2 Kings 10:8-11 - Homiletics

The wicked have small regard for their helpers and confederates.

Jehu had made the authorities of Samaria his tools. He had required of them the performance of a wicked and bloody act, such as despotism has rarely exacted from its instruments. Seventy persons to be slain in the course of a few hours—for no offence, for no state necessity except to smooth the path of a usurper! And the seventy persons for the most part boys and youths, some probably infants, and these defense- less ones entrusted to the care and protection of those who were now called upon to take their lives! It was a tremendous burden to cast on men not previously his partisans, not bound to him by any interchange of good offices and benefits—rather, under the circumstances, his natural opponents and adversaries. Yet they took the burden on themselves; they accepted the miserable task assigned to them—they accepted it, and carried it out. No doubt they thought that by so doing they had bound the king to them, made him their debtor, and laid him under an obligation which he would not be slow to acknowledge. But the deed once done, the deaths once accomplished, and immediately the instigator of the crime turns against his accomplices. " Ye are righteous," he says to the crowd which has gathered together to gaze at the heads of the victims—"ye can discern aright; now judge between me and these murderers. I slew my master—I killed one man, political necessity compelling me but who slew all these ?" He holds up his friends and allies, without the least compunction, to the popular odium. He entirely conceals the fact that he himself has been at the root of the whole matter, has conceived the massacre, and commanded it ( 2 Kings 10:6 ). He contrasts the terrible deed of blood, which has horrified all who have heard of it, with his own comparatively small crime, and claims to have his light offence condoned, overshadowed as it is by the heinous deed of the Samaritans. We do not know whether by his speech he provoked any popular outbreak. At the least, he turned the tide of popular disfavor from himself to his confederates, and left them to answer, as best they might, the serious question, "Who slew all these?" It is worth the preacher's while to impress on men the frequency of such conduct on the part of the persons who conceive evil designs, but must have tools to execute them. There is no solidarity among those who are confederates in wickedness. We hear of "honor among thieves;" but it is often "conspicuous by its absence." Monarchs engaged m plots denounce and disgrace their agents, when the plots fail, even sometimes permitting their execution; ministers are conveniently oblivious of the services rendered by those who win elections by intimidation and bribery; even "head-centers" are apt to look coldly on the work done by "ratteners" or "moonlighters" and, instead of commending and rewarding them, are rather anxious to disclaim all complicity in their actions. If the poor tools knew beforehand how little benefit they would derive from their wicked violence, what small thanks they would get from those who set them on, and how ready these last would be, on any difficulty arising, to leave them in the lurch, they would scarcely lend themselves to the purposes of their instigators. It is one of the weaknesses of the kingdom of evil that its agents do not keep faith one with another. It would weaken the kingdom still more if the conviction were general that this is so, and that the subordinate agents who work out an end have little to look for in the way of reward or encouragement from their employers.