow officers in 9:11), but Jehu will soon act as “crazy” as any of those prophets. As Olyan puts it, “It seems fairly apparent that the writer of this passage is using the root (sh-g-‘) in a subtle and artful manner,” and “The words (from the root sh-g-‘) become symbolic of the service of Yahweh. Both the prophets and Jehu are instruments of Yahweh’s restoration of shalom.” Whether it be Elisha bringing about the rise of Hazael of Aram (cf. 8:7-15), or, as here, the rise of Jehu, there will be no question that the work of Elijah and Elisha will inevitably bring about the demise of the Omride dynasty, both from without and from within.
But that is not necessarily how the Assyrians recorded it. King Jehu “son of Omri” is famously (or perhaps infamously) depicted in the second register of the Black Obelisk from Nimrud (see ANEP, pictures 351, 355) as bowing down in abject humility to the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, and Jehu’s tribute is listed as follows: silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase (?), golden goblets, golden buckets, etc. (cf. Cogan and Tadmor 1988:335). Now, Jehu was hardly the “son of Omri,” but that is nevertheless how various Assyrian inscriptions repeatedly refer to him, even well into the second half of the eighth century (cf. Cogan and Tadmor [1988:106], who note that the Assyrian scribes were aware that Jehu had seized the throne but chose to acknowledge Omri as the first significant dynast in Israel; also cf. Stith 2008:213-214, who sees Jehu as a vassal of Hazael in light of the Tel Dan inscription [see the note on 1 Kgs 12:29 for details]). (For McCarter’s suggestion, generally discredited, that it is Jehoram “son of Omri,” and not Jehu, who is depicted on the Black Obelisk, see Cogan and Tadmor 1988:106; Barnes 1991:35 n. 14.) Thus we end up with the acute irony that Jehu, the infamous usurper of the Omride dynasty, was remembered in Assyria as a petty vassal king linked with the dynasty he usurped. The irony will become even more acute when one realizes that Jehu’s dynasty lasted over 100 years (Omri’s lasted at most some 42 years), and Jehu’s great-grandson Jeroboam II was remembered as one of the most powerful kings in Israelite history (see 14:23-29).
Such are the vicissitudes of history and of historiography—one cannot control how one will be remembered. And as we shall see in the commentary on 10:1-17 and 10:18-31, even the biblical record concerning Jehu is mixed: clear appreciation of his zeal for Yahweh, yet clear hesitation in reference to his bloodthirsty way of exhibiting such zeal (cf. Hos 1:4-5). But one thing is most clear: The dynasty of Omri has come to an end, and that end is clearly the will of Yahweh, as repeatedly stated through his prophets Elijah and Elisha. The blood of Naboth most definitely will be avenged (cf. 9:26)!