the tower observed at a distance the furious approach of Jehu, but did not yet recognise him personally; and by order of Jehoram he sent out a single horseman to meet him, and learn whether he were coming with peaceful or with hostile intent. Jehu threateningly directed him to remain behind, treated a second who followed him in the same way, and continued his course without stopping. The warder reported to the king the third time what was going on, adding this time that judging by the mad driving it must be Jehu. The king, accordingly, having no suspicion of any harm, had his chariot got ready, and, accompanied by Ahaziah, drove out himself to receive him. The two chariots met just by what had formerly been the vineyard of Naboth. After a few words had been exchanged, Jehoram perceived the evil purpose of his general, and turned his chariot and fled, but he was hit in the back by an arrow of Jehu's, and immediately sank down in the car and died. Jehu then reminded his companion how they had once, when riding side by side in Ahab's suite, heard the word of Elijah about Naboth, and how the threat then uttered was now being fulfilled; and bid him throw the body upon this very field. Ahaziah fled in the same chariot, and in the hope of more easily escaping, took the side road westwards to Megiddo. In the meantime, however, Jehu's train was swollen with a crowd of persons who rejoiced in the fall of the house of Ahab; he bid them not even spare its kinsmen in Judah; and so Ahaziah was wounded behind the pavilion on the hill Gur before the town of Ibleam.' He succeeded, however, in reaching Megiddo, but there he died; and his body was subsequently carried back to Jerusalem by his servants to be interred in the royal sepulchre. Jehu himself hastened with the same fury on to Jezreel, and was admitted into the city. The aged Jezebel thought she had to deal with another Zimri,3 and so before he could reach the palace she adorned herself with all her seductive charms, then placed herself at the window, and addressed the frenzied Jehu on his entrance, as if it would not come amiss to her to share with him the palace and its glories. He, however, shouted out with his voice of thunder that whoever was on his side two or three eunuchs at once The error was occasioned by uniting viii. 28 sq. too closely with the preceding verses, while it really begins an entirely new narrative.

2

If Megiddo is the same as the present Legio (Lejjûn) as Robinson assumes with much probability, the situation of Ibleam, about which he is entirely silent, is deter

should appear at the window : presented themselves; he called mined from the passage under consideration. Further, in ix. 27, 1" has fallen

מרכבה after והוא and הכהו out after

2 The account in 2 Chron. xxii. 8 sq. differs in some details, but is not to be preferred to the older narrative.

3 P. 36.

to them to throw down Jezebel, and forthwith he was able to tread under his own feet her bloody corpse. Some time later, however, after he had banqueted in the palace, he gave orders that she should be buried as a king's daughter; but only a few remains were then to be found of her body, and the threat of Elijah that the dogs should tear her corpse upon the field of Jezreel seemed to be terribly fulfilled.

In accordance with the example of the previous founders of new dynasties in this kingdom, Jehu's next step was to destroy all the numerous members of the house of Ahab. The younger ones, the sons of Jehoram, and perhaps of some of his kinsmen, about seventy in all, were living in Samaria under the care of influential persons who were charged with their education. Jehu, accordingly, wrote to the chief officers of the kingdom, the elders of the city and the governors of the princes, with the mocking exhortation to them to set up one of them as king and fight for him, since they had plenty of chariots and horses, a fortified city, and a well-provided arsenal at command. In dread of the conqueror of two kings and aware that the army was on his side, they declared their submission, upon which he immediately demanded the heads of the seventy princes. They were sent to him to Jezreel, and publicly exposed in two rows, when he addressed the people who crowded to gaze at them in words which doubtless expressed his own deep emotion in such a moment: 'now was all guilt against God taken off their heads, for the really guilty had paid the penalty in a marvellous way, with the exception of the king, not by his own, but by others' hands: thus was the ruin of the house of Ahab, predicted in days past by Elijah, divinely fulfilled.' Encouraged by the success of all his undertakings so far, he now put to death all the confidential friends and priests of Jehoram, as well as the kindred of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and set off for the same purpose to Samaria. On the way, however, at Betheked,3 he came across forty-two of Ahaziah's relatives, who had The use of the word ph for field, as well as generally for the land of a city, 2 Kings ix. 10, 36 sq., is rare, and probably peculiar to the northern provinces;

but it makes it all the more certain that we

have here a genuine utterance of Elijah; and, which stands for it in 1 Kings xxi. 23, although it was the reading of the LXX, can only have arisen from it by an error, for it is difficult to assume that it was abbreviated from it by derivation and is equivalent to it.

2 In 2 Kings x. 1, should be

.5 .cf. ver ; יזרעאל read for

How the

number reached seventy, is explained in my Alterthümer, p. 284 sqq.

spelt it, was still known in this district A place named Baibakád, as the LXX sent village of Beitkad, which Robinson by the Fathers; it might suggest the pre(Bib. Res. ii. p. 316, ed. 1856) places in the district between Jezreel and Samaria, though he only doubtfully fixes its locality on the map; in this situation it would have been too far to the east to be on the direct road.

probably been sent off by Athaliah from Jerusalem, on the first report of the great disturbances in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, to render any assistance they could to the house of Ahab in its troubles. Jehu had them all killed, and thrown into the village well. He next lighted on Jonadab,1 addressed him with a friendly salutation, and as they quickly came to an understanding in their mutual zeal against Baal-worship, he took him with him in his chariot.

In Samaria itself he acted at first as if he intended to exterminate only those nearly connected with the house of Ahab, After he had succeeded in this, he proclaimed a great festival of Baal, at which all the prophets, priests, and worshippers of Baal were to be present; and certainly it might be presumed that the new king, after extirpating the preceding dynasty, intended to follow its example of devotion to the pleasures of the religion of Baal. An enormous crowd, accordingly, assembled on the appointed day in the spacious halls of the temple of Baal. Jehu, accompanied by Jonadab, took care that the festival should be celebrated with all the splendour which would only be lavished by any potentate upon mysteries into which he desired to be initiated. He gave orders that robes 2 suitable for the solemnity should be distributed to all who were not already provided. When the moment drew near for the celebration of the mysteries, he cried aloud, in accordance with heathen usage, with the utmost earnestness, that all worshippers of Jahveh should be cast out.3 He even went so far as to sacrifice with his own hand, as though he were the most zealous of Baal's adorers. But, at a given signal, eighty of the bravest soldiers burst in, cut everyone down, and cast out the corpses without burial. They then made their way into the inner sanctuary, the enclosure of which rose like a lofty fortress, where Baal was enthroned, surrounded by the images of his fellow-gods. These

1 P. 79.

2 It was probably the well-known sacred robe of the Phoenicians, described in Herodian, v. 5, ad fin., and Silius Ital. iii. 2427; cf. also W. Hupfeld's Res Lydiorum, i. p. 58 sq., Chwolson's Ssabier, ii. p. 712 sq., and similar occurrences in mysteries at the present day in Africa, see Ausland, 1851, p. 248.

4

of Holies; this expression was certainly, it is true, only used of the temple of Baal; the possibility of it, however, becomes intelligible when it is remembered (1) that

originally means 'fortress,' see notes on Micah v. 10, Jer. xlviii. 8, and the

remark ii. p. 382; and (2) that the image of the heathen god often stood in a lofty and dark enclosure within the temple resembling a fortress. The expression y

3 It is well known how much importance was attached in the heathen mysteries to the procul profani! cf. the practice in golden crown, Mishna Sabbath, the Tyrian temple of Hercules at Gades, the gods allied with Baal was also prov. 1, is also noteworthy.-The worship of vided for in the temple of Baal at Jerusalem, 2 Kings xi. 18,

Sil. Ital. iii. 21 sqq.

It is plain that y, 2 Kings x. 25, must mean much the same as the Holy

were all burned; the great stone statue of Baal, which originally stood in front of the temple, was shattered; the whole temple was razed to the ground, and its site defiled for ever. Nor did the lingering remains of Baal-worship which might be discovered in other parts of the realm escape the search or the severity of the new monarch.

We have no longer, unfortunately, any details of Elisha's meeting with the new king, or of what he said to him. But his wishes were essentially carried out and we always find him occupying a high position in the regard of the new dynasty.

On the kingdom of Judah the murder of its king and the greater number of the grown-up members of its royal house immediately entailed further lamentable consequences. Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab,' mother of the murdered king, followed up the death of her son by destroying all the rest of the males belonging to the royal family; and it was only with difficulty that a single son of the late king, not yet a year old, was saved. The motive of this frantic deed is no doubt to be looked for, partly in internal dissensions, of which we have no longer any information, though the nature of them may be conjectured from Athaliah's decided inclinations towards heathenism, but chiefly in the great power enjoyed by a queenmother, which Athaliah was afraid of losing if the murdered sovereign should be succeeded by a more distant relative; for she had herself no other son.3 Such a deed, however, could only have been conceived and executed in the midst of the convulsions into which Jehu had precipitated both kingdoms.

IV. HIGHER CONCEPTION OF ELIJAH.

Once more, then, the kingdom of the Ten Tribes had been the scene of a most energetic revolt on the part of the spirit of the ancient religion against the intrusion of a foreign heathen cultus; and the object which Elijah had not completely succeeded in achieving, was accomplished now. By one of the most violent of revolutions, the state was once more set free from the serious errors and perplexities into which it had been plunged; it was once more driven back to its condition at its foundation, so far indeed as any kingdom can be put back to its own origin. And in Jehu, whose warlike arm was alone capable of becoming the instrument of such a revolution, one of the Judges seemed to have come again; just so unexpected was his appearance, just so irresistible the might with which, like a

1 P. 95.

2 Vol. iii. p. 272.

P. 94 sq.

giant, he struggled for the cause of Jahveh. This great difference, however, characterised the two situations; he had not to contend like the ancient heroes against external enemies of the sacred cause, but against its far more dangerous internal foes. The crimes by which this revolution gained a shameful distinction, could have been with difficulty avoided, partly because of the nature of the ancient state-religion (as it has been already described),' partly on account of the deeper roots which heathenism and the rule of the house of Omri had at that time struck in both kingdoms; moreover, in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, such outrages were no novelty. Hence nothing can be more incorrect than the assertion that Elisha, when he had Jehu anointed, did not foresee or consent to the sacrifice of so many lives; he could not have looked into the future with so little discernment, although he certainly had not (like a Roman proscriptor) designated beforehand any individuals as victims. Nor is it in the least probable that Elisha condemned the outrages after their perpetration. But the less patent evils which are involved in every violent revolution, and were especially connected with the atrocities of this one, appeared in the course of this history with constantly increasing force, and made their true nature more and more deeply felt.

2

1. With the progress of time the conception of a phenomenon so extraordinary as Elijah's career on the one hand acquired greater clearness, and on the other, gradually increased in strength and assumed more gigantie proportions; and there were two leading truths which were firmly established in it. In the first place, it was not till then that it became really clear that it was Elijah alone who impressed upon the whole of the great movement and revolution which it was left for his successors to complete, its inward impulse and its higher necessity; and hence it might easily appear that he himself with his powerful spirit had achieved the greatest of those results which historical accuracy assigns to his successors. Important kingdoms, Israel and Damascus, were in this period overturned and erected; the destinies of Israel were completely in the hands of the prophets of Elijah's school, and

1 Vol. iii. p. 288 sq.

The two things are very closely connected. First of all, the recollection of a great career already past must acquire general clearness, and learn to perceive in corresponding representations the reality of its marvellous greatness. If, in the next place, the object, so far as it presents itself to the mind in all its greatness,

really is unusually great, it goes on growing, with the active development of the representation, into gigantic proportions, so as to arrive at the highest possible expression of which it is capable. The records of Christ in the New Testament simply reproduce in the loftiest form this characteristic (among numerous others) of the career of Elijah.