9:1-10 In these and the like events, we must acknowledge the secret working of God, disposing men to fulfil his purposes respecting them. Jehu was anointed king over Israel, by the Lord's special choice. The Lord still had a remnant of his people, and would yet preserve his worship among them. Of this Jehu was reminded. He was commanded to destroy the house of Ahab, and, as far as he acted in obedience to God, and upon right principles, he needed not to regard reproach or opposition. The murder of God's prophets is strongly noticed. Jezebel persisted in idolatry and enmity to Jehovah and his servants, and her iniquity was now full.

Verse 10. - And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel. This had been previously prophesied by Elijah (1 Kings 21:23; 2 Kings 9:26, 27). To an Israelite, and even to a Phoenician, it was an awful threat; for both nations alike buried their dead carefully in deep-dug graves or rocky receptacles, and both regarded the desecration of a corpse as a grievous calamity ('Records of the Past,' vol. 9. pp. 112,114). The dog was to the Hebrews, and to the Orientals generally, an unclean animal, and to be devoured by dogs would have been viewed as a fate which, for a queen, was almost inconceivable. And there shall be none to bury her. Jezebel had no one sufficiently interested in her fate to watch over her remains. Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, had kept watch over the bodies of the seven sons of Saul, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night (2 Samuel 21:10); and in Greece, if we may believe the poets, life had been risked, and actually forfeited, to save a near relative from similar ignominy (Soph., 'Ant.,' lines 245-743). But "Jezebel had none to bury her." When she was ejected from the palace window (ver. 33) and fell to the ground, and was trodden under foot by Jehu's chariot-horses, no one came forth from the palace to give the bruised and wounded corpse such tendance as was possible. There was entire neglect of the body for (probably) some hours; and, during these, the catastrophe occurred which Divine foresight had prophesied, but which human malice had not intended (see vers. 34-37). And he opened the door, and fled. The young man the prophet obeyed to the letter the injunctions which Elisha had given him (ver. 3). The moment that he had executed his errand, he fled.

And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel,.... Or in the field of Jezreel; the Targum is, the inheritance of Jezreel; this is also threatened, 1 Kings 21:23.

and there shall be none to bury her; or nothing of her to bury, as Kimchi, all being eaten up but her skull, feet, and the palms of her hands, see 2 Kings 9:35.

and he opened the door, and fled; that is, the young man of the sons of the prophets, as soon as he had said the above words, as he was ordered, lest he should be taken up for a traitor.

10. in the portion of Jezreel—that is, that had formerly been the vineyard of Naboth.

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