Context No. 2439 of 4322 · 2 Kings

2 Kings 9:23-29: in context

23Joram turned his hands and fled, and said to Ahaziah, “This is treason, Ahaziah!” 24Jehu drew his bow with his full strength, and struck Joram between his arms; and the arrow went out at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot. 25Then Jehu said to Bidkar his captain, “Pick him up, and throw him in the plot of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite; for remember how, when you and I rode together after Ahab his father, the LORD laid this burden on him: 26‘Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth, and the blood of his sons,’ says the LORD; ‘and I will repay you in this plot of ground,’ says the LORD. Now therefore take and cast him onto the plot of ground, according to the LORD’s word.” 27But when Ahaziah the king of Judah saw this, he fled by the way of the garden house. Jehu followed after him, and said, “Strike him also in the chariot!” They struck him at the ascent of Gur, which is by Ibleam. He fled to Megiddo, and died there. 28His servants carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem, and buried him in his tomb with his fathers in David’s city. 29In the eleventh year of Joram the son of Ahab, Ahaziah began to reign over Judah.

Jehu has been anointed to end the house of Ahab, and here he cuts down King Joram, Ahab's son. But he does not simply kill him; he has the body thrown onto a particular field, the plot that once belonged to Naboth the Jezreelite. Remember, Jehu tells his officer, how God swore to repay the blood of Naboth and his sons on this very ground. The murder of one powerless man, years before, is answered here on the exact spot.

The detail of the field is the point. Ahab had Naboth killed to steal his vineyard, a small crime against a nobody, the kind of injustice the world forgets by the next season. God did not forget. He named the place and the debt and collected it on the same soil. This is sobering and, in a way, consoling: the blood of the overlooked cries out and is heard, and the passage of time does not quietly erase a wrong done to the weak.

Have I assumed God has forgotten an injustice, my own or another's, simply because years have gone by without a reckoning?

Sources

2 Kings 9:26: Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth, and the blood of his sons... and I will repay you in this plot of ground, says the LORD.
2 Kings 9:25: throw him in the plot of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite.
Genesis 4:10: The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the ground.