Commentaria in IV Regum
Chapter 9. Synopsis of the Chapter
Eliseus sends one of his disciples to anoint Jehu king of Israel, to destroy the house of Achab; he anoints Jehu; and the princes, understanding this of Jehu, make him king. Jehu, therefore, made king, goes to Jezrahel, and there slays Joram king of Israel and Ochozias king of Juda, and orders Jezabel to be thrown down from the house, whom the dogs then devour according to the oracle of Elias.
1. And Eliseus the prophet called one of the sons of the prophets, and said to him: Gird up thy loins, and take this little bottle of oil in thy hand, and go to Ramoth Galaad. 2. And when thou art come thither, thou shalt see Jehu the son of Josaphat the son of Namsi: and going in, thou shalt make him rise up from among his brethren, and carry him into an inner chamber. 3. Then taking the little bottle of oil, thou shalt pour it on his head, and shalt say: Thus saith the Lord: I have anointed thee king over Israel. And thou shalt open the door, and flee, and not stay there. 4. So the young man, the servant of the prophet, went away to Ramoth Galaad, 5. And went in thither: and behold the captains of the army were sitting, and he said: I have a word to thee, O prince. And Jehu said: Unto which of us all? And he said: To thee, O prince. 6. And he arose and went into the chamber: and he poured the oil upon his head, and said: Thus saith the Lord the God of Israel: I have anointed thee king over the people of the Lord in Israel, 7. And thou shalt cut off the house of Achab thy master, and I will revenge the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord, at the hand of Jezabel. 8. And I will destroy all the house of Achab: and I will cut off from Achab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up, and the meanest in Israel. 9. And I will make the house of Achab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nabat, and like the house of Baasa the son of Ahias. 10. And the dogs shall eat Jezabel in the field of Jezrahel, and there shall be none to bury her. And he opened the door and fled. 11. Then Jehu came forth to the servants of his lord: and they said to him: Are all things well? why came this madman to thee? And he said to them: You know the man, and what he said. 12. But they answered: It is false, but rather do you tell us. And he said to them: Thus and thus did he speak to me, and he said: Thus saith the Lord: I have anointed thee king over Israel. 13. Then they made haste, and taking every man his garment, laid it under his feet, after the manner of a judgment-seat, and they sounded the trumpet, and said: Jehu is king. 14. So Jehu the son of Josaphat the son of Namsi conspired against Joram: now Joram had besieged Ramoth Galaad, he and all Israel, against Hazael king of Syria: 15. And he was returned to be healed in Jezrahel of his wounds, because the Syrians had wounded him when he fought against Hazael king of Syria. And Jehu said: If it please you, let no man go forth out of the city, lest he go and tell it in Jezrahel. 16. And he got up and went to Jezrahel: for Joram was sick there: and Ochozias king of Juda was come down to visit Joram. 17. The watchman, therefore, that stood upon the tower of Jezrahel, saw the troop of Jehu coming, and said: I see a troop. And Joram said: Take a chariot, and send to meet them, and let him that goeth say: Is all well? 18. So there went one in a chariot to meet him, and said: Thus saith the king: Is all peaceable? And Jehu said: What hast thou to do with peace? pass, and follow me. And the watchman told, saying: The messenger came to them, but he returneth not. 19. And he sent a second chariot of horses: and he came to them, and said: Thus saith the king: Is there peace? And Jehu said: What hast thou to do with peace? pass, and follow me. 20. And the watchman told, saying: He came even to them, but returneth not: and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Namsi, for he driveth furiously. 21. And Joram said: Make ready the chariot. And they made ready his chariot; and Joram king of Israel, and Ochozias king of Juda, went out, each in his chariot, and they went out to meet Jehu, and met him in the field of Naboth the Jezrahelite. 22. And when Joram saw Jehu, he said: Is there peace, Jehu? And he answered: What peace? as long as the fornications of Jezabel thy mother, and her many sorceries, are in vigour. 23. And Joram turned his hand, and fleeing, said to Ochozias: There is treachery, Ochozias. 24. But Jehu bent his bow with his hand, and shot Joram between the shoulders; and the arrow went out through his heart, and immediately he fell in his chariot. 25. And Jehu said to Badacer his captain: Take him, and cast him into the field of Naboth the Jezrahelite: for I remember when I and thou, sitting in a chariot, followed Achab the father of this man, that the Lord laid this burden upon him, saying: 26. If I do not requite thee in this field, saith the Lord, for the blood of Naboth, and for the blood of his children, which I saw yesterday, saith the Lord. Now therefore take him, and cast him into the field, according to the word of the Lord. 27. But Ochozias king of Juda, seeing this, fled by the way of the garden house: and Jehu pursued him, and said: Strike him also in his chariot: and they struck him in the going up to Gaver, which is by Jeblaam: and he fled into Mageddo, and died there. 28. And his servants laid him upon his chariot, and carried him to Jerusalem: and they buried him in his sepulchre with his fathers in the city of David. 29. In the eleventh year of Joram the son of Achab, Ochozias began to reign over Juda. 30. And Jehu came to Jezrahel. And Jezabel hearing of his coming in, painted her eyes with stibic stone, and adorned her head, and looked out at a window 31. At Jehu coming in at the gate, and said: Can there be peace for Zambri, that hath killed his master? 32. And Jehu lifted up his face to the window, and said: Who is this? and two or three eunuchs bowed down to him. 33. And he said to them: Throw her down headlong; and they threw her down, and the wall was sprinkled with her blood, and the hoofs of the horses trod upon her. 34. And when he was come in to eat and drink, he said: Go and see after that cursed woman, and bury her: because she is a king’s daughter. 35. And when they went to bury her, they found nothing but the skull, and the feet, and the extremities of her hands. 36. And coming back they told him. And Jehu said: It is the word of the Lord, which he spoke by his servant Elias the Thesbite, saying: In the field of Jezrahel the dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezabel, 37. And the flesh of Jezabel shall be as dung upon the face of the earth in the field of Jezrahel, so that they who pass by shall say: Is this that Jezabel?
1. GO TO RAMOTH GALAAD.—For that city, after the wound of King Joram who was besieging it, had been taken, either wholly or in part, say Abulensis, Sanchez and Serarius, and this is plain from verse 15.
2. THOU SHALT MAKE HIM RISE UP FROM AMONG HIS BRETHREN,—that is, as Vatablus has it, bid him rise from the midst of his brethren, that is, of his fellow-princes; for those who are here called brethren are shortly after called princes.
AND CARRY HIM INTO AN INNER CHAMBER,—that thou anoint him king in secret: lest, if thou do it publicly, sedition be stirred up by the followers and partisans of King Joram, and therefore when thou hast anointed him in secret, immediately “flee, and stay not there.”
6. I HAVE ANOINTED THEE.—This seems to have been the second anointing of Jehu: for the first seems to have been done by Elias; for God had commanded him, 3 Kings xix, 15, and therefore had bidden him go to Damascus, to anoint Hazael king of Syria, and then to Samaria, to anoint Jehu king of Israel: but that first anointing of Elias was previous and a foreshadowing of the kingdom; this second made by Eliseus was the conferring of the kingdom, and his creation as king. So Cajetan, Scholastic History, Sanchez and others.
11. WHY CAME THIS MADMAN TO THEE?—See here how idolatrous princes and military men laugh at the prophet, and call him “mad” and a fanatic. For the austere life of the prophets, their rough dress, their prophetic speech seemed to them to be madness, and the prophets seemed to them to be raving; for they were as it were out of their mind, and breathed upon by the spirit of a higher divinity. Whence Plato in the Phaedo: “Some,” he says, “by divine favour are mad, as the prophets and Sibyls,” and Cicero, book II On Divination: “What authority has that frenzy which you call divine, that he who is not wise in what he sees sees what is hidden, and he who has lost human senses has attained divine ones, and to prophesy is the same as to rave?” “But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God,” 1 Corinthians ii and iii. The same, and more, the prophets of the devil did, who uttered wild gestures and seemed to rave: whence of the Sibyl consulted by Aeneas Virgil thus sings, book VI of the Aeneid:
Her face changed not, nor her colour one, nor did her hair remain in order: but her breast heaves, and her wild heart swells with rage, and she seems greater, nor sounds like a mortal, when she is breathed upon by the god now nearer.
YOU KNOW THE MAN, AND WHAT HE SAID,—as if to say: you know that he is mad, and therefore spoke madly, and therefore is not to be believed, nor is it to be told. This Jehu says, lest, if he should say that he had really been anointed king by him, he create danger for himself: lest, namely, someone, either fighting for Joram, or envying Jehu the kingdom, should attack and kill him. “But when they asked,” adds Josephus, “for what reason the young man had come, and said that he seemed mad: You guess rightly, he said, for he spoke the words of a madman. But when they asked still more that it be explained to them what it was, he told them that the kingdom of the people had been conferred on him by God.”
12. BUT THEY SAID: IT IS FALSE, BUT RATHER DO YOU TELL US,—as if to say: the prophet spoke not madly, but seriously and of great moment, and we utterly desire that you relate it to us. Whence the Chaldee translates, Thou sayest falsely, tell us now. They suspected, by God’s instinct, what the fact was, namely that Jehu had received from the prophet an oracle of the kingdom, and they strive to extort it from him, whence follows:
13. THEN THEY MADE HASTE, AND TAKING EVERY MAN HIS GARMENT (outer garment), LAID IT UNDER HIS FEET, AFTER THE MANNER OF A JUDGMENT-SEAT.—The Septuagint, upon the ascent of the steps; Vatablus, on the top of the steps, that is, on the highest step, namely the highest and most eminent place, as if to say: in a lofty place with their garments they raised for him as it were a royal throne, that he might sit upon it as king: for by this rite they made him king. Namely, at the voice of the prophet, which the princes had heard from Jehu, these and the soldiers, divinely roused, made haste and carried it out, and so with hurried labour built up some steps, which they covered with their cloaks as with tapestries, and placed Jehu at the top of them, and acclaimed him: “Jehu is king,” as if to say, Jehu is our king, let him live therefore and reign prosperously for many years. So Plutarch writes of Cato of Utica in his Life, that garments were spread by the soldiers over the places which he was about to tread: which kind of honour he says was wont to be paid to emperors. And in certain rites of their gods, when they were conveyed in festal procession, garments were wont to be spread, writes the same Plutarch in Alcibiades.
The same of the rites of Juno is related by Athenaeus, book XII, chapter ix. So also for Christ, as Messias the king, entering Jerusalem in solemn procession on Palm Sunday, the crowd strewed the way with palms and garments, Matthew xxi.
18. WHAT HAST THOU TO DO WITH PEACE,—as if to say: I bring not peace but war; for I have conspired against your king Joram, to kill him and seize his kingdom.
21. AND JORAM KING OF ISRAEL, AND OCHOZIAS KING OF JUDA WENT OUT, etc., TO MEET JEHU; AND MET HIM IN THE FIELD OF NABOTH THE JEZRAHELITE.—Just and fitting was this judgment of God, who gathered them into the field of Naboth to be slain in it, in which Achab their father had despoiled Naboth of his vineyard and killed him, as He had Himself foretold to him by Elias, 3 Kings xxi, 23.
22. AS LONG AS THE FORNICATIONS OF JEZABEL THY MOTHER, AND HER MANY SORCERIES, ARE IN VIGOUR,—namely the idolatry and magic of Jezabel; for idolatry is mystical fornication, in which a man, forsaking God his spouse, cleaves to idols as to adulterers. The same is magic, because the priests of idols are magicians; for they consult the demon, and receive oracles from him. Jehu says this, as if to say: I come on the part of God the judge, to punish thy idolatry and magic, and that of thy mother Jezabel.
25. THAT THE LORD LAID THIS BURDEN UPON HIM.—A “burden” is the name for a threatening and weighty prophecy, by which God had foretold through Elias that the descendants of Achab would be slain for his crimes, 3 Kings xxi, 23.
27. STRIKE HIM ALSO,—for the extermination of the house of Achab foretold and decreed by God. For Ochozias king of Juda was, on his mother Athalia’s side, a grandson of Achab, and imitated his crimes and idolatry.
Thou wilt say, 2 Paralipomenon xxii, 9, Ochozias is said to have fled and hidden in Samaria? I answer, this time he fled and hid in Samaria, but, as is added in the same place, being afterwards caught in Samaria, he was brought to Jehu at Gaber, and there, struck, he fled to Mageddo, and died there. So Lyra.
29. IN THE ELEVENTH YEAR OF JORAM THE SON OF ACHAB KING OF ISRAEL, OCHOZIAS BEGAN TO REIGN OVER JUDA.—“Reigned,” that is, began to reign, and scarcely reigned one year; for in the twelfth year, together with Joram, he was slain by Jehu.
30. AND JEZABEL HEARING OF HIS COMING IN (Jehu the regicide), PAINTED HER EYES WITH STIBIC STONE,—not to attract Jehu to love of her; for she was an old woman and knew Jehu to be the sworn enemy of her house, but to show boldness, as one who neither feared nor cared for Jehu; whence she rebuked him and called him the murderer of her lord (King Joram), to strike him: for she thought that Jehu, as against a woman and a queen, would not dare to lay hands on her, nor stain himself with her blood. But if he did dare, she wished to die bravely and nobly, as if despising death. This is the vanity of the world and of worldlings, as the vanity of women is stibic stone and purple, which therefore Magdalen despised when she repented; for as St. Jerome says, in his epistle to Furia: “She had not curling pins, nor creaking shoes, nor eyes tinted with stibium.” Whence St. Cyprian, in the treatise On Works and Almsgiving: “Anoint thy eyes,” he says, “not with the devil’s stibium, but with the eye-salve of Christ.”
31. CAN THERE BE PEACE FOR ZAMBRI, THAT HATH KILLED HIS MASTER?—as if she said, What peace and fellowship can there be with Jehu, who is like another tyrant Zambri. For as Zambri killed Ela his king, 3 Kings xvi, 10, and seized his kingdom, so Jehu killed Joram his king, and seized his kingdom.
37. AND THE FLESH OF JEZABEL SHALL BE AS DUNG.—He alludes to the etymology of the name Jezabel. For Jezabel is the same as ei zebel, that is, where is the dung? For zebel in Chaldee, Syriac and Arabic is the same as dung. Or Jezabel is the same as i zebel, that is, an island of the dunghill, or from the dunghill, says Pagninus, whence some think that from zebel, that is dung, the devil is called by contempt zabulus, that is, a dunghill-dweller, and the Greeks call Beelzebub “Beelzebul,” as the god of dung; for upon dung sits the zebub, that is, the fly. Moreover St. Ambrose, Exhortation to virgins, says: “Jezabel,” he says, “is the same as the outflow of vanity, or vain and empty overflow, such as there is in avarice, ambition and all concupiscence, whose idea is Jezabel.”
IS THIS THAT JEZABEL,—as if to say: Does Fortune, changing her turns, so cast down Jezabel from the height of glory to the depth of ignominy? She was the beauty and splendour of the world: now she stinks like foul dung. She was the wife and mother of kings, nay mistress and ruler: behold now she is torn by dogs. She was the terror of Elias and the prophets, nay of all Israel: behold now she is trodden by the hoofs of horses. A Father says that Jezabel was more severely punished than Achab, who fell honourably in war, pierced by an arrow, because Jezabel had been to him the occasion of all evil, indeed his prompter and inciter: “Jezabel,” he says, “paid greater penalties than Achab the seizer of the vineyard: for she had woven that whole business, and had given the king occasion of the lapse.”
So Blessed Francis Borgia, lately Duke of Gandia, when he was carrying the body of the deceased Isabella, wife of Charles V, to the royal sepulchre at Granada, saw it so deformed, foul and horrible that he did not recognise it, and dared not swear that this was the body of the empress. Wherefore, gazing at it with fixed eyes and in amazement: “Is this,” he said, “Isabella, empress of the world?” Is this that wise and holy Isabella, the joy of the Spaniards, the glory of the empire, the hope of the world? Where is that recent beauty of countenance, where the brightness of the eyes, where the majesty of the royal crown? Has her flesh then turned to putrefaction, her beauty to stench, her splendour to horror? Wherefore, God enlightening his mind, and considering attentively how great was the vanity of kings and kingdoms and all the goods of the world, he decided to bid them farewell and to serve God alone, and entering the Society of Jesus, gave a rare example of all virtues, to religious and seculars alike, nay to princes and kings, as is plain from his Life.