2 Kings 10:9

_AND IT CAME TO PASS IN THE MORNING, THAT HE WENT OUT, AND STOOD, AND SAID TO ALL THE PEOPLE, YE BE RIGHTEOUS: BEHOLD, I CONSPIRED AGAINST MY MASTER, AND SLEW HIM: BUT WHO SLEW ALL THESE?_ Said to all the people, Ye be righteous ... A great concourse was assembled to gaze on this, novel and ghastly spectacle. The speech which Jehu addressed to the spectators was artfully framed to impress their minds with the idea that so wholesale a massacre, done without his order or connivance, was the secret result of the divine judgment denounced on the house of Ahab; and the effect of it was to prepare the public mind for hearing, without horror, of a similar revolting tragedy which was soon after perpetrated-namely, the extinction of all the influential friends and supporters of the dynasty of Ahab, including those of the royal house of Judah....

1-14 In the most awful events, though attended by the basest crimes of man, the truth and justice of God are to be noticed; and he never did nor can command any thing unjust or unreasonable. Jehu destroyed all that remained of the house of Ahab; all who had been partners in his wickedness. When we think upon the sufferings and miseries of mankind, when we look forward to the resurrection and last judgment, and think upon the vast number of the wicked waiting their awful sentence of everlasting fire; when the whole sum of death and misery has been considered, the solemn question occurs, Who slew all these? The answer is, SIN. Shall we then harbour sin in our bosoms, and seek for happiness from that which is the cause of all misery?...

Verse 2 Kings 10:9. _YE BE RIGHTEOUS_] Another irony, intended partly to excuse himself, and to involve them in the odium of this massacre, and at the same time to justify the conduct of both, by showing that all was done according to the commandment of the Lord....

YE BE RIGHTEOUS - i. e., “Ye are just, and can judge aright.” Jehu unfairly keeps back the fact that he had commanded the execution....

EXPOSITION 2 KINGS 10:1 THE REIGN OF JEHU OVER ISRAEL. 2 KINGS 10:1 The revolution initiated by the destruction of Joram and Jezebel is here traced through its second and its third stages. The immediate question, after Joram's death, was—Would any member of his family rise up as a claimant of the throne, and dispute the succession with Jehu? Ahab had seventy male descendants, all of them resident in Samaria: would there be any one among their number bold enough to come forward and assert his hereditary fight? Jehu regarded this as the most pressing and imminent danger, wherefore his first step was to challenge such action, and either pr

AND IT CAME TO PASS IN THE MORNING, THAT HE WENT OUT, AND STOOD, AND SAID TO ALL THE PEOPLE,.... Who were gathered together to this shocking sight, or on the above accounts: YE BE RIGHTEOUS; having had no concern in taking off the heads of those men: BEHOLD, I CONSPIRED AGAINST MY MASTER, AND SLEW HIM; I own it, and some may blame me for it, and charge me with treason and murder: BUT WHO SLEW ALL THESE? not he, but the chief men of Samaria, and therefore must be more guilty than he, having shed the blood of so many persons, who had not offended against God and man to so great a degree as Joram; this he said to lessen his own sin, and wipe off the reproach of it, that his character might appear fairer in the eyes of the people, concealing, at the same time, his orders for the slaying of them....

2. JEHU'S JUDGMENTS, BAAL-WORSHIP DESTROYED, AND HIS DEATH CHAPTER 10 _ 1. The judgment upon the house of Ahab (2 Kings 10:1)_ 2. The relations of Ahaziah slain (2 Kings 10:12; 2 Chronicles 22:8) 3. Jehonadab spared (2 Kings 10:15) 4. The Baal worship destroyed (2 Kings 10:18) 5. Jehu's record (2 Kings 10:29) 6. Israel cut short ...

DESTRUCTION OF THE HOUSE OF AHAB AND OF THE BAAL WORSHIPPERS. The same source is continued, but 2 Kings 10:28 are from a Deuteronomist. The whole story is one of the most terrible in the OT, Ahab had a large family in Samaria. Jehu with a sort of rude chivalry invited the elders of the city to choose one of them as king, and to fight for the throne. But the cowardly rulers promised submission, and at Jehu's command sent the heads of the seventy sons to Jezreel in baskets (2 Kings 10:7). A further massacre of all Ahab's adherents at Jezreel followed, and of forty-two of the family of Ahaziah, king of Judah (2 Kings 10:13). Jehu next ...

YE BE RIGHTEOUS. Said by way of flattery and to allay disaffection....

_he went out, and stood_ At the gate, the place of concourse, where the people usually gathered, and whither recent events would bring them in full number. Jehu in this way began to play the king. _Ye_be _righteous_ He is about to make an appeal to the people. He therefore puts them first of all in a good frame of mind towards himself, by acknowledging them to be fit to be arbiters in the case which he is going to put before them. He admits at once that he is as Jezebel had called him -the murderer of his master" (2 Kings 9:31), but before them they see the heads of the whole of Ahab's sons, slain by the rulers of Samaria. -Who smote all these?" he asks, feeling confident that his act will fade into insignificance before the enormity of their greater butchery. And he was not disappointed. _who slew_[R.V. SMOTE] _all these?_ The verb is not the same as in t