1 Elisha the prophet summoned one of the sons of the prophets and told him, "Tuck your cloak into your belt, take this flask of oil with you and go to Ramoth-gilead.
2 When you get there, find Jehu son of Jehoshaphat son of Nimshi. Go in, get him up from among his brothers and take him into an inner room.
3 Take the flask of oil, pour it on his head and say, 'This is what the LORD says: I anoint you king over Israel.' Then open the door and run; do not linger."
4 So the young man, the young prophet, went to Ramoth-gilead.
5 When he arrived, the army commanders were sitting there together. "I have a message for you, commander," he said. "For which of us?" asked Jehu. "For you, commander," he answered.
6 Jehu got up and went into the house. The young man poured the oil on his head and told him, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'I anoint you king over the LORD's people, over Israel.
7 You are to strike down the house of your master Ahab, and I will avenge the blood of my servants the prophets and the blood of all the LORD's servants shed by Jezebel.
8 All of Ahab's house will perish. I will cut off from Ahab every male in Israel, bond or free.
9 I will make Ahab's house like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah.
10 As for Jezebel, the dogs will eat her on the plot of land at Jezreel, and no one will bury her.'" Then he opened the door and ran.
11 When Jehu went back out to his master's officers, one of them asked him, "Is everything all right? Why did this crazy fellow come to you?" "You know the man and the way he talks," he answered.
12 "Not true!" they said. "Tell us." So he said, "He told me such and such, and said, 'This is what the LORD says: I anoint you king over Israel.'"
13 At once each of them took his cloak and spread it under Jehu on the bare steps. They blew the trumpet and shouted, "Jehu is king!"
14 So Jehu son of Jehoshaphat son of Nimshi plotted against Joram. (Joram and all Israel had been guarding Ramoth-gilead against Hazael king of Syria,
15 but King Jehoram had gone back to Jezreel to recover from the wounds the Syrians had inflicted on him in his battle with Hazael king of Syria.) Jehu said, "If you are with me, do not let anyone escape from the town to go and report this in Jezreel."
16 Then Jehu got into a chariot and rode to Jezreel, because Joram was lying ill there, and Ahaziah king of Judah had gone down to see Joram.
17 The lookout standing on the tower in Jezreel saw Jehu's troops approaching and called out, "I see troops!" "Get a horseman," Jehoram ordered. "Send him to meet them and ask, 'Do you come in peace?'"
18 The horseman rode off to meet him and said, "The king asks, 'Do you come in peace?'" "What does peace matter to you?" Jehu answered. "Fall in behind me." The lookout reported, "The messenger has reached them, but he is not coming back."
19 So the king sent out a second horseman. He came to them and said, "The king asks, 'Do you come in peace?'" Jehu answered, "What does peace matter to you? Fall in behind me."
20 The lookout reported, "He has reached them, but he is not coming back either. And the driving is like that of Jehu son of Nimshi; he drives like a maniac."
21 "Hitch up my chariot," Jehoram ordered, and they hitched it up. Jehoram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah rode out, each in his own chariot, to meet Jehu, and they met him at the plot of land that had belonged to Naboth the Jezreelite.
22 When Jehoram saw Jehu, he asked, "Do you come in peace, Jehu?" "How can there be peace," he answered, "while the harlotries and the many sorceries of your mother Jezebel continue?"
23 Jehoram wheeled around and fled, calling out to Ahaziah, "Treason, Ahaziah!"
24 Jehu drew his bow with all his strength and shot Jehoram between the shoulders. The arrow pierced his heart, and he slumped down in his chariot.
25 Jehu said to Bidkar, his officer, "Pick him up and throw him onto the field that belonged to Naboth the Jezreelite. Remember how you and I were riding together behind his father Ahab when the LORD uttered this burden of prophecy against him:
26 'As surely as I saw the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons yesterday, declares the LORD, I will repay you on this very plot of land, declares the LORD.' So pick him up and throw him onto that plot, as the LORD said."
27 When Ahaziah king of Judah saw what had happened, he fled along the road to Beth-haggan. Jehu chased him, shouting, "Shoot him too!" They shot him in his chariot on the ascent of Gur near Ibleam, but he fled to Megiddo and died there.
28 His servants took him by chariot to Jerusalem and buried him with his fathers in his tomb in the city of David.
29 In the eleventh year of Joram son of Ahab, Ahaziah had become king over Judah.
30 Then Jehu came to Jezreel. When Jezebel heard about it, she put makeup on her eyes, arranged her hair and looked out of the window.
31 As Jehu came in through the gate, she called out, "Do you come in peace, you Zimri, you murderer of your master?"
32 He looked up at the window and called, "Who is on my side? Who?" Two or three eunuchs looked down at him.
33 "Throw her down!" he said. They threw her down, and some of her blood splattered the wall and the horses, and he trampled her underfoot.
34 Jehu went in and ate and drank. Then he said, "Take care of that cursed woman and bury her, since she was a king's daughter."
35 But when they went out to bury her, all they found were her skull, her feet and the palms of her hands.
36 They went back and told him, and he said, "This is the word of the LORD that he spoke through his servant Elijah the Tishbite: 'On the plot of land at Jezreel the dogs will eat Jezebel's flesh,
37 and Jezebel's corpse will be like dung on the surface of the ground in the plot of land at Jezreel, so that no one will be able to say, "This is Jezebel."'"