Study Desk

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

Now the watchman was standing on the tower in Jezreel and he saw the crowd with Jehu as he approached, and said, "I see a company." And Joram said, "Send a horseman to meet them and have him ask, 'Do you come in peace?'"

So when Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard about it, and she painted her eyes and adorned her head and looked down from the [upper] window.

So they returned and told Jehu. Then he said, "This is the word of the LORD, which He spoke through His servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, 'In the property of Jezreel the dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezebel.

'The corpse of Jezebel will be like dung on the surface of the field in the property of Jezreel, so they cannot say, "This is Jezebel."'"

Ahab had seventy sons [and grandsons] in Samaria. So Jehu wrote letters and sent them to Samaria, to the rulers of Jezreel, to the elders, and to the guardians of the children of Ahab, saying,

Then Jehu wrote a second letter to them, saying, "If you are with me and will obey me, take the heads of your master's sons, and come to me at Jezreel tomorrow about this time." Now the [dead] king's sons, seventy persons, were with the great men of the city, who were rearing them.

When the letter came to them, they took the king's sons and slaughtered them, seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent them to Jehu at Jezreel.

So Jehu killed all who remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men and his familiar friends and his priests, until he left him without a survivor.

These were the sons of Etam: Jezreel, Ishma, and Idbash; and the name of their sister was Hazzelelponi.

Then he returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds they had inflicted on him at Ramah when he fought against Hazael king of Aram. And Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram king of Judah, went down to see Jehoram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick.

And the LORD said to him, "Name him Jezreel; for yet in a little while I will avenge the blood [that was shed in the Valley] of Jezreel and inflict the punishment for it on the house of Jehu, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.

"On that day I will break the bow [of the military power] of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel."

Then the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel shall be gathered together, And they will appoint for themselves one leader, And they will go up from the land, For great and glorious will be the day of Jezreel.

And the earth shall respond to the grain and the new wine and the oil [which beg it to bring them forth], And they will respond to Jezreel [My Israel, who will now be restored].