Did King Jehu Kill His Own Family?

026

One of the most dramatic finds ever made relating to the Bible is the famous Black Obelisk of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (ruled 858–824 B.C.E.), excavated by Austen Henry Layard at Nimrud in 1846 and now prominently displayed in the British Museum.

The four-sided limestone monument is decorated with five registers of relief sculptures depicting the bringing of tribute to Shalmaneser. Each register reads around four sides, one panel to a side, portraying a particular tribute and tribute-bearers. The second register from the top shows the tribute of the Israelite king Jehu (ruled 841–814 B.C.E.). The central figure on the first panel of this register, presumably Jehu himself, prostrates himself, forehead to the ground or possibly kissing the feet of the Assyrian monarch. Some have suggested that this figure might be Jehu’s emissary. But if it is Jehu, this panel offers the only extant picture of a king of ancient Israel from the First Temple period.

The cuneiform caption above this register identifies the scenes as representing the tribute of Jehu and reads as follows:

“Tribute of Iaua [Jehu], son of Omri. Silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden beaker, golden goblets, pitchers of gold, tin, staves for the hand of the king, [and] javelins, I [Shalmaneser] received from him.”¹

Before Jehu is Shalmaneser himself, beneath the winged symbol of the Assyrian god Assur. Behind him stand two retainers, one protecting him from the elements with a shade. Jehu’s attendants stand behind the Israelite monarch with tribute in hand.

The Bible does not mention Jehu paying tribute to Shalmaneser. But obviously the Bible does not record everything that occurred in a reign that began in 841 B.C.E. and ended in 814 B.C.E.

There is another problem, however. The inscription 027calls Jehu the son of Omri. This does not necessarily mean that Jehu was Omri’s literal son. It could well mean he was a descendant of Omri, that is of the House, or dynasty, of Omri. But that does not solve the problem. According to conventional scholarly wisdom, Jehu was not even a descendant of Omri. On the contrary, Jehu staged a coup d’etat that supposedly brought an end to the 40-year rule of the Omride dynasty. As recounted in 2 Kings 9–10, Jehu, a commander in King Joram’s army, was instructed by Elisha to murder the king, which ended the line of Omri.

In Judah, the southern kingdom, the Davidic kings ruled continuously for 400 years, whereas murder and usurpation were common occurrences in the northern kingdom of Israel. Omri, also a general, became king of the northern kingdom in 882 B.C.E. after attacking his predecessor. Omri was succeeded by his son Ahab (ruled 871–852 B.C.E.), who in turn was 028succeeded first by one son, Ahaziah (ruled 852–851 B.C.E.), and then by another son, Joram (ruled 851–842 B.C.E.), whom Jehu murdered.

Jehu was not satisfied, however, simply to murder Joram. He also had Ahab’s 70 descendants murdered and their heads brought to him in baskets. But even this was not enough. “Jehu struck down all that were left of the House of Ahab in Jezreel—and all his notables, intimates, and priests—till he left him no survivor” (2 Kings 10:11).

The grisly paradox of the cuneiform inscription on the Black Obelisk is that it identifies Jehu as the son of Omri, the very house he is famous for destroying. Modern scholarship assumes, based on all the information available in the Hebrew Bible, that to destroy the House of Ahab would be to destroy the House of Omri as well. But the Hebrew text never explicitly draws that conclusion: Throughout the Ahab/Jehu cycle the house that is destroyed is called the House of Ahab, while the House of Omri is never mentioned.

Why does the Bible make this peculiar distinction between the House of Ahab and the House of Omri? I propose that the Black Obelisk inscription is correct, that Jehu was indeed a “son” of Omri—that is, a descendant of Omri—but through a different line from that of Ahab, and that the House of Omri therefore did not come to an end when Jehu wiped out the House of Ahab.

Traditional explanations for the supposed mistake on the Black Obelisk—the identification of Jehu as a son of Omri—point out that the Assyrians may have misunderstood Israelite politics or that modern interpretations of the cuneiform text may be in error. To understand the difficulties with such explanations, we must first examine Shalmaneser’s own inscriptions and Assyrian royal inscriptions in general, asking the question: How much credibility should we give them? Was it a mistake to identify Jehu as a son of Omri?

The Assyrians were, and still are, famous for their monumental reliefs, which adorned the walls of their palaces and depicted their battles, tributes and hunting expeditions. They also left behind written records of the many “accomplishments” of their reigns, describing their feats in inscriptions on reliefs, statues, throne pedestals, buried tablets, stelae and even cliff faces along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

These accounts had basically a propagandistic purpose: They glorified the ruler and were intended to fill all who viewed the texts with fear of Assyria and its monarch. Because they had a political function, however, the information they give cannot always be trusted. Recent scholarship indicates that the function 029and audience of Assyrian royal inscriptions, as well as their genre and style, may determine the “information” they provide and its reliability.²

According to an inscription of Shalmaneser’s father, Assurnasirpal II (ruled 883–859 B.C.E.), Assurnasirpal conducted a military campaign in Syria, conquering territory as far west as the Mediterranean.³ Later, when Shalmaneser ascended the throne, he immediately campaigned in this same territory, presumably already conquered by his father. New political realities in the west made Shalmaneser’s task difficult. The western states, usually busy fighting one another, had for once put aside their differences and formed coalitions to confront the greater menace, Assyria.

In 853 B.C.E., at the battle of Qarqar, Shalmaneser faced a coalition led by Irhuleni of Hamat (in modern Syria) and Hadadezer of Damascus (see 2 Samuel 8; possibly Ben-Hadad II). The coalition included 12 kings from regions stretching all the way to the Mediterranean coast. Shalmaneser claimed victory for the Assyrian army, but four years later he renewed his campaigns in the region, which suggests his victory was not as complete as the inscription, on the Kurkh Monolith, claims.⁴

The Kurkh Monolith is a seven-foot-high, round-topped, inscribed limestone stela discovered at Kurkh, a site on the Upper Tigris. The text of the stela spans the first six years of Shalmaneser’s reign and contains the first mention of Israel in Shalmaneser’s texts. This reference tells us that King Ahab provided 2,000 chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers to help the coalition fight Shalmaneser’s forces.

The Kurkh Monolith is the only inscription of Shalmaneser imitating the literary style of his forebears. The ferocity and bravery of the Assyrian king, the horrible fate awaiting those who failed to surrender and the difficult trek to many of the sites mentioned are some of the motifs Shalmaneser inherited from his predecessors. Like the earlier Assyrian annals, the Kurkh Monolith depicts the monarch as a ferocious warrior campaigning on behalf of his gods to collect booty and spread Assyria’s fame.

To support the king’s image as a ferocious warrior, the Kurkh Monolith, like those of Shalmaneser’s predecessors, lists the cities and rulers conquered. In this context, it is not surprising that King Ahab is mentioned in Shalmaneser’s account. All 12 kings of the 030seacoast coalition led by Irhuleni and Hadadezer are listed by name and place. This contrasts with Shalmaneser’s later inscriptions, which refer to his enemies only as the seacoast kings. It is also characteristic to list the number of chariots and soldiers accompanying each coalition member. Ahab’s contribution of 2,000 chariots was the largest in this category, more grand even than that of Hadadezer of Damascus, who contributed only 1,200 chariots (but also 1,200 calvarymen and 20,000 foot soldiers). The extravagant numbers and vivid terminology are consistent with the literary style of the inscription.

Scholars often use this passage to demonstrate Israel’s strength under King Ahab’s rule,⁵ but the numbers in the Kurkh text might well be grossly exaggerated. The inscription is not well-written (there are many scribal errors), so the numbers for Israel might even be the result of scribal error. Or the author may have inflated the numbers to make Shalmaneser’s feat look more glorious.

What can be trusted, however, is the list of the members of the coalition. Shalmaneser would have derived little satisfaction from listing enemies under the wrong names, or from mistaking their countries or titles. Since the names and the places match up well with the Biblical material, there is no reason to doubt them. It seems clear that King Ahab of Israel did indeed take part in that battle.

Three Assyrian inscriptions,⁶ in addition to the undated caption on the Black Obelisk, refer to “Jehu son of Omri” and describe events taking place in 841 B.C.E., 12 years after the battle of Qarqar. By that time the political situation had changed significantly. Hadadezer of Damascus had been replaced, according to Shalmaneser, by Hazael, who is called “son of a nobody,” the Assyrian term for a usurper.⁷ Hazael fought Assyria alone, which suggests perhaps that the old coalition had fallen apart. By this time Shalmaneser 031claimed enough control of the area to set up a statue of himself on Mt. Carmel, on the Mediterranean cost (near modern Haifa), and receive tribute from “Jehu, son of Omri” and from the rulers of Tyre and Sidon.⁸

According to these three inscriptions, Israel became a loyal Assyrian vassal when Jehu came to the throne. The Hebrew Bible makes no comment on this policy change, but Shalmaneser’s inscriptions do not report any further trouble from Israel.

These three inscriptions reflect a shift in the style of Shalmaneser’s inscriptions after the Kurkh Monolith. We can observe a change in the way the Assyrian king is portrayed. The difficult journey and the horrors suffered by the captured cities are not recounted in Shalmaneser’s later inscriptions; they are replaced by descriptions of more campaigns to new places, recited in a matter-of-fact way.

Shalmaneser often tells us how many times he crossed mountains or seas, but the nature of the difficulties and the poetic imagery characteristic of earlier accounts are almost completely absent. Rather than providing detailed descriptions of the king’s itinerary, foreign powers are grouped under common geographic reference points, such as “the 12 kings of the seacoast” or “the kings of Hatti.” When Shalmaneser’s later inscriptions refer to the battle of Qarqar, they do not even list the names of the coalition kings. The reason is not that the Assyrians could not remember who those kings were, but that they were no longer the focus of the propaganda.

The primary goal of the two inscription styles was in the end the same, to show the king fulfilling his role as ruler of the Assyrian empire. The difference lies in the kinds of events and accomplishments that came to define a successful ruler and empire. The later inscriptions portray Shalmaneser campaigning regularly rather than intermittently, if somewhat less grandly, as part of his role as king. In the later inscriptions, he is not simply a military hero, but someone who persistently expands the empire.

In light of this stylistic change, the inscriptions referring to 841 B.C.E. take on new significance: Whereas Jehu is mentioned in all three, his contemporaries in Sidon and Tyre are not. In view of the evolution of Shalmaneser’s texts, the absence of references to Sidon and Tyre is not surprising; in fact, it is almost to be expected. Jehu was singled out because he was the new tributary ruler of an area previously hostile to the Assyrians. Although the Hebrew Bible is silent on this turn of events, Shalmaneser’s annals frequently record “visits” by Assyrian officials to new leaders and list the names and areas of leaders providing tributes.

But why is Jehu referred to as “son of Omri”? A traditional explanation is that the Assyrians referred 032to a kingdom by using the name of the first ruler from that kingdom with whom they had contact. Since Assurnasirpal II campaigned in the west (though not far enough to the southwest to reach Israel), it is possible that he came into contact with Omri, who ruled Israel at that time. According to the traditional view, the Assyrians for that reason referred to Israel as the “house of Omri” until it was destroyed in 721 B.C.E.—despite the fact that Jehu represented the beginning of a new, if short-lived, dynasty.

If that is so, however, we would not expect the first Assyrian reference to an Israelite ruler, on the Kurkh Monolith, to mention Ahab as ruling the land of sir-’i-la-a, probably Israel, though possibly Jezreel. No reference to King Omri in the Assyrian inscriptions has been discovered. Thus the standard explanation for the reference to Jehu as “son of Omri”—that Omri was the Assyrian term for Israel—is unsupported by the evidence. The reference to Jehu on the Black Obelisk is especially important for a number of reasons. Art historian Michelle Marcus demonstrates in her study of Shalmaneser’s monuments that the people pictured on the obelisk are from regions at the outermost reaches of Assyrian power.⁹ For the Assyrians, Jehu’s kingdom was important because it was at the limit of their fledgling empire.

This analysis of Assyrian inscriptions seems to refute another explanation sometimes given for the identification of Jehu as son of Omri, namely that the Assyrians did not know or care about the turnover in the royal house of Israel at the time Jehu murdered the last ruler of the House of Omri. The Kurkh Monolith, however, shows that the Assyrians knew of Ahab, whose Israelites joined the coalition fighting against Assyria. Surely, they would also have known Israel’s ruler (Jehu) when its policy changed from belligerence to quiescent subservience and Israel began paying tribute. Israel’s location at the farthest edge of Assyrian control, as indicated on the Black Obelisk, makes the relationship between ruler and vassal that much more significant.

The Assyrians knew of the change in the ruling house of Damascus (from Hadadezer to Hazael). Why not in Israel as well? The Assyrians referred to Hazael as the “son of a nobody,” their term for a usurper, indicating that they paid attention to the status of their 033enemies’ right to the throne. Thus, it is hard to believe that a geographically important, tribute-bearing vassal’s status would be unknown to them. As Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor have stated, “It is not possible that the Assyrian scribes were unaware that Jehu had seized the throne in Samaria.”¹⁰

Scholars often use Assyrian records, including those of Shalmaneser, to explicate matters not discussed in the Hebrew Bible. Few scholars, for example, have trouble believing that Jehu brought tribute to the Assyrian king, despite the fact that Assyria is never mentioned in the Jehu cycle recorded in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. Nor do scholars refrain from theorizing about the strength of Israel and her neighbors in the coalition against Shalmaneser, basing their arguments on the numbers in the Kurkh inscription. If the Assyrian information is thought to be relatively reliable, it seems inconsistent to explain away the Black Obelisk’s identification of Jehu as “son of Omri” as a result of the Assyrians’ misunderstanding. Indeed, I have tried to explain how and why the information in Assyrian texts is biased, where the inscriptions can be trusted and where they cannot. Clearly, the Assyrians knew the names of their vassals and were aware of changes in royal families. Rather than finding fault with the cuneiform, we should be critically rethinking the interpretation of the Hebrew text.

A clue: In the Hebrew Bible, Jehu is called “Jehu son of Jehoshaphat son of Nimshi” (2 Kings 9:2, 14). Jehu is the only king of Israel to have his grandfather’s name listed in his patronymic. Why?

Traditional explanations would suffice were it not for the Assyrian references. These explanations usually suggest that Jehu’s father was not as well known in the community as his grandfather, or that Nimshi is a clan name whose meaning has been lost over the centuries. Another explanation is that Jehu’s grandfather’s name is included to show that Jehu’s father was not King Jehoshaphat of Judah, Jehu’s contemporary.¹¹

Although the foregoing explanations are consistent with Biblical accounts, they face some significant problems: (1) There is no other Biblical reference to a person named Nimshi, so that he was probably not all that well known; (2) the name “Nimshi” appears as a personal name on a Samarian ostracon, making it unlikely that the name referred to a clan;¹²(3) not only are grandfathers’ names never listed in the patronymics of Israelite kings, but other Israelite kings who usurped the throne, such as Zimri and Omri, have no patronymics at all!

On the other hand, if Jehu claimed descent from Omri, the inclusion of his grandfather’s name may have been necessary to establish the genealogical link.

Jehu’s relationship with the Israelite palace and 080royalty also hints at a family connection. Several Biblical passages clearly indicate that Jehu is no stranger to the king or palace. For example, when Jehu is proclaimed king by his troops and rides to the palace, he is recognized from afar by the way he rides (2 Kings 9:20). When riding out to greet him, Joram, about to be killed, calls Jehu by name (2 Kings 9:22). Jehu comments that he once rode behind Joram’s father, Ahab, in battle (2 Kings 9:25). Even Jezebel’s greeting to Jehu—she calls him a “Zimri”—may indicate he was a palace insider (2 Kings 9:31). Clearly, Jehu was no stranger to the royal family.

One way of accounting for Jehu’s familiarity to the royal family is to argue that Jehu was a well-known military commander. Yet, compared to accounts of other military commanders who seized the Israelite throne, the Biblical story of Jehu contains many unusual elements. As already noted, neither Zimri nor Omri have a patronymic. Zimri is called “commander of half the chariots” and Omri is “commander of the army,” yet neither seems to be known to the royal family (1 Kings 16:15).

Jehu’s seizure of the throne does have parallels with Zimri’s. Both attempt a bloody purge of the ruling family after gaining the throne. But the bloodiness of Jehu’s coup, the destruction of the entire family and all of Judah’s heirs to the throne, seems excessive.¹³

The Hebrew Bible does not present all the information modern historians would like. We know of Israel’s participation in the seacoast coalition during the reign of Ahab, and of Israel’s vassal status in Jehu’s time, only from Assyrian inscriptions. Given that modern Biblical scholarship generally concludes that Assyrian information is reliable within certain parameters, we should now reconsider the question of Jehu’s relationship to the House of Omri. The Hebrew Bible does not refute the Assyrian information, it simply does not mention it.

I propose that Jehu was indeed a descendant of Omri. In the ancient Near East, it was common for rulers to have more than one wife. Polygamy was a normal practice even in the United Monarchy of Israel. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Omri had more than one wife—and more than one son. Nor was it unusual for one son to resent another’s accession to the throne; and there are numerous examples of such rivalries and jealousies continuing into later generations. It is possible, then, that Jehu descended from some branch of the Omri clan, and hence was a member of the royal family.

Without contradicting information provided by the Hebrew Bible, this suggestion would answer many questions. Assuming that Omri had sons from more than one wife would explain the Assyrian reference to Jehu as belonging to the House of Omri. It would also account for Jehu’s unusual patronymic, why he was a commander so familiar to the royal family, and why the purge of the House of Ahab, extending to Judah, was so severe. This new way of thinking about Jehu solves problems on both the cuneiform and Biblical sides without having to make excuses for any of the texts involved.

One of the most dramatic finds ever made relating to the Bible is the famous Black Obelisk of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (ruled 858–824 B.C.E.), excavated by Austen Henry Layard at Nimrud in 1846 and now prominently displayed in the British Museum. The four-sided limestone monument is decorated with five registers of relief sculptures depicting the bringing of tribute to Shalmaneser. Each register reads around four sides, one panel to a side, portraying a particular tribute and tribute-bearers. The second register from the top shows the tribute of the Israelite king Jehu (ruled 841–814 B.C.E.). The central figure […]