2 Kings 10:31

2Ki 10:31 But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the LORD God of Israel with all his heart: for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin.

Ver. 31. With all his heart.] He had a dispensatory conscience, a rotten heart, and that was his ruin. A man may recover of a fever, and die of a dropsy; so he that leaveth some gross sin, yet huggeth a less, is an undone person.

For he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam.] No, though the Lord had made him such large promises, as 2Ki 10:30, compare 2Co 7:1. Nevertheless he may as well deserve - as did Galba, and our Richard III - to be reckoned in the rank of bad men, but good princes.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2Ki_10:31

Jehu took no heed to walk in law of the Lord.

Ruin wrought by neglect

I remember once seeing a bit of an old Roman road; the lava blocks were there, but for want of care, here a young sapling had grown up between two of them and had driven them apart; there they were split by the frost; here was a great ugly gap full of mud; and the whole thing ended in a jungle. How shall a man keep the road in repair? By taking heed thereto. Things that are left to go anyhow in this world have a strange knack of going one how. You do not need anything else than negligence to ensure that thing will come to grief. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Heedlessness perilous

There is no need that the man in a skiff amid Niagaras rapids should row toward the cataract; resting on his oars is quite enough to send him over the awful verge. It is the neglected wheel that capsizes the vehicle and maims for life the passengers. It is the neglected leak that sinks the ship. It is the neglected field that yields briers instead of bread. It is the neglected spark near the magazine whose tremendous explosion sends its hundreds of mangled wretches into eternity. The neglect of an officer to throw up a rocket on a certain night caused the fall of Antwerp, and postponed the deliverance of Holland for twenty or more years. The neglect of a sentinel to give an alarm hindered the fall of Sebastopol, and resulted in the loss of many thousand lives.

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2Ki 10:31. But Jehu took no care to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel — He abolished the worship of Baal, but did not keep up the worship of God, nor walk in his law. He showed great zeal and care for the rooting out of a false religion; but in the true religion he showed no care, took no heed: was not solicitous to please God and do his duty. With all his heart — His heart, his whole heart, was not engaged in, nor influenced by religion; nor was he truly zealous for the glory of God, and the advancement of true and genuine piety in himself and others. It is evident his own religion was very superficial, and yet God made use of him as an instrument of effecting some reformation in Israel. It is a pity that those who do good to others, are not always good themselves.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

10:31-33 In response to Jehu’s unfaithfulness, the Lord began to cut down the size of Israel’s territory, one of the curses for spiritual infidelity to the covenant (Deut 28:25). • The Aramean king Hazael moved southward, conquering areas east of the Jordan River north of the border of Moab. The Arameans continued the pressure against Israel throughout the reign of Jehu and into the reign of his son Jehoahaz (2 Kgs 12:17-18; 13:3).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 31. Jehu took no heed] He never made it his study; indeed, he never intended to walk in this way; it neither suited his disposition nor his politics.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(31) But Jehu took no heed.—Or, Now Jehu had not been careful. This verse, rather than the next, begins a new paragraph.

To walk in the law—i.e., the Mosaic law, which forbids the use of images, such as the “calves.”

With all his heart.—This is explained by the next sentence. He had done honour to Jehovah by extirpating the foreign Baal-worship, but he supported the irregular mode of worshipping Jehovah established by Jeroboam as the state religion of the Northern kingdom.

For.—Not in the Hebrew.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

31. with all his heart] He only went partially on the right way, and probably personal ambition had much to do with his zeal against Baal. With the calves it was another matter. They formed, as it were, the emblems of Israel’s independence, and so the king’s feeling would be enlisted on their side.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

From Jordan eastward,.... This was principally the coast on which Hazael smote them, to the east of the land of Canaan:

all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, and the Reubenites, and the Moabites; the country on the other side Jordan, given to these tribes by Moses, at their request, which were before the kingdoms of Sihon and of Og:

from Aroer, which is by the river Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan: countries which the Israelites first conquered, and were the first they lost.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

With all his heart: His obedience wanted three necessary properties, care or heedfulness, universality, and sincerity.

He departed not from the sins of Jeroboam; his resolved continuance in one single course is justly alleged as an argument of his false-heartedness in all his other actions.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

But Jehu took no heed to walk in the Law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart. Jehu"s character is thus summed up by Dean Stanley: "The character of Jehu is not difficult to understand, if we take it as a whole, and consider the general impression left upon us by the biblical account. He is exactly one of those men whom we are compelled to recognize, not for what is good or great in themselves, but as instruments for destroying evil, and preparing the way for good; such as Augustus Caesar at Rome, Sultan Mahmoud II in Turkey, or one closer at hand in the revolutions of our own time and neighborhood. A destiny, long kept in view by himself or ethers inscrutable secrecy and reserve in carrying out his plans a union of cold, remorseless tenacity with occasional bursts of furious, wayward, almost fanatical zeal; this is Jehu, as he is set before us in the historical narrative, the worst type of a son of Jacob the "supplanter"...without the noble and princely qualities of Israel; the most unlovely and the most coldly commended of all the heroes of his country" ("Lectures on the Jewish Church," vol. 2. p. 289). The estimate is lower than that formed by most other writers; but it is not far from the truth. For he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin (comp. ver. 29).

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Took no heed - Sin, clearly shewed that his heart was not right with God.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.