KJV: And the LORD said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel

NKJV: Then the LORD said to him: "Call his name Jezreel, For in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel."

ASV: And Jehovah said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease.

NASV: And the LORD said to him, "Name him Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.

RSV: And the LORD said to him, "Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel."

NASV: And the LORD said to him, "Name him Jezreel; for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.

NIV: Then the LORD said to Hosea, "Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel.

REB: "The LORD said to Hosea, "Call him Jezreel, for in a little while I am going to punish the dynasty of Jehu for the blood shed in the valley of Jezreel, and bring the kingdom of Israel to an end."

NAB: Then the LORD said to him: Give him the name Jezreel, for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed at Jezreel and bring to an end the kingdom of the house of Israel.

JB: "Name him Jezreel," Yahweh told him, "for it will not be long before I make the House of Jehu pay for the bloodshed at Jezreel and I put an end to the sovereignty of the House of Israel.

GNB: (T)he LORD said to Hosea, "Name him 'Jezreel,' because it will not be long before I punish the king of Israel for the murders that his ancestor Jehu committed at Jezreel. I am going to put an end to Jehu's dynasty."

NWT: And Jehovah went on to say to him: "Call his name Jezreel, for yet a little while and I must hold an accounting for the acts of bloodshed of Jezreel against the house of Jehu, and I must cause the royal rule of the house of Israel to cease."

NCV: The LORD said to Hosea, "Name him Jezreel. This is because soon I will punish the family of Jehu for the people they killed at Jezreel. Then I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel."

CEV: Then the LORD said, "Hosea, name your son Jezreel, because I will soon punish the descendants of King Jehu of Israel for the murders he committed in Jezreel Valley."

LAMSA'S (Peshitta): And the LORD said to him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and I will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.

MOFFATT'S: "Call him Jezreel," said the Eternal, "for it will not be long before I avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu and put an end to the kingdom of Israel."

REVISED BERKELEY: "Call his name Jezreel," the LORD told him, "for after a little time now, I will punish the house of Jehu because of the blood of Jezreel, and put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel."

WEB: Yahweh said to him, "Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease.

BBE: And the Lord said to him, Give him the name of Jezreel, for after a little time I will send punishment for the blood of Jezreel on the line of Jehu, and put an end to the kingdom of Israel.

DARBY: And Jehovah said unto him, Call his name Jizreel; for yet a little, and I will visit the blood of Jizreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease.

WBS: And the LORD said to him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.

JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY: And the LORD said unto him: 'Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.

HENDRICKSON'S INTERLINEAR: And said Jehovah to him, Call his name Jezreel for yet a little [while] and I will visit the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu and will make cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.

HENDRICKSON'S MARGINAL: And Jehovah said to him, Call his name God Will Sow, for yet in a little while I will visit the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu and will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease.

YOUNG'S LITERAL: and Jehovah saith unto him, 'Call his name Jezreel, for yet a little, and I have charged the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and have caused to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel;

All twenty-five of these translations--and others that I didn't quote--convey the idea of punishing the house of Jehu because of the bloodshed at Jezreel. We will see below that LJ essentially claims that all of the scholars who worked on these translations were wrong, because Hosea was not referring to the massacre that Jehu committed at Jezreel. As I go through his attempts to manipulate biblical texts to make them not mean what they clearly say, I will explicate Hosea 1:4 in more detail to show that his spin on this verse is a purely arbitrary one that he has obviously devised in order to eliminate a biblical error.

Gomer's first son is symbolically named Jezreel (meaning "God sows") to signify that God will end the kingdom of Israel by Assyria and scatter (or "sow") the Israelites among the heathen nations, as a token of which he will break Israel's military power in the valley of Jezreel.

Gomer was the woman whom Hosea married when Yahweh told him to "take a wife of whoredom," so, as some scholars think, she was probably a cultic priestess or at least a prostitute. If so, she was likely dedicated to Baal, a Canaanite god associated with, among other things, fertility, because Hosea made two references to the Israelite worship of Baal (2:8; 13:1) and additional references to Baal worship in its plural form (2:13,17). It could be, then, that Yahweh's command to name Hosea's son Jezreel was intended as a gesture of recognition that God and not Baal "sows" the seeds of fertility that caused the birth of Hosea's son. In the first verse cited above, Yahweh had said that he had given the wine, grain, oil, silver, and gold that the symbolic mother of Israel had given to Baal (2:8). At any rate, the name Jezreel, given to Gomer's son, was clearly intended to recall "the blood of Jezreel" for which Yahweh intended to punish the house of Jehu, because the prophet said that the house of Jehu would be punished for the blood of Jezreel. It would stretch imagination beyond reasonable limits to think that Jehu committed a famous massacre at Jezreel but that Hosea's statement that the "house of Jehu" was going to be punished "for the blood of Jezreel" did not refer to the blood that Jehu had shed at Jezreel but rather to the "children of Israel" who had been killed during the reigns of the Jehu dynasty, as LJ will soon claim below. To see this more clearly, let's imagine that a person named James Smith has been indicted for multiple murders at a town called Clarkville. If LJ should read a newspaper report that said that the trial of Smith had ended with his being condemned to death "for the murders in Clarkville," I doubt that LJ would have any difficulty understanding that "the murders in Clarkville" referred to the murders that Smith had been accused of committing. I seriously doubt that LJ would think it possible that Smith had been condemned to die for bank robbery or jaywalking or any other offense except the one called to mind by the phrase "murders in Clarkville." As I continue through LJ's latest "solution" to the Jehu problem, I intend to show that the word blood was used idiomatically in Hebrew to mean murder or killing, so the name Jezreel in Hosea 1:4, used in reference to the "blood" of Jezreel, was clearly associated with the murders that Jehu had committed in the valley of Jezreel. No other interpretation makes any sense.

I said "valley of Jezreel" here, rather than just Jezreel, for reasons that will soon be explained.

In this solution, "Jezreel" in "the blood of Jezreel" refers to the children of Israel as it clearly does in Hosea 1:4a, 1:11, and 2:22, and "blood" refers to the blood of the children of Israel shed by their enemies (in particular the Syrians) during the Jehu dynasty as a result of their idolatry.

If LJ should read an article like my hypothetical newspaper report of "the murders in Clarkville," would he think that "Clarkville" referred to the people in the state where Clarkville was located and that murders referred to the murders of people in the state who had been killed by others beside James Smith? Like most biblicists trying to hawk "solutions" to biblical discrepancies, LJ simply made an arbitrary assertion about the meaning of the passage in dispute and cited his "proof texts" without quoting them. I suspect that this is done so frequently by would-be apologists because they know that quoting the texts would show enough context to enable at least some readers to see that they don't support what is being claimed. As we will now see, that is the case with LJ's "proof texts" cited above. As we look at them, keep in mind that his unsupported assertion is that "Jezreel" in "the blood of Jezreel" referred to the children of Israel, whose blood had been "shred by their enemies... during the Jehu dynasty." If this is the case, there should be some kind of contextual evidence in his "proof texts" that he could cite in support of this claim, but we see nothing in his article except the bald assertion restated above. As I discuss his "proof texts," I will quote their broader contexts. In the first scripture quotation, notice in particular the last verse, which I will emphasize in bold print.

Hosea 1:8 When she [Gomer, i. e., Hosea's wife] had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. ⁹ Then Yahweh said, "Name him Lo-ammi [not my people], for you are not my people and I am not your God." ¹⁰ Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," it shall be said to them, "Children of the living God." ¹¹ The people of Judah and the people of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head; and they shall take possession of the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.

After Solomon's death around 930 BC, the Israelite kingdom, which had been unified into one nation by David, broke into two divisions, the northern kingdom [Israel] and the southern kingdom [Judah], but as I will discuss more in detail later, the last verse quoted above predicted a reunification of Judah and Israel into one nation. Before I elaborate on this prophecy, which obviously failed, I want to establish first the dating of Hosea's prophecies, because this information will be relevant to issues coming up later in my reply to LJ's "solution" of the Jehu problem. In the body of his article, LJ made reference to some of the same historical information that I will mention, so when we get to that part of his "solution 2006," I can refer readers back to this section of my article if such should be necessary to rebut any of his points that relate to this period of Israel's history.

Hosea claimed that his prophetic ministry spanned the reigns of the Judean kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (1:1). In dating his prophecies, however, Hosea mentioned in this verse only Jeroboam, the son of Joash, as a king who reigned in the northern kingdom when "the word of Yahweh" came to him. This Jeroboam was the third-generation son of the four generations of Jehu's sons whom Yahweh had promised him would reign in Israel as a reward for Jehu's having destroyed the house of Ahab (2 Kings 10:30). Uzziah of Judah's reign ended around 742 BC and Hezekiah's ended in 687 BC, which latter date would have been after the northern kingdom's conquest by Assyria in 722 BC (2 Kings 17). Since Hosea made no reference to this conquest and mentioned here only Jeroboam II's reign in dating his ministry, with no reference at all to Jeroboam's son Zechariah, whom Shallum assassinated in 746 BC, ostensibly in fulfillment of the prophecy that Jehu's descendants would reign in Israel for four generations (2 Kings 15:8-12), we can reasonably conclude that Hosea's prophecies were written before the conquest of the northern kingdom and also before the assassination of Zechariah. This is a rather obvious conclusion in view of Hosea's prophecy in 1:4 that Yahweh would "in a little while... avenge the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu." Had Zechariah already been assassinated, the prophet would surely have referred to the end of the house of Jehu as a fait accompli rather than an event still in the future at that time.

Because 2 Kings comes before Hosea in the arrangement of books in the Bible, some think that the Kings writer praised Jehu for massacring the royal family of Israel and then later the prophet Hosea condemned it, but actually Hosea condemned the massacre at least a century and a half before the Kings writer praised it. This is a logical conclusion reached from the closing content of 2 Kings, which recorded Nebuchadnezzar's second sacking of Jerusalem in 587 BC (2 Kings 25:8-12). Obviously, this book could not have been completed before the date of the final events that it recorded. As I will notice later, it should not be surprising to LJ that two biblical writers, separated in time by 150± years, when there were no libraries or internet files to consult for historical information, would have taken opposite positions on an event like the massacre at Jezreel. This, of course, doesn't mean that LJ's latest position on the Jezreel massacre is automatically incorrect, but when I show through explication of the appropriate biblical passages that he probably is wrong again, his recognition of biblical errancy, admitted earlier, should ease his pain of having to abandon another "explanation" of biblical discrepancy. He can always find comfort in rationalizing that the inconsistency in the opinions of Hosea and the Kings writer in the matter of the massacre at Jezreel was just another one of those errors that biblical writers sometimes made in "inconsequential matters."

Now before I analyze his second passage in Hosea cited above as "proof" that the "blood of Jezreel," in Hosea 1:4 referred to "the blood of the children of Israel shed by their enemies (in particular the Syrians) during the Jehu dynasty," readers should notice that in 1:11, Hosea predicted that Judah and Israel would be gathered together into one nation again under one head [ruler], a prediction that he ended by saying, "(F)or great shall be the day of Jezreel." Since Hosea said in 1:4-5 that Yahweh would (1) punish the house of Jehu "for the blood of Jezreel" and (2) put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel by "break[ing] the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel," a more sensible interpretation of the word Jezreel, as the prophet used it in verse 11 where he spoke of the greatness of the "day of Jezreel," would be that he meant it to symbolize circumstances that would bring about the new unified nation that would arise after Yahweh had punished the house of Jehu and put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel "in the valley of Jezreel." To see those circumstances as the purging of both Israel's guilt for Jehu's massacres at Jezreel and the people's personal guilt for various "sins" that will be identified and discussed as we go along is perfectly sensible--far more sensible than the strained interpretation that LJ is trying to sell. The other "proof texts" cited by LJ seem to bear this out. To understand the one verse that he cited (2:22), we need to go all the way back to 2:1 in order to let the broader context shed light on how Jezreel was used in verse 22. As I go through the broader context of this passage, I will interrupt to comment on key parts of it.

Hosea 2:1 Say to your brother, Ammi, and to your sister, Ruhamah, ² Plead with your mother, plead--for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband--that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts, ³ or I will strip her naked and expose her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and turn her into a parched land, and kill her with thirst. ⁴ Upon her children also I will have no pity, because they are children of whoredom. ⁵ For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, "I will go after my lovers; they give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink." ⁶ Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns; and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths.

Ammi and Ruhamah were the second and third children born to Hosea's "wife of whoredom," after Jezreel, in chapter one. Ammi meant "you are not my people" and Ruhamah meant "has not obtained mercy." Gomer, their mother, was Hosea's "wife of whoredom," who symbolized Israel, which Hosea thought had become an unfaithful "wife" to Yahweh. Hosea, however, foresaw a reformation in which Israel would turn from its "unfaithfulness" to Yahweh and would become unified again with Judah, so in the verses that follow, he led his readers up to the time of this reformation.

7 She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then she shall say, "I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now." ⁸ She did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished upon her silver and gold that they used for Baal. ⁹ Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my wine in its season; and I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness. ¹⁰ Now I will uncover her shame in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand. ¹¹ I will put an end to all her mirth, her festivals, her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her appointed festivals. ¹² I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, "These are my pay, which my lovers have given me." I will make them a forest, and the wild animals shall devour them. ¹³ I will punish her for the festival days of the Baals, when she offered incense to them and decked herself with her ring and jewelry, and went after her lovers, and forgot me, says Yahweh.

Through the predicted punishment of the house of Jehu and putting an end to the house of Israel by breaking its bow in the valley of Jezreel, Yahweh would put an end to all of the mirth of his unfaithful wife Israel and thereby punish her for having participated in "the festival days of the Baals." At that time, the stage would be set for the reformation and formation of a unified nation of Israel and Judah, which the following verses predicted.

14 Therefore, I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. ¹⁵ From there I will give her her vineyards, and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she shall respond as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. ¹⁶ On that day, says Yahweh, you will call me, "My husband," and no longer will you call me, "My Baal." ¹⁷ For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more. ¹⁸ I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety. ¹⁹ And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. ²⁰ I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know Yahweh. ²¹ On that day I will answer, says Yahweh, I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth; ²² and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel; ²³ and I will sow him for myself in the land. And I will have pity on Lo-ruhamah, and I will say to Lo-ammi, "You are my people"; and he shall say, "You are my God."

After all of these reforms and the blessings that Yahweh would bring upon his reclaimed wife, "(T)hey shall answer Jezreel." Yahweh would then have pity on Lo-ruhamah and would say to Lo-ammi, "You are my people." When we look at the broader context of LJ's last "proof text," we see that Hosea was using here the word Jezreel to symbolize conditions that would make possible the reunification of Judah and Israel, which Hosea obviously thought would then enjoy a permanent state of Utopia forever. To say, as LJ did, that Hosea had used the word to mean the "blood of the children of Israel" who had been killed during the reign of the Jehu dynasty is an arbitrary interpretation that has no textual support. My explications of the texts cited above by LJ show that Hosea's primary concern was the spiritual unfaithfulness of Yahweh's wife Israel, which had occurred through Baal worship. Those who take the time to read the entire book will see a repeated emphasis on Israel's devotion to Baal but nothing to indicate that Hosea was upset over "the blood of the children of Israel" who had been killed during the Jehu dynasty. If there is any textual evidence that this was Hosea's primary concern, LJ should quote and explicate it.

This "blood" is avenged upon the house of Jehu because they continued and promoted the cult of calf worship introduced by Jeroboam (and so "made Israel to sin"), which was the chief cause of divine judgment on the northern kingdom by enemy nations such as Syria.

The text in dispute contained two prophecies: (1) Yahweh would punish the house of Jehu "for the blood of Jezreel." (2) Yahweh would put an end to the house of Israel. A quick look again at the text will confirm this double prophecy.

Hosea 1:4 And Yahweh said to him [Hosea], "Name him Jezreel; for in a little while [1] I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and [2] I will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease.

If Hosea meant what LJ is claiming, then the prophet could have used a few lessons in how to write with clarity, because the adverbial phrase "for the blood of Jezreel" is positioned to give the impression that it modified punish and not both punish and cause. If Hosea had meant that Yahweh would both punish the house of Jehu and cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease and that he would do both because of the blood of Jezreel, he should have positioned the disputed phrase where it would clearly indicate that it modified both predictions. The rewording below would communicate the meaning that LJ is now claiming for Hosea 1:4.

And Yahweh said to him, "Name him Jezreel; for because of the blood of Jezreel, in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu and cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to end.

Now there is no doubt that "the blood of Jezreel" was the reason for both predictions of punishment in this rewritten version of the verse, but as the phrase was actually placed in the verse, it leaves the definite impression that the blood of Jezreel was the reason only for the predicted punishment of the house of Jehu. The rest of the book of Hosea focused primarily on Baal worship in Israel, which would be Hosea's reason for Yahweh's causing the house of Israel to cease so that Yahweh could replace it with a nation in which both Judah and Israel would be reunified and worship him.

Starting from Jeroboam, all the kings of Israel were, in addition to being culpable for their own idolatry, responsible for the blood of the people of Israel in leading them in idolatry--and paid for it by the assassinations and massacres accompanying the numerous coups in Israel's history (see 1 Kings 14:14-16).

The Bible was written in a time when people superstitiously believed that the gods controlled almost every event in human lives. In times of prosperity and good fortune, the people thought that their gods were pleased with them. In times of misfortune and calamity, they thought that they had displeased their gods. In the inscription on the Moabite Stone, for example, king Mesha of Moab said that Omri, the king of Israel, had "oppressed Moab many days, because Chemosh was angry with his land." This same belief was reflected many times in the Bible.

The author(s) of Judges repeatedly attributed adversity and oppression by other nations to the failure of the people to please their god Yahweh.

Judges 2:11 Then the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh and worshiped the Baals; ¹² and they abandoned Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; they followed other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were all around them, and bowed down to them; and they provoked Yahweh to anger. ¹³ They abandoned Yahweh, and worshiped Baal and the Astartes. ¹⁴ So the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them, and he sold them into the power of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies.

3:7 The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, forgetting Yahweh their God, and worshiping the Baals and the Asherahs. ⁸ Therefore the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of King Cushan-rishathaim of Aram-naharaim; and the Israelites served Cushan-rishathaim eight years.

3:12 The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh; and Yahweh strengthened King Eglon of Moab against Israel, because they had done what was evil in the sight of Yahweh. ¹³ In alliance with the Ammonites and the Amalekites, he went and defeated Israel; and they took possession of the city of palms. ¹⁴ So the Israelites served King Eglon of Moab eighteen years.

This was a recurring theme in the book of Judges. The people would do evil in the sight of Yahweh, and then some kind of adversity would follow. Eventually, the adversity, usually some kind of foreign oppression, would end, and change of fortune would immediately be attributed to their having "cried out to Yahweh" (Judges 3:9,15). Such accounts merely reflected a belief of the times, because the people then thought that their gods were involved in every event in their lives. When disasters and calamities happened, such as defeats in battles or conquests by invading armies, they reasoned that they had done something that displeased their gods. This kind of thinking was an excellent example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc [after this, therefore because of this] fallacy, which has no doubt resulted in many silly superstitions, such as beliefs that breaking mirrors or walking under ladders will cause bad luck. After occasions of tragedy it was always easy to find something considered wrong by contemporary societal standards, so it was common in those days to blame famines, oppression, or conquests, or whatever on actions believed to have angered the gods.

That was no doubt the case in LJ's "proof text" cited above. 1 Kings 14:14-16 does say that Yahweh would cut off the house of Jeroboam and "give up Israel" because of the sins of Jeroboam, but readers should keep in mind that the book in which this condemnation appears was, as I pointed out above, written well after the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 BC. The question of why Yahweh would have allowed this to happen to his "chosen people" was a bothersome question that demanded an explanation, and the author of the books of Kings had one: It happened because of the sins of Jeroboam. It would never have occurred to the writer that it had happened because, as a modern English idiom says, "shit happens." No, if it happened, there had to have been a reason, so Jeroboam was made the scapegoat, even though he had reigned and died of apparently natural causes (1 Kings 14:19-20) in 901 BC, 179 years before the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 BC. Yahweh certainly took his good sweet time getting around to "cutting off" the house of Israel for the sins of Jeroboam, didn't he?

I trust that I was not the only one to notice how LJ was trying to play both sides of the street. Earlier, he had said that "the blood of Jezreel" was the deaths of the children of Israel who had died under the reigns of the Jehu dynasty and that it was because of those deaths that "God" was going to put an end to the house of Israel, but then he turned around and cited a "proof text" that says that Yahweh would "cut off" Israel because of the sins of Jeroboam. Let's look at a full quotation of what LJ's "proof text" says.

1 Kings 14:14 Moreover Yahweh will raise up for himself a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam today, even right now! ¹⁵ "Yahweh will strike Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water; he will root up Israel out of this good land that he gave to their ancestors, and scatter them beyond the Euphrates, because they have made their sacred poles, provoking Yahweh to anger. ¹⁶ He will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and which he caused Israel to commit."

This passage is rather easy to understand. It put an after-the-fact blame on Jeroboam for the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom and the deportation of its people to regions beyond the Euphrates. LJ, then, needs to make up his mind. Did Yahweh destroy the northern kingdom and send its population into captivity because of the sins of Jeroboam or did he do it because of the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed during the reigns of the Jehu dynasty? He can't have it both ways.

Sensible readers, of course, will realize that the author of Kings was simply interpreting events in accordance with his religious beliefs. A national calamity had happened, and someone had to be responsible for it. He made Jeroboam the scapegoat. Later on, in 2 Kings, he made king Manasseh the scapegoat for the Babylonian conquest of Judah and the subsequent captivity of its population (2 Kings 23:26-27; 2 Kings 24:3-4). This was just the way that superstitious people living in superstitious times thought, but if the Kings writer was correct in saying that Yahweh would destroy the northern kingdom because of the sins of Jeroboam, then LJ's claim that Hosea prophesied the destruction of the northern kingdom because of the sins of the Jehu dynasty can't also be right.

Because he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, i.e., calf worship, Jehu had been warned of divine judgment against his house, the execution of which was postponed to the fourth generation in consideration of the fact that he served God in the matter of the destruction of the house of Ahab (2 Kings 10:29-31).

Well, here is a question for LJ. If Jehu had departed from the sins of Jeroboam, would Yahweh have spared and protected the kingdom of Israel? If so, then the prophecy in 1 Kings 14:14-16, quoted above, would have failed, because this prophecy said that Yahweh would "cut off" Israel because of Jeroboam's sins. Which way, then, does LJ want it? Did Yahweh cause the kingdom of Israel to end because of the sins of Jeroboam or because of the sins of the house of Jehu? He can't have it both ways.

The Solution in Detail: The solution to the problem lies in a correct interpretation of Hosea 1:4-5 and, in particular, the phrase "the blood of Jezreel." As mentioned above, the contradiction results from taking this phrase as a reference to those killed by Jehu in Jezreel. Unfortunately, most apologists have also tried to reconcile the two verses on that basis.

Well, duh, why wouldn't readers of Hosea 1:4 think that the phrase "the blood of Jezreel" referred to people who had been killed in Jezreel? Could it be that those "most apologists" that LJ referred to have tried to reconcile the two verses "on that basis" because they are intellectually honest enough to recognize that there is no other sensible interpretation of the "blood of Jezreel" than that it was a reference to Jehu's massacre of the royal family of Israel at Jezreel?

Even though he later indicated an awareness of it, LJ has completely ignored here that there were three Jezreels: one was a city that became the royal capital of the kings of Israel, another one was a valley (Josh. 17:16; Judges 6:33) in which the royal city of the northern kings was later located, and the third one was a city located in the territory of Judah (Josh. 15:56), where David's wife Ahinoam was born (1 Sam. 25:43). It is unlikely that Hosea 1:4 was referring to this third Jezreel but not only likely but certain that he was including the valley of Jezreel in his prophecy against the house of Jehu.

Hosea 1:4-5 And Yahweh said to him, "Name him Jezreel; for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. ⁵ On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel."

In other words, Hosea was predicting that when Yahweh put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel it would be done by events that could be called "break[ing] the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel." When LJ's list of seven is analyzed, one can see that all of those murders can be attributed either to Jezreel or the valley of Jezreel. LJ excluded from "the blood of Jezreel" the murder of king Ahaziah of Judah, who was visiting his uncle Joram of Israel at the time, because Jehu's archers wounded him at the descent of Gur, and he later died at Megiddo, but the descent of Gur is located by Ibleam (2 Kings 9:27), which is on the western side of the valley of Jezreel. Megiddo itself, as biblical reference maps and books like Eerdmans Bible Dictionary will confirm, is located "on the edge of the slope of the Mt. Carmel ridge, on the edge of the Jezreel valley" (1987, p. 706). Hence, there is no reason to exclude Ahaziah from the blood that was shed at Jezreel.

LJ also excluded the 42 relatives of Ahaziah who were massacred at Beth-eked, but the location of this place is uncertain. Since these kinsmen of Ahaziah were on their way to Jezreel to visit Ahaziah, there is no way that he can state with certitude that their murders did not happen in the valley of Jezreel. The fact that Jehu met them and ordered their death while he was on the way to Samaria (2 Kings 10:12) and that after he had resumed his journey to Samaria, he met Jehonadad and invited him to ride in the chariot on to Samaria would imply that Jehu was still some distance from Samaria when he encountered Ahaziah's kinsmen. The parallel account of Ahaziah's assassination indicates that these kinsmen were indeed somewhere in the valley of Jezreel.

2 Chronicles 22:8 When Jehu was executing judgment on the house of Ahab, he met the officials of Judah and the sons of Ahaziah's brothers, who attended Ahaziah, and he killed them. ⁹ He searched for Ahaziah, who was captured while hiding in Samaria and was brought to Jehu, and put to death.

As previously noted, the account of the massacre in 2 Kings claims that Jehu's bowmen wounded Ahaziah when he fled the scene after Joram was killed when going out to meet Jehu.

2 Kings 11:23 Then Joram reined about and fled, saying to Ahaziah, "Treason, Ahaziah!" ²⁴ Jehu drew his bow with all his strength, and shot Joram between the shoulders, so that the arrow pierced his heart; and he sank in his chariot. ²⁵ Jehu said to his aide Bidkar, "Lift him out, and throw him on the plot of ground belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite; for remember, when you and I rode side by side behind his father Ahab how Yahweh uttered this oracle against him: ²⁶ 'For the blood of Naboth and for the blood of his children that I saw yesterday, says Yahweh, I swear I will repay you on this very plot of ground.' Now therefore lift him out and throw him on the plot of ground, in accordance with the word of Yahweh." ²⁷ When King Ahaziah of Judah saw this, he fled in the direction of Beth-haggan. Jehu pursued him, saying, "Shoot him also!" And they shot him in the chariot at the ascent to Gur, which is by Ibleam. Then he fled to Megiddo, and died there.

It would not have been possible for Ahaziah to have died both in Megiddo and Samaria, if Samaria in the chronicler's version meant the city of Samaria, but if Samaria here meant the geographical region known as Samaria, then Ahaziah by dying in the city of Megiddon would have also died in the region of Samaria. This would be somewhat like one newspaper account today saying that a person died in Chicago while another account says that he died in Illinois. We know that both would be right. Hence, if LJ wants to reconcile the various biblical texts so that the accounts of the massacre at Jezreel will be inerrant--as he apparently wants to do--he must take the position that both Ahaziah and his kinsmen were killed somewhere in the valley of Jezreel. It would be proper, then, to include all of them in the term "blood of Jezreel" if that term was being used, as I believe it was, in Hosea's reference to "the blood of Jezreel."

LJ claims that his numbers 4 [the beheading of Ahab's 70 sons] and 7 [the massacre of "all who remained of Ahab in Samaria"] could not be included in the term "the blood of Jezreel." These are actually the only two examples in his quibble that have any real merit to them, because they all appear to have been killed in Samaria, the city. However, Jehu issued in Jezreel the ultimatum to their guardians to kill the 70 sons of Ahab (2 Kings 10:1-7), and after the guardians of Ahabs sons had obeyed the ultimatum, the heads of Ahab's sons were sent to Jezreel and displayed in two piles at the entrance into the city, so it would be pretty much of a petty quibble to argue that these 70 sons of Ahab could not be included in the term "blood of Jezreel."

As for "all who remained of Ahab" that were killed in Samaria, they were part of a massacre that began at Jezreel and was overseen by Jehu in Jezreel, so there would be no reason to exclude them from the term "blood of Jezreel." There are ample precedents of massacres that took their names from the towns either close to or in the actual killing fields. The infamous My Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, in Vietnam would be a well known example. The massacre began outside the village of My Lai when soldiers from the 1st platoon of Charlie Company encountered peasant farmers outside the village. They were the first victims of the My Lai massacre even though they weren't actually killed in the village. Some of the villagers came out to meet the soldiers, and they were killed too, outside the actual village. From there, the massacre continued in the village, and culminated in the killing of villagers fleeing for their lives across rice paddies, again outside the actual village. Later, in mopping up operations, villagers who were seen coming out of hiding places were also killed. Many of the killings, then, took place outside of the actual village, but no one would consider it improper to refer to those killed in rice paddies and ditches outside of the village as victims of the My Lai massacre. I could cite other examples beside the My Lai massacre, but it is sufficient to show that LJ is simply quibbling when he tries to exclude some of the victims of Jehu's massacre from the term "blood of Jezreel." This is really rather amusing. LJ had no trouble finding "the children of Israel" who had been killed during the Jehu dynasty in the term "blood of Jezreel," but he doesn't think that some of the actual victims of Jehu's massacre that brought him to power should be included in the term.

Therefore, it would be very inaccurate to refer to the massacre of the house of Ahab by Jehu as "the blood of Jezreel."

I just showed that this would be no more inaccurate than referring to Vietnamese peasants who had been killed outside of the village as victims of the My Lai massacre.

If Hosea was condemning the house of Jehu for the destruction of the house of Ahab by Jehu, he could have simply had God say "I will punish the house of Jehu for his destruction of the house of Ahab," which would have been far more accurate.

This would have left room for quibbling about who were members of the house of Ahab at that time. Would those who were not actually blood relatives of Ahab, such as Jehoram's "great men, his familiar friends, and his priests" (2 Kings 10:11), have been included in the term "house of Ahab"? As the tale was told, the victims of the massacre were first named, as in the example just cited, and then identified as a part of those "remaining" to Ahab. Anyway, this is just another part of LJ's quibbling. When someone refers to Lt. William Calley, Jr.'s, conviction for the My Lai massacre, I doubt if anyone hearing this reference would wonder if the crime for which he was convicted included those who were killed near but not actually in My Lai proper. So it is with "the blood of Jezreel"; its meaning would leave little doubt except with someone trying to "explain" a biblical discrepancy.

I can illustrate this with "the blood of Naboth," an expression that was also used in the story of Jehu's massacre at Jezreel. Naboth, a contemporary of Ahab, had owned a vineyard that Ahab wanted, but Naboth refused to sell it to him (1 Kings 21:1-4), so Ahab's wife Jezebel conspired to have Naboth convicted and killed on a trumped up charge of having cursed Yahweh (vs:5-16). The scheme worked, and after Naboth had been stoned to death, Ahab took possession of his vineyard. For the crime against Naboth, however, Yahweh sent the prophet Elijah to tell him that on the very spot where dogs had licked "the blood of Naboth," dogs would also lick his own blood (vs:17-19). With this brief summation of the story in mind, one can easily understand what Jehu, after having killed Joram, meant in the passage below where he referred to "the blood of Naboth."

2 Kings 9:125 Jehu said to his aide Bidkar, "Lift him [Joram] out, and throw him on the plot of ground belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite; for remember, when you and I rode side by side behind his father Ahab how Yahweh uttered this oracle against him: ²⁶ 'For the blood of Naboth and for the blood of his children that I saw yesterday, says Yahweh, I swear I will repay you on this very plot of ground.' Now therefore lift him out and throw him on the plot of ground, in accordance with the word of Yahweh."

In reading this, anyone familiar with the murder of Naboth would never scratch his head and wonder what "the blood of Naboth" had meant in the orders that Jehu gave to his aide Bidkar. It obviously referred to the event in which the blood of Naboth was shed. In the same way, there is no sensible interpretation of "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 except to understand that it was referring to the blood that Jehu had shed in the massacre at Jezreel. If not, why not?

Indeed, "the house of X" is the usual expression used in the Bible when referring to the destruction of the family and relatives of the Hebrew kings (see, for example, 1 Kings 13:34; 15:29; 16:12; 2 Chronicles 21:7; 22:10).

Yes, it was, so what is LJ's point? The issue is not what "the house of so-and-so" meant, but what "the blood of Jezreel" meant. I think that I have pretty well removed all doubt that it referred to the atrocities committed by Jehu at Jezreel. If, for example, the house of Jehu referred to those who were descendants of Jehu, why wouldn't the blood of Jezreel refer to those who were killed at the only massacre known to have been committed by Jehu at Jezreel?

Alternatively, Hosea could have had God say "I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, the ascent of Gur, Samaria, and Beth-eked"!

Likewise, modern reporters could have said that Lt. Calley was convicted for the massacre at My Lai and its nearby rice paddies and ditches, but those familiar with the incident would understand that all of the massacres in that region on that day are covered by the umbrella term "My Lai Massacre."

By analogy, imagine that Al Qaeda had attacked four locations in the U.S., one after another, including the World Trade Center, and all with similar numbers of casualties. How inaccurate and incomprehensible it would have been if the President had appeared on television afterward and said, "The U.S. will punish Al Qaeda for the blood of the World Trade Center!" Why single out one location when American citizens died in all four?

LJ probably couldn't have selected a worse example to try to shore up his quibble. On the same day, that the World Trade Center was attacked, another plane crashed into the Pentagon, and yet another one crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside, probably from efforts by passengers to thwart the plan to hit still a third target. Bush has devised a single term to refer to the terrorist activities of that day. Rather than appealing to the attack on the "World Trade Center," he will use the term "nine-eleven" as a catch-all umbrella term to stir emotional acceptance of whatever policies of his are being questioned. Whenever we hear him or his defenders use the term, we understand what they are referring to. No one hearing the term would think that it referred to, say, the devastation caused by the tsunami of December 26, 2004, in Southern Asia or the hurricane Katrina on the gulf coast, but to assign arbitrary meanings like these to the term "nine-eleven" would be just as ridiculous as LJ's attempt to make "the blood of Jezreel" refer not to the people massacred at Jezreel but to "the children of Israel" who were killed by the Syrians during the reigns of the Jehu dynasty.

At this point, LJ began an attempt to prove his spin on the meaning of the phrase "blood of Jezreel," which I will reply to in part two of my point-by-point response to his 2006 attempt to solve the Jehu problem.

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