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  • From: Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The meaning of "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4
  • Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:10:50 -0700

I see that discussions of Biblical Hebrew can't avoid making historical and textual assumptions. This post concerns the assumptions.

Vadim Cherny pointed out that the apparent contradiction between the favorable and unfavorable views of Jehu can be resolved by taking the position expressed in 2Kings10:29-31, namely that Jehu was good at first then inexplicably went bad. To me this isn't much of an explanation.

This seems like the kind of case where a multiple-source view of the text has too much explanatory power to ignore. Look at the case of Ahab, who is clearly a villain everywhere but 1Kings20:1-34, a manifestly heterogeneous text that seems pro-Ahab. In the case of Jehu, it seems logical that we would encounter both favorable and unfavorable texts, the former produced under sponsorship of Jehoahaz, Joash and Jeroboam II, the latter produced by anti-government (prophetic) sources. It is also plausible that sections like 2Kings10:29-31 belong to an editorial framework (usually called "Deuteronomist") that attempts to reconcile contradictions.

By the way, the thesis that most of the Jehu account was written by royal apologists is buttressed by the plausibility of reading most of the Elijah-Elisha stories, especially Elijah's massacre of the Baalists, as Jehuid propaganda. (If massacring your enemies was good when Elijah did it, Jehu's massacre looks better.) From the point of view of the social-justice reformers like Hosea, Jehu's dynasty was no different from Omri's. Hosea didn't like Jeroboam II, and it is plausible that he would take a dim view of Jehu.


Gabe Eisenstein




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