Mfonobong Inyang: The Man In The Arena – Notes For Jehu

Keeping to my promise of addressing the elephant in the room in my former treatise, I have a few thoughts to share in this auspicious age of freedom, especially concerning Jehu. One of the best allies of truth is time, so I have learnt that instead of engaging in needless arguments by people who are committed and, in most cases, incentivised to misunderstand a message – I just play the long game and let things happen. This is not my first rodeo; I have become very comfortable saying things that don’t make sense at the time or aren’t politically correct but ultimately turned out to be true. It doesn’t mean I know everything, or I get everything right, but I do my best to call balls and strikes. Also, for those who are not familiar with the use of archetypes in storytelling, you might want to read my previous essays. Unfortunately, this is not the time to elucidate because I want to keep this short and sweet. So let me quarterback this thing.

The Madman

The etymology of this reference to Jehu came from an unnamed watchman in Jezreel who did his best to provide real-time actionable intelligence. At this time, Jehu had just been anointed as an insurgent to upend the status quo and end the reign of Ahab. So he got on his horse and headed straight to the state house with his crew. This watchman, to his credit, could identify Jehu simply by his signature style of riding a horse: “It must be Jehu son of Nimshi, for he’s driving like a madman”. Just in a few verses before, Jehu’s colleagues also referred to the young prophet as a madman for delivering Elisha’s errand and anointing Jehu to replace the incumbent.

That gives us a very important context: we can then safely extrapolate that the term madman was a colloquial expression in that time which alluded to someone who dared to…