Ahab and Jezebel, two of the worst characters in sacred story, had a son; and with such blood as theirs in his veins, no wonder that Joram, on succeeding to the throne of one parent, exhibited the vices of both. His mother does not seem to have had a drop of human-kindness in her breast. Yet he was not altogether dead to humanity, as appears by an incident which occurred during the siege that reduced his capital to the direst extremities. The ghastly aspect of a famished woman who throws herself in his way with a wild, impassioned, wailing cry of “Help, my lord, O king!” touches him; and he asks, “What aileth thee?” Stretching out a skinny arm to one pale and haggard as herself, she replies, with hollow voice, “This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son.” Struck with horror at the story, Joram rent his clothes. He had pity, but no piety.

“Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will but revolt more and more.” Never were these words, never was the fact that unsanctified afflictions have the same hardening effect on men which fire, that melts gold, has on clay, more strikingly illustrated than on this occasion. So far from rending his heart with his garment, and humbling himself before the Lord, Joram flares up into fiercer rebellion; and turning from these victims of the famine to his courtiers, he grinds his teeth to profane God’s name and vow vengeance on his prophet, saying, “God do so and more also to me, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day.” Impotent rage against the only man who could have weathered the storm, and saved the state! The prophet’s head stood on his shoulders when that of this son of a murderer—as Elisha called him—lay low in death in the dust of Naboth’s vineyard. The day arrives which sees the cup of Joram’s iniquity full, and that of God’s patience empty—drained to the last drop. The chief officers of the army are sitting outside their barrack, when one wearing a prophet’s livery approaches them. Singling out Jehu from the group, he says, I have an errand to thee, O captain! The captain rises; they pass in alone; the door is shut; and now this strange, unknown man, drawing a horn of oil from his shaggy cloak, pours it on Jehu’s head. As if it had fallen on fire, it kindled up his smouldering ambition—so soon at least as this speech interpreted the act, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I have anointed thee king over the people of this land. Thou shall smite the house of Ahab thy master; dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there shall be none to bury her.” Having spoken so, the stranger opens the door, and flies. But faster flies God’s vengeance. Ere his feet have borne the servant to Elisha’s door, the banner of revolt is up, unfurled; troops are gathering to the sound of trumpets; and soldiers, eager for change and plunder, are making the air ring to the cry, Jehu is king!

Launched like a thunderbolt at the house of Ahab, Jehu makes right for Jezreel with impetuous, impatient speed. A watchman on the palace tower catches afar the dust of the advancing cavalcade, and cries, I see a company! Guilt, which sleeps uneasy even on downy pillows, awakens, on the circumstance being reported to him, the monarch’s fears. A horseman is quickly despatched with the question, Is it peace? Thus, pulling up his steed, he accosts the leader of the company, who, drawing no rein, replies, in a tone neither to be challenged nor disobeyed, What hast thou to do with peace? Get thee behind me! Failing the first’s return, a second horseman gallops forth to carry the same question and meet the same reception. Sweeping on like a hurricane, the band is now near enough for the watchman to tell, “He came near unto them, and cometh not again;” and also to add, as he marks how their leader is shaking the reins and lashing the steeds of his bounding chariot, “The driving is like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.” Displaying a courage that seemed his only redeeming quality, or bereaved of sense, according to the saying, Whom God intends to destroy He first makes mad, Joram instantly throws himself into his chariot, advances to meet the band, and demands of its leader, Is it peace, Jehu? What peace, is the other’s answer, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother and her witchcrafts are so many? With the words that leave his lips an arrow leaves his bow to transfix the flying king—entering in at his back and passing out at his breast; and when he is cast, a bloody corpse, into Naboth’s vineyard, and dogs are crunching his mother’s bones, and Jehu has climbed the throne, and Elisha walks abroad with his head safe on his shoulders, and the curtain falls on the stage of these tragic and righteous scenes, it was a time for the few pious men of that guilty land to sing, “Lo thine enemies, O Lord, lo thine enemies shall perish; but the righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: they shall grow like a cedar of Lebanon.”

Such was the mission of Jehu, the son of Nimshi. How different that of Jesus, the Son of God! They might have been identical; presented at least grounds of comparison rather than grounds of striking contrast. Yet so remarkable is the contrast that Jehu’s mission—and therefore have we related the story—forms as effective a background to Christ’s, as the black rain-cloud to the bright bow which spans it. The cause of the difference lies in God’s free, gracious, sovereign mercy—in nothing else; for had mankind, at the tidings that the Son of God, attended by a train of holy angels, was approaching, met Him on the confines of our world with Joram’s question, “Is it peace?” that question might justly have met with Jehu’s answer, “What hast thou to do with peace?”—what have you done to obtain it, or to deserve it? Yet, glory be to God in the highest, it is peace—peace more plainly and fully announced in these most gracious words, “It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things to himself, whether they be things on earth, or things in heaven.”