2 Kings 10:25-36

2 Kings 10:12-24 - Daily Devotion - 31 July 2026 St Barnabas Anglican Church Fairfield & Bossley Park 25 When he had finished making the burnt offering, Jehu said to the guards and officers, “Go in and kill them. Do not let anyone out.”So the guards and officers put them to the sword, threw the bodies out, and went into the inner room of the temple of Baal.26 They brought out the sacred pillar of the temple of Baal and burned it. 27 They also demolished the sacred pillar of Baal. Then they tore down the temple of Baal and made it into a latrine, which it is to this day.28 Thus Jehu eradicated Baal from Israel, 29 but he did not turn away from the sins that Jeroboam son of Nebat had caused Israel to commit—the worship of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan.30 Nevertheless, the LORD said to Jehu, “Because you have done well in carrying out what is right in My sight and have done to the house of Ahab all that was in My heart, four generations of your sons will sit on the throne of Israel.”31 Yet Jehu was not careful to follow the instruction of the LORD, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn away from the sins that Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit.32 In those days the LORD began to reduce the size of Israel. Hazael defeated the Israelites throughout their territory 33 from the Jordan eastward through all the land of Gilead (the region of Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh), and from Aroer by the Arnon Valley through Gilead to Bashan.34 As for the rest of the acts of Jehu, along with all his accomplishments and all his might, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?35 And Jehu rested with his fathers and was buried in Samaria, and his son Jehoahaz reigned in his place. 36 So the duration of Jehu’s reign over Israel in Samaria was twenty-eight years.REFLECTIONSWritten by Stephen SheadThere’s an amazing little connection between today’s passage and the opening verses of Matthew’s Gospel. It’s a detail I only learned when I was preparing to preach on Matthew earlier this year, and it blew my mind, so I want to share it with you.Matthew famously arranges Jesus’ genealogy in three groups of 14 generations each: 14 generations from Abraham to King David, who was a preview of the Messiah; 14 generations from King David to the exile in Babylon; and 14 generations from the exile to Jesus.But many people say that Matthew has fudged the generations to make Jesus’ line look like a neat, God-ordained pattern. The reason is that it looks like Matthew skips 3 generations. In Matthew 1:8, in the middle of the second group, Matthew says, “Joram was the father of Uzziah.” Joram – or Jehoram, as he is also known – was the king of Judah we met briefly in 2 King 8. But he wasn’t directly the father of Uzziah, he was actually his great-great grandfather. There were three generations of kings in between them: Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah.So was Matthew fudging? Not at all! The key detail is in verse 30 of today’s passage, where God tells Jehu that because of his faithfulness in eradicating the wicked house of Ahab, “four generations of your sons will sit on the throne of Israel.” That phrase “the throne of Israel” is a very special phrase. In the whole Old Testament, there are only two other kings who said to sit on “the throne of Israel”: King David and his son Solomon. They both ruled over the whole, united kingdom of Israel. After Solomon’s death, the kingdom was divided in two, so from then on, there were parallel kings over Israel in the north and Judah in the south.But in 1 Kings 9, Jehu assassinates the kings of both Israel and Judah, to end the threat of Baal-worship. And from God’s point of view, that meant that the dynasty of Jehu – this northern usurper – had temporarily replaced the line of King David in Jerusalem. For four generations (which is how long Jehu’s dynasty would last), there would again be a king on the throne of all Israel – so during that time, from God’s point of view, there was a gap in the line of David’s heirs.Guess how long Jehu’s four generations lasted? They lasted through the reigns of Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah in Judah – the three kings Matthew leaves out of his genealogy of Jesus. Matthew leaves them out because God left them out of his reckoning of Jesus’ royal line.“As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him” (Psalm 18:30). Pray today that God might grow us all in our conviction that his word is flawless, and that it might lead us to marvel at Jesus and take refuge in him. ABOUT THE AUTHORStephen is our Senior Minister.