“Give me your hand”
Is your heart as true to mine as my heart is to yours?… give me your hand. So he gave him his hand, and Jehu helped him into his chariot. (2 Kings 10:15 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Jehu just offering a helping hand up into the chariot.
The cultural key
To modern ears 'give me your hand' sounds like an offer to help someone climb aboard. In context it is the sealing of a pact. After Jehu asks whether Jehonadab's heart is fully with his, the extended hand is a formal pledge of allegiance: to 'give the hand' was to bind oneself, much as we would say to strike a deal or shake on it, but with the weight of a covenant. Only after the hand is given does Jehu pull him up into the chariot to witness his purge of Baal. The idiom carries this force elsewhere too: priests 'gave their hands' as a pledge to put away foreign wives (Ezra 10:19), and Zedekiah 'gave his hand' in swearing loyalty to Babylon (Ezekiel 17:18). The handclasp is an oath, not a courtesy.
Recovered meaning
'Give me your hand' seals a binding pledge of loyalty between Jehu and Jehonadab, the ancient equivalent of shaking on a covenant, not simply a hand up into the chariot. Giving the hand elsewhere formalizes solemn commitments.