Beth-eked

Beth-eked of the Shepherds ("the binding-house of the shepherds") was a wayside station — probably a sheep-shearing facility — on the road between Jezreel and Samaria where the bloodiest single act of Jehu's revolution took place (2 Kings 10:12-14). After Jehu had killed Joram king of Israel, Jezebel, and the seventy sons of Ahab in Samaria, he encountered forty-two relatives of Ahaziah king of Judah traveling north to visit "the sons of the king and the sons of the queen mother." Jehu seized them all at the pit of Beth-eked and slaughtered them down to the last man, refusing to spare any of the Davidic kinsmen because of their political ties to the house of Omri. The site has not been securely identified but lay somewhere on the descent from the Jezreel Valley toward Samaria, possibly at Beit Qad east of Jenin which preserves the name.