So perished the most infamous woman that ever wore a royal diadem, as had been predicted.  With her also perished the seventy sons of Ahab, all indeed that survived of the royal house of Omri.  And the work of destruction did not end until the courtiers of the late king and all connected with them, even the palace priests, were killed.  Then followed the massacre of the other priests of Baal, the destruction of the idolatrous temples, and the restoration of the worship of Jehovah, not only at Samaria, but at Jerusalem, for the revolution extended far and wide on the death of Ahaziah as of Joram.  Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, who reigned over Judah, also perished in those revolutionary times.

It is not to be supposed that the relentless and savage Jehu was altogether moved by a zeal for Jehovah in these revolting slaughters.  He was an ambitious and successful rebel; but like all notable forces, he may be regarded as an instrument of Providence, whose ways are “mysterious,” because men are not large enough and wise enough to trace effects to their causes under His immutable laws.  Jehu was a necessary consequence of Ahab and Jezebel.  Jehovah, as the national deity of the Jews, was the natural and necessary rallying cry of the revolt against Phoenician idolatry and foulness.  The missionary sermons of those crude days were preached with the sword and the strong arm.  God’s revelations of himself and his purposes to man have always been through men, and by His laws the medium always colors the light which it transmits.  The splendor of the noonday sun cannot shine clearly through rough, imperfect glass; and so the conceptions of Deity and of the divine will, as delivered by the prophets, in every case show the nature of the man receiving and delivering the inspired message.  And yet, through all the turmoil of those times, and the startling contrast between the conceptions presented by the “Jehovah” of Elijah and the “Father” of Jesus, the one grand central truth which the seed of Abraham were chosen to conserve stands out distinctly from first to last,—­the unity and purity of God.  However obscured by human passions and interests, that principle always retained a vital hold upon some—­if only a “remnant”—­of the Hebrew race.

The influence of Elijah, then, acting personally through him and his successor Elisha, had caused the extermination of the worship of Baal.  But the golden calves still remained; and there was no improvement in the political affairs of the kingdom.  It was steadily declining as a political power, whether on account of the degeneracy which succeeded prosperity, or the warlike enterprises of the empires and states which were hostile equally to Judah and Israel.  Jehu was forced to pay tribute to Assyria to secure protection against Syria; and after his death Israel was reduced to the lowest depression by Hazael, and had not the power of Syria soon after been broken by Assyria, the northern kingdom would have been utterly destroyed.