Today’s passage quite violent and quite misogynistic. It reads like a bloody scene from an action movie. Ahab is dead but his son and wife are still alive and ruling Israel. The kind of Judah, Ahaziah, was cooperating with Israel. So, Jehu is anointed by the community of prophets and kills Ahab and all his family and all his friends. Jezebel is murdered and her body eaten by dogs, but not before she puts on eye makeup? The power vacuum leads to Ahaziah’s mother ruling for several years in Judah–after she kills all of her rivals, but one who slips through her figures. Then she is killed. Also everyone who worships Baal is killed.
I note that while these are not objective histories in the modern sense, they are also no whimsical fairy tales about slaying dragons. They are pretty realistic. Society’s thrashing about searching for a leader to save it does not have a good track record.
Even the good leaders seem to always go bad after time–the corrupting influence of power. Is there a different model?