A Revolution Hurried Along
Photo by Aditya Vyas on Unsplash
Chris Hedges is among our most passionate truth-tellers who continues his shrill expose of corporate greed and its costs for our society. I recently went back to his book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Happily he is joined in writing this book by Joe Sacco who provides compelling cartoons to go along with the narrative.
Hedges and Sacco consider in turn four case studies of the way in which corporate greed has done its work of destruction, hence, Days of Destruction:
“Days of Theft” (chapter 1) concerns land seizure by the government and speculators from Native Americans;
“Days of Siege” (chapter 2) considers the hopeless and resourceless in Camden, New Jersey, where the “world is divided between the prey and the predators” (p. 77);
“Days of Devastation” (chapter 3) tells of the ruin of the land in West Virginia by the coal companies, and the local society is left completely bereft and without hope;
“Days of Slavery” (chapter 4) narrates the plight of Latino camps where the laborers live in sub-human conditions in order to grow the vegetables needed for consumer tables.
These chapters are very disturbing reading. Each of these chapters features an economy that has been ransacked by corporate greed with the working community left behind and abandoned, without power and without hope.
The second part of their study concerns a popular uprising that will overcome the power of corporate greed and return power to the people (chapter 5). They regard Occupy Wall Street as a harbinger of the revolution that is sure to come when enough people decide they are no longer willing to live in the “cages” of corporate greed. “Power to the people” is the certain antidote to power in the hands of the few that manage to reduce too many people into willing docile conformity.
It is my wont, as regularly as I am able, to read such contemporary analysis at an interface with a biblical text. It is my conviction that reading at that intersection has a chance to illuminate both the biblical text and the contemporary writing. In this instance I propose to read Hedges and Sacco alongside the text in II Kings 9-10 that is also very disturbing reading. This biblical text, violent as it is, is never read in church, and in general is neglected. I have no doubt that attention must be paid to it for the reasons I will suggest. Reading these two chapters in the Bible knowingly requires recognition of these two critical awarenesses:
1. Every God comes along with a socioeconomic political option that the God champions and legitimates. This defining linkage is elemental for reading this text. The linkage is well said in the aphorism of Karl Marx:
The criticism of heaven is thus transformed into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.
Thus for example, there is no doubt that YHWH the God of Israel, since the Exodus emancipation, comes along with a neighborly covenantal economy that YHWH champions and legitimates.
2. In this text and in the Bible generally, Baal is the legitimator and champion of a socioeconomic system that practices predatory greed and individual wealth at the expense of the community. From this awareness it follows that the deep contestation between YHWH and Baal (for example in the narrative of Mt. Carmel (I Kings 18) is at the same time a deep contestation between a neighborly covenantal economy and an economy of predatory greed and individual wealth (as for example in the narrative of I Kings 21). Thus the issue joined in II Kings 9-10 is not unlike the issue joined by Hedges and Sacco in their analysis of destruction and their anticipation of revolution.
The biblical text is divided into two parts. II Kings 9:1-13 is the preparation for and initiation of the revolution to be led by Jehu. What follows in 9:14-10:28 is the cunning, bloody implementation of the revolution with an outcome of the installation of a new government led by the leader of the revolt, Jehu. The initiation of the revolution is credited to Elisha. This is the same Elisha who in previous narratives had stood outside of and apart from the royal regime, manifesting and performing a transformative power that could not be understood or curbed by the royal regime. Now Elisha moves to overthrow the Omride dynasty that he has long since rejected. This dramatic movement toward new governance is through three-fold reiteration of the same formula:
Elisha instructs a member of his circle:
Thus says the Lord: I anoint you king over Israel (v. 3).
Elisha’s messenger says to Jehu with oil poured over his head,
Thus says the Lord the God of Israel, I anoint you king over the people of the Lord, over Israel (v. 6).
Jehu reports to his companion soldiers, quoting the messenger,
Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel (v. 12).
The formulation is the same in each case. Except that it is worth noting that in the second iteration of that formula, it is filled out by the added phrases, “the God of Israel,” and “the people of the Lord.” This double intensification, at the moment of anointing, is surely to accent that for both God and people the anointing concerns the creation of a covenantal community that is in sharp contrast to the present governance of the Omride dynasty. It does not worry Elisha or the messenger or Jehu himself or the acclaiming troops that there is no vacancy in the royal office. They know that full well. They also know full well that their act of anointing and acclaiming amounts to a resolve to overthrow established authority that is now viewed by them as illegitimate. The reason for their readiness to do the overthrow of established authority is that it is a dynasty committed to the practice of Baalism.
In the second part of the narrative, the theme is the progressive advance of new governance, the implementation of the anointing (II Kings 9:14-10:28). First Jehu must deal with the present kings, Joram in Israel and Ahijah in Judah (9:14-29). It is ironically dramatic that Jehu kills Joram exactly on the erstwhile property of Naboth the Jezreelite, thus identifying the revolution with the peasants who have been done in by the predatory practices of the Omride dynasty. In short order King Ahaziah of Judah is also slain (vv. 27-29). Then follows the dramatic disposal of Jezebel, now the queen mother, again with an allusion to the Naboth murder (vv. 30-37; see I Kings 21:17-19). Thus the royal house is decimated, and the revolution is staged with a full and ready identification with Naboth who is a stand-in for the peasants who have suffered at the hands of the predatory rulers.
Tucked into this narrative is the verse that has kept Jehu famous. “He drives like a maniac” (II Kings 9:30). Or as we now say, “He drives like Jehu.” Jehu is in a huge hurry. He knows that his revolution is urgent. He knows that as long as the present regime lasts the vulnerable suffer. We may take his urgency as a measure of the catastrophe wrought by the regime, a catastrophe that is matched by our own current corporate greed. It is for us, as for Jehu, a time of acute urgency.
In chapter 10 the seizure of power by the new peasant movement is completed. First Jehu kills seventy sons of Ahab in Samaria (10:1-11). This massive number of princes no doubt in popular perception represented extravagant self-indulgence that contrasted with the subsistence economy of the peasants. Yet again the killing is linked to the word of Elijah concerning Naboth:
Know then that there shall fall to the earth nothing of the word of the Lord, which the Lord spoke concerning the house of Ahab; for the Lord has done what he said through his servant Elijah (II Kings 10:10).
Then follows the complete wipeout of the royal family of Judah, forty-two persons in all; he spared none of them (vv. 12-14). Thus in both 9:27-29 and 10:12-14 the disposal of the Southern royal family seems almost an afterthought to the narrator.
In the reprise of 10:15-17 we are given yet another notation about the remainder of the royal family in Samaria with another reference to Elijah. But then, in some relief from the killing, Jehu welcomes to his company Jehonadab son of Rechab. We know elsewhere that the “Rechabites” are an embodiment of the old tribal, covenantal ways who have resisted the high-life extravagance of the royal house (Jeremiah 35:1-19). Jehu identifies his movement with the most old-fashioned conservatism in Israel, thus providing important credentialing for his movement.
In the final paragraph of the narrative Jehu conducts a mop-up action against the followers of Baal (10:18-28). These verses are filled with references to Baal, the legitimator and champion of the predatory economy of the Omrides:
Jehu summoned all the prophets of Baal, all his worshipers, and all his priests (v. 19)
Jehu cunningly planned to destroy all the worshipers of Baal (v. 19).
Jehu ordered a solemn assembly for Baal (v. 20).
The temple of Baal was filled from wall to wall (v. 21).
Jehu ordered that the vestments for the worshipers of Baal be brought out (v. 22).
Jehu, along with Jehonadab the Rechabite, made sure there were no worshipers of YHWH among the throng of Baal worshipers (v.23).
They burned the pillar of Baal (v. 26).
They destroyed the temple of Baal and made it a latrine (v. 27).
And then in conclusion:
Thus Jehu wiped out Baal from Israel (28).
Jehu’s action is full, complete, and final. The events set in motion by Elijah have come to fulfillment! The narrative leaves us in no doubt that the intent of Jehu is to overrun and eliminate the political economy legitimated by Baal. He does so on behalf of the peasant economy represented by Naboth, voiced by Elijah, performed by Elisha, and embodied by Jehonadab the Rechabite.
We must of course take care to notice the massive violence of Jehu. There is no way around that accent in the narrative. But we must also notice that the initiating violence did not come from Jehu, but from Ahab, Jezebel, and the followers of Baal. (See Dom Helder Camara, The Spiral of Violence).That regime in Samaria was, from its inception to its implementation and demise, an act of violence against resourceless peasants. The responding violence of Jehu may seem disproportionate until we take into account the long-running wholesale systemic violence of the regime.
The parallel to the destruction and revolution of Hedges and Sacco seems unavoidably evident. As the Omride dynasty had severely exploited the peasant community, so the predatory economy of corporate greed had worked its violent deathliness against Native Americans, the inner city vulnerable, coal miners, and Hispanics, and any others who were useful targets for exploitation. Like the strange movement of Jehu, the Occupy Wall Street movement came from outside the sphere and reach of the regime and had on its side the urgent need of nameless unnumbered persons.
We have on our hands this dangerous biblical text. There is good reason we avoid it in practice, in the first instance because it is filled with violence. But the deeper reason we avoid it is that it is a rendering of a revolution from below on behalf of the resourceless. It takes no stretch of the imagination to see that the Jesus movement, in a very different mode, continued that revolution that proved so dangerous to the establishment that it ended in a state execution.
The primary learning here, as I see it, is the deep link between the God-claim of the gospel and the socioeconomic political by-product of that God-claim. YHWH always comes with a neighborly covenantal economy. Jesus always comes with a caring eye for those left behind. The Trinitarian God is marked by suffering and communal solidarity so that this God can never be easily at home with predatory wealth or the system of usurpation. Every time a preacher or a teacher of the church speaks up, she must willy-nilly bear witness to the byproduct of neighborliness. This God never travels but with the vulnerable. We prefer to have “only God.” But the God of the gospel is not on offer in that way. That is why Jesus insisted that we cannot have only one “great commandment.” There are always two (Mark 12: 28-34)! Always God and neighbor, both loved passionately and urgently. The Occupy Wall Street Movement fully understood this, even if in a very different idiom. Nonetheless, we may finally trust the idiom we have been given: “God and neighbor.” Elijah knew this in his severity. Elisha knew this as he performed among the outsiders. Jehonadab the Rechabite never forgot it. And Jehu acted it out in the face of systemic violence.
The biblical narrative is honest enough, in its highly stylized conclusion to Jehu, to recognize that the movement could last only so long:
The Lord said to Jehu, “Because you have done well in carrying out what I consider right, and in accordance with all that was in my heart have dealt with the house of Ahab, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel” (II Kings 10:30).
Only four generations, a short shelf life: only Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, and the great Jeroboam II. Not more! Even this eager movement is not perfect:
But Jehu was not careful to follow the law of the Lord the God of Israel with all his heart; he did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam, which he caused Israel to commit (v. 31).
We get an imperfect movement. Even that, however, is well worth the effort. The effort must be made.
Walter Brueggemann
September 28, 2022
Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann is one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is the author of over one hundred books and numerous scholarly articles. He continues to be a highly sought-after speaker.
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