it some rebuke that he did not care for. But when they pressed him, he told the truth; the oil was upon him-he was the anointed king. Even then the captains seem to have begun half in jest, placing Jehu on the top of the stone stairs-probably from their citadel to the town below-blowing their trumpets and shouting "Jehu is king." The army and people took up the cry, and Jehu felt that now indeed it was time to be in earnest. He was a trained captain, and quickly took his measures. He shut the gates, that no report of the proclamation might reach Jezreel before him, and then prepared to set forth with his friends and surprise Jehoram in his palace.

LESSON XL.

THE FATE OF JEZEBEL.

B.C. 885.-2 Kings ix. 16—27, 30—37.

So Jehu rode in a chariot and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay there. And Ahaziah king of Judah was come down to see Joram.

And there stood a watchman on the tower in Jezreel, and he spied the company of Jehu as he came, and said, I see a company. And Joram said, Take an horseman, and send to meet them, and let him say, Is it peace?

So there went one on horseback to meet him, and said, Thus saith the king, Is it peace? And Jehu said, What hast thou to do with peace? turn thee behind me. And the watchman told, saying, The messenger came to them, but he cometh not again.

Then he sent out a second on horseback, which came to them, and said, Thus saith the king, Is it peace? And Jehu answered, What hast thou to do with peace? turn thee behind me.

And the watchman told, saying, He came even unto them, and cometh not again: and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.

And Joram said, Make ready. And his chariot was made ready. And Joram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah went out, each in his chariot, and they went out against Jehu, and met him in the portion of Naboth the Jezreelite.

And it came to pass, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, Is it peace, Jehu? And he answered, What peace, so long as the sins of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?

And Joram turned his hands, and fled, and said to Ahaziah, There is treachery, O Ahaziah.

And Jehu drew a bow with his full strength, and smote Jehoram between his arms, and the arrow went out at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot.

Then said Jehu to Bidkar his captain, Take up, and cast him in the portion of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite: for remember how that, when I and thou rode together after Ahab his father, the LORD laid this burden upon him ;

Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth, and the blood of his sons, saith the LORD; and I will requite thee in this plat, saith the LORD. Now therefore take and cast him into the plat of ground, according to the word of the LORD.

But when Ahaziah the king of Judah saw this, he fled by the way of the garden house.

And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired* her head, and looked out at a window.

And as Jehu entered in at the gate she said, Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?

And he lifted up his face to the window, and said, Who is on my side? who? and there looked out to him two or three slaves.

And he said, Throw her down. So they threw her down: and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses: and he trode her under foot.

And when he was come in, he did eat and drink, and said, Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a king's daughter.

And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.

Wherefore they came again, and told him. And he said, This is the word of the LORD, which he spake by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel :

And the carcase of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel; so that they shall not say, This is Jezebel.

COMMENT.-Vengeance was come at last. Jezreel stood on a hill, commanding a view all over the plain of Esdraelon, and the watchman on the tower of the fortress where the wounded Jehoram lay, beheld the cloud of dust coming from the direction of the fords of Jordan. Full six miles he could see, and when he beheld clearly enough to discern a troop of armed men in chariots and on horseback, he sent notice to the king. Messenger after messenger was sent out. Neither was allowed by Jehu to return. Then by the swift and furious driving the watchman knew Jehu, the captain at Ramoth-gilead. Probably Jehoram thought that the garrison had been defeated by the Syrians, and were fleeing from them. He caused his chariot to be made ready, and went out to meet the newcomers, in too great anxiety to wait for tidings; but when he saw how unlike their demeanour was to that of defeated men, he could only ask," Is it peace, Jehu?" The stern reply that there could be no

* Dressed.

peace so long as his mother Jezebel's crimes were so many, showed him that it was against himself that Jehu was coming, and with a cry to his nephew of "There is treachery, O Ahaziah!" he turned and would have fled, but was shot to the heart by an arrow from Jehu's own bow. Raised into the perception that he was indeed God's instrument of vengeance, Jehu called to mind the moment when, as he attended Ahab, he had heard the great prophet Elijah denounce vengeance on him and his house for the murder of Naboth; and he bade his fellow-captain Bidkar cast the body of Joram into the garden once belonging to the murdered Naboth. Ahaziah of Judah had fled through the garden, but Jezebel, proud and untamed as ever, with all the undaunted spirit Phœnician princesses * have shown in moments of peril, still fought out her fight. All her life she had struggled against God; she did so to the last. She had other sons and grandsons, and she tried to save the crown for them. She painted her face—that is, drew dark marks round her eyelids with antimony-and caused her hair to be royally dressed. Dust and sackcloth as mourning for her son were not for her; she would show neither fear nor sorrow, nor submission. She looked from her window, as Jehu drove in at the gate, and uttered the few bitter words, “Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?"—Zimri, who had reigned but seven days, and then was burnt in his house by Omri, the father of Ahab. But Jehu called, "Who is on my side-who?" A few of her slaves-the palace attendants whom Phoenician luxury had brought in-looked out at his call, and it was by their hands that she was thrown down to the horrible fate of being trampled under foot, and torn to pieces by the packs of hungry, houseless dogs who haunt the streets of Eastern cities— such dogs as had licked the blood of her victim Naboth, and again of her husband Ahab, and now doubtless of her son Jehoram.

“That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, And that the tongue of thy dogs may be red through the same."

So utter was the destruction, that when Jehu, remembering her queenly birth, sent forth to bury her, nothing was found but a few of the harder of her bones!

Such is the end of resistance to God, resistance carried on obsti

Dido, who is said to have been her niece; Sophonisba; the women of Carthage.

nately, through a long life, and through corruption of all who fell under her influence. Therefore it is that, in the last book of the Holy Scripture, Jezebel's name is used again in the message to the Church of Thyatira, to denote one who resisted the Church and disputed and corrupted the truth. And so again Jezebel, the proud Zidonian queen, will for ever remain the type and token of this wicked world, in its open enmity to God and His Saints.

LESSON XLI.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE HOUSE OF AHAB.

B.C. 885.—2 KINGS x. 1—14; 2 CHRON. xxii. 8—12.

And Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. And Jehu wrote letters, and sent to Samaria, unto the rulers of Jezreel, to the elders, and to them that brought up Ahab's children, saying,

Now, as soon as this letter cometh to you, seeing your master's sons are with you, and there are with you chariots and horses, a fenced city also, and armour;

Look even out the best and meetest* of your master's sons, and set him on his father's throne, and fight for your master's house.

But they were exceedingly afraid, and said, Behold two kings stood not before him how then shall we stand?

And he that was over the house, and he that was over the city, the elders also, and the bringers up of the children, sent to Jehu, saying, We are thy servants, and will do all that thou shalt bid us; we will not make any king: do thou that which is good in thine eyes.

Then he wrote a letter the second time to them, saying, If ye be mine, and if ye will hearken unto my voice, take ye the heads of the men your master's sons, and come to me to Jezreel by to-morrow at this time. Now the king's sons, being seventy persons, were with the great men of the city, which brought them up.

And it came to pass when the letter came to them, that they took the king's sons, and slew seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent him them to Jezreel.

And there came a messenger, and told him, saying, They have brought the heads of the king's sons. And he said, Lay ye them in two heaps at the entering in of the gate until the morning.

And it came to pass in the morning, that he went out, and stood, and said to all the people, Ye be righteous: behold, I conspired against my master, and slew him: but who slew all these?

Know now that there shall fall unto the earth nothing of the word of the LORD, which the LORD spake concerning the house of Ahab : for the LORD hath done that which he spake by his servant Elijah.

* Fittest.

So Jehu slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and his kinsfolks, and his priests, until he left him none remaining.

And he arose and departed, and came to Samaria. And as he was at the shearing house in the way,

Jehu met with the brethren of Ahaziah king of Judah, and said, Who are ye? And they answered, We are the brethren of Ahaziah; and we go down to salute the children of the king and the children of the queen.

And he said, Take them alive. And they took them alive, and slew them at the pit of the shearing house, even two and forty men; neither left he any of the princes of Judah, and the sons of the brethren of Ahaziah, that ministered to Ahaziah, he slew them.

And he sought Ahaziah: and they caught him, (for he was hid in Samaria,) and brought him to Jehu: and when they had slain him they buried him: Because, said they, he is the son of Jehoshaphat, who sought the LORD with all his heart. So the house of Ahaziah had no power to keep still the kingdom.

But when Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah.

But Jehoshabeath, the daughter of the king, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons that were slain, and put him and his nurse in a bedchamber. So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of king Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest, (for she was the sister of Ahaziah,) hid him from Athaliah, so that she slew him not.

And he was with them hid in the house of God six years and Athaliah reigned over the land.

COMMENT.-The principal rulers of Jezreel seem to have fled to Samaria, where the family of Ahab, seventy in number, dwelt : not, of course, all his own sons, but also his grandsons and their children, living together in a great family palace such as used to be found in the East Indian States. Jehu, in the strange mocking temper which had all along seemed half doubtful of his own mission, sent a letter to these rulers of Jezreel, demanding whether they meant to choose a king from the family of Ahab, and hold out the town for them. Their answer showed their fear and submission, and it showed, too, how little wicked men can obtain faithful service, for they only begged to know how to make their peace with the new king.

Jehu answered that if they wished to be his friends they must bring him the heads of the descendants of Ahab. They obeyed, and sent the heads in the great baskets used for the vintage. He caused them to be piled in two ghastly heaps on either side of his gateway, and then called on the people to observe that this was