40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 10:1-27 (Episode 333)

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

Ahab has 70 sons that Jehu is determined to deal with. Jehu proves to be not only a ruthless warrior but a good politician. And the worshipers of Baal gather for a special sacrifice. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

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Chad, last week Jezebel got thrown out a window by some eunuchs. And the dogs were hungry in that day, apparently, and there was not much left of her. And that's sort of where we ended. I mean, Jehu is on a rampage. If you ever wondered what the wrath of God would look like fully flushed out, it seems like you have the cross, which is where the wrath of God ultimately resides, and then you have, if you want to know what you've been spared, you can look at Jehu and be like, this is what you had coming if it wasn't for Jesus.

yeah he uh he's been on quite the the rampage and he and as we'll see uh jumping here into chapter 10 he's not done he's he's got a lot more rampaging to to do before before he's finished but yeah pretty pretty grotesque bloody ending to uh to chapter nine where jezebel gets thrown out the window and then mostly devoured by by the dogs on the street so we're going to transition from that bloody scene to another bloody scene. And this one's going to deal with the 70 sons of Ahab in Samaria, which is how the chapter starts out. Second Kings chapter 10, Ahab had 70 sons in Samaria. These are most likely sons and grandsons. So the Hebrew word ben, which is ordinarily translated as son. It's the same as

bat in Hebrew, which is a word for daughter. It can encompass both son and grandson, just like bat can encompass both daughter and granddaughter. So maybe kings did have multiple wives and concubines and whatnot. So these might actually be 70 sons, but I'm guessing this is probably sons and grandsons. It seems like, if you're wondering how to read this, I always read something like this as you know descendants like this is your fan like whatever his family tree looked like uh coming down from him that's what we're talking about yeah it's basically going to be anybody

who might be put into a position where they can basically reign in place of they have that's that's what's being set up here uh by the way if if that 70 sons rings a bell like if if you're an old testament person which obviously you are because you're listening to our podcast or if you've been a long-time listener you'd be like yeah did somebody else have 70 sons yes they did actually back in the the wonderful uh holy days of the judges there was the guy named gideon who in judges chapter 8 verse 30 we were told had 70 sons and interestingly another tie-in between judges 8 and this those 70 sons with the one exception one guy got away were executed that was back when Abimelech had all these sons of Gideon, after Gideon died, had all these sons

executed so that he could be the king. So, you know, not exact parallel, but somewhat of a parallel here between 70 sons being murdered back then, and all 70 sons, as we'll see in a moment, are going to be beheaded in this case. So Ahab has these 70 sons in Samaria, and now Yehu is going to do something kind of interesting here. He's going to, twice in two different ways, he's going to test the uh the loyalty well first of all he's going to find out if they're if they're on his side the the people that he's about to write a letter to and he does this in a very sneaky sort of way so uh he gets the pen and paper and he sits down and he's going to write a letter to the rulers of samaria and the elders and the guardians of the sons of ahab so these

basically the people in in they're in political control of the city they're the ones who have been making sure that the sons and grandsons, these descendants of Ahab are trained in all the various ways or the guardians, the teachers, whatnot. So to them, Yehu writes these letters. And here's what he says. Now then, as soon as this letter comes to you, seeing your master's sons are with you, and there are with you chariots and horses, fortified cities, also in weapons. So, you know, since you've got Ahab's sons, and since you have all this stuff, select the best and fittest of your master's sons, and set him on his father's throne, and fight for your master's house. Now, if you just read that, not knowing Yehu, not knowing what he's done, and certainly not

knowing what he will do, you might be thinking to yourself, well, this is kind of a strange, why would this guy who just staged a coup, and took out the king, and has been exalted as king himself would be writing letters to these rulers of samaria telling them to put another guy on on the throne well of course that's the whole test right he's uh he's going to see how they react to this will they respond by actually doing that or will they respond by saying no way no there's no way that we would do that because we're on your side yahoo so they get the letter and verse 4 tells us their reaction and we know right away the direction they're going to go it says but they were exceedingly afraid and said behold the two kings could not stand before him

they're talking about yahoo the two kings the king from the north and the king from the south both of whom were assassinated by yahoo those two guys couldn't stand before him how then can we stand so they realized right away the the tone of this letter was such that he wasn't serious he didn't actually want them to do this he was he was testing them to see kind of where where they stood on on him and his uh his newly inaugurated very bloody reign so what happens verse five tells us that that he who was over the palace and he who was over the city together with the elders and the guardians so everybody kind of gets together all these people that were addressed by the initial letter, they get together and they sent a message back to Yehu. And here's what they

said. We are your servants and we will do all that you tell us. We will not make anyone king. So do whatever is good in your eyes. All right. So you're catching the way this is going. So he sends a letter to test them out, see where they're at. They write a letter back because of course they don't want to die they're afraid and so they say listen listen yeah we uh we are definitely with you whatever you want us to do just say it and uh we'll get it done whatever whatever is good in your eyes is going to be good with us as well but i and this is uh this is a smart way to do this that you you're trying to figure out you get a letter you're fairly certain that you're like this is a test, this is a trap, we don't want to do this.

However, we don't want to appear like we're disobedient, like we're not willing to do stuff. And so the response is good, which is, hey, man, whatever you want to do, it's fine with us. Here's the issue. We're not kingmakers. You want to make someone king, that's great. and we'll be totally down for that.

That'll be the king. We'll support it. So that's fine. So anything you want, we'll do, but we don't make kings. You make the king, then we'll serve him or whatever. It's a good move. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's basically throwing the ball back toward him.

You make the decision as to what you want to happen. so uh verse six tells us that he wrote them a second letter so this letter is much more to direct the first one was just kind of okay let's see what these guys say okay well they've they've responded they've said we're we're with you and you tell us what to do so he's tested them once now he's going to test them again he's going to see make sure that they uh they put their money where their mouth is make sure that not only are they just saying we're going to be faithful to He's going to test that fidelity and see if they actually do what he tells them. Now, this is pretty fascinating, too, because this can be this letter.

And we've all received like text or emails or actual letters where we have to do a little bit of interpretation. Be like, you know, what was the tone when this was written? You know, what exactly does this mean? We've all kind of done a little bit of exegesis with regard to correspondence. correspondence that we have received they have to do the same thing except this one is a pretty serious interpretation that they have to make because in the second letter yahoo says this if you are on my side and if you are ready to obey me and by the way just we've mentioned this multiple times but this is a great chance to say it uh in hebrew it's listen to the voice of it's

not obey it's the hebrew idiom here so they're listening to his voice uh just like we listen to the voice of God and his word has its way with us. So this is Yehu saying, if you're listening to my voice, if you're going to let my word have its way with you, then here's what I want you to do. Now, this is the part where we have to interpret. Take the heads of your master's sons and come to me at Jezreel tomorrow at this time. Now, here's where the head part is where you have to do some interpretation because, as in Hebrew, so also in English. You know, I can talk about the head of state, right? I can talk about the head of a company. I can talk about the head of any organization or any group whatsoever. And when I'm talking about the head of an organization or

group, of course, I'm talking about the leadership, right? Now, that's one way you can interpret head, but the other way is you can interpret it quite literally, right? We all have an actual head on our body so what does yahoo mean does it mean to i want you to to assemble the leaders of all of your master's sons and bring them to me at jezreel tomorrow does it mean like actual get these guys together and bring them like we're gonna have a meeting i need you to bring we're gonna have a meeting yeah we're gonna have a little powwow we're gonna sit down and we're gonna talk through things get the five eldest sons of ahab and uh meet me over here i want we're gonna have a little conversation with them yeah yeah there's there's 70 of them so obviously there's going to be a few

that stand out they're the heads or the leaders of this this group so send them as a representative group we'll we'll talk i feel like this is that's one way you can interpret that i feel like this is harder than so you get this text message right uh you're hanging out with the guys and then your wife texts you and says what time will you be home now now how do you interpret that is she just wondering what time you will be home do you respond with a time because this is the question or do you say to the guys i gotta go because what this text actually means is you need to be in the car immediately because it's getting you're a it's saturday morning uh you're uh you're loading up your

your golf clubs in the trunk of the car and your wife says are you going golfing today so is she really asking is she is she seeking information or is is she saying something else like technically you can respond uh to such a text message or the question are you go and give Are you going golfing? You can just give the answer. I'm sure you could be, you know, you could say, well, you just asked what time. I told you what time. But you're supposed to know.

I feel like this is harder than that because I know when I get that text message of, when are you coming home, that means that I need to be coming home right then. The only answer to that text that I need to give is, I'm on my way. I was just leaving. I'll be there in 15 minutes, whatever. uh this is more difficult because if you get this one wrong like you're trying to decide if you're supposed to gather some dudes or if you're supposed to kill some dudes so and you can't just text them back no no clarity this is a little more difficult so uh they decide probably what happens is okay they get this letter they're reading it they're having you

know a little conversation here and they're thinking now what what does he mean and they think well let's just look at what he's done so far let's look at the character and the actions of this person who sent us this letter what has he just done well he just wiped out a whole bunch of people he's there there's blood everywhere that the yahoo goes so i'm thinking he probably means for us to take this quite literally yeah this is whatever the conversation they had that It's the interpretation they came up with. This seems like you deciding, like, I don't know, maybe your wife's phone dies and you decided,

does my wife want to know what time I'm coming home or does she want me to come home right now? Let me look down through the past experiences I have with her. I think she wants me to come home right now. That would be a good exegesis. Yeah. That's a good marital exegesis right there. Yeah.

She's not actually looking for a time. So he's not looking for a time. And Yehu was probably actually looking for literal heads. That's what happens anyway. After they read the letter, it says the king's son, 70 persons, were with the great men of the city. We're bringing them up. We already knew that.

Just kind of bringing us up to speed on that once more. So verse 7 says that as soon as the letter came to them, they took the king's sons and slaughtered them. That is a good translation. He has a lot of different words, not a lot, but a few different words that can indicate the taking the life of someone. Kind of a general term for killing.

There's a very specific word for bloodshed. And there's also a very specific word, shahat, which is best translated as slaughter. And that's what's used here. So they shahat them. This is like a sacrifice term almost, right? Yeah. Slaughtering bulls, goats.

They slaughtered them. That's it. Yeah, 70 persons. And one of the reasons that this verb is used is the way in which these men were killed. So they were all beheaded. Maybe something else was done to them in addition to that. But we're told that after they were shahat, slaughtered, they put their heads in baskets and sent them to him in Jezreel. Now, that's another kind of interesting detail.

When he wrote the letter, he said, I want you to take the heads of your master's sons and come to me at Jezreel tomorrow. These guys are going to play it safe. They're going to chop the heads off these sons, and then they're going to send them to him at Jezreel. So they want to keep a little distance. distance. They're going to do what he said, at least the way they interpreted what he said, but they're going to keep a little distance between themselves and

this evidence of their obedience. So verse 8 says, when the messenger came and told him, that is Yehu, they have brought the heads of the king's sons. Then Yehu says, well, here's what I want you to do with them.

Let's lay them in two heaps at the entrance of the gate until the morning. so i i suppose if you want to send a message that's certainly one way to do that yeah put 35 heads on this side 35 35 heads on on that side it's pretty it's pretty unmissable indication of what's going to happen to you if you decide to go against yahoo yeah that's uh that's pretty good deterrent from doing anything that uh you might not should do i'm also wondering how many guys does

Jehu have that are loyal to him? It takes some doing. So you've got 70 sons. How many guys in there at this place are willing to do the will of Jehu or whatever? We'll do whatever you want. What's he got?

500 guys in there or what? Because it seems like 70 guys to you have to that's a big fight on your hands. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of people to subdue and to force into the posture of execution. Yeah. So anyway, that's that's what happened.

They made these stacks, two heaps on either side of the gate until morning. And then in the morning, Yahoo gets gets up. He goes out and he's going to make a little speech. He says to assist to all the people. Now, this first the first part of the speech is I'm guessing is sarcastic. uh the esv has you are innocent robert alter in his translation uh adds adds a word just to kind of set the tone of this so he adds well something like well you are innocent it's kind of that tone of well aren't aren't you innocent in other words no you're not innocent because look here's these two heaps of all these heads of people that you have just you've just killed so you're not innocent even you are innocent but the tone seems to be indicating you're you're not innocent because

look what you've done. He goes on. It was I who conspired against my master and killed him, but who struck down all of these? So in other words, he's saying there's blood on my hands. I admit that. I struck down the king. I was anointed to do so. I took him out, but look, we're in this together now, right? You're obviously an accomplice to this because you just killed the 70 sons of Ahab. All I said was bring me their heads. Right. I didn't say I did not spell. I didn't say I want you to slaughter the sons of Ahab, cut off their heads and bring them to me. That's the that's the way that you interpreted my words. But I didn't say that explicitly. But you did this. You struck down all these guys. So now, look, we're all in this together. He's a very, very sneaky, coy kind

of politician i mean he's a he's a fierce warrior too but he's also got some political bones in him yeah this is how you uh you bring some people into some uh mutually assured destruction right so like well you're on my side now because if this goes badly we're all in trouble you're not gonna be able to put it on me because i'm gonna be able to say i was just wanting to have a conversation and next thing i know 70 heads and baskets show up so that wasn't me that was you So Yehu is, I mean, he's shedding a lot of blood, so he's obviously capable of that, but he's also capable of some pretty smart maneuvering politically,

which is what he just did here. He goes on now, so he's done the warrior thing, he's done the politician thing, and now he's going to be kind of a preacher, prophet. He's going to say in verse 10, know then that there shall fall to the earth nothing of the word of the Lord. so that's a that's an idiom that we've encountered before back in i believe it was yeah first samuel 319 uses that same same kind of expression so when it says that not a word will fall to the

ground it means that it's all going to be accomplished so nothing's going to be lost in other words you're not going to have some some word from god as it were through the cracks unfulfilled so nothing of all that god has spoken is going to fall to the earth it's all going to be accomplished and then he goes on to talk about this promise that the lord made concerning ahab he says which the lord spoke concerning the house of ahab for the lord has done what he said by his servant elijah so back in first kings i believe it was chapter 19 when god told elijah to do what elijah actually never did and that is to anoint haziel king of syria and then to anoint yahoo as king over the northern kingdom elijah never did that it was up to elijah to take care of that

but the prophecy was made back then and it's been waiting fulfillment all these times until finally now yahoo has actually brought it to brought it to pass god said he would destroy the house of amri slash ahab and that is precisely what has now just happened so verse 11 finishes up this paragraph it says so yahoo struck down all who remained of the house of ahab in jezreel all his great men his close friends his priest until he left none remaining it's a kind of mop mop up operation you know besides these these 70 sons that were in samaria 70 sons grandsons samaria there were other people in jezreel who were maybe they were you know advisors whoever they were they were all super close to ahab he takes out them as well he's you know he's checking every

place to make sure there's no vestige left of anyone who's related to Ahab or was close to him during his lifetime. All right, he's not done. Verse 12 starts another paragraph. He sets out and goes to Samaria, and on the way, when he was at a place called Beth-eked, so the house of of the shepherds, he meets the relatives of Ahaziah, king of Judah. Now, you remember earlier that when Yehu had his first encounter with the king of the north and king of the south, he ended up killing both of them, right? And the king of the south was Ahaziah.

So these are the relatives of the king of Judah, the king of the southern kingdom that Yehu has already killed, except these people don't know that. They have no idea everything that's happened. They didn't get the press release. So they're on their way. And Yehu says to them, who are you?

and they say, well, we're Ahaziah's family. We're his relatives. You know, the king of the south. We're his family. Obviously, these guys have not heard about what happened a little way down the road. Or these are... They're totally in the dark

here. Or they are complete fools. I mean, this is not the guy that you say, oh, me? Oh, I'm the relative of the person that you killed don't do that your answer who are you you say i'm nobody absolutely nobody no but we were just out for a ride just happened to happen to be in this area uh that that's all no but they say we're the relatives of his eye and we came down to visit the royal princes and the sons of

the queen mother so not only are they say we're the relatives of the guy you just killed but we're also we were going to visit the very people that were just beheaded at your you know implicit request yeah yeah who responds take them alive well they take them alive but they didn't stay alive very long and they must have been transported elsewhere they're taken alive but then immediately thereafter we read they took them alive and no surprise here they also shahat them slaughtered them at the pit of beth eked there were 42 of these and he spared none of them no surprise there either so everywhere that he's going he's taking out he's taking out folk i have not been doing the math here but uh you know we've got two kings we got the 70 now we have 42 it's it's

adding up pretty the death toll here is is is out of control and he's not done yet uh but before we Before we get to the next killing, we have a little kind of partnership, you might say, that develops. That's what the next little section is about. And this is actually kind of fascinating, and it ties in, interestingly, with something in Jeremiah. So here's what happened. He goes from there, and along the way, he meets a fellow by the name of Jehonadab, who is the son of Rechab, and he's coming to meet him. all right and i'll explain who he is in just a minute he greets him yeah who greets him and he

says to him is your heart true to mine as mine is to yours seven of these guys they know each other so in other words are you are you with me on this and jehonadab this guy he just met says yep i sure am so he says well if that's the case well then give me your hand let's let's shake hands so he gives gives him his hand they shake hands and then yeah who takes him up in to the chariot with him and says, come with me and see my zeal for the Lord. Well, he's got plenty of that. He's got, you know, he's uber zealous for the Lord. So he brings him in the chariot and says, come along with me. I'm going to show you how zealous I am for Yahweh. So he had him riding his chariot and they go, verse 17, they go all the way to Samaria. And when they get there,

they struck down everybody who was left, everybody who remained to Ahab in Samaria till he had wiped them out, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke to Elijah. So who is this guy? So Jehonadab, this, by the way, is around 830, 840 BC. Just kind of orient yourself time-wise. So Yehu and this guy by the name of Jehonadab, the son of Rechab, they get together, they have this conversation. So this is around 840 BC.

skip forward to around 600 BC. So, I mean, two centuries later in the time of Jeremiah. Jeremiah, of course, lived right before and then during and then right after the time of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 586. So, this is before, in Jeremiah's ministry, before the temple was actually destroyed. So, we'll say around 600.

And we learn there from Jeremiah chapter 35 that these descendants of Jehonadab are still around. And they're a very strict ascetic sect. They're called the Rechabites. So you remember that Jehonadab is the son of Rechab. And so the Rechabites are the descendants of Rechab and his son Jehonadab. And you might have stumbled across this

if you've read Jeremiah before. These people had adopted kind of this very strict ascetic lifestyle. and there's certain things that they wouldn't do so when jeremiah has this conversation with them uh he's saying hey i know that you are very faithful you're very obedient to kind of your your family your clan's history and this lifestyle handed down to you and they say yes we are in fact uh rekob who's kind of the the forefather of our group forbade us from drinking wine he says we're not to build a house or sow seed or plant or own a vineyard instead we're to live in

tents so they they developed this kind of nomadic lifestyle when they refrain from drinking wine they don't do the things that farmers usually do so it's a very odd kind of group within within the jews within the israelites at the time of jeremiah now jeremiah is using them basically and make the point that, listen, these Rechabites are faithful. They're obedient to their forefather. He told them, don't do these things and do this, and that's what they do. But you're not obedient to what God says you are to do. That's the way that's used in Jeremiah chapter 35.

But what I find interesting is that here, in the case of Yehu, we meet basically the founder of that group, or at least his son, Jehonadab. So there's a connection here between what's happening with second kings and then all the way in Jeremiah a couple centuries later. Okay. Maybe this was an impetus for that. Maybe this dude was like, let me show you my zeal for the Lord. And he's like, okay.

They go out, slaughters all these guys, and then this dude was like, tell you what I'm going to do going forward. I'm going to put together my people, and we're never going to be in positions of power. We're just going to live in tents. We're never going to give anyone any reason to get all zealous for the Lord on us. That makes perfect sense to me. Having seen what he just did, and he's actually going to be there, too, at what happens next. So having seen all that, yeah, maybe Jehonadab was like, you know what?

I'm going to make sure that my sons and grandsons and great-grandsons, all these generations to come, I'm going to make sure that they are never in a position where they end up on the wrong end of the sword facing somebody like Yahoo.

Yes. It makes sense. Never drink wine so you're never going to get drunk and maybe do something you shouldn't do. I don't want you

to live in towns. You can live in tents. And I want you to have mobility. I don't want you to be stuck to a vineyard or to a field. You want to be able

to move around. We just want people to we just want people to be able to say hey what's up with those people and the response to be oh don't worry about them they don't they they're just they live in tents and they're not bothering anybody don't worry about them it's the best way to be yeah it'd be it'd be kind of like you know uh no one's no one's going to accuse the amish of like being political enemies of the state right right yeah it's kind of like that you know oh well yeah they're the recubites they're they're the amish you know you don't have to worry about them just have their own kind of

thing that they do. It's kind of out of step with everybody else. So anyway, what's going to happen next? Well, he gets in the chariot, and he's about to have a great sacrifice to Baal. That's what's going to come up here, but this is not going to be the sacrifice that the worshipers of Baal anticipated. So Yehu gathers all the people together. He assembles them, and here's what he says, he's like, Ahab served Baal a little, but Yehu will serve him much. He's going to be this great Baal worshiper, and we'll see how this happens. So he says, so here's what I want you to do. Call to me all the prophets of Baal. I mean, every single one, all his worshipers, all his priests. Let none be missing, because I have a great sacrifice to offer to Baal. In fact, if

you're not there you're gonna die whoever is missing shall not live so we're gonna make sure we have all the priests all the prophets all the worshipers everybody who's officially connected with bail i want to have this great sacrifice and it's so important that if you're not there i'm gonna hunt you down and kill you dude this guy is this guy is out of control with his his rhetoric it's i mean all right here's hey you guys are weak bail worshipers i mean the king before me like his his bail worship was little like my bail worship is going to be something to behold and i want you to behold it at that if you don't behold it i'm gonna kill you Now, I know I'm letting the cat out of the bag here, but it is a wondrous thing to say, you have to come to my thing where I'm going to kill all of you.

And if you don't, I'm going to kill you. So you use the threat of death as a way to gather up all the people who you are certainly going to put to death. And in the whole, I'm going to make a great sacrifice to bail. Come on, man. Yeah, this whole thing is so over the top. It's a complete Yahoo kind of moment. We've met a few of these people who are like, everything is 100%. It doesn't matter what it is.

It's 100%. Well, this guy is 110%. Then we're told as if we needed to be told this, but sometimes the Bible does tell us things that are pretty obvious. Who did it with cunning in order to destroy the worshipers of Baal? Yeah, I would say this is done with cunning deceitfulness. The Hebrew root of this is the same root for Jacob, that deceitful kind of guy. So this is that cunning guy.

So Jacob did this with the character of Jacob, with cunning, in order to destroy the worshipers of Baal. So he ordered that they were to sanctify a solemn assembly for Baal. So that's the proclamation that they made. And this message goes out throughout all Israel. all the worshipers of Baal came so that, we read, there was not a man left who didn't come. And they go into the house of Baal.

The house of Baal is packed. It's filled from one end to the other. You've got all these people there. And not satisfied with having everybody there, Yehoah also said, you know what, find whoever is in charge of the vestry where they keep the sacred

garments. Whoever's in charge of the wardrobe, I want you to find that guy and have him bring out vestments for all the worshipers of Baal. So whatever these vestments were, we don't know. That would be an interesting detail to find out. But they've got these sacred garments that are worn by the worshipers of Baal. And they have, you know, the wardrobe was full. So they're bringing out all these vestments.

And everybody's making sure that they're clothed. Then, of course, the reason for this is to make sure that everybody knows who's who. You've got your team's uniform on here. so this is the the team the bail team they got they have that that particular vestment on so he brings vestments out and then yahoo goes into the house of bail so he's into this this temple with jehonadab the son of rakab the one that we just talked about and he said to the worshipers of bail they should have been suspicious you know you would think by now they would be suspicious but whatever he says he says to them to the bail people search and see

that there is no servant of the Lord here among you, but only the worshipers of Baal. I want to make sure that everybody here, nobody wants to have anything to do with Yahweh. These are all just Baal people. So they go in, they offer sacrifices, burn offerings. So all this is going on inside. Outside, Yehu gathers his soldiers together.

He's got 80 men. And he gathers these guys together. They're away from the worshipers of Baal, so they can't overhear what's happening. And he says to these 80 guys, the man who allows any of those, talking about the people inside, the man who allows any of those

whom I give into your hands to escape shall forfeit his life. You ever feel like, yeah, who is like just issuing death threats left and right here. If you don't come to this worship service, you're going to die. If you let one of these worshipers escape,

you're going to die. Yeah, he really thinks that killing you is a good way to get you to do what he wants you to do. So the threat of him, the threat of losing your life, and use mine, this is the best way

to get someone to do something? Yeah, that's like his number one motivation for getting anything accomplished that he wants to get accomplished. If you don't do this, you're going to die. And nobody has any reason not to believe him, too.

They're like, oh, I think he's serious. Yeah, yeah, who says that? Yeah, he's totally serious. He's not joking. He's not bluffing. so verse 25 as soon as he had made now the he part was this yahoo was this somebody else we're not told this he as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering yahoo said to the

guard and to the officers go in and strike them down let not a man escape of course we saw this coming that's what happened they go in they they they put them all to death with the sword the guard and the officers then take the bodies of these men however many there were cast them out and went into the inner room of the house of baal maybe this is kind of like the equivalent of the holy of holies in the temple in jerusalem so this inner room of the house of baal and inside there was uh a pillar uh we don't know what this was like it's matzevah which is uh the the sometimes translated sacred pillars. These are what were forbidden for the Israelites to have. So maybe a depiction of Baal or something like that. Anyway, they brought out the pillar that was in the house

of Baal and they burned it. And they then demolished this pillar of Baal, demolished the house of Baal. So they do all this. They kill all these people. They destroy the pillar. They destroy the the temple so you got destruction you got bloodshed you got uh this this demolition of this pagan house now if if you wanted to if you're yahoo and you've done all this and you really want i mean you you have accomplished a great deal destructive wise and death wise but if you want to really really put the exclamation on this i mean you just want to make sure that to add uh the ultimate insult to this injury then what are you going to do well here's an idea why don't you take this temple that you have destroyed filled with the blood of

the worshipers you burned a pillar you've done all this stuff and why don't you transform it now into a public restroom. Yes. It says that he made it into a latrine to this day. To this day. You know, if you're worried about people going back to the sacred space and, like, you know, reestablishing some Baal worship,

you don't want, like, secret nighttime Baal worship going on, hey, just make it a bathroom. Yeah. And so here's an interesting little archaeological detail. And for those of you out there who have read Unveiling Mercy, my devotional, I talk about this on August 28th. So in 2016, at Tel Lachish in Israel, archaeologists discovered that there had been some sort of sacred temple or something like that. And inside they found a toilet. Now, this is a different place.

okay this is a different place than what we're talking about here this is samaria this is telekish however same thing so this place uh that was you know formerly used for for bail worship or whatever kind of worship was was going on now is is transformed into a place for using the restroom so that you know probably was in other words not the only time that something like this happened this was you know this is how you really completely insult uh and desecrate this place that was once considered holy by worshipers of pagan gods. Well, you just make sure it's a place where people go to use the restroom. This guy is a different kind of guy.

He's a different breed. Yeah. There is no one among the kings north or south that's quite like Yehu. He is definitely one of a kind. Yeah. And you would think. He has zeal for the Lord, right? Like you said, come and see my zeal for the Lord.

Yeah. It was wild. then we'll get into this next week is you would think this guy has got to be as devoted to Yahweh as anybody ever has been. I mean, look at this guy and we'll find, we'll find out what, what his sort of his reign is like.

And it turns out he's not perfect either. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'll be how we kind of wrap up, wrap up his story. Yeah. You,

you would think everything we've said, I mean, this is the the pinnacle of zeal for yahweh but there's a there is a but there we'll find out exactly how far that zeal extended uh that's right next week all right chad well i will see you then all right see them