Useful Bible Studies > 2 Kings Commentary > chapter 10
This was one of the most terrible incidents that the Bible records. These 70 boys and young men were all princes who belonged to the royal family of King Ahab. They had gone to Samaria as a place of safety. However, the palace there became their prison. The men who killed them were their own teachers and palace officials. The people who had responsibility for them became their murderers.
The subject is unpleasant – but let us try to understand what happened. Israel’s people did not usually cut off a person’s head to kill that person. The people in many other nations commonly did that, but it disgusted Israel’s people. David cut off Goliath’s head only after he was already dead (1 Samuel 17:51).
To kill and to cut the heads off so many young people was a hard and slow task. It would be necessary to take each of them in turn to the place of his death by force. Each boy and each young man would have desperately appealed for his life. Their killers, who knew them so well, gave no attention to their cries and their screams. Those terrible sounds continued for much of the day, and probably late into the night. Everyone in Samaria, the capital city, heard it; nobody came to help them.
Their deaths were the price to save the city from an attack by Jehu, the new king. Although Jehu himself killed none of the princes, the leaders of Samaria were carrying out these murders in order to please him.
Next part: A public display of the heads (2 Kings 10:8)
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