I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 10-12.

    As soon as Jehu gained power he proceeded to kill all of the remaining family of Ahab in Israel (the northern kingdom). He also killed members of King Ahaziah’s family who had come to visit the sons of Ahab. We tend to read this as a group who was visiting family that got caught up in the revolution. However, they were probably coming from Judah to Israel to take part in worship ceremonies which would have hurt their standing if they had been seen to be involved in them by the common people of Judah. This is similar to the way in which the extremely wealthy and members of high levels of government hold conferences in exotic locations to avoid the eyes of the common people and enjoy things which might harm their reputations if they were commonly know to enjoy them. Jehu followed this up by holding a national festival of Baal worship…at which he had all of the priests and worshipers killed.

    So, we discover that Jehu was motivated to act by the words of the prophets of God and acted decisively to eliminate Baal worship in Israel. Yet, he did not destroy the gold calves which Jeroboam had built and appears to have continued the worship of them. This tells me that Jehu did not see a conflict between worshiping God and worshiping at the gold calves, although he did see that Baal worship was not consistent with worshiping God. Or to put it another way, all of this suggests that the sect which worshiped at the gold calves worshiped in a manner similar to the sect which worshiped at the Temple in Jerusalem. It also suggests that the teachings of the two groups were similar as well. Furthermore, we see that the Baal worshipers tried to pass themselves off as just another variation on the same theme. All three groups, the Jerusalem sect, the “gold calves” sect, and the Baal worshipers, were fully aware that the first two were similar and related sects, but the Baal worshipers were something else entirely.