Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary

Adam Clarke Commentary

And the carcass of Jezebel shall be as dung - As it was not buried under the earth, but was eaten by the dogs, this saying was also literally fulfilled.

They shall not say, This is Jezebel - As she could not be buried, she could have no funeral monument. Though so great a woman by her birth, connections, and alliances, she had not the honor of a tomb! There was not even a solitary stone to say, Here lies Jezebel! not even a mound of earth to designate the place of her sepulture! Judgment is God's strange work; but when he contends, how terrible are his judgments! and when he ariseth to execute judgment, who shall stay his hand? How deep are his counsels, and how terrible are his workings!

The Biblical Illustrator

2 Kings 9:37

And the carcase of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field.

The fruits of perfect sin

1. Jezebel’s is the character of one complete in evil. She enters the stage of human events in the fulness of her wickedness. She does not come before our notice till she has passed through all the stages of early conviction, strife with conscience, and sometimes of the warnings of a better nature. She is one whom savages would pronounce wicked, and from whom they would start as a dangerous member of even their social body. There are some who are brought before us in this way in life, as if the curtain were suddenly drawn up, and they were presented to the eye for the first time in their full development. We have been allowed to see none of the inward workings, none of the early struggle and strife. All this has gone on between themselves and God alone. His eye only has noticed, and His hand recorded the gages, challenges, and contests between the tempter and the sinner. We see but the end of the conflict. We perceive only the conqueror standing forward flushed with his success, and the ranks of the vanquished receding into the far distance on either side, like the forms of beautiful dreams scared by the breaking in of morning light. In the great portrait gallery of Holy Scripture no one is found exactly like her. She stands individually distinctive and terrible.

2. Here is her history. Ahab is mentioned as coming to the throne of Samaria nine hundred and eighteen years before Christ. The marriage with Jezebel is mentioned as a decided step in evil in Ahab, and is clearly connected with his idolatry. The next mention of her is her desire and effort to kill all the prophets of the Lord, and Obadiah’s success in saving them. Then came the denunciation of God upon Jezebel, and the prophecy of her being eaten of dogs in the portion of Jezreel There is a pause in her history, and we hear no more of the queen-mother during the reign of Ahab’s successor. The wicked king had sunk to his doomed grave. But she, the author and abettor of his sinfulness, lived on. Her end is the next and last circumstance of her life; very terrible. She comes out again with her old characteristic. The long pause in which she has been withdrawn from observation has made no change in her character save to stereotype all old failings, and gnarl into her form the sins of her earlier days. Shameless and barefaced in her iniquity, she looked out for admiration from the very man who was returning as a conqueror over her husband’s race.

3. There are certain features which belong to the thoroughly wicked person, and the approach to those characteristics may always excite alarm and anxiety. The principal points about Jezebel are these. A woman holding an evil influence over her husband, and turning her pertinacity and vigour of practical energy and power into the pursuit of the line in which the man hesitated. The wicked woman has an energy of evil which makes her far worse than the man. Her persecution of God and good men. Her casting in her lot with the wicked and the profligate. Her unflinching and unhesitating profligacy in the destruction of Naboth. Her raillery of the king. Her vanity overcoming in the end of life all other feelings, natural or not.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

And the carcass of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel,.... For upon this spot her carcass fell when thrown out of the window of the king's palace, and here it was left; for the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which was in the portion of Jezreel, was next to the palace, 1 Kings 21:1, there seems to be some allusion to her name Jezebel, which signifies "where is dung?"

so that they shall not say, this is Jezebel; there being nothing left of her to be seen or pointed to, nor any grave nor monument over it on which was such an inscription, here lies Jezebel; or that might lead posterity to say, this is Jezebel's grave. Now though the words of this verse are not recorded elsewhere, as the words of the Lord, by Elijah, yet as Jehu was present when they were spoken, and within the hearing of them, he now remembered them, and could repeat them, these circumstances bringing them fresh to his mind.

Geneva Study Bible

(p) Thus God's judgments appear even in this world against those who suppress his word and persecute his servants.

Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary

REFLECTIONS

READER! what an awful view doth this chapter afford of the miserable end of Ahab's race! and how is the mind struck in the contemplation, that a family such as his was in all its branches, should sell themselves to work evil with greediness. It is hardly possible to go through the review of what is related in these histories of Ahab and Jezebel, and their house hold, without being again and again prompted, as we prosecute the history, to exclaim from whence arose such determined resolute impiety!

But we read the history of Ahab to very little profit if it doth not serve to lead the mind further than to the history of a single person or family, and not to behold in it the outlines of wicked and ungodly men in all ages. In the dreadful opposition Ahab made to the God of Israel and his prophets, do we not behold the representation of all the Ahabs of every age, in their avowed hatred and opposition of the blessed gospel of the Lord Jesus? Do not some of this description of men seem as if every faculty was in league against the Lord Jesus? Their hearts boiling with implacable bitterness; their ears resolutely stopped to all the grace of the gospel; their voices uniformly raised against it. Despisers of divine things, haters of God and of his Christ! Oh! my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly mine honor be not thou united.

But, Reader! how sweet to the view is Jesus after looking at human nature, and human wickedness, in such awful characters! and farther, how increasingly so is the view of Jesus under these considerations, when we are enabled to trace our preservation and upholding from such awful examples on ourselves! Yes! dearest, almighty Jesus! it is to thy preventing and restraining grace we cheerfully ascribe all the praise and the glory. Truly must I say (and, Reader, do you not the same?) by the grace of God I am what I am! that I have been, that I now am, and that I feel confidence for the future I shall be kept; on my bended knees, in transports of rejoicing, would I give the whole glory to the adorable Redeemer. It was Jesus who committed to his Father his church for this blessed purpose in the close of his ministry, and just before his death. And it is to this one source the preservation of his people must be everlastingly ascribed. Keep (said the gracious Redeemer as he placed his dearly purchased flock in the hands of the Lord) keep, Holy Father, through thine own name those whom thou hast given me. And hence under the unquestionable evidence of this great truth, would I cry out with the apostle, and say, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy hath be gotten to this lively hope all his people, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

John Trapp Complete Commentary

2 Kings 9:37 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.

Ver. 37. Shall be as dung.] Here seemeth to be an allusion to the etymology of her name. Jezebel is the same with E-zebel, that is, where is the dung? or, Je-zebel, that is, the island of dung, or, woe to the dung. (a) The devil is from the same root called in the gospel Beelzebul, the lord of dung, or, a dunghill deity. Iezebel, idem est quod vanitatis profluvium, saith Ambrose, vel vana et vacua redundantia, the superfluity of naughtiness.

So that they shall not say, This is Jezebel.] Katherine de Medici, queen mother of France, after she had for thirty years’ space wonderfully troubled that kingdom, died ingloriously, and as wishedly as she had lived wickedly and dissolutely,

“ Plenaque fraudis anus. ”

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

These words are not extant in the place where this prophecy is first mentioned, 1 Kings 21:23, but are here added, either by Jehu, by way of explication and amplification; or rather, because Elijah spoke them, though they be not there recorded, as being for the substance of them contained in the former words; it being usual to insert some passages in following writings which had been omitted in the former.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

37.They shall not say, This is Jezebel — No person should ever be able to recognise her corpse or know her dust. “Though so great a woman by her birth, connexions, and alliances, she had not the honour of a tomb! There was not even a solitary stone to say, Here lies Jezebel! not even a mound of earth to designate the place of her sepulchre! Judgment is God’s strange work; but when he contends, how terrible are his judgments!”

George Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

Jezabel? So fallen (Menochius) and degraded, though once possessed of so much power and beauty! sic transit gloria mundi. Hebrew and Septuagint, "that they shall not say, This is Jezabel!" (Haydock) --- No monument shall recall her to the remembrance of men. (Calmet) --- Her body cannot be recognized. This will be the fate of the greatest mortal beauties, a few days after their departure. St. Francis Borgia durst not take an oath that the corpse which he had to attend, was that of the late beautiful empress Isabella: so much was it already disfigured. This sight was the beginning of his conversion, and of that eminent sanctity to which he attained, by despising all that the world can give or take away. (Haydock) --- The Spanish interpreters call Achab's widow, Isabella: and she seems to have been the sister, or relation, of Dido, who founded Carthage about this time; (Tirinus) Salien says in the 16th year of Jehu, the year before Christ 887. (Haydock)

E.W. Bullinger's Companion Bible Notes

field. Some codices, with Septuagint and Vulg, read "ground".

so that, &c. = [something] of which they shall not say, &c.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(37) And the carcase of Jezebel.—This continuation of the prophecy is not given in 1 Kings 21:23. It is probably original; not “a free expansion” by Jehu, as Keil asserts.

Shall be.—It is questionable whether the Hebrew text is to be read as a rare ancient form wehâyâth); or simply as an instance of defective writing (wehâyethâ). We prefer the second view.

As dung.—Comp. Psalms 83:10.

So that they shall not say.—Comp. Genesis 11:7 for the construction. The sense is, So that men will no longer be able to recognise her mangled remains.

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

the carcase

Psalms 83:10; Ecclesiastes 6:3; Isaiah 14:18-20; Jeremiah 8:2; 16:4; 22:19; 36:20; Ezekiel 32:23-30 Reciprocal: Joshua 17:16 - Jezreel;  1 Kings 14:10 - as a man taketh;  1 Kings 15:29 - he left not;  2 Kings 15:12 - And so;  Ezra 6:11 - his house;  Job 20:7 - perish;  Isaiah 5:25 - torn;  Jeremiah 9:22 - fall;  Jeremiah 25:33 - they shall be;  Malachi 2:3 - spread;  Philippians 3:8 - but dung

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Bibliographical Information
Torrey, R. A. "Commentary on 2 Kings 9:37". "The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge". https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/tsk/2-kings-9.html.

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