Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Leonard Jayawardena <leonardj AT live.com>]

In my post of day before yesterday, I showed that 2 Kings 10:30 contains not 
only a commendation of Jehu for his destroying the house of Ahab in obedience 
to God but also an implied postponed punishment of his house for following 
"the sins of Jeroboam." We saw that the punishment was postponed to the 
fourth generation of Jehu as a reward for his obedience. A punishment in "the 
fourth generation" recalls Exodus 20:5, reproduced below (in KJV): 
"Thou shalt have no other gods beside Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any 
graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is 
in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under earth: Thou shalt not bow 
down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous 
God, visiting [Hebrew pâqad] the iniquity of the fathers upon the children 
unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me."
 
What this passage says is that those who "hate" God, i.e., those who go after 
other gods, such as Jehu, are liable to have their sins visited even up to 
the third and fourth generations of their descendants. Comparison of 2 Kings 
10:29-31 with Exodus 20:3-5 will provide confirmation that 2 Kings 10:30 is 
indeed a case of postponed punishment.  Note that Exodus 20:5 need not be 
seen as teaching vicarious punishment of children for the sins of their 
fathers. The prophecy against Jehu was fulfilled in the fourth generation of 
Jehu's dynasty when king Zechariah, Jehu's great-great-grandson, was 
assassinated by Shallum the son of Jabesh to usurp the throne (2 Kings 
15:8-10). We read in vs. 9, the verse IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING the verse that 
records Zechariah's assasination (v. 10), that he, too, "did what was evil in 
the sight of the Lord, as his fathers had done" and "did not depart from the 
sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin" (vs. 9). 
Therefore assasination of Zechariah (and other members of Jehu's house, 
though not mentioned in the historical record) was a punishment not only of 
Jehu but also of Zechariah, who emulated his great-great grandfather in 
committing "the sins of Jeroboam." We can reasonably conclude from this 
therefore that what is actually involved in God "visiting" the sins of the 
fathers upon the children is God withholding his grace from the descendants 
of sinners, who then emulate their fathers' bad example and suffer the 
consequences for doing so. Interestingly, Hosea uses the same Hebrew word 
pâqad in Hosea 1:4: "I will avenge/visit [pâqad] the blood of Jezre-el upon 
the house of Jehu ...."  While pâqad is used in passages in the OT other than 
Exodus 20:5, in view of the fact that a punishment of Jehu's house in the 
fourth generation due to idolatry was already predicted by a prophet who 
preceded Hosea (2 Kings 10:30), it is not unreasonable to see an allusion to 
Exodus 20:5 by the use of this word.  Hosea's contemporary Amos prophesied 
that Yahweh would "rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword" (Amos 
7:9). Hosea predicted that Yahweh would avenge "the blood of Jezreel" upon 
"the house of Jehu." Both were predicting the same event, but, by the mention 
of "the house of Jehu," Hosea was recalling the prophetic warning given to 
Jehu many decades before that he would be punished for his following "the 
sins of Jeroboam" by the destruction of his house in the fourth generation. 
However, "the blood of Jezreel" is not to be placed on the head of Jehu or 
any one king of Israel only, for, as I have shown earlier, the books of Kings 
hold all the kings of Israel to be responsible for the eventual fate of the 
nation--"the blood of Jezreel"--and all paid the penalty for it. 
So to sum up, Jehu was warned by God that his idolatry would be punished by 
the destruction of his house, but, in consideration of his services to God in 
destroying the house of Ahab, the punishment was postponed to the fourth 
generation, which, as it turned out, was the generation of king Zechariah, 
Jehu's great-great-grandson, who was assassinated by Shallum the son of 
Jabesh to usurp the throne. Hosea's prophecy simply announced that the time 
had now arrived for that prophecy to be fulfilled. The interpretation that 
"the blood of Jezreel" as a reference to Jehu's massacre at Jezreel arises 
from the unfortunate coincidence that Jehu happened to massacre some members 
of the house of Ahab in Jezreel.   Leonard JayawardenaSri Lanka
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