JEHU je’ hu (יֵה֔וּא, LXX ̓Ιου, Assyrian Jaua, it is Jah [who is God], in witness against polytheism [Noth, Israelitische Personennamen 15ff., 143; for the form, see Elihu; Abihu]). The name of a Judahite prophet, of an Israelite king, a member of a clan of Jerahmeel (1 Chron 2:38), one of a band of migrating Simeonites (4:35) and a Benjamite who joined David (12:3).
I. Jehu ben Hanani
He was a prophet (1 Kings 16:12, 2 Chron 19:2) and possibly son of a prophet (see Hanani). He warned Baasha that he would be judged for failing to measure up to his calling as successor to Jeroboam and Nadab, for he followed their heretical cult (1 Kings 16:1-4). Later, Jehu had to rebuke Jehoshaphat for allying himself with Ahab in an attempt to recover Ramoth-gilead from the Syrians (2 Chron 19:2). This took place in 853 b.c., whereas Baasha reigned from 909 to 886 b.c. (Thiele) or shortly afterward (Albright). Jehu left a commentary on the reign of Jehoshaphat that was incorporated in the “Book of the Kings of Israel” (1 Chron 20:34; see Myers ad loc., and Rudolph, Chronicles p. 81). The phrase dibre (Yehoshapat) is standard for “the affairs of,” which can be extended to mean “records of,” cf. 16:11; Myers interprets dibre Yāhōō in a similar sense, though Rudolph restricts it to “messages” (as in dabăr Yahweh).
II. Jehu ben Jehoshaphat ben Nimshi
He was a commander in the Israelite army who accepted the divine commission through Elisha to take over the royal office, avenge the persecution of Yahwists, and extirpate Phoen. Baal worship from Israel (2 Kings 9:1-10; cf. 1 Kings 19:16).
A. Chronology. According to 2 Kings 3:1; 8:25, Jehoram (Joram) of Israel reigned twelve years; Ahaziah of Judah acceded in Jehoram’s twelfth (or his eleventh) by the accession year reckoning that appears to have been used in 2 Kings 9:29; and he reigned (part of) one year. This was the year of Jehu’s coup, in which both kings were killed. A definite synchronism is available with Assyrian history, for Shalmaneser III records the battle of Qarqar, at which Ahab fought, in his sixth year, and the receipt of tribute from Jehu in his eighteenth (respectively 853/2 and 841/0 b.c.; there is a faint possibility that the dates should be one year higher, see Thiele ch. 3). If Ahab was killed at Ramoth-gilead in the campaign season of 853 b.c., Ahaziah of Israel reigned in 853/2 and 852/1; Jehoram’s first year was 852/1, and his twelfth, 841/0 b.c. In 841, Shalmaneser attacked Damascus, devastating Syria and Hauran, so Jehu’s revolt can hardly have been later than the middle of the campaigning season of 841 b.c. This correlation with the years of a single Assyrian king affords the clearest proof that non-accession-year reckoning (antedating) was used in Israel, and that it was being adopted also in Judah, presumably as a result of the intermarriage between the royal houses (and, perhaps, of the close alignment of foreign policy). It may seem unlikely that the Syrians attacked Ramoth in the year of Shalmaneser’s expedition; Miller therefore adopts Lucian’s recension of the MT synchronisms, implying a shorter reign for Jehoram, and allowing 844/2 for Jehu’s revolt. Jehu reigned twenty-eight years (2 Kings 10:36), dying in 814/3 b.c.
B. Revolution
1. Prophetic instigation (2 Kings 9:1-13). In Jehoram’s twelfth year, the Israelites held a defensive position at Ramothgilead, a key point on the N-S trade route E of the Jordan, against the Syrians. Jehoram, wounded in a Syrian attack, had gone to Jezreel to recover, leaving his commanders (of whom Jehu may have been chief) to carry on the war in Gilead. Ahaziah, king of Judah, who was assisting Jehoram in the campaign, later went down to Jezreel to see how he was progressing; and the court was there, including Jezebel the queen mother.
At this juncture, a young emissary arrived from the community of prophets in the Jordan valley, of which Elisha was head. As directed by Elisha, he requested a private interview with Jehu, and commissioned him in the name of the Lord to avenge the murder of Yahwist prophets on the Omride dynasty and to take over the kingdom. To confirm his message, he anointed Jehu on the spot. Jehu’s fellow officers, on hearing this, rallied immediately and proclaimed him king.
2. Capture of Jezreel (2 Kings 9:14-37). This passage begins by restating that Jehu rebelled against Jehoram while the latter was in Jezreel recovering from a war wound. Jehu requested his colleagues to prevent anyone else from leaving Ramoth while he went to Jezreel in his chariot (prob. with a small guard, as inferred in Jos. Antiq. IX. vi. 3).
As Jehu approached Jezreel, he detained two scouts who were sent to question him, which prob. gave Jehoram the impression that he wanted to confer privately. Puzzled by his commander’s presence and behavior, and perhaps fearing that something extraordinary had happened at Ramoth, Jehoram went with Ahaziah to meet him. Jehu was waiting by the royal garden that Ahab had obtained by the death of Naboth; he may already have been thinking of the scandal and of Elijah’s condemnation of it, which he had witnessed when he was a young officer (v. 25). He returned Jehoram’s greeting with a challenge and shot him as he turned to escape; then he pursued Ahaziah and wounded him mortally as he took the hill road by Ibleam (v. 27). Ahaziah was evidently making for Samaria by the Dothan valley; if the text of Kings is sound, his charioteer then turned along the plain to Megiddo (cf. 1 Chron 22:9). Jehu, in returning to Jezreel, came face to face with Jezebel, who tried to reassert her authority from the vantage point of an upper window; but her courtiers were not prepared to stand against the new master, and on his orders two or three of them seized Jezebel and hurled her down in front of his chariot.
3. Consolidation (2 Kings 10). In view of the family loyalty characteristic of Sem. people, Jehu could only secure his hold by extirpating Ahab’s family; his problem was to do so and yet avoid the odium of sole responsibility for the blood bath. He wrote to the governors of the royal household at Samaria, offering them the choice of putting up a successor to the throne (and taking the consequences) or pledging their submission with the heads of Jehoram’s children and young relatives. They took the latter course, enabling Jehu to point to the evidence and deny responsibility. The number of victims is given as seventy, which may be conventional (Cooke NSI, LXII, pp. 171ff., cites a parallel example from Zenjirli in N Syria), but there were enough to make “two heaps” (10:8). Jehu now moved to Samaria; on the way he met and liquidated a group of forty-two relatives of Ahaziah who, all unsuspecting, were on their way to visit the royal house in Jezreel. Clearly, Ahaziah’s body had not yet reached Jerusalem when they left. The rest of the Judean royal family (except Joash) were killed by Athaliah; so when she died, the Phoen. contamination had been eradicated, whereas the Davidic succession hung by a slender thread.
4. Consummation. In Samaria, Jehu completed his purge of the Omride family and partisans. The next objective, to break the grip of Phoen. culture and religion, was gained by stratagem. He announced that he would adopt Baalism with even more fervor than Ahab, proclaiming an assembly in the temple of Baal to celebrate his accession; when the ceremony was fairly under way, he sent in his guards to massacre the Baalists. Although some scholars (GVI) can scarcely believe that Jehu was accepted as a Baalist, there is reason enough for his coup to be seen first as an army revolt or possibly social in character (see [4] below). Yahwism was thus reestablished as the official religion; but further reform stopped, not touching the cult of Bethel and Dan, nor were the older forms of Baalism abandoned (see Hosea).
C. Jehu’s reign. Jehu reigned for twenty-eight years (2 Kings 10:36) and died a natural death; but it was a period of decline. Having broken with the Phoenicians, he found himself paying tribute as they did to Shalmaneser III; this is recorded in the “black obelisk” from Nimrud. Kraeling (ch. 9, p. 80) defines Jehu’s policy as “continued political alignment” with Phoenicia, but this appears to go beyond the evidence, and his citation of 2 Kings 10:31 is hardly relevant. As other authorities rightly point out, Jehu had administered the most insulting rebuffs to Tyre. Neither is it evident that the Phoenicians paid tribute for any reason but to secure their own safety. Jehu may have been seeking the protection of Assyria against the Arameans; but a recently discovered copy of Shalmaneser’s annals supports Olmstead’s suggestion that the Assyrians reached the sea, not first at Nahr-el-Kelb toward Byblos, but at Mt. Carmel, after marching through Hauran and northern Israel. The tribute apparently was not large; prob. Shalmaneser was not seeking more than a satisfactory climax to his somewhat inconclusive campaign against Hazael.
Assyrian activity faded out as their attention was engaged first by Urartu, then by civil war. Hazael, regaining his strength, went on to occupy the country E of Jordan (see 2 Kings 10:33; there is no need to infer from this text that Jehu first retook the Medeba district, and then lost it to Hazael). Isaiah (15:16) and Jeremiah (48) refer to many of the towns as Moabite, so Mesha prob. settled and held them, though at various times Aramean suzerainty was asserted.
D. Evaluation. Jehu failed to keep his early promise, both in religious zeal and in leadership. One can only guess whether he found the problems too big, or succumbed to the deeper temptations of the society that he had set out to purge. Certainly, he was gifted with courage, even audacity, and a power of command. His name, and his father’s, indicate a conservative background, which helps to explain his readiness to do Elisha’s bidding. His association with Jehonadab the Rechabite is unquestionably significant. J. Morgenstern (HUCA XV [1940], pp. 230-248), who finds the significance sinister, claims that Jehonadab brought Elisha’s directions for the religious purge, which he sees as a follow through from Asa’s reforms (fifty-eight years earlier). It is more probable, as W. F. Albright suggests, that the support of the pastoral Rechabite leader stemmed from hatred of civilized society, which had brought poverty to the country and also discontent to the militia, as well as frustration to a part at any rate of the officers (The Biblical Period, p. 36). Jezebel miscalculated when she compared Jehu to Zimri; this time, the army did not react.
Socially, the episode may be seen as a revolt against the abuses of wealth. It could not touch the roots of the problem; as prosperity returned, so did the abuse, as observed in the prophecy of Amos in the next cent. In divine providence, Israel was saved on the brink of desperate peril and utter rejection of the Lord, and given yet another opportunity of repentance.
The purge, as Morgenstern points out, seriously weakened the upper class and therefore the army. This, however, only partly explains the failure to withstand Hazael; the stories of Elisha record dramatic reversals of position in wars between Ben-hadad and Jehoram. The apparent lethargy of Jehu’s reign is still an enigma.
Bibliography E. Kraeling, Aram and Israel (1918), 73-84; A. T. Olmstead, History of Assyria (1923), 139; History of Palestine and Syria (1931), 398.; Sumer, VII (1951), 11; J. Montgomery, Kings ICC (1951); J. Pritchard, ANET2 (1955), 278, 281; D. W. Thomas (ed.), Documents of OT Times (1958), 46-49; H. Tadmor, IEJ, XII (1962), 114ff.; G. E. Wright, Biblical Archaeology (1962), 158ff.; B. Mazar, BA, XXV (1962), 113f.; J. Gray, Kings (1964); E. Thiele, Mysterious Numbers2 (1965), 64-72; Y. Aharoni, Land of the Bible (1966), 309-311; J. Miller, JBL, LXXVI (1967), 285ff.