IEHU. – Prophet, son of Hanani, who exercised his prophetic activity in the kingdom of Israel in the time of King Baasa (910–887 B.C.), whom he reproached for his misdeeds and for his defection from the legitimate worship of Jahweh, following the Ieroboam I (v.), and foretold the downfall of his dynasty.
According to the Vulgate (I Reg. 16:7), this prophet is said to have been killed by King Baasa himself; this is an error: in the Hebrew text, it is not Baasa who kills Iehu, but Iehu who reproaches Baasa for the cruel extermination of Ieroboam’s family. In fact, we find him again some thirty years later, when he Iosaphat (v.) for having formed a friendship and alliance by marriage with the wicked King Achab (II Par. 19:2 ff.). He outlived King Iosaphat himself and wrote the records of his reign (II Par. 20:34). Gaetano Stano
IEHU. – Tenth king of Israel after the schism (842–815 B.C.). Captain of the Ioram (v.), having already served under King Achab (II Reg. 9, 25), he secretly received anointing as king at the hands of a prophet, a disciple of Eliseo, while he was encamped near Ramoth of Galaad (present-day es-Salt). He was an instrument in the hands of Jahweh ACAB (v.), which had led Israel into idolatry and persecuted the prophets (II Reg. 9, 7 ff.). Once the army captains had sided with I., the revolt spread with lightning speed as a political-religious reaction against the dynasty of Amri. King Ioram, surprised in the plain of Iezrael, where he had gone to recover from the wounds sustained at Ramoth of Galaad, was killed on the spot. Ochozia, king of Judah, also related to the family of Achab, who had come to visit Ioram, was pursued by I.’s soldiers and lost his life at Mageddo. Iezabel (v.), the wicked queen who persecuted the prophets: I. had her thrown from the window of her palace, and her corpse trampled by horses (II Reg. 9, 14–37). He then massacred the house of Ioram, as well as the related family of Ochozia, and inaugurated in Israel a new (fifth) dynasty, which reigned for about a century, until the death of Zaccaria (744 B.C.), longer than all the others.
From the beginning of his reign I. set himself up as a champion of Yahwism and worked energetically to eradicate the worship of Baal, which the syncretistic policy of his predecessors had greatly encouraged: having assembled the priests of Baal by a stratagem in their temple, he killed them all and demolished the sanctuary (II Reg. 10, 18–27). It does not seem, however, that in all these repressions I. was animated solely by religious zeal; ambition and thirst for revenge played a considerable part. Moreover, he too followed the superstitious practices of his predecessors, worshipping the golden calf in the schismatic sanctuaries of Bethel and Dan (II Reg. 10, 29). In any case, his cruelties, of which a sorrowful memory was preserved in Israel for almost a century (Or. 1, 4), cannot in any way be attributed to Eliseo, who anointed him king at the Lord’s command. During I.’s reign, relations with Judah and Syria became more strained. Precisely in order to defend himself against the powerful neighbor from Damascus, I. hastened, at the beginning of his reign, to render homage to the Assyrian king Salmanasar III, to whom he sent his tribute. On the famous “black obelisk” (now in the British Museum), which celebrates Salmanasar’s victories, I. is also depicted (improperly called “of the house of Amri”: Yana bti Humri) in an attitude of worship before the Assyrian King. But the king of Syria, Hazael, made Israel pay dearly for this alliance with the Assyrians: he not only harassed the kingdom of Samaria with continual raids, but also wrested from it the entire territory beyond the Jordan, leaving for a long time a terrible memory of his wartime atrocities (cf. II Reg. 8, 12; Am. 1, 3). I. died after twenty-eight years of reign, leaving the country exhausted and one-third occupied by the Syrians.