Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Elisha sends one of his own to anoint Jehu as king of Israel, to destroy the family of Ahab; he anoints Jehu: learning this from Jehu, the princes create him king. Jehu therefore, made king, proceeds to Jezreel, and there kills Joram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah, and orders Jezebel to be thrown down from the house, and dogs then devour her according to the oracle of Elijah.
Vulgate Text: 4 Kings 9:1-37
1. Now Elisha the Prophet called one of the sons of the prophets, and said to him: Gird your loins, and take this flask of oil in your hand, and go to Ramoth-gilead. 2. And when you arrive there, you will see Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi: and going in, you will raise him from the midst of his brothers, and bring him into an inner room. 3. And holding the flask of oil, you will pour it over his head, and say: Thus says the Lord: I have anointed you king over Israel. And you will open the door, and flee, and you will not remain there. 4. So the young man, the servant of the prophet, went to Ramoth-gilead, 5. and entered there: and behold, the commanders of the army were sitting, and he said: I have a word for you, O commander. And Jehu said: For which of us all? And he said: For you, O commander. 6. And he arose and entered the room: and he poured oil over his head, and said: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: I have anointed you king over the people of the Lord, Israel, 7. and you shall strike the house of Ahab your master, and I will avenge the blood of My servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord, at the hand of Jezebel. 8. And I will destroy the whole house of Ahab: and I will cut off from Ahab every male, and the last and the least in Israel. 9. And I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah. 10. And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the field of Jezreel, and there shall be no one to bury her. And he opened the door and fled.
11. Then Jehu came out to the servants of his master: and they said to him: Is all well? Why did this madman come to you? He said to them: You know the man and what he has said. 12. But they answered: That is false; but tell us rather. He said to them: This and that he spoke to me, and he said: Thus says the Lord: I have anointed you king over Israel. 13. They made haste therefore, and each one taking his cloak, they placed them under his feet, in the likeness of a tribunal, and they sounded the trumpet, and said: Jehu is king. 14. So Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi, conspired against Joram: for Joram had been besieging Ramoth-gilead, he and all Israel, against Hazael king of Syria: 15. and he had returned to be healed in Jezreel on account of wounds, because the Syrians had wounded him, fighting against Hazael king of Syria. And Jehu said: If it pleases you, let no one go out as a fugitive from the city, lest he go and report it in Jezreel. 16. And he went up, and set out for Jezreel: for Joram was ill there: and Ahaziah king of Judah had come down to visit Joram. 17. Now the watchman who was standing on the tower of Jezreel saw the company of Jehu coming, and said: I see a company. And Joram said: Take a chariot, and send to meet them, and let the one going say: Is all well? 18. So he who had mounted the chariot went to meet him, and said: The king says: Is everything peaceful? And Jehu said: What have you to do with peace? Fall in behind me. The watchman also reported, saying: The messenger has come to them, and does not return. 19. He sent also a second chariot of horses; and he came to them, and said: The king says: Is there peace? And Jehu said: What have you to do with peace? Fall in behind me. 20. And the watchman reported, saying: He has come to them, and does not return: and the manner of driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously. 21. And Joram said: Make ready the chariot. And they made his chariot ready; and Joram king of Israel went out, and Ahaziah king of Judah, each in his chariot, and they went out to meet Jehu, and found him in the field of Naboth the Jezreelite. 22. And when Joram saw Jehu, he said: Is it peace, Jehu? And he answered: What peace? The fornications of your mother Jezebel, and her many sorceries, still flourish. 23. And Joram turned his hand and fled, saying to Ahaziah: Treachery, Ahaziah! 24. But Jehu drew his bow with his full strength, and struck Joram between the shoulders; and the arrow went through his heart, and he immediately collapsed in his chariot. 25. And Jehu said to Bidkar his captain: Take him up, and cast him in the field of Naboth the Jezreelite: for I remember when you and I were riding together in the chariot after Ahab his father, that the Lord laid this burden upon him, saying: 26. Surely for the blood of Naboth, and for the blood of his sons, which I saw yesterday, says the Lord, I will repay you in this field, says the Lord. Now therefore take him up, and cast him in the field, according to the word of the Lord. 27. But Ahaziah king of Judah, seeing this, fled by the way of the garden house: and Jehu pursued him, and said: Strike him also in his chariot: and they struck him on the ascent of Gur, which is near Ibleam: and he fled to Megiddo, and died there. 28. And his servants placed him on his chariot, and brought him to Jerusalem; and they buried him in his sepulchre with his fathers in the city of David. 29. In the eleventh year of Joram son of Ahab, Ahaziah became king over Judah. 30. And Jehu came to Jezreel. Now when Jezebel heard of his entrance, she painted her eyes with antimony, and adorned her head, and looked out through a window 31. at Jehu entering through the gate, and said: Can there be peace for Zimri, who slew his master? 32. And Jehu lifted his face to the window, and said: Who is on my side? Who? And two or three eunuchs bowed to him. 33. And he said to them: Throw her down; and they threw her down, and the wall was splashed with her blood, and the hooves of the horses trampled her. 34. And when he had gone in to eat and drink, he said: Go and see to that cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a king's daughter. 35. And when they had gone to bury her, they found nothing but her skull, and her feet, and the tips of her hands. 36. And they returned and told him. And Jehu said: This is the word of the Lord, which He spoke through His servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying: In the field of Jezreel shall the dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel, 37. and the flesh of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the earth in the field of Jezreel; so that passers-by shall say: Is this Jezebel?
Verse 1: Go to Ramoth-Gilead
1. GO TO RAMOTH-GILEAD. For that city, after King Joram who was besieging it was wounded, had already been captured, either entirely or in part, says Abulensis, Sanchez, and Serarius, and this is clear from verse 15.
Verse 2: You Will Raise Him From the Midst of His Brothers
2. YOU WILL RAISE HIM FROM THE MIDST OF HIS BROTHERS, as Vatablus translates, command him to rise from the midst of his brothers, that is, his fellow commanders; for those who are called brothers shortly afterwards are called commanders.
BRING HIM INTO AN INNER ROOM, so that you may anoint him king in secret: lest if you do it publicly, a sedition be stirred up by the followers and supporters of King Joram, and therefore when you have anointed him in secret, immediately "you will flee, and will not remain there."
Verse 6: I Have Anointed You King Over Israel
6. I HAVE ANOINTED YOU. This seems to have been the second anointing of Jehu: for the first seems to have been performed by Elijah; for God had commanded this to him, 3 Kings 19:15, and therefore had ordered him to go to Damascus, to anoint Hazael as king of Syria there, and then to Samaria, to anoint Jehu as king of Israel: but that first anointing by Elijah was preliminary and prognostic of the kingdom; this second one, performed by Elisha, was the conferral of the kingdom, and his creation as king. So Cajetan, the Scholastic History, Sanchez, and others.
Verse 11: Why Did This Madman Come to You
11. WHY DID THIS MADMAN COME TO YOU? See here how idolatrous princes and military men ridicule a prophet, and call him "mad" and fanatical. For the harsh life of the prophets, their rough clothing, and prophetic speech seemed to them to be madness, and the prophets seemed to them to be insane; for they were as if out of their minds, inspired by the loftier spirit of the deity. Whence Plato in the Phaedo: "Some, he says, are mad by divine gift, such as prophets and Sibyls," and Cicero, book 2 On Divination: "What authority has that frenzy which you call divine, that what a wise man does not see, a madman sees, and he who has lost human senses has attained divine ones, and to prophesy is the same as to be insane." "For the natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God," 1 Corinthians 2 and 3. The prophets of the devil did the same and even more, producing disordered gestures and appearing to rage: whence Virgil sings thus of the Sibyl consulted by Aeneas, Aeneid book 6:
Not one her countenance, not one her color, Nor did her combed tresses stay in place: but her breast panting, And her wild heart swelling with frenzy, she seemed greater to behold, Nor sounding mortal, when she was inspired by the nearer Presence of the God.
YOU KNOW THE MAN AND WHAT HE HAS SAID, as if to say: you know he is mad, and therefore has spoken mad things, which are therefore not to be believed, nor narrated by me. Jehu says this lest, if he says he was truly anointed king by the prophet, he create danger for himself: lest someone, fighting for Joram or envying Jehu the kingdom, attack and kill him. "When they questioned him, says Josephus, about the reason the young man had come, and said he seemed mad: Rightly, he said, you conjecture, for he spoke the words of a madman. But when they pressed him even more to explain what it was about, he said the young man had told him that the kingdom of the people had been entrusted to him by God."
Verse 12: That Is False; Tell Us Rather
12. BUT THEY SAID: THAT IS FALSE; BUT TELL US RATHER, as if to say: the prophet spoke not mad things, but serious and momentous ones, and we most earnestly wish you to tell them to us. Whence the Chaldean translates: it is false what you say; tell us now. By divine instinct they suspected what was the case, namely that Jehu had received from the prophet an oracle of kingship, and they strive to extract it from him, whence follows.
Verse 13: They Made Haste, Each Taking His Cloak
13. THEY MADE HASTE THEREFORE, AND EACH ONE TAKING HIS CLOAK (outer garment) PLACED THEM UNDER HIS FEET, IN THE LIKENESS OF A TRIBUNAL. The Septuagint: on the ascent of the steps; Vatablus: at the top of the steps, that is, at the highest step, at the loftiest and most prominent place, as if to say: in an elevated place they erected for him with their garments a kind of royal throne, so that he might sit on it as king: for by this rite they created him king.
Indeed, at the word of the Prophet which the commanders had heard from Jehu, both they and the soldiers, divinely inspired, conferred the kingdom upon him, and therefore constructed some steps by hasty work, which they covered with their cloaks as with tapestries, and at the top of them they placed Jehu, and acclaimed him: "Jehu is king," as if to say: Jehu is our king; long may he live and reign prosperously for many years. Thus Plutarch writes of Cato of Utica in his life, that garments were spread by soldiers through those places which he himself was going to walk upon: which kind of honor he reports was customarily given to emperors. And in certain sacred rites of their gods, while they were carrying them in festive procession, garments were customarily spread, as the same Plutarch writes in his life of Alcibiades.
Athenaeus relates the same about the sacred rites of Juno, book 12, chapter 9. So also for Christ, as the Messiah King, entering Jerusalem in solemn procession on Palm Sunday, the crowd spread the way with both palms and garments, Matthew 21.
Verse 18: What Have You to Do With Peace
18. WHAT HAVE YOU TO DO WITH PEACE, as if to say: I do not bring peace, but war; for I have conspired against your king Joram, to kill him and seize his kingdom.
Verse 21: Joram King of Israel Went Out
21. AND JORAM KING OF ISRAEL WENT OUT, AND AHAZIAH KING OF JUDAH, etc., TO MEET JEHU; AND THEY FOUND HIM IN THE FIELD OF NABOTH THE JEZREELITE. This was a just and fitting judgment of God, who gathered them in the field of Naboth so that they would be slain in the place where their father Ahab had despoiled Naboth of his vineyard and killed him, as God Himself had foretold to Ahab through Elijah, 3 Kings 21:23.
Verse 22: The Fornications of Your Mother Jezebel
22. THE FORNICATIONS OF YOUR MOTHER JEZEBEL, AND HER MANY SORCERIES, STILL FLOURISH, namely the idolatry and sorcery of Jezebel; for idolatry is mystical fornication, by which one, leaving God the Spouse, clings to idols as to adulterers. The same is sorcery, because the priests of idols are sorcerers; for they consult the devil and receive oracles from him. Jehu says this, as if to say: I come on the part of God the Judge, to punish your idolatry and sorcery, and that of your mother Jezebel.
Verse 25: The Lord Laid This Burden Upon Him
25. THAT THE LORD LAID THIS BURDEN UPON HIM. "Burden" is what the threatening and heavy prophecy is called, by which God through Elijah had foretold that the descendants of Ahab would be killed for his crimes, 3 Kings 21:23.
Verse 27: Strike Him Also
27. STRIKE HIM ALSO, for the destruction of the house of Ahab foretold and decreed by God. For Ahaziah king of Judah was, on the side of his mother Athaliah, the grandson of Ahab, and imitated his crimes and idolatry.
You will object: in 2 Chronicles 22:9, it is said that Ahaziah fled and hid in Samaria? I respond: on this occasion he fled and hid in Samaria, but as is added there, he was later apprehended in Samaria and brought to Jehu in Gur, and there struck, he fled to Megiddo, and died there. So Lyra.
Verse 29: In the Eleventh Year of Joram Son of Ahab
29. IN THE ELEVENTH YEAR OF JORAM SON OF AHAB, KING OF ISRAEL, AHAZIAH BECAME KING OVER JUDAH. "Became king," that is, he began to reign, and he reigned barely one year; for in the twelfth year of Joram he was killed together with him by Jehu.
Verse 30: Jezebel Painted Her Eyes With Antimony
30. NOW WHEN JEZEBEL HEARD OF HIS (Jehu the regicide's) ENTRANCE, SHE PAINTED HER EYES WITH ANTIMONY, not to entice Jehu into love for her; for she was an old woman, and knew that Jehu was her sworn enemy, but to display her spirit, as one who neither feared nor cared about Jehu; whence she rebuked him and called him the killer of her lord (King Joram), to dismay him: for she thought that Jehu would not dare to lay hands on her, being a woman and a queen, nor stain himself with her blood. But if he should dare, she wished to die with spirit and nobility, as if scorning death. This is the vanity of the world and of worldly people, just as the vanity of women is antimony and rouge, which therefore the Magdalene, when she repented, despised; for as St. Jerome says, letter to Furia: "She did not have curling turbans, nor squeaking shoes, nor eyes ringed with sooty antimony." Whence St. Cyprian, treatise On Works and Almsgiving: "Anoint your eyes, he says, not with diabolical antimony, but with the eye-salve of Christ."
Verse 31: Can There Be Peace for Zimri, Who Slew His Master
31. CAN THERE BE PEACE FOR ZIMRI, WHO SLEW HIS MASTER, as if to say: what peace and fellowship can there be with Jehu, who is like another Zimri the tyrant. For just as Zimri killed Elah his king, 3 Kings 16:10, and seized his kingdom, so Jehu killed Joram his king, and seizes his kingdom.
Verse 37: The Flesh of Jezebel Shall Be as Dung
37. AND THE FLESH OF JEZEBEL SHALL BE AS DUNG. He alludes to the etymology of the name Jezebel. For Jezebel in Hebrew is the same as אי זבל i zebel, that is, where is the dung? For zebel in Chaldean, Syriac, and Arabic is the same as dung. Or Jezebel is the same as ויזבל i zebel, that is, island of a dunghill, or woe to the dunghill, says Pagninus, whence some think that from zebel, that is dung, the devil is contemptuously called zabulus, that is, a dung-collector, and the Greeks call Beelzebub, Beelzebul, as if the God of dung; for the fly, zebub, sits on dung. Moreover, St. Ambrose, Exhortation to Virgins: "Jezebel, he says, is the same as a flood of vanity, or a vain and empty overflow, such as is found in avarice, ambition, and every concupiscence, whose embodiment is Jezebel."
IS THIS JEZEBEL? As if to say: Has fortune so reversed its turns as to cast Jezebel down from the summit of glory to the depths of ignominy? She was the beauty and ornament of the world: now she rots like foul dung. She was the wife and mother of kings, indeed a mistress and ruler: behold, now she is torn by dogs. She was the terror of Elijah and the prophets, indeed of all Israel: behold, now she is trampled by the hooves of horses.
St. Chrysostom notes, homily 25 on the Epistle to the Romans, that Jezebel was more severely punished than Ahab, who died honorably, struck by an arrow in battle, because Jezebel was for him the occasion of all evil, indeed the instigator and inciter: "Jezebel, he says, paid greater penalties than Ahab the robber of the vineyard: for she had woven this whole affair, and had given the king the occasion of his fall."
Thus Blessed Francis Borgia, formerly Duke of Gandia, when he was conveying the body of the deceased Isabella, wife of Charles V, to the royal tomb at Granada, saw it so deformed, foul, and horrible that he could not recognize it, nor dare to swear that this was the body of the empress. Wherefore, gazing at it with fixed eyes and marveling: "Is this, he said, Isabella, Empress of the world?" Is this the wise and holy Isabella, the joy of Spain, the glory of the empire, the hope of the world? Where is that recent beauty of her face, where the splendor of her eyes, where the majesty of the royal crown? Has her flesh so turned to putrefaction, her beauty to stench, her splendor to horror? Wherefore, with God illuminating his mind, attentively considering how great was the vanity of kings and kingdoms and all the goods of the world, he resolved to bid them farewell and to serve God alone, and entering the Society of Jesus, he gave a rare example of all virtues, to religious and secular alike, and indeed to princes and kings, as is clear from his Life.