Lives of Scripture

Bidkar was Jehu's officer, riding beside him the day Jehu was anointed to overthrow the house of Ahab and become king of Israel (2 Kings 9:1-13). When Jehu confronted King Joram, son of Ahab, on the very plot of land that had belonged to Naboth the Jezreelite, Joram fled and Jehu shot him through the heart with an arrow (9:21-24). Jehu then turned to Bidkar and gave him a specific charge: "Take him up and cast him into the property of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite; for I remember when you and I were riding together after Ahab his father, that the LORD laid this oracle against him" (9:25). Jehu recalled Elijah's earlier prophecy that God had seen Naboth's blood and would repay Ahab's house on that same ground (9:25-26; compare 1 Kings 21:19-24). Bidkar, addressed personally and recalled as an eyewitness alongside Jehu to Elijah's original oracle, carried out the order, disposing of Joram's body on the very field his father had stolen through murder. Bidkar's brief appearance ties together two generations of a single unresolved sin, and shows God's word, spoken years earlier through a prophet, coming true exactly, to the place, at the hand God chose.