Jehu's Coup: the End of the House of Ahab

Within a few days there was no king of Israel, no king of Judah, no Jezebel, and none of Ahab's seventy sons.

Elisha sent one of the disciples of the prophets to Ramoth-gilead, to the army: to call the commander Jehu son of Jehoshaphat into an inner room, pour a flask of oil on his head, say "the LORD has anointed you king over Israel"—and flee without delay. So it was done. His fellow officers asked why "this madman" had come; Jehu put them off, then told the truth—and they spread their garments on the steps and blew the shofar.

Jehu drove to Jezreel. Jehoram king of Israel, recovering there from his wounds, rode out to meet him together with Ahaziah king of Judah—and both, understanding nothing, asked, "Is it peace, Jehu?" The answer: what peace, while the harlotries of Jezebel and her sorceries remain. Jehoram turned his chariot; the arrow went in between his shoulders and came out at the heart. Ahaziah fled and died of his wound at Megiddo.

Jezebel heard that Jehu was entering the city. She painted her eyes, dressed her hair and looked out of the window with a royal greeting. Jehu raised his head: "Who is with me?" Two or three courtiers looked out—and threw her down. When, after the meal, they went to bury the king's daughter, they found only the skull, the feet and the palms of the hands.

The rest was done by letter. Jehu wrote to the elders of Samaria: choose the best of your master's sons and fight for him. They took fright and answered with submission. The second letter demanded heads. By morning two heaps stood at the gate of Jezreel. Then Jehu proclaimed a great sacrifice to Baal, gathered all his ministers into the temple, had it checked that not one servant of the LORD was among them—and posted eighty men outside.

Jehu reigned twenty-eight years, and Scripture speaks of him two ways: he destroyed Baal out of Israel—and he did not turn from the golden calves of Jeroboam. On the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III a king is shown bowing with tribute before the Assyrian; the caption names him Jehu—the oldest known depiction of an Israelite.

Academic history dates this event differently. In the age of the kings the divergence is not the one familiar from the Persian period, where Seder Olam runs about a hundred and sixty-five years short. Here academic chronology reckons some reigns as overlapping — father and son on the throne together — so its span from the division of the kingdom to the destruction of the Temple comes out nearly three decades shorter. The gap therefore grows: a hundred and thirty-five years at the division, a hundred and fifty-four at Sennacherib, a hundred and sixty-four at the destruction. The anchors of the academic count are external documents: the battle of Qarqar (853), Jehu's tribute on the Black Obelisk (841), the fall of Samaria (722), Sennacherib's campaign (701), Megiddo and Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns in the Babylonian Chronicles (609, 605, 597). Both dates appear on the timeline when the divergence layer is on.