The Pitiless Zeal of the Lord
Introduction: When Judgment Comes Calling
We live in a sentimental age, an age that has forgotten what holiness is, and consequently, has forgotten what evil is. We have convinced ourselves that God, if He exists at all, is a kindly old grandfather, a celestial therapist whose chief aim is to affirm our choices and validate our feelings. We have traded the consuming fire of Sinai for a scented candle. And because we have done this, a passage like the one before us today is profoundly offensive. It strikes our modern sensibilities like a slap in the face.
Jehu, the divinely appointed instrument of God's wrath, is on a bloody rampage. He has already executed Joram, king of Israel, and Ahaziah, king of Judah. He has engineered the death of the wicked queen Jezebel, whose blood was licked by dogs just as the prophet Elijah had foretold. He has overseen the execution of Ahab's seventy sons in Samaria. And now, on his way to consolidate his power, he encounters a traveling party of royal cousins from the south. What happens next is stark, brutal, and to our therapeutic culture, utterly incomprehensible. But it is the Word of God, and therefore it is not only true, but it is good. It is a necessary lesson in the nature of covenantal judgment and the terrifying reality of corporate guilt.
We must understand that God's judgments are not random acts of divine temper. They are the meticulous, long-delayed payment of a debt. The house of Ahab, which had infected both Israel and Judah with its Baal-worship, was a cancerous tumor on the body politic of God's people. God, the divine surgeon, had declared that it must be cut out, root and branch. This was not a suggestion; it was a verdict. Jehu was the scalpel. What we are reading here is not a story about Jehu's personal cruelty, though his zeal was certainly a blunt instrument. It is a story about the inexorable justice of a holy God against a house that had set itself up in defiant rebellion against Him. The relatives of Ahaziah were not innocent bystanders; they were twigs on a poisoned branch, and the whole tree was coming down.
This is a hard lesson, but a necessary one. If we do not understand the severity of God, we cannot possibly understand the riches of His grace. If we do not see what our sin deserves, we will never be truly astonished by the mercy we have received in Christ. This passage forces us to confront the reality that sin has consequences that ripple outward, that covenantal associations matter, and that when God's patience finally runs out, His judgment is terrifyingly thorough.
The Text
Then he arose and came out and went to Samaria. On the way, while he was at Beth-eked of the shepherds, Jehu found the relatives of Ahaziah king of Judah and said, “Who are you?” And they said, “We are the relatives of Ahaziah; and we have come down to greet the sons of the king and the sons of the queen mother.” Then he said, “Take them alive.” So they took them alive and slaughtered them at the pit of Beth-eked, forty-two men; and he left none of them.
(2 Kings 10:12-14 LSB)
An Ill-Timed Family Reunion (v. 12-13)
We begin with the scene of the encounter.
"Then he arose and came out and went to Samaria. On the way, while he was at Beth-eked of the shepherds, Jehu found the relatives of Ahaziah king of Judah and said, 'Who are you?' And they said, 'We are the relatives of Ahaziah; and we have come down to greet the sons of the king and the sons of the queen mother.'" (2 Kings 10:12-13)
Jehu is on the move. Having secured Jezreel, he is now heading to Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, to finish the job God gave him. His purpose is to eradicate the house of Ahab completely. The location is "Beth-eked of the shepherds," which means "the shearing house of the shepherds." It is a place where sheep are gathered to be shorn. The bitter irony of what is about to happen in this place should not be lost on us. A different kind of shearing is about to take place.
He encounters a group of men, and with his typical bluntness, asks, "Who are you?" Their answer seals their fate. "We are the relatives of Ahaziah." Ahaziah, the king of Judah, was the grandson of Ahab and Jezebel through their wicked daughter Athaliah. He had already been killed by Jehu's men (2 Kings 9:27). These forty-two men are his kinsmen, princes of the southern kingdom, now caught in the northern purge. They are part of the extended cancerous growth that God had marked for excision.
Their stated purpose is tragically naive. They have come "to greet the sons of the king and the sons of the queen mother." They are on a social call, a courtesy visit to their royal cousins in Israel. They are completely oblivious to the fact that the political landscape has been violently redrawn in the last few hours. They are heading to a party that has already been broken up by the wrath of God. The "sons of the king" they intended to greet, all seventy of them, were already dead, their heads in baskets on their way to Jehu in Jezreel (2 Kings 10:7). The "queen mother," Jezebel, was now dog food. These men are walking into the epicenter of a divine judgment, cheerfully ignorant of the sentence that has been passed on the whole corrupt dynasty.
This is a sobering picture of the world's blindness. Men go about their business, making their plans, arranging their social visits, utterly unaware that they are on a collision course with the judgment of God. They are associated with a rebellious house, and they think the party will go on forever. But the God who is not mocked has already issued the decree, and the executioner is on the road.
The Shearing at the Pit (v. 14)
Jehu's response is swift and without sentiment.
"Then he said, 'Take them alive.' So they took them alive and slaughtered them at the pit of Beth-eked, forty-two men; and he left none of them." (2 Kings 10:14 LSB)
There is no debate, no trial, no negotiation. Jehu's commission from God was to "strike the house of Ahab your master" and to "destroy all the house of Ahab" (2 Kings 9:7-8). These men, by their own admission, are part of that house. They are relatives of Ahaziah, whose mother was Ahab's daughter. The blood of Ahab ran in their veins, but more importantly, the rebellion of Ahab was the defining feature of their entire clan. They were part of a covenant-breaking dynasty, and the judgment on that dynasty was corporate.
The order to "take them alive" might seem merciful at first, but it is merely practical. It is so the execution can be done in an orderly fashion. They are taken to the "pit of Beth-eked," likely a cistern or a well. Here, at the shearing-house, these royal lambs are brought to the slaughter. Forty-two men are executed. The number is precise. The judgment is thorough. "He left none of them."
This is what the Bible calls the outworking of God's holy jealousy. This is not the petty jealousy of a jilted lover. This is the righteous, covenantal zeal of a husband whose bride has played the harlot with other gods. Ahab and Jezebel had led Israel and Judah into the rank idolatry of Baal worship. They had murdered God's prophets. They had stolen from the innocent, as in the case of Naboth's vineyard. The bill for all this wickedness had now come due. These forty-two men were part of the payment.
We recoil from this because we have an individualistic view of guilt. We think, "What did these specific forty-two men do?" The Bible operates with a much more robust, and frankly more realistic, understanding of corporate solidarity. We are not isolated individuals. We are bound up in families, in covenants, in nations. The sin of a king brings judgment on his people. The sin of a father brings consequences upon his children. This is a principle that runs from Adam to the final judgment. To be "in Adam" is to share in his guilt and condemnation. To be "in Ahab" was to be marked for destruction. This is a terrible reality, but it is the same principle that makes our salvation possible. We are saved because we are corporately "in Christ," and His righteousness is imputed to us. You cannot have the sweetness of federal headship in Christ without accepting the grim reality of federal headship in Adam, and by extension, in Ahab.
Conclusion: Zeal, Judgment, and the Gospel
So what are we to do with a passage like this? First, we must see it as a clear revelation of God's hatred for sin, particularly the sin of idolatry and covenant-breaking. God is not tolerant of rivals. He will not share His glory with another. The syncretism that the house of Ahab championed, trying to blend the worship of Yahweh with the worship of Baal, is an abomination to Him. Our modern world is drowning in this kind of syncretism, attempting to blend Christianity with secular humanism, with Marxism, with sexual libertinism. This passage is a stark warning that such mixtures will inevitably call down the judgment of God.
Second, we see the nature of divine judgment. It is often slow in coming, but when it arrives, it is thorough and inescapable. For generations, the house of Ahab had prospered in its wickedness. They must have thought they had gotten away with it. But God's accounting is perfect. Not one of the forty-two men escaped. There is no corner of the universe where a man can hide from the justice of God. The only place of refuge is the one place where that justice has already been fully satisfied, and that is the cross of Jesus Christ.
And that is the final and most important point. This brutal scene at the pit of Beth-eked should drive us to the gospel with fear and gratitude. We are all, by nature, relatives of a fallen king. We are all "in Adam." We are all part of a rebellious house, cheerfully on our way to a party that is doomed. We are all under a sentence of death. The pit is waiting for us.
But God, in His mercy, has provided an escape. He sent His own Son, who was not part of any rebellious house, to be slaughtered at a different pit, outside the city walls of Jerusalem. On the cross, Jesus Christ took upon Himself the full, corporate judgment that was due to us. He was cut off so that we, the guilty relatives of a condemned race, could be grafted into His righteous family. Jehu's zeal was a faint and bloody shadow of the divine zeal that burned in the heart of Christ as He set His face toward Jerusalem. He went to the cross to absorb the wrath of God, so that all who are found "in Him" by faith are spared from the pit.
Therefore, do not read this passage and simply cluck your tongue at the barbarity of the Old Testament. Read it and tremble at the justice of God. Read it and marvel at your own guilt. And then, read it and flee to the only one who can deliver you from the wrath to come. Jehu left none of them. But God, at the cross, leaves none of those who are in Christ to perish. He takes them alive, and He gives them life forevermore.