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.