Tag Archives: Violence and the Bible

2 Kings 10 The Elimination of the Sons of Ahab and the Worshippers of Baal

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Part of the gift-bearing delegation of King Jehu, Black Obelisk, 841–840 BCE.

2 Kings 10: 1-14

  1 Now Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. So Jehu wrote letters and sent them to Samaria, to the rulers of the city, to the elders, and to the guardians of the sons of Ahab, saying, 2 “Since your master’s sons are with you and you have at your disposal chariots and horses, a fortified city, and weapons, 3 select the son of your master who is the best qualified, set him on his father’s throne, and fight for your master’s house.” 4 But they were utterly terrified and said, “Look, two kings could not withstand him; how then can we stand?” 5 So the steward of the palace and the governor of the city, along with the elders and the guardians, sent word to Jehu, “We are your servants; we will do anything you say. We will not make anyone king; do whatever you think right.” 6 Then he wrote them a second letter, saying, “If you are on my side and if you are ready to obey me, take the heads of your master’s sons and come to me at Jezreel tomorrow at this time.” Now the king’s sons, seventy persons, were with the leaders of the city, who were charged with their upbringing. 7 When the letter reached them, they took the king’s sons and killed them, seventy persons; they put their heads in baskets and sent them to him at Jezreel. 8 When the messenger came and told him, “They have brought the heads of the king’s sons,” he said, “Lay them in two heaps at the entrance of the gate until the morning.” 9 Then in the morning when he went out, he stood and said to all the people, “You are innocent. It was I who conspired against my master and killed him, but who struck down all these? 10 Know, then, that there shall fall to the earth nothing of the word of the Lord that the Lord spoke concerning the house of Ahab, for the Lord has done what he said through his servant Elijah.” 11 So Jehu killed all who were left of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, all his leaders, close friends, and priests, until he left him no survivor.
  12 Then he set out and went to Samaria. On the way, when he was at Beth-eked of the Shepherds, 13 Jehu met relatives of King Ahaziah of Judah and said, “Who are you?” They answered, “We are kin of Ahaziah; we have come down to visit the royal princes and the sons of the queen mother.” 14 He said, “Take them alive.” They took them alive and slaughtered them at the pit of Beth-eked, forty-two in all; he spared none of them.

There is no avoiding the violence of this text. Jehu and those around him are blunt instruments removing the cancer of both the Omri dynasty and the cancer of Baalism from Israel. Back when I was working through the book of Esther, I did a short reflection on Violence and the Bible, but I still think most modern readers and interpreters find the bloody transition from the heirs of king Ahab to Jehu disconcerting.

The world of the bible was violent as was the ancient world that it was set within. It may not be quite the grimdark world of some recent fantasy made popular in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, since the world of the bible does assume there is a higher moral power involved in it, but as far as the shocking violence I think this, and the previous chapter, compete with almost anything written by modern authors. There were no bloodless coups in the ancient world. For the necessary transition to happen in both Israel and Judah drastic actions are required (in the view of 2 Kings).

Alex Israel in his writing on Jehu’s overthrown of the Omri dynasty believes that the detail provided is a critique of Jehu’s violence:

Kings is no stranger to military coups, yet not one of these mutinies revel in the explicit gore and detailed descriptions of murder that we find with Jehu. The narrative’s detail communicates Jehu’s barbarism. (Israel, 2019, p. 168)

Although Hosea 1:4 does view Jehu’s violence as excessive, I don’t believe that the narrator of 2 Kings does. Even though the other mention of seventy sons[1] being killed belongs to Abimelech in Judges 9, a story that has several connections with 2 Kings 10, Jehu’s actions are viewed in a positive light in 2 Kings. The violence does not all occur at Jehu’s hands as we will see as the narrative progresses, but Jehu’s evaluation is not tainted by his violent methods in overthrowing the Omri dynasty and the practices of Baal worship but instead that Jehu didn’t go far enough in removing the false worship practices from Northern Israel.

Jehu’s actions at the beginning of this chapter challenge the people with power in Samaria to choose one of the heirs of Ahab to rally behind and to prepare to meet him in battle. Jehu’s rule will never be secure as long as there is another line that can make a claim on the throne, but he does grant the leadership in Samaria the opportunity to make a fight for these heirs of Ahab. We don’t know how the line of Ahab was viewed within Samaria, and the text only mentions the terror of the leaders about this military commander’s ability to conquer whatever resistance they offer. These leaders entreat Jehu for peace and Jehu responds with the command to bring the heads of the seventy sons of Ahab. These leaders of will also have blood on their hands at the conclusion of the coup, but it may not have been necessary for them to directly participate in the bloodshed. As Choon-Leong Seow states on the Hebrew wordplay:

The word “heads” (ra’sim) is ambiguous, for it could refer literally the anatomical heads or figuratively to leaders. The officials assume the literal meaning and decapitate the remaining descendants of Ahab. (NIB III: 223)

There was a time when the leaders could have claimed innocence in this bloody transition since it was Jehu who killed the kings of Israel and Judah as well as Jezebel the queen mother, but now with the seventy heads of the sons of Ahab in baskets they share in this overthrow. Their hands are just as bloody as Jehu’s. Yet, for the narrator of 2 Kings, this bloody event is the fulfillment of the words of Elijah spoken against Jehu in Jezreel. (1 Kings 21)

Finally in this section there is the slaughter of the relatives of Ahaziah. These travelers from Judah seem completely unaware of the situation they walked into as they travel to visit Jezebel and the royal princes of Israel. These kin of Ahaziah are linked by marriage to Ahab’s line and in slaughtering these relatives Jehu weakens the remnants of the house of Ahaziah in Jerusalem. As we will see in the following chapter the remaining child of Ahab, his daughter Athaliah, will violently attempt to hold onto power in Jerusalem.  

2 Kings 10: 15-36

  15 When he left there, he met Jehonadab son of Rechab coming to meet him; he greeted him and said to him, “Is your heart as true to mine as mine is to yours?” Jehonadab answered, “It is.” Jehu said, “If it is, give me your hand.” So he gave him his hand. Jehu took him up with him into the chariot. 16 He said, “Come with me and see my zeal for the Lord.” So he had him ride in his chariot. 17 When he came to Samaria, he killed all who were left to Ahab in Samaria, until he had wiped them out according to the word of the Lord that he spoke to Elijah.

  18 Then Jehu assembled all the people and said to them, “Ahab offered Baal small service, but Jehu will offer much more. 19 Now therefore summon to me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and all his priests; let none be missing, for I have a great sacrifice to offer to Baal; whoever is missing shall not live.” But Jehu was acting with cunning in order to destroy the servants of Baal. 20 Jehu decreed, “Sanctify a solemn assembly for Baal.” So they proclaimed it. 21 Jehu sent word throughout all Israel; all the servants of Baal came, so that there was no one left who did not come. They entered the temple of Baal until the temple of Baal was filled from wall to wall. 22 He said to the keeper of the wardrobe, “Bring out the vestments for all the servants of Baal.” So he brought out the vestments for them. 23 Then Jehu entered the temple of Baal with Jehonadab son of Rechab; he said to the servants of Baal, “Search and see that there is no servant of the Lord here among you but only servants of Baal.” 24 Then they proceeded to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings.
  Now Jehu had stationed eighty men outside, saying, “Whoever allows any of those to escape whom I deliver into your hands shall forfeit his life.” 25 As soon as he had finished presenting the burnt offering, Jehu said to the guards and to the officers, “Come in and kill them; let no one escape.” So they put them to the sword. The guards and the officers threw them out and then went into the citadel of the temple of Baal. 26 They brought out the pillar that was in the temple of Baal and burned it. 27 Then they demolished the pillar of Baal and destroyed the temple of Baal and made it a latrine to this day.
  28 Thus Jehu wiped out Baal from Israel. 29 But Jehu did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat that he caused Israel to commit: the golden calves that were in Bethel and in Dan. 30 The Lord said to Jehu, “Because you have done well in carrying out what I consider right and in accordance with all that was in my heart have dealt with the house of Ahab, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.” 31 But Jehu was not careful to follow the law of the Lord the God of Israel with all his heart; he did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam that he caused Israel to commit.

  32 In those days the Lord began to trim off parts of Israel. Hazael defeated them throughout the territory of Israel: 33 from the Jordan eastward, all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, the Reubenites, and the Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the Wadi Arnon, that is, Gilead and Bashan. 34 Now the rest of the acts of Jehu, all that he did, and all his power, are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel? 35 So Jehu slept with his ancestors, and they buried him in Samaria. His son Jehoahaz succeeded him. 36 The time that Jehu reigned over Israel in Samaria was twenty-eight years.

Jehu now meets Jehonadab son of Rachab. The two men are loyal to one another but also share a zeal for the LORD. The descendants of Jehonadab son of Rechab will be the Rechabites that the prophet Jeremiah encounters in Jerusalem who do not drink wine or grow vineyards in obedience to their ancestor’s way. (Jeremiah 35) Now this ancestor of the Rechabites and Jehu move with cunning against the entrenched worship of Baal in Samaria.

In the ancient world the political and religious realms are interconnected, and it would not be surprising for a new ruler to pay for a sacrifice to the gods worshipped in the land. Jehu’s religious connections may not be well known in Samaria, and the prospect of having the new king as a patron would be enticing to the cult of Baal in the land. Yet, Jehu is acting with ‘cunning.’[2] Many modern readers may be confused by the dishonesty of Jehu’s actions, but 2 Kings views these actions positively. After attempting to ensure that only worshippers of Baal are present Jehu orders his guards to slaughter those participating and not to allow any to escape. Jehu in this action eliminates the worship of Baal during his reign and in the view of 2 Kings this causes God to grant him the longest running dynasty in the Northern Kingdom.

Yet the final evaluation of Jehu is negative not because of his violence or dishonesty but because he didn’t go far enough. He allowed the shrines at Bethel and Dan to remain. One the one hand it would be difficult for Jehu to remain in control in Samaria if people had to return to Jerusalem to worship, but in the view of the narrator of 2 Kings this is evidence of idolatry. Northern Israel is slowly losing control of its border to Hazael’s forces out of Damascus, but Jehu and his sons will maintain control in Samaria for four generations.

[1] Seventy is one of the ‘representative’ numbers in Hebrew which may be literal or may represent a large number. Typically multiples of three, seven, and twelve have a connotation of completeness in Hebrew thought.

[2] The Hebrew word for cunning is ‘aqob. This is also the name Jacob. Jacob’s original name and his character in Genesis is that of one who acts with cunning. The trickery here by Jehu is not evaluated in a negative light.

Joel 3 God’s Judgment of the Nations

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Let us Beat Swords Into Plowshares, a sculpture by Evgeniy Vuchetich, given by the Soviet Union to the United Nations in 1959

Joel 3

1 For then, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, 2 I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat, and I will enter into judgment with them there, on account of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations. They have divided my land, 3 and cast lots for my people, and traded boys for prostitutes, and sold girls for wine, and drunk it down.

4 What are you to me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? Are you paying me back for something? If you are paying me back, I will turn your deeds back upon your own heads swiftly and speedily. 5 For you have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried my rich treasures into your temples. 6 You have sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, removing them far from their own border. 7 But now I will rouse them to leave the places to which you have sold them, and I will turn your deeds back upon your own heads. 8 I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a nation far away; for the LORD has spoken.

9 Proclaim this among the nations:
Prepare war, stir up the warriors. Let all the soldiers draw near, let them come up.
10 Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears;
let the weakling say, “I am a warrior.”
11 Come quickly, all you nations all around, gather yourselves there.
Bring down your warriors, O LORD.
12 Let the nations rouse themselves, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat;
for there I will sit to judge all the neighboring nations.
13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.
Go in, tread, for the wine press is full.
The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great.
14 Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision!
For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.
15 The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining.
16 The LORD roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth shake. But the LORD is a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.
17 So you shall know that I, the LORD your God, dwell in Zion, my holy mountain.
And Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers shall never again pass through it.
18 In that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
the hills shall flow with milk, and all the stream beds of Judah shall flow with water;
a fountain shall come forth from the house of the LORD and water the Wadi Shittim.
19 Egypt shall become a desolation and Edom a desolate wilderness,
because of the violence done to the people of Judah,
in whose land they have shed innocent blood.
20 But Judah shall be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem to all generations.
21 I will avenge their blood, and I will not clear the guilty, for the LORD dwells in Zion.

This final chapter of Joel may seem bloodthirsty and distasteful to many modern Christians who have grown up without the experience of war and famine devastating their land. The image of God as the divine warrior who humiliates the enemies of the people of God may seem like a remnant of a more violent time, but it also reflects our ability to trust in our own military might to secure our future rather than God being the defender of Israel (or any other nation). In the aftermath of the Babylonian exile the military power Israel or Judah could exert was shattered. Although we do not know much about the geopolitics of the fourth and fifth century BCE it is clear that Joel’s complaints against the other nations parallel the events listed in other prophets. The army of locusts which devastated the land in Joel 1-2 for a community which suffered a series of crises as it tried to regain its footing in the land must have seemed like the straw that broke the camel’s back. (Birch, 1997, p. 162) As Judah and Jerusalem imagine a hopeful future beyond the locusts and the evil inflicted on them by their neighbors in their troubled past it involves both the renewal of the agricultural prosperity of the land and the removal of the threat of their neighbors.

Although the United States has been involved in conflicts during the fifty years of my life, these conflicts have always taken place in some other land and have been conducted by a volunteer military whose experiences are not shared by the majority of the population. In contrast in Israel:

Every forty-four years out of the last four thousand, on average, an army has marched through it, whether to conquer it, to rescue it from someone else, to use it as a neutral battleground on which to fight a different enemy, or to take advantage of is as the natural route for getting somewhere else to fight there instead. (Wright, 1992, p. 3)

Especially at this juncture of history where Jerusalem and Judah are a weak client state of Persia surrounded by hostile neighbors, the people were scattered among the nations, the land was divided up after the conquest of Babylon and is only partially restored after Persia allows some of the people to resettle, and where slavery for men and women and even children is a recent memory their desire for justice on their oppressors is understandable. More critical in Joel’s vision is that the LORD has taken offense at the misuse of “my people and my heritage Israel.” The nations have taken advantage of Israel’s inability to protect itself through multiple crises and have profited off this weakness to obtain land, and to either be those who captured people to sell into slavery or served as markets where slaves were sold to other nations.

Human trafficking or slavery was an assumed part of conflicts in the ancient world. One of the bounties that armies marching through a land would take is from selling both the defeated enemy, but also captured civilians into slavery. Both the economic and the human capital of Judah and Jerusalem have been plundered and moved through the seaports of Tyre and Sidon and Philistia. Families cry out for their lost generations and God promises to return them home to Judea and to do to Phoenicia (Tyre and Sidon) and Philistia what they did to God’s people and inheritance. The silver and gold will be returned from their temples (or palaces)[1] and while the children of Israel were sold into slavery among the Greeks, the Sabeans in the south are the promised destination of the children of these nations.

In verse nine the text becomes more poetic as the LORD issues a challenge to the nations. It is important to note that the LORD is not telling Israel to prepare for war but throws down the gauntlet to challenge the nations to face God at the valley of judgment.[2] Although the famous image of Isaiah 2: 1-4 and Micah 4: 1-3 where the nations turn their swords into plowshares[3] and spears into pruning hooks (or knives) is reversed here so that the nations are invited to take up what weapons they can fashion if they choose to oppose the LORD who awaits their arrival as a divine warrior. The image of God treading the winepress echoes Isaiah 63: 1-6:

“Who is this that comes from Edom, from Bozrah in garments stained crimson? Who is this so splendidly robed marching in his great might?”“ It is I, announcing vindication, mighty to save.: “Why are your robes red, and your garments like theirs who tread the wine press?” “I have trodden the wine press alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in anger and trampled them in wrath; their juice spattered on my garments, and stained all my robes. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year for my redeeming work had come. I looked and there was no helper; I stared, but there was no one to sustain me; so my own arm brought me victory, and my wrath sustained me. I trampled down peoples in my anger, I crushed them in my wrath,and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.

The God of Israel will not allow the oppression of God’s people and God’s inheritance to go on indefinitely and the wickedness of the world must be eliminated. The scene is violent and there is no way around the violence of the imagery, but the nations are invited to gather before the LORD and only their continued opposition to the LORD has brought about this bloody moment. The advent of God’s presence brings about a cosmic reaction as the sun and moon are darkened and the earth shakes. The imagery is similar to Amos 1: 1-2 but also reflects the common Jewish thought that the creation itself reacts to the divine presence drawing near.

The presence of God as the divine warrior and protector of the people ensures the safety of Zion. God’s presence sanctifies the land, but that sanctification for Joel also means the exclusion of the nations (Gentiles). (Collins, 2013, p. 28) Perhaps this is only the exclusion of political occupation, but as mentioned in the previous post Joel does not see this vision of God’s Spirit being poured upon all the people as including the nations. This restoration of safety by the exclusion of the nations and the punishment of those who had oppressed Israel probably stretches to the limit of the imagination of Joel. The later expansion of this vision in the early Christians would be a struggle documented in the book of Acts. It also echoes the renewal of agricultural prosperity from Joel 2: 18-27. The wine that had dried up in chapter one now drips from the mountains, the sheep and cattle who were dying of starvation now produce milk in the hills, and the creeks dried up in the drought now flow with water. In an image that echoes Ezekiel 47: 1-12, water now flows from the temple of God and flows out to provide water for the Wadi Shittim.

From the position of many Western Christians who have not experienced the oppression of an external enemy or the life-threatening environmental crisis of Joel these images of God may seem difficult to square with the God of love proclaimed in many churches. Yet, for Joel and most other Jewish and early Christians God judges because God cares about God’s people, God’s land, and God’s inheritance. For those who have lived in the shadow of terror where children have become the victims of human trafficking, where men and women of all ages are sold into slavery and where violence has ruled the land their hope is for a God who can and will defend them.

Prior to becoming a pastor, I served as an officer in the Army during the time the peacekeeping missions in Bosnia. The experience of Bosnia or Rwanda is probably closer to the experience of Judah and Jerusalem than the peaceful existence of the United States throughout my lifetime. Years ago, I encountered Miroslav Volf’s profound reflections on forgiveness in light of his experiences as a Croatian in the aftermath of the desolation of his country and people by the Serbians, and Exclusion and Embrace is one of the books I use frequently to inform how I encounter the God of the scriptures who comes to provide judgment on earth. As Volf states:

Most people who insist on God’s “nonviolence” cannot resist using violence themselves (or tacitly sanctioning its use by others). They deem the talk of God’s judgment irreverent, but think nothing of entrusting judgment into human hands, persuaded presumably that this is less dangerous and more humane than to believe in a God who judges! That we should bring “down the powerful from their thrones” (Luke 1: 51-52) seems responsible; that God should do the same, as the song of that revolutionary Virgin explicitly states, seems crude. And so, violence thrives, secretly nourished by belief in a God who refuses to wield the sword.

My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone (which is where a paper that underlies this chapter was originally delivered). Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love. Soon you would discover it takes the quiet suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind. (Volf, 1996, pp. 303-304)

These images may never be easy for many Christians to read, but they are an essential part of the hope of a people who are unable to defend themselves. God is their divine warrior who provides not only protection but prosperity and turns away the warring of the nations. In the language of Psalm 46:

Come, behold the works of the LORD; see what desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. “Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.”    (Psalm 46: 8-10)

Only when we step away from our privileged and hear these words from the troubled world that Joel inhabits can we properly hear these words of hope that Joel speaks to this grieving community. There is no hope of a future that can be separated from physical safety for themselves and their children. I do think God calls on us for our imaginations to continue to expand as we envision a future for ourselves and our enemies, but it is also critical to understand that the prophets speak to a specific people with specific traumas that need to be healed. Perhaps for Joel it is only the nations mobilizing with their swords and spears that can finally bring them to the point that Isaiah and Micah can hope for where nations no longer train for war and the instruments of war are returned to implements of agriculture. For Joel forgiveness is not possible for the nations before justice (or retribution) for the wrong his people have suffered has been exacted by their God. Joel’s voice is not unique in scripture, but it is also not the only voice.

[1] The word in Hebrew can mean either temple or palaces. Likely this refers to the items taken from the temple of the LORD or from the household of the king since most people would not have access to large amounts of silver or gold.

[2] Jehoshaphat means the LORD judges.

[3] Or mattocks. As James D. Nogalski notes this probably refers to a mattock which is smaller than an animal pulled plowshare and would be turned into a short sword rather than what is often seen in sculptures. (Nogalski, 2023, p. 166)