All families impact society for good or ill. Ahab’s family were so vile that their house must be razed.
The recording of brutality in the Bible is not unwarranted. This is not the gratuitous violence of a Hollywood movie. It’s there to show the horrific consequences of human evil. As Jehu approached Jezreel, Jezebel the queen mother “put paint on her eyes and adorned her head, and looked through a window” (2 Ki 9:30). But her makeup couldn’t cover her murders. Seeing her, Jehu called out, “Who is on my side?” (v 32). Two or three eunuchs volunteered and “threw her down” from her upper chamber (v 33). Her collision with the earth was not pleasant. Jehu, unfazed, decided to break for a meal (v 34)! Afterward, he told his men that, though a wicked woman, she was a king’s daughter, and her body should be buried. But when they came to her, all that remained was her “skull and the feet and the palms of her hands” (v 35), as if even the back-street curs would have nothing to do with the vile thoughts of her mind, the corrupt acts of her hands, or the perverse path of her feet. This was in fulfillment of Elijah’s prophecy (1 Ki 21:23). But the blood-shedding wasn’t over. Jehu wrote to the elders of Jezreel and told them to crown one of Ahab’s family as king—if they dared! They didn’t. “Two kings could not stand up to him;” they said. “How then can we stand?” (2 Ki 10:4). Well then, wrote Jehu in a second letter, heads must roll. “If you are for me and will obey my voice, take the heads of…your master’s sons, and come to me at Jezreel by this time tomorrow” (v 6). Placed in two hideous piles at the gate, the muted heads declared: “Nothing shall fall to the earth of the word of the Lord…concerning the house of Ahab” (v 10). Thankfully, this macabre chapter against God’s foes will not continue much longer.