the ascent, she cast her thoughts back to the days when Omri, the founder of her dynasty, had trampled down the false usurper Zimri. It is difficult to know whether her words were spoken in stern rebuke or bitter irony, "Had Zimri peace who slew his lord?"1 or "Welcome to Zimri,2 the slayer of his lord." The savage conqueror looked up.3 His words, too, are variously handed down: "Who art thou?"-"Come "down to me;" or "Who is on my side, who?" Two eunuchs here, three there, looked out at his call, and dashed the Queen down from the window. She fell between the palace and the advancing chariot. The blood flew up against the wall and over the horses, as they trampled her down under their hoofs. The conquering procession drove through the gateway, and sate down to a triumphal feast. Not till the feast was over did a spark of feeling rise within the breast of Jehu at the fall of so much grandeur. He bade his servants go out and bury the woman, who, with all her crimes, was yet the daughter of a king. But it was too late. The body had been left on the "mounds,” as they are called in Eastern stories, where the offal is thrown outside the city gates. The wild dogs of Jezreel, prowling then as now around the walls, had done their work; only the harder parts of the human frame remained, -the skull, the hands, and the feet. It is this dreadful scene which is so well caught in Racine's tragedy of "Athalie," where the daughter of Jezebel recounts the dream in which her mother's ghost appeared to her:

1 Or, "Is it peace, O Zimri, slayer of his lord" (Keil, Comment.).

2 So Joseph. Ant. ix. 6, § 4, kúhos δουλός, &c.

3 Joseph. Ibid.

4 Joseph. Ibid. and LXX.
5 2 Kings ix. 33.

6 Ibid. ix. 34.

7 Ibid. 34-37; comp. Pa. cxli 7

Ma mère Jézabel devant moi s'est montrée,

Comme au jour de sa mort, pompeusement parée.
Ses malheurs n'avaient point abattu sa fierté,
Même elle avait encore cet éclat emprunté
Dont elle eut soin de peindre et d'orner son visage,
Pour reparer des ans l'irréparable outrage
Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser,
Et moi je lui tendis les mains pour l'embrasser,
Mais je ne l'ai plus trouvé qu'un horrible mélange
D'os et de chair meurtris et traînés dans la fange,
Des lambeaux pleins de sang et des membres affreux,
Que des chiens dévorans disputaient entr' eux.1

Samaria.

Every stage of Jehu's progress was thenceforth marked with blood, yet still under the same March on overruling self-control. After the fall of Jezreel, he marched on to the capital, Samaria. Of seventy young princes who were awaiting his arrival there he secured the destruction, by a bold challenge which threw the responsibility on the chief minister. Half-way between Jezreel and Samaria was a well-known shearinghouse, or other resort of shepherds; here he executed forty-two members of the royal family of Judah, who had started from Jerusalem, perhaps on the rumor of the revolution at Jezreel. In a well, close by, as at Cawnpore, they were all slaughtered. It was immediately after this that he came across a figure, who might have reminded him of Elijah himself. It was Jehonadab. Jehonadab the son of Rechab,—that is, the son of the "Rider," - an Arab chief of the Kenite tribe, who was the founder or second founder of one of those Nazarite communities which had grown up in the kingdom of Israel, and which in this instance combined a kind of monastic discipline with the manners of the Bedouin race from whom they were descended.* It

1 Act II. Scene 5.

• 2 Kings x. 3.

3 Amos ii. 11.

4 1 Chr. ii. 55; Jer. xxxv. 6, 7.

seems that he and Jehu were already known to each other. The King. was in his chariot; the Arab was on foot. It may be that the house of " the shepherds" 2 (as the place of their meeting was called) was a usual haunt of the pastoral chief. It is not clear which was the first to speak. The Hebrew text implies that the King gave his blessing to Jehonadab. The Septuagint and Josephus imply that Jehonadab blessed the King. The King knew the stern tenacity of purpose that distinguished Jehonadab and his tribe: "Is thy heart right "with my heart, as my heart is with thy heart?" The answer of Jehonadab is slightly varied. In the Hebrew text, he replies vehemently, "It is, it is give me thy "hand." In the Septuagint, he replies simply, "It is," and then Jehu with his wonted caution, rejoins, "If it is, "give me thy hand." The hand, whether of Jehonadab or Jehu, was grasped in a clasp which was not afterwards parted. The King lifted him up to the edge of the chariot, apparently to whisper into his ear the first indication of the religious revolution which he had determined to make with the political revolution already accomplished. Side by side with the King, the austere Hermit sate in the royal chariot as he entered the capital of Samaria," the warrior in his coat of mail, the ascetic "in his hair-cloth." 5

cre at Sa

After the few remaining adherents or members of the The massa- house of Ahab were put to death, it might have maria. seemed that the throne of Jehu was established, and the massacres stayed. Nothing had yet been done beyond what might be necessary for the extinction of the reigning dynasty. The temple of Ashtaroth had

Joseph. Ant. ix. 6, § 6.

3 In Josephus, Jehonadab blesses

2 Beth-eked (translated "the shear- Jehu; see Keil, ad loc. ing-house").

4 Followed by the English Version 5 Dr. Pusey on Amos, p. 176.

been left standing at Jezreel;1 the temple of Baal was still standing in Samaria. To Jehonadab alone had the King whispered his zeal for JEHOVAH. To all the rest of Israel he could say, "Ahab served Baal a little; but "Jehu shall serve him much." A splendid festival was announced in the temple at Samaria; the whole heathen population of Israel was summoned; the sacrifices were ready; the sacred vestments were brought out; all the worshippers of Baal were there; all the servants of Jehovah, as unworthy of the sacred mysteries, were excluded. The King himself was the first to enter, and offer the victims to the heathen gods. There was nothing in that unmoved countenance to betray the secret. Even the King and the Anchorite were able to the last moment to preserve the mask of conformity to the Phoenician worship. They completed their sacrifice, and left the temple. Round about the building were eighty men, consisting of the King's own immediate officers and body-guard. They were intrusted with the double charge, first of preventing the escape of any one, and, secondly, of striking the deadly blow. They entered, and the temple was strewn with corpses, which, as fast as they fell, the guards and the officers threw out with their own hands. At last, when the bloody work was over, they found their way to the inner sanctuary, which towered like a fortress above the rest. There, as

4

we have seen, Baal was seated aloft, with the gods of Phoenicia round him. The wooden images, small and great, were dragged from their thrones and burnt. The pillar or statue of Baal which Joram had removed was also shattered. The temple was razed to the ground,

1 2 Kings xiii. 6.

2 See Herodian, v. 5; Silius Ital. iii. 20-27 (Ewald, iii. 532).

3 2 Kings x. 25 (LXX.).

4 See Lecture XXX.

and its site only known in after-days as the depository of all the filth of the town.1

So ended this great revolution. The national worship of Baal was thus in the northern kingdom forever suppressed. For a short time, through the very circumstances which had destroyed it in Samaria, it shot up afresh in Jerusalem. But in Israel, the whole kingdom and church returned to the condition in which it was before the accession of the house of Omri. The calfworship of Jeroboam was once more revived, and in that imperfect form the True Religion once more became established.

Jehu.

The character of Jehu is not difficult to understand,

if we take it as a whole, and consider the general impression left upon us by the Biblical account. He is exactly one of those men whom we are compelled to recognize, not for what is good or great in themselves, but as instruments for destroying evil and preparing the way for good; such as Augustus. Cæsar at Rome, Sultan Mahmoud II. in Turkey, or one closer at hand in the revolutions of our own time and neighborhood. A destiny, long kept in view by himself or others inscrutable secrecy and reserve in carrying out his plans -a union of cold remorseless tenacity with occasional bursts of furious, wayward, almost fanatical, zeal: this is Jehu, as he is set before us in the historical narrative, the worst type of a son of Jacob,the "supplanter," as he is called,2 without the noble and princely qualities of Israel, the most unlovely and the most coldly commended of all the heroes of his country.3

1 2 Kings x. 27.

3 Except that "all his might" is

2 Ibid x. 19, "in subtilty " (Heb.). applied to him alone of all the Kings

of Israel (2 Kings x. 31).