10- Yehu gets Achav’s people to kill Achav’s sons, and he kills the relatives of Achaziah, as well as the rest of the family of Achav. Yehu pretends to serve the Ba’al idol and gathers all the worshipers to one building, then burns them all alive. Yehoachaz succeeds Yehu.
11 – Queen Atalyah reigns over Yehudah after her son [Achaziah] the king dies, and kills off all the relatives. However ,Yoash, son of Achazia, is hidden by Achzaia’s sister. After seven years, Ataliah is executed and Yoash reigns.
12 – Yoash imposes a new system of financially maintaining the Beis Hamikdash. He uses parts of the mikdash to pay off Chazael king of Aram to stop him invading. Yoash is assassinated and his son Amatziah reigns.
13 – HaShem saves us from the invasion of Aram. Yehoachaz dies and is replaced as King of Yehudah by Yoash. Yoash dies and is replaced by his son Yeravam. Elisha performs a miracle in guaranteeing we will beat Aram three times via getting someone to fire an arrow. Elisha dies and someone comes back to life via touching his dead bones. Yoash beats Aram.
14 – Amatziah, son of Yoash, becomes King of Yehudah. Amatziah is beaten in war by Yoash King of Israel, who takes the Temple articles as spoils. Yoash dies and is replaced by Yeravam. Amatziah is assassinated. Yeravam dies and is replaced by his son Zecharia as the King of Israel.
15 – A listing of several kings who ruled and then died, as well as an accounting for their deeds. It ends of with Pekah as king of Israel and Yosam as King of Yehudah – and a righteous king at that. Assyria begins its conquest of Israel and exiles cities of Israel back to Assyria. Achaz, son of Yosam, replaces his father after his father dies.
DVAR TORAH… [TOTAL LOYALTY]
In perek 10 we see an amazing thing. King Yehu pretends to be an idol worshiper in order to gather the idol-worshipers together and kill them off. Now imagine what the people were saying about Yehu before they realised that he was really only pretending. He temporarily damaged his own reputation for the benefit of Klal Yisrael and the long term goal. The message is not to be so caught up in one’s own reputation and to focus on the goal instead. We find this in two other places that I know of:
1) Part of the difficulty of the test of the akeidah was that Avraham was universally known for his kindness, and his reputation would suffer a tremendous dent if people knew he slaughtered his son. [And his reputation was important in spreading his spiritual message] Yet, still, because he knew that this is what HaShem wanted, he went off to sacrifice his son, and his reputation too.
2) Avshalom rebelled against his father David HaMelech. Chazal tell us that David HaMelech was worried at the chillul HaShem this would create that he was planning to feign idol worship so that beis din would kill him (for idolatry), and nobody would blame Avshalom for having rebelled against an ‘idolotrous’ king. The greatness of David was that he was willing to put his reputation on the line [and was prepared to go down in history as a king who served idols] in order to do HaShem’s Will in preventing a chilul HaShem.
It’s not easy to put HaSHem’s Will constantly above one’s personal reputation and ego, but it’s a central part of our service of HaShem. Better to have a worse reputation in the temporary stay in this world, and a better reputation in the Next World.
Have a wonderful Shabbes
