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Baal, he ordered, on his arrival, to search for and remove any worshippers of the
LORD.
Neither of these measures would excite surprise, but would only be regarded as
indications of Jehu's zeal, and his desire that the rites of Baal should not be profaned
by the presence of strangers. The attendance of Jehonadab might seem strange; but
he was in the train of the king whom he was known to have served, in whose
company he had returned to Samaria, and with whom he had continued while he
issued his mandates, and prepared for the feast of Baal. He might therefore be simply
an adherent of Jehu, and now prepared to follow his lead.
The rest may be briefly told. As the sacrifices were offered Jehu surrounded the
building with eighty of his trusted guards, who, on the given word of command,
entered the building, threw down all they encountered, and penetrated into "the
sanctuary* of the house of Baal," where all who had been marked out to them were
slaughtered. Then they brought out the wooden images and burnt them, while the
large stone statue of Baal, as well as the Temple itself, were destroyed. And
completely to desecrate the site, and mark the contempt attaching to it, Jehu
converted it into a place for public convenience.
(^296) "Thus," as Scripture marks, "Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel." Yet, as the
cessation of idolatry after the return from the exile did not issue in true repentance
towards God, nor in faith in the Messiah, so did not this destruction of Baal-worship
lead up to the service of Jehovah. Rather did king and people stray farther from the
LORD their God. Of the succeeding events in Jehu's reign, which lasted no less than
twenty-eight years, no account is given in Scripture, except this notice, that "in those
days Jehovah began to cut Israel short: and Hazael smote them in all the coasts of
Israel; from Jordan eastward, all the land of Gilead, of the Gadites, and the
Reubenites, and the Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the river Arnon, even
Gilead and Bashan." And the Assyrian monuments throw farther light upon this brief
record. They inform us about the wars of Hazael against Assyria, and they represent
Jehu as bringing tribute to the king of Assyria. The inference which we derive is that
Jehu had entered into a tributary alliance with the more powerful empire of Assyria
against Hazael, and that when the latter had made his peace with Assyria, he turned
against Jehu, and inflicted on Israel the losses thus briefly noticed in Scripture. Be
this as it may, this at least is certain, that with the loss of the whole trans-Jordanic
territory, the decline of the northern kingdom had commenced.
Nor was the state of matters more hopeful in the southern kingdom of Judah. The
brief and bloody reign of Athaliah was, indeed, followed by the counter-revolution of
Jehoiada, and the elevation of Joash to the throne. But the reformation then
inaugurated was of short duration. After the death of Jehoiada, the worship of
(^)