Jehu and the Yhwh-alone Movement

Abstract

Building on Bernhard Lang’s model of a “Yhwh-alone movement,” this article examines how the demand for the exclusive worship of Yhwh may have arisen. Its point of departure is the hypothesis that Yhwh originated in the region around the Gulf of Aqaba, a view that the author maintains despite objections raised by some biblical scholars. In the adjoining regions to the south, on the Arabian Peninsula, there is evidence for conceptions of kinship between a deity and population groups whose lines of descent were denoted by a word meaning “tent.” From a social-historical perspective, this pattern has parallels among tent-dwelling groups in Israel, such as the Kenites and the Rechabites. From the perspective of the history of religions, two storm gods entered the Canaanite religious sphere during the second millennium BC: first Baal at Ugarit and later Yhwh in Israel. Each entered into a different relationship with El, the father of the gods. Biblical texts reveal a conflict between two social ideals: the tent-dwelling, pastoral, and comparatively egalitarian world associated with Yhwh, and the hierarchically stratified ideology of palace and monarchy represented by Baal. The account of the Jehu revolution preserves a political expression of this contrast. Jehu’s alliance with Jonadab the Rechabite and his actions against the Omrides and the cult of Baal articulate a program advocating the worship of Yhwh rather than Baal in Israel. Only after the Assyrian conquests of 732 and 722 BC, which were interpreted as manifestations of Yhwh’s wrath, did this demand broaden into an explicit rejection of the worship of all other gods and goddesses.