Commentaria in IV Regum
19. FOR I HAVE A GREAT SACRIFICE TO BAAL,—as if to say: I wish to offer a great and solemn sacrifice to Baal, and therefore I wish all the Baalites to be present. Jehu pretended this, but truly intended to slay the Baalites themselves like victims to God, and to offer them to the demon as the executioner of God, who, as their lord and possessor, being their worshippers, was about to carry them off with him into hell.
20. SANCTIFY A SOLEMN DAY TO BAAL,—that is, proclaim a feast day and a holy one, on which we may solemnly worship Baal; but you, O Baalites, will worship him formally with victims of oxen, while I will worship him only materially, by slaying and handing you over, like victims, to the demon to whom you have dedicated yourselves and to whom you have bound yourselves as slaves. And truly the demon held a solemn feast when he seized the souls and bodies of so many idolaters, his servants, slain by Jehu. Those who were summoned therefore came to the solemn feast, not of their banquet, but of their slaughter. So at the death of Luther the devil proclaimed a solemn feast for the demons subject to him, and called together all round about to lead his soul with triumph down to hell. The demons who possessed the demoniacs at Geel confessed this. Geel is a city in Brabant between Antwerp and Louvain, where St. Dympna, virgin and martyr, slain by her father, a king of Ireland, for her virginity, lies at rest, and shines with many miracles, especially in freeing the possessed from the demon, as I once saw with my own eyes when I visited the sacred relics of this holy virgin. At Geel, I say, on the day on which Luther died, all the possessed were free of the demons; but on the next day they were possessed and tormented by them again. When the demons were asked the reason, they said that on the previous day they had been summoned to the funeral of their great friend Martin Luther, had been present there and had kept the feast; for their prince and arch-demon had ordered all the evil spirits to gather at the obsequies of their prophet and faithful fellow-worker Luther; for it was fitting that he who had led the greatest number to hell should be solemnly led there by the greatest number. So Tilmann Bredenbach relates, among others, book 7 of his Collationes sacrae, ch. 39, who adds that an innumerable multitude of ravens (they were demons), croaking in a horrible manner, flew above the corpse of Luther and accompanied it from Eisleben to the tomb at Wittenberg. The demons held a like feast at the death of Udo, archbishop of Magdeburg, as the same Bredenbach relates at length, book 8, ch. 14, from Nauclerus, Fulgosius and P. Canisius.
21. AND ALL THE SERVANTS OF BAAL CAME.—He calls “servants” the devotees of Baal, especially the priests, as is plain from v. 19, whence in the following verse he ordered vestments to be given them, namely priestly and sacred ones; for it does not seem that absolutely all who adored Baal came, or that the temple could have held them all. So in Acts 16:14, “worshippers” means pious and religious men who piously worship God. Abulensis, however, thinks that all who professed the worship of Baal were summoned and came to the solemn day of Baal; for although in the time of Achab they were in great number, yet shortly after, in the reign of the pious king Josaphat, many of them returned to the worship of the one true God.
AND THE HOUSE OF BAAL WAS FILLED FROM ONE END TO THE OTHER,—namely from one extreme to the other. The Septuagint: and the house was filled to the mouth; the Chaldee: from corner to corner.
22. BRING FORTH VESTMENTS FOR ALL THE SERVANTS OF BAAL,—namely priestly or sacred ones, such as the Levites and Nathinites, or ministers of the priests, used; he did not therefore give them lay garments as a reward. For this would have been a great enticement to many to idolatry and sin, so that for the sake of vestments they would pretend to be worshippers of Baal. Abulensis adds that Jehu supplied them with victims for the sacrifice and invited them to sacrifice, and that without fault. But this cannot be said; for to invite to sacrifice to an idol is a fault and a crime, whatever the end for which it is done. It sufficed Jehu, therefore, that he allowed them, prepared as they were to sacrifice, to sacrifice.
23. BUT THAT THERE BE ONLY THE SERVANTS OF BAAL.—“Saying that he did not wish,” says Josephus, “that any stranger or profane person should intrude on their rites.” Jehu prudently provided this, so that no innocent person or worshipper of God might be slain, but only the guilty Baalites.
24. HIS LIFE SHALL BE FOR THE LIFE OF HIM.—“He threatened,” says Josephus, “that whoever should let any of them escape, another would die in his stead.”
25. AND IT CAME TO PASS, WHEN THE HOLOCAUST WAS ENDED.—The Hebrew, the Chaldee and the Roman Septuagint have the singular: When he had finished, namely the high priest of Baal. The Royal and Complutensian Septuagint have the plural: And it came to pass that they finished offering the holocaust; both are true, for many offered many holocausts on many altars.
AND THE SOLDIERS AND CAPTAINS (cast out their bodies)—of Jehu.
26. AND THEY WENT TO THE CITY OF THE TEMPLE OF BAAL, AND BROUGHT OUT THE STATUE FROM THE TEMPLE OF BAAL, AND BURNED IT.—It seems that some city was specially dedicated to Baal, from whose temple they brought out the statue of Baal and burned it. Vatablus and Salianus understand by “city” cities, as a change of number, as if he said: By the command and commission of Jehu they went into any cities of Israel, and brought out from them the idols of Baal and burned them; and it is very probable that they did this; for, as follows: “So Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel”; which he would not have done if he had destroyed him in one city only. Finally, it could be a transposition: “They went to the city of the temple,” that is, they went to the temple of the city; for this temple built by Achab in Samaria was vast and spacious, having various dwellings annexed like a small city, as if he said: After all and only the worshippers of Baal were slain in the temple, Jehu with his men entered the temple itself, and brought out the statue of Baal and burned it. Hence the Royal and Complutensian Septuagint do not have the word city, but only they went as far as the temple of Baal, and this is very fitting and suitable to this place.
29. BUT FROM THE SINS (of worshipping the golden calves) OF JEROBOAM, etc., HE DEPARTED NOT.—Wonderful was this blindness or folly of Jehu and the other kings of Israel, that although they saw that by God’s command they were destroying the houses of Achab and of other kings on account of the worship of idols, they themselves worshipped the same, if not in number, yet certainly in kind; and therefore they felt the same avenging hand of God, and were cut off with their descendants. The cause was political, because they feared lest, if the people went up to Jerusalem to worship, it would likewise return to the line of David and the kings reigning in Juda. But this fear of theirs was vain; for they had God as their surety; he had promised that if they worshipped him alone, their kingdom would be stable, and would be handed on to their descendants for many centuries.
30. BECAUSE THOU HAST DILIGENTLY EXECUTED, etc., THY SONS UNTO THE FOURTH GENERATION SHALL SIT ON THE THRONE OF ISRAEL:—the event answered to the promise of God: for Jehu reigned 28 years, his son Joachaz succeeded him for 17 years, his son Joas for sixteen, his son Jeroboam for 44, his son Zacharias for six months.
Further, the Hebrews think that the prophet who made this promise to Jehu was the prophet Jonas, the fourth of the minor prophets. But Jonas did not flourish under Jehu, but under Jeroboam, the great-grandson of Jehu. Wherefore Nicephorus in his Chronicle and Salianus more rightly think that this prophet was Eliseus, who first anointed Jehu king, as was said in chapter 9, vv. 1 and 2.
It seems that Jehu received this promise from God as a reward immediately after the Baalites were slain and Baal overthrown, although Abulensis thinks it was made after Jehu began to worship the calves, and that therefore this promise was limited by God to the fourth generation. But God soon punished the worship of the calves by Hazael king of Syria invading the land of Israel, as is immediately added; that was therefore a time not of reward, but of punishment.
Finally, against the idols and calves of Jehu God sent prophets, who dictated and wrote their oracles and threats against him, and against Israel, which applauded him in his crime; the first of whom was Osee, who began to prophesy under Jehu, or a little after Jehu. Whence in chapter 1, v. 4, he says: “Yet a little while, and I will visit the blood of Jezrahel upon the house of Jehu,” and in chapter 7, v. 1: “When I would have healed Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered,” namely of Jehu and of the ten tribes, of which Ephraim was the head. He adds the cause: the people’s proneness to idols, confirmed by custom, which fostered and promoted the idolatry of Jehu. Whence in the last chapter, v. 3: “They have made the king glad with their wickedness, etc.; the city has rested a little from the mixing of the leaven, until the whole was leavened, etc. Because they have made ready their heart like an oven, when he lay in wait for them.” See what was said there.
32. AND HAZAEL SMOTE THEM IN ALL THE COASTS OF ISRAEL,—burning cities, killing young men, dashing little ones to pieces, ripping up women with child, as Eliseus had foretold to them, chapter 8, v. 12.