Zimri

And as Yehu enters the gate, she calls down, verse 31.

Ha-shalom zimri harag Adonav? Is it peace, zimri, murderer of his master? There it is again, Hashalom, but this time dripping with contempt.

She's calling him Zimri.

You remember Zimri? He assassinated the king of Israel, seized the throne, and lasted all of seven days.

And who overthrew him? Omri, Ahav's own father.

The dynasty Jezebel married into rose to power on the ashes of Zimri's rebellion, and now she's using that very history to mock Yehu.

But Yehu doesn't even answer her.

I think that's the proper response.

When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it, and she painted her eyes and adorned her head and looked out of the window.

And as Jehu entered the gate, she said, Is it peace, you Zimri, murderer of your master? and he lifted up his face to the window and said, Who is on my side? Who? Two or three eunuchs looked out at him.

He said, Throw her down.

So they threw her down, and some of her blood splattered on the wall and on the horses, and they trampled on her.

These words, 1 Kings 15 verse 27, and Baasha, the son of Ahijah of the house of Issachar, conspired.

Now the rest of the acts of Zimri and his treason that he wrought, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel? And Baasha had conspired.

against Nadab and Zimri had conspired against Elah.

And do you know over the page in the story of Jehu, we'll come to it in a couple of days, in 2 Kings chapter 10 and verse 9, even Jehu admits himself that there was a conspiracy afoot.

It came to pass in the morning that he, that is Jehu, went out and stood and said to all the people, ye be righteous and Behold, I conspired against my master and slew him.

Even he acknowledges it here in chapter 10 and verse 9.

He was a little bit like Baasha, whose house was completely destroyed, just as he was about to completely destroy Ahab's.

He was a little bit like Zimri, another chariot captain with ambition and zeal.

As the chariot comes through the gate below her, the queen mother of Israel calls down and gets the first word.

Have you come in peace, Zimri, you murderer of your master? It is a masterpiece of an insult, and you have to know a little history to hear it land.

Zimri was a real man, and everyone in that gateway knew his story.

He had been a chariot commander a few decades earlier, under an earlier northern king.

He assassinated his master, seized the throne, and wiped out the previous royal house.

Seven.

The army in the field heard what he had done, proclaimed a different commander king on the spot, and marched on the capital.

Zimri saw them coming, went into the citadel of the royal palace, set the building on fire around himself, and died in it.

It says in the Gemara in Sanhedrin, that Amri, why does Amri get to become king? It's because Amri adds one simple village to Eretz Yisrael.

Shemer, So Tanatvei Elio, in Tanatvei Elio, Rabbi Perak Tess, tells us that one time, Elio was sitting in the Beis HaMedrash in Yerushalayim, in front of the Chachamim, and he says, How come Achav was different? Until Amri, They had just gone from king to king, from Aela to Zimri and Zimri to Omri.

And, of course, Tiffany was brought up in the middle.

And Omri comes along.

But desperate.

Jeroboam, Abijah, Nadab, Asher, Elah, Zimri, Omri, king after king has failed.

Now Ahab is worse than all of them.

Israel's been warned.

In the twenty-sixth year of Asa king of Judah, Elah the son of Baasha began to reign over Israel in Tirzah, and he reigned two years.

But his servant Zimri, commander of half his chariots, conspired against him.

When he was at Tirzah, drinking himself drunk in the house of Arza, who was over the household in Tirzah, Zimri came in and struck him down and killed him.

In the twenty-seventh year of Asa king of Judah, and reigned in his place.

When he began to reign, as soon as he had seated himself on his throne, he struck down all the house of Baasha.

He did not leave him a single male of his relatives or his friends.

Thus Zimri destroyed all the house of Baasha, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke against Baasha by Jehu the prophet, for all the sins of Baasha and the sins of Elah his son, which they sinned and with which they made Israel to sin, provoking the Lord God of Israel to anger with their idols.

Now the rest of the acts of Elah, and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel? In the twenty-seventh year of Asa king of Judah, Zimri reigned seven days in Tirzah.