We know with what alacrity Jehu assumed his office, and set about the discharge of its stern and bloody duties; how he drove furiously to slay Joram, assailing him the while with loud reproaches for tolerating the wicked doings of Jezebel; how he caused Ahaziah, king of Judah, to be slain; how he commanded Jezebel to be thrown from the window, and trod her under foot; how he effected the wholesale slaughter of seventy persons of King Ahab’s sons, of all his great men, and his kinsfolks, and his priests, until he left him none remaining; and how, too, returning from this destruction, he met forty-two of the brethren of King Ahaziah, and caused them all to be slain at the pit of the shearing house. The words of the text introduce us to his last recorded deed of this kind, namely, the destruction by subtlety of all the followers of Baal, and the suppression of his worship throughout the land of Israel. In reading this narrative, the questions naturally arise, How far were the deeds of Jehu a performance of the Divine will? Was Jehu in any respect, and if so, in what, a holy character? Under what influence did he act, and forbear to act? May we consider these questions rightly, and learn from them lessons of wisdom by GOD’S grace to be carried out into holy practice! There is, then, no doubt, because we may read the command for it, in plain words, that GOD willed the destruction of Ahab’s whole house and the extermination of the abominable idolatry of the Zidonians. Jehu seems, indeed, to have been unnaturally ready for the executioner’s office, to have discharged it savagely, and to have availed himself of what is never needed or allowed in GOD’S service, of subtlety, fraud, lying: but still, making allowance for excesses, arising from his natural disposition, from his professional familiarity with deeds of blood, and probably from a proud misconception of the authority under which he acted, it must be admitted that, in the main, Jehu so far did the will of the LORD.