Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary

Adam Clarke Commentary

Lay ye them in two heaps - It appears that the heads of these princes had arrived at Jezreel in the night time: Jehu ordered them to be left at the gate of the city, a place of public resort, that all the people might see them, and be struck with terror, and conclude that all resistance to such authority and power would be vain.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Two heaps - Probably placed one on either side of the gateway, to strike terror into the partisans of the late dynasty as they passed in and out of the town.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

And there came a messenger, and told him, saying, they have brought the heads of the king's sons,.... Perhaps this messenger to Jehu came from the great men of Samaria themselves, to let him know that they had obeyed his orders:

and he said, lay ye them in two heaps at the entering in of the gate until the morning; very probably it was towards or at the evening they were brought; and he ordered them to be taken out of the baskets, and laid in two heaps at the entering of the gate of the city, that they might be taken notice of, and publicly viewed by the people that passed and repassed the gate; and where they met in great numbers, either on account of the market there, or court of judicature there held, especially in mornings; and here they were to remain till the morning, though not without a guard, that they might still be more exposed to view; Noldius^F16Ebr. Conc. Part. p. 68. No. 340. renders it, "without the door of the gate", for they were brought at night, when the gate was shut.

Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Lay ye them in two heaps at the entering in of the gate, etc. — The exhibition of the heads of enemies is always considered a glorious trophy. Sometimes a pile of heads is erected at the gate of the palace; and a head of peculiarly striking appearance selected to grace the summit of the pyramid.

John Trapp Complete Commentary

2 Kings 10:8 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.

Ver. 8. Lay ye them in two heaps.] (a) Here some hard hearted Hannibal would have cried out, O formosum spectaculum! Oh, brave sight! Or, O rem regiam! as another, when he had slain three hundred. I am ready to say as one did on a like occasion -

“ Tu quibus ista legas incertum est, Lector, ocellis:

Ipse quidem siccis scribere vix potui. ”

{a} The world is like this heap of heads, that had never a heart amongst them.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

At the entering in of the gate; the place of judicature, to signify that this was an act of justice, and of God’s righteous judgment; and the place of greatest concourse, where people went out of the city, and came into it, and whither they resorted for judgment and other occasions; that all men might behold this dreadful spectacle of Divine vengeance upon Ahab’s family, and thereby might justify Jehu’s cause and proceedings.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

8.Lay ye them in two heaps — “This cutting off of heads in collective masses, and making them into heaps, is or has been frightfully common in the East; and an Oriental, familiar with blood and beheading from his cradle, would read this portion of Scripture with little, if any, of the disgust and horror, and certainly with none of the surprise, with which it inspires us. After a battle, or a massacre, or the rout of a band of robbers, the heads are, as in the present instance, heaped up pyramidally, faces outward, on each side the palace gate; and the builder of this horrid pile, if a man of taste and fancy, usually reserves a head with a fine long beard to form the crown of his handiwork. Nothing so much shocks a European in the East as the frightful cheapness of human life, and with it, of human heads. In Persia it has not seldom been known for the king to express his displeasure at a town or village by demanding from it a pyramid of heads of given dimensions.” — Kitto.

Until the morning — The heads had probably reached Jezreel at night.

Joseph Benson's Commentary of the Old and New Testaments

2 Kings 10:8. Lay them at the entering in of the gate — The place of judicature, to signify that this was an act of God’s righteous judgment: and this being the place of public concourse for justice and other business, and where people were continually passing and repassing, the laying them there was to expose them to public view, that all might know there was no one left of Ahab’s posterity to reign over them.

George Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

Morning, that all the people might see them. (Calmet) --- Jehu did not choose to admit the Samaritans into the city during the night. (Menochius)

Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible - Unabridged

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.

Lay ye them in two heaps ... The exhibition of the heads of enemies in the East in ancient times always was considered a glorious trophy. Sometimes a pile of heads was erected at the gate of the palace, and a head of peculiarly striking appearance selected to grace the summit of the pyramid. On the sculptures at Khorsabad, Kouyunjik, and Nimroud, eunuchs are seen collecting the heads of the slain, and writing down the number ('Nineveh and its Remains,' 2:, p. 377). This mode of reckoning the loss of an enemy was long practiced in the East; but the Egyptians generally counted by hands, and Saul, at least in one instance, fixed upon another part of the body as a trophy (1 Samuel 18:25; 1 Samuel 18:27). The heads of Ahaziah's brethren are described as piled up in two heaps at the entrance gate of Samaria; and such trophies are still laid at the gates of Eastern cities. At the principal entrance to the Sultan's palace in Constantinople there are niches appropriated to this purpose; but when there is a large number of heads, two pyramids are formed of them at each side of the gate. The same practice prevails extensively throughout Asia, particularly in Persia. Oriental conquerors, ambitious of a permanent monument of glory, sometimes erect pillars, or triumphal arches, which are inlaid at the arches, or other conspicuous parts, with heads of the king or generals of the enemy. Several of these pillars exist in Turkey and Persia, particularly in the gateways of Bagdad, where such monuments were at a comparatively recent period raised with the heads of 200 Khezail Arabs, captured by the pasha. Such barbarous usages are revolting to humanity; but we need not wonder at their prevalence in the ancient and modern East, when we remember that almost down to the beginning of the present century, gibbeting the corpses of criminals was practiced in many parts of this country.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(8) There came a messenger.—Literally, and the messenger came in. Josephus says Jehu was giving a banquet.

Heaps.—The noun (çibbûr) occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament. In the Talmud it means “congregation,” as we say colloquially “a heap of persons.” The verb (çâbar) means “to heap up.” (See Exodus 8:10.)

At the entering in of the gate.—The place of public business, where all the citizens would see them. (Comp. 2 Kings 7:3; 1 Kings 22:10.) But perhaps not the city gate, but the gate of the palace is to be understood. Parallels to this deed of Jehu are not wanting in the history of modern Persia. (Comp. 1 Samuel 17:54; 2 Maccabees 15:30; and the comparatively recent custom in our own country of fixing up the heads of traitors on London Bridge.)

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

there came

2 Samuel 11:18-21; 1 Kings 21:14; Mark 6:28

Lay ye them

Such barbarities are by no means uncommon in the East. "It has been know to occur," says Mr. Morier, "after the combat was over, that prisoners have been put to death in cold blood, in order that the heads, which are immediately despatched to the king, and deposited in heaps at the place gates, might make a more considerable show."

until the morning

Deuteronomy 21:23