Did God commend Jehu for the bloodshed at Jezreel, or condemn it?

The two passages judge two different things: the deed God had ordered, and the heart of the man who did it. Kings itself gives both verdicts, side by side. Just before the praise of 10:30 it says that Jehu kept the golden calves at Bethel and Dan (10:29); just after it, that he “took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart” (10:31). So the reward was limited from the start: four generations, and no more.

The end of Ahab’s line was God’s sentence, announced by Elijah years before (1 Kings 21:21–24) and given to Jehu to carry out (2 Kings 9:7–10). As judgment it was just, and God says so. But Jehu used the command for his own ends. He cried “Come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord” (10:16), yet he held on to Jeroboam’s calves, which kept his people away from Jerusalem and so served his politics. He also went beyond his orders: he killed Ahaziah king of Judah and forty-two of his kinsmen (9:27; 10:12–14), and at Jezreel “all his great men, and his kinsfolks, and his priests” (10:11). Keil and Delitzsch, following Calvin, put it this way: the act was righteous as God’s judgment but became blood-guilt in Jehu, because he served himself in it.

Scripture judges in the same way elsewhere. Assyria is “the rod of mine anger” against a godless nation, yet it is punished, because “he meaneth not so” but meant only to destroy (Isaiah 10:5–7, 12). Hosea’s warning came true: Jehu’s great-great-grandson Zachariah was murdered after six months, and the writer notes, “This was the word of the Lord which he spake unto Jehu” (2 Kings 15:12).

Going beyond the command

Some put the weight on the excess: God ordered the end of Ahab’s house, but not the killing of the princes of Judah, nor of every official and priest in Jezreel. On this view Hosea condemns what Jehu added, not what he was told to do.

The blood of Jehu’s house

A few suggest that ‘the blood of Jezreel’ may refer to bloodshed by Jehu’s descendants, not recorded in Kings, rather than to Jehu’s purge. Most commentators, including Keil and Delitzsch, think Hosea means the events of 2 Kings 9–10, since those are the only deeds of blood at Jezreel that we know of.

Christian commentators differ over whether Hosea blames Jehu chiefly for his motives, for going beyond his orders, or for both. The text names the bloodshed but does not spell out which.