CHAP. X. 1-27. EXTERMINATION OF THE OTHER SONS OF AHAB, OF THE BRETHREN OF AHAZIAH OF JTJDAH, AND OF THE PROPHETS OF BAAL.
Vers. 1-11. Extermination of the Seventy Sons of Ahab in Samaria. — Vers. 1-3. As Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria (D*33 in the wider sense, viz. sons, including grandsons [see at ver. 13], as is evident from the fact that E^DK, foster-fathers, are mentioned, whereas Ahab had been dead fourteen years, and therefore his youngest sons could not have had foster-fathers any longer), Jehu sent a letter to the elders of the city and to the foster-fathers of the princes, to the effect that they were to place one of the sons of their lord upon the throne. There is something very strange in the words Wgffl ^Nipr *lbrv£, " to the princes of Jezreel, the old men," partly on account of the name Jezreel, and partly on account of the combination of E^P-T^ witli *"HP. If we compare ver. 5, it is evident that D^P^ cannot be the adjective to 'V *]&, but denotes the elders of the city, so that the preposition •£ has dropped out before D^PTn iwinr ^t", the princes or principal men of Jezreel, might certainly be the chief court-officials of the royal house of Ahab, since Ahab frequently resided in Jezreel. But against this supposition there is not only the circumstance that we cannot discover any reason why the court-officials living in Samaria should be called princes of Jezreel, but also ver. 5, where, instead of the princes of Jezreel, the governor of the city and the governor of the castle are mentioned. Consequently there is an error of the text in bsinr, which ought to read?N "vyn^ though it is older than the ancient versions, since the Chaldee has the reading bsjnr, and no doubt the Alexandrian translator read the same, as the Septuagint has sometimes t?}? 7ro\ea>?, like the Vulgate, and sometimes Xafiapeias, both unquestionably from mere conjecture. The " princes of the city " are, according to ver 5, the prefect of the palace and. the captain of the city; the &W, " elders," the magistrates of Samaria; and 3Nnx D^ex, the fosterfathers and tutors appointed by Ahab for his sons and grandsons. 2Kns is governed freely by D^oxn In ver. 2 the words from E^flNl to pBkn form an explanatory circumstantial clause: " since the sons of your lord are with you, and with you the war-chariots and horses, and a fortified city and arms," i.e. since you have everything in your hands, — the royal princes and also the power to make one of them king. It is perfectly evident from the words, "the sons of your lord," i.e. of king Joram, that the seventy sons of Ahab included grandsons also. This challenge of Jehu was only a ruse, by which he hoped to discover the feelings of the leading men of the capital of the kingdom, because he could not venture, without being well assured of them, to proceed to Samaria to exterminate the remaining members of the royal family of Ahab who were living there.?V E^??, to fight concerning, i.e. for a person, as in Judg. ix. 17. — Vers. 4, 5. This ruse had the desired result. The recipients of the letter were in great fear, and said, Two kings could not stand before him, how shall we? and sent messengers to announce their submission, and to say that they were willing to carry out his commands, and had no desire to appoint a king. — Vers. 6, 7. Jehu then wrote them a second letter, to say that if they would hearken to his voice, they were to send to him on the morrow at this time, to Jezreel, the heads of the sons of their lord; which they willingly did, slaying the seventy men, and sending him their heads in baskets. *K**n "IK *13 *WK, " the heads of the men of the sons of your lord," i.e. of the male descendants of Ahab, in which H50K may be explained from the fact that DS^tpaa has the meaning " royal princes" (see the similar case in Judg. xix. 22). In order to bring out still more clearly the magnitude of Jehu's demand, the number of the victims required is repeated in the circumstantial clause, " and there were seventy men of the king's sons with (n«) the great men of the city, who had brought them up." — Vers. 8, 9. When the heads were brought, Jehu had them piled up in two heaps before the city -gate, and spoke the next morning to the assembled people in front of them: " Ye are righteous. Behold I have conspired against my lord, and have slain him, but who has slain all these?" Jehu did not tell the people that the king's sons had been slain by his command, but spake as if this had been done without his interfering by a higher decree, that he might thereby justify his conspiracy in the eyes of the people, and make them believe what he says still further in ver. 10:" See then that of the word of the Lord nothing falls to the ground {i.e. remains unfulfilled) which Jehovah has spoken concerning the house of Ahab; and Jehovah has done what He spake through His servant Elijah." — Ver. 11. The effect of these words was, that the people looked quietly on when he proceeded to slay all the rest of the house of Ahab, i.e. all the more distant relatives in Jezreel, and " all his great men/' i.e. the superior officers of the fallen dynasty, and " all his acquaintances," i.e. friends and adherents, and " all his priests," probably court priests, such as the heathen kings had; not secular counsellors or nearest servants (Thenius), a meaning which D^lIS never has, not even in 2 Sam. viii. 18 and 1 Kings iv. 5.
Vers. 12-17. Extermination of the Brothers of Ahaziaii
Vers. 12 sqq. Jehu then set out to Samaria; and on the way, at the binding-house of the shepherds, he met with the brethren of Ahaziah, who were about to visit their royal relations, and when he learned who they were, had them all seized, viz. forty-two men, and put to death at the cistern of the binding-house. tf3J3 mJ?.s], " he came and went," appears pleonastic; the words are not to be transposed, however, as Bbttcher and Thenius propose after the Syriac, but?|J3 is added, because Jehu did not go at once to Samaria, but did what follows on the way. By transposing the words, the slaying of the relations of Ahaziah would be transferred to Samaria, in contradiction to vers. 15 sqq. — The words from 151 JP3 fc^n onwards, and from KWJI to rn-,rp tjtD, are two circumstantial clauses, in which the subject wnj is added in the second clause for the sake of greater clearness: " when he was at the binding-house of the shepherds on the road, and Jehu (there) met with the brethren of Ahaziah, he said...." tf^n l$nva (Bai6aKdO, LXX.) is explained by Bashi, after the Chaldee RJJH riB*33 ITO, as signifying locus conventus pastorum, the meeting-place of the shepherds; and Gesenius adopts the same view. But the rest of the earlier translators for the most part adopt the rendering, locus ligationis pastorian, from "ipy, to bind, and think of a house uhi pastorcs ligabant oves quando cas tondebant. In any case it was a house, or perhaps more correctly a place, where the shepherds were in the habit of meeting, and that on the road from Jezreel to Samaria; according to Eusebius in the Onom. s.v. BaiOafcdO, a place fifteen Boman miles from Legio (Lcjun, Mcgiddo), in the great plain of Jezreel: a statement which may be correct with the exception of the small number of miles, but which does not apply to the present village of Beit Kacl to the east of Jenin (Bob. Pal. iii p. 157), with which, according to Thenius, it exactly coincides. WnM *ntf, for which we have 'rw ''ns VJ3, Ahaziah's brothers' sons, in 2 Chron. xxii. 8, were not the actual brothers of Ahaziah, since they had been carried off by the Arabians and put to death before he ascended the throne (2 Chron. xxi. 17), but partly step-brothers, i.e. sons of Joram by his concubines, and partly Ahaziah's nephews and cousins. BW?, ad salutandum, i.e. to inquire how they were, or to visit the sons of the king (Joram) and of the queen-mother, i.e. Jezebel, therefore Joram's brothers. In ver. 1 they are both included among the " sons " of Ahab. — Vers. 1 5 sqq. As Jehu proceeded on his way, he met with Jehonadab the son of Eechab, and having saluted him, inquired, " Is thy heart true as my heart towards thy heart? " and on his replying B*|, " it is (honourable or true)," he bade him come up into the chariot, saying B*}, " if it is (so), give me thy hand;" whereupon he said still further, " Come with me and see my zeal for Jehovah," and then drove with him to Samaria, and there exterminated all that remained of Ahab's family. Jehonadab the son of Eechab was the tribe-father of the Eechabites (Jer. xxxv. 6). The rule which the latter laid down for his sons and descendants for all time, was to lead a simple nomad life, namely, to dwell in tents, follow no agricultural pursuits, and abstain from wine; which rule they observed so sacredly, that the prophet Jeremiah held them up as models before his own contemporaries, who broke the law of God in the most shameless manner, and was able to announce to the Eechabites that they would be exempted from the Chaldsean judgment for their faithful observance of their father's precept (Jer. xxxv.). Eechab, from whom the descendants of Jehonadab derived their tribe-name, was the son of Hammath, and belonged to the tribe of the Kenites (1 Chron. ii. 55), to which Hobab the father-in-law of Moses also belonged (Num. x. 29); so that the Eechabites were probably descendants of Hobab, since the Kenites the sons of Hobab had gone with the Israelites from the Arabian desert to Canaan, and had there carried on their nomad life (Judg. i. 16, iv. 11; 1 Sam. xv. 6; see Witsii Miscell. ss. ii. p. 223 sqq.). This Jehonadab was therefore a man distinguished for the strictness of his life, and Jehu appears to have received him in this friendly manner on account of the great distinction in which he was held, not only in his own tribe, but also in Israel generally, that he might exalt himself in the eyes of the people through his friendship.1 — In ^lOTTlX trvi, " is with regard to thy heart honourable or upright?" fix is used to subordinate the noun to the clause, in the sense of quoad (see Ewald, § 277, a). D^Ktwrr73 3??*vi " all that remained to Ahab," i.e. all the remaining members of Ahab's house.
Vers. 18-27. Extermination of the Prohiets and Priests of Baal and of the Baal- worship. — Vers. 18 sqq. Under the pretence of wishing to serve Baal even more than Ahab had done, Jehu appointed a great sacrificial festival for this idol, and had all the worshippers of Baal throughout all the land summoned to attend it; he then placed eighty of his guards around the temple of Baal in which they were assembled, and after the sacrifice was offered, had the priests and worshippers of Baal cut down by them with the sword. Objectively considered, the slaying of the worshippers of Baal was in accordance with the law, and, according to the theocratical principle, was perfectly right; but the subjective motives which impelled Jehu, apart from the artifice, were thoroughly selfish, as Seb. Schmidt has correctly observed. For since the priests and prophets of Baal throughout the Israelitish kingdom were bound up with the dynasty of Ahab, with all their interests and with their whole existence, they might be very dangerous to Jehu, if on any political grounds he should happen not to promote their objects, whereas by their extermination he might hope to draw to his side the whole of the very numerous supporters of the Jehovah-worship, which had formerly been legally established in Israel, and thereby establish his throne more firmly. The very fact that Jehu allowed the calf-worship to continue, is a proof that he simply used religion as the means of securing his own ends (ver. 29). n"WJ> itsnp (ver. 20), " sanctify a festal assembly," i.e. proclaim in the land a festal assembly for Baal (compare Isa. i. 1 3; and for rnvjj = n"J)W> see at Lev. xxiii. 36). wji?^, and they proclaimed, sc. the festal meeting. — Ver. 21. The temple of Baal was filled nw ns,
1 According to C. a Lapide, Jehu took him up into his chariot " that he might establish his authority with the Samaritans, and secure a name for integrity by having Jehonadab as his ally, a man whom all held to be both an upright and holy man, that in this way he might the more easily carry out the slaughter of the Baalites, which he was planning, without any one daring to resist him."
" from one edge (end) to the other." ns in this sense is not to be derived from hnb, a corner (Cler., Ges.), but signifies mouth, or the upper rim of a vessel. Metajphora sumta a vasibits humore aliquo plenis: Vatabl. — Ver. 22. roWTngiTvP "*$* is the keeper of the wardrobe (Arab, prcefectus vestium), for the air. \ey. nnrfe signifies vestiarium (Ges. Thes. p. 764). The reference is not to the wardrobe of the king's palace, out of which Jehu had every one who took part in the feast supplied with a festal dress or new caftan (Deres., Then., etc.), but the wardrobe of the temple of Baal, since the priests of Baal had their own sacred dresses like the priests of almost all religions (as Silius has expressly shown in his Ital. iii. 24-27, of the priests of the Gadetanic Hercules). These dresses were only worn at the time of worship, and were kept in a wardrobe in the temple. — Vers. 23, 24. Jehu then came with Jehonadab to the temple, and commanded the worshippers of Baal to be carefully examined, that there might not be one of the worshippers of Jehovah with (among) them. When the priests of Baal were preparing to offer sacrifice, Jehu had eighty men of his guards stationed before the temple, and laid this injunction upon them: " Whoever lets one of the men escape whom I bring into your hands (we must read a?®] instead of &!?^), his life shall answer for his (the escaped man's) life, WW nnn ipsa, as in 1 Kings xx. 39. — Ver. 25. irfea: when he (the sacrificing priest, not Jehu) had finished the burnt-offering (the singular suffix 1 may also be taken as indefinite, when one had finished, vid. Ewald, § 294, b), Jehu commanded the runners and aides-de-camp: Come and smite them (the worshippers of Baal), without one coming out (escaping); whereupon they smote them with the edge of the sword, i.e. slew them unsparingly. ^7^*1: and the runners and aides-de-camp threw (those who had been slain) away, and went into the citadel of the temple of BaaL byarnvn Ty cannot be the city of the temple of Baal, i.e. that part of the city in which the temple of Baal stood, for the runners were already in the court of the temple of Baal; but it is no doubt the temple-citadel, the true temple-house ("i\? from "ity, locus circumseptus) — templum Baalis magnifice exstructum instar arcis alicujus (Seb. Schm.). — Ver. 26. They then fetched the columns (nbir») out of the temple and burned them (the suffix in fWjb^ refers to the plural rihSD taken as an abstract noun, as in ch. iii. 3; cf. Ewald, § 3 1 7, a). They then broke in pieces the?J?2in na*D3 column of Baal, i.e. the real image of Baal, probably a conical stone dedicated to Baal, whereas the nhXO, which were burned, were wooden columns as TrdpeSpoc or orv/jLj3a)/jLOL of Baal (see Movers, Phoniz. i. p. 674). — Ver. 27. Lastly, they destroyed the temple itself and made it nianno?, privies, for which the Masoretes have substituted the euphemistic nifcttriD, sinks, as a mark of the greatest insult, many examples of which are to be met with among Oriental tribes (yid. Ezra vi. 11, Dan. ii. 5, and Haevernick in loc). — Thus Jehu exterminated Baal from Israel This remark in ver. 28 forms the introduction to the history of Jehu's reign, with which the last epoch in the history of the ten tribes begins.
In the 161 years which this epoch embraces, from B.C. 883 to 722, the fate of the kingdom of Israel was accomplished. The first hundred years, which comprised the reigns of Jehu and his descendants, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, and Jeroboam il, were the last day of grace for the rebellious ten tribes, at the expiration of which the judgment began to burst upon them. As the anointing of Jehu by Elisha was performed by the command of God, so also was the religious reform, which Jehu vigorously commenced with the extermination of the Baal-worship, a fruit of the labours of the prophets Elijah and Elisha within the sinful kingdom; but this reform stood still half-way, since J^hu merely restored the idolatrous Jehovah-worship introduced by Jeroboam, and neither he himself nor his successors desisted from that sin. In order, therefore, if possible, to complete the work begun by His prophets of converting Israel to its God, the Lord now began to visit the rebellious tribes with severe chastisements, giving them up into the power of the Syrians, who under Hazael not only conquered the whole of the land to the east of the Jordan, but almost annihilated the military force of the Israelites (ch. x. 32, 33, xiii. 3, 7). This chastisement did not remain without fruit. Jehoahaz prayed to the Lord, and the Lord had compassion upon the oppressed for the sake of His covenant with the patriarchs, and sent them deliverers in Joash, who recovered the conquered land from the Syrians after the death of Hazael, and in Jeroboam, who even restored the ancient boundaries of the kingdom (ch. xiii. 4, 5, and 23 sqq., xiv. 25, 26). But with this renewal of external strength, luxuriance and debauchery, partiality in judgment and oppression of the poor began to prevail, as we may see from the prophecies of Hosea and Amos (Amos v. 10 sqq., vi. 1-6; Hos. vi. 7 sqq.); and in addition to the Jehovah-worship, which was performed in an idolatrous manner (Hos. viii. 13, ix. 4, 5), the worship of Baal was carried on most vigorously (Hos. ii. 13, 15, x. 1, 2), so that the people made pilgrimages to Bethel, Gilgal, and even to Beersheba in the south of the kingdom of Judah (Hos. iv. 15; Amos iv. 4, v. 5, viii. 14), and on account of the worship thus zealously performed, relied in carnal security upon the protection of God, and scoffed at the judgments of the Lord which were threatened by the prophets (Amos v. 14, 18). This internal corruption increased with the death of Jeroboam, till all civil order was dissolved. Anarchy, conflicts for the possession of the throne, and repeated regicides, broke up the kingdom and made it ripe for the judgment of destruction, which was gradually accomplished by the Assyrians, whom one party in the reign of Menahem had called to their help, under Pul, Tiglathpileser, and Shalmanasar. — The kingdom of Judah, on the other hand, was purified from the destructive consequences of the alliance with the dynasty of Ahab through the overthrow by the high priest Jehoiada of the godless Athaliah, who had murdered the royal children after the death of Ahaziah and seized upon the government, and, with the renewal of the covenant and the extermination of the worship of Baal under the young king whom Jehoiada had trained, was brought back to the theocratic path; and notwithstanding the fact that in the closing years of Joash and Amaziah idolatry found admission again, was preserved in that path, in which it increased in strength and stability, so that not only were the wounds quickly healed which the war with Israel, occasioned by Amaziah's pride, had inflicted upon it through the conquest and plunder of Jerusalem (ch. xiv 8 sqq.), but during the sixty-eight years comprised in the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, the people rose to a state of great prosperity and wealth through the pursuit of agriculture and trade, and a thoughtful development of the resources of the land, and the kingdom acquired great external power through the humiliation of the Philistines and the subjugation of the Edomites once more (2 Chron. xxvi.). At the same time, neither of these kings was able entirely to suppress the illegal worship of the high places, although the temple-worship was regularly sustained according to the law; and with the increase of wealth and power, not only did luxuriance and pride set in, but also idolatry and an inclination to heathen ways (Isa. ii. 5-8 and 16 sqq., v. 18 sqq.); so that even in the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham Isaiah predicted the day of the Lord's judgment, which was to fall upon everything lofty and proud (Isa. ii.— iv.). This prophecy began to be fulfilled, so far as its first beginnings were concerned, even in the time of Ahaz. Under this weak and idolatrous ruler idolatry gained the upper hand, and the worship of Jehovah was suppressed; and this open apostasy from the Lord was followed by immediate punishment. The allied kings of Israel and Syria forced their way victoriously into Judah, and even stood before the gates of Jerusalem, with the intention of destroying the kingdom of Judah, when Ahaz, despising the help of the Lord, which was offered him by the prophet Isaiah, purchased the assistance of Tiglath-pileser the king of Assyria with silver and gold, and was thereby delivered from his foes. But this made him dependent upon the Assyrians, who would have conquered the kingdom of Judah and destroyed it, as they had already destroyed the kingdom of Israel, had not the Lord hearkened to the prayer of the pious king and miraculously routed the powerful army of Sennacherib before the walls of Jerusalem.
Vers: 28, 29. Jehu exterminated the worship of Baal from Israel; but the sins of Jeroboam, the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, that is to say, the idolatrous worship of Jehovah, he allowed to remain. " The golden calves, etc.: " this is a supplementary and explanatory apposition to " the sins of Jeroboam." — Vers. 30, 31. Jehu is promised the possession of the throne to the fourth generation of his sons for having exterminated the godless royal house of Ahab (vid. ch. xv. 1 2). The divine sentence, " because thou hast acted well to do right in mine eyes, (because thou) hast done as it was in my heart to the house of Ahab," refers to the deed as such, and not to the subjective motives by which Jehu had been actuated. For it is obvious that it had not sprung from pure zeal for the honour of the Lord, from the limitation added in ver. 31: " but Jehu did not take heed to walk in the law of Jehovah with all his heart, and did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam." — Vers. 32, 33. Therefore (this link of connection follows from the actual fact, though it is not distinctly mentioned in the text) Hazael had now to inflict chastisement upon faithless Israel. In Jehu's days Jehovah began " to cut off in Israel," i.e. to rend away certain portions from the kingdom. " Hazael smote them (the Israelites) on the whole of the border of Israel," i.e. of the kingdom, " from Jordan to the sun-rising {i.e. on the eastern side of the Jordan), the whole of the land of Gilead (H?"'5? n^ is- dependent upon H3*, which must be supplied from ^_), namely, the territory of the tribes of Gad, Eeuben, and Half-Manasseh, from Aroer on the brook Arnon (now Araayr, a ruin on the northern border of the Mojeb (Arnon) valley; see at Num. xxxii. 34), the southern border of the Israelitish land to the east of the Jordan (Deut. ii. 36, iii. 12), both Gilead and Bashan," the two countries into which Gilead in the broader sense was divided (see at Deut. iii. 8-1 7). — These conquests took place during the twenty-eight years' reign of Jehu, since Hazael began to reign before Jehu, viz. while Joram was king, and had already fought successfully against the Israelites at Eamoth in Joram's reign (ch. viii. 28, 29), but not in the later part of Jehu's reign, as Thenius supposes. — Vers. 34-36. Conclusion of the history of Jehu's reign. The length of his reign is not given till the end in this instance (ver. 36), contrary to the usual custom in our books, because his ascent of the throne is not expressly mentioned in what precedes; but the general character of his reign is given in immediate connection with the account of his anointing and of the extermination of Ahab's dynasty.
Vers. 1-3. The Government of Athaliah (cf. 2 Chron. xxii. 10-12). After the death of Ahaziah of Judah, his mother Athaliah, a daughter of Ahab and Jezebel (see at ch. viii. 18 and 26), seized upon the government, by putting to death all the king's descendants with the exception of Joash, a son of Ahaziah of only a year old, who had been secretly carried off from the midst of the royal children, who were put to death, by Jehosheba, his father's sister, the wife of the high priest Jehoiada, and was first of all hidden with his nurse in the bedchamber, and afterwards kept concealed from Athaliah for six years in the high priest's house. The 1 before n3™"} is no doubt original, the subject, Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah, being placed at the head absolutely, and a circumstantial clause introduced with nnyjj: " Athaliah, when she saw that, etc., rose up." nrteran jnpo, all the royal seed, i.e. all the sons and relations of Ahaziah, who could put in any claim to succeed to the throne. At the same time there were hardly any other direct descendants of the royal family in existence beside the sons of Ahaziah, since the elder brothers of Ahaziah had been carried away by the Arabs and put to death, and the rest of the closer bloodrelations of the male sex had been slain by Jehu (see at ch. x. 13). — Jehosheba (JOB*^, in the Chronicles njDsrirv), the wife of the high priest Jehoiada (2 Chron. xxii. 11), was a daughter of king Joram and a sister of Ahaziah, but she was most likely not a daughter of Athaliah, as this worshipper of Baal would hardly have allowed her own daughter to marry the high priest, but had been born to Joram by a wife of the second rank. D^rriDD (Ckethib), generally a substantive, mortes (Jer. xvi. 4; Ezek. xxviiL 8), here an adjective: slain or set apart for death. The Keri D^nt^D i6 the participle Hophal, as in 2 Chron. xxii. 11. 'on innn is to be taken in connection with aJjfl: she stole him (took him away secretly) from the rest of the king's sons, who were about to be put to death, into the chamber of the beds, i.e. not the children's bed-room, but a room in the palace where the beds (mattresses and counterpanes) were kept, for which in the East there is a special room that is not used as a dwelling-room (see Chardin in Harm. Beobb. iii. p. 357). This was the place in which at first it was easiest to conceal the child and its nurse. ^P?], " they (Jehosheba and the nurse) concealed him," is not to be altered into VTVflDFn after the Chronicles, as Thenius maintains. The masculine is used in the place of the feminine, as is frequently the case. Afterwards he was concealed with her (with Jehosheba) in the house of Jehovah, i.e. in the home of the high -priest in one of the buildings of the court of the temple.
Vers. 4-20. Dethronement of Athaliah and Coronation
OF Joash (compare the account in 2 Chron. xxiii., which is more elaborate in several points). * — Ver. 4. In the seventh year of Athaliah's reign, Jehoiada sent for the captains of the king's body-guard to come to him into the temple, and concluded a covenant with them, making them swear and showing them the king's son, namely, to dethrone the tyrant Athaliah and set the king's son upon the throne. rri*wan "H^, centuriones, military commanders of the executioners and runners, i.e. of the royal body-guard. The Chethib nVKD may be explained from the fact that nap is abridged from ^W (vid. Ewald, § 267,d). On OTHI *a = Vlijirn wan (l Kings L 38) see the Comm, on 2 Sam. viii. 18; and on pas a periphrasis of the genitive, see Ewald, § 292, a. In 2 Chron xxiii. 1-3 the chronicler not only gives the names of these captains, but relates still more minutely that they went about in the land and summoned the Levites and heads of families in Israel to Jerusalem, probably under the pretext of a festal celebration; whereupon Jehoiada concluded a covenant with the persons assembled, to ensure their assistance in the execution of his plan. — Vers. 5-8. Jehoiada then communicated to those initiated into the plan the necessary instructions for carrying it out, assigning them the places which they were to occupy. " The third part of you that come on the Sabbath (i.e. mount guard) shall keep the guard of the king's house C79^ is a corruption of *"MpKfy and the third part shall be at the gate Sur, and the third part at the gate behind the runners, and (ye) shall keep guard over the house for defence; and the two parts of you, (namely) all who depart on the Sabbath, shall keep the guard of the house of Jehovah for the king; and ye shall surround the king round about, every one with his weapons in his hand; and whoever presses into the ranks shall be slain, and shall be with the king when
1 In both accounts we have only short extracts preserved from a common and more complete original, the extracts having been made quite independently of one another and upon different plans. Hence the apparent discrepancies, which have arisen partly from the incompleteness of the two abridged accounts, and partly from the different points of view from which the extracts were made, but which contain no irreconcilable contradictions. The assertion of De Wette, which has been repeated by Thenius and Bertheau, that the chronicler distorted the true state of the case to favour the Levites, rests upon a misinterpretation of our account, based upon arbitrary assumptions, as I have already shown in my apologetischer Versuch iiber die Chronik (p. 361 sqq.).
he goes out and in," i.e. in all his steps. The words ri3^n *ns and ris^n *KV<J M those coming and those going out on the Sabbath/' denote the divisions of the watch, those who performed duty on the Sabbath and those who were relieved on the Sabbath; not the military guard at the palace however, but the temple-guard, which consisted of Levites. For David had divided the priests and Levites into classes, every one of which had to perform service for a week and was relieved on the Sabbath: compare 1 Chron. xxiii.-xxvi. with Josephus {Ant. vii. 14, 7), who expressly says that every one of the twenty-four classes of priests had to attend to the worship of God " for eight days, from Sabbath to Sabbath," also with Luke i. 5. On the other hand, we do not know that there was any similar division and obligation to serve in connection with the royal body-guard or with the army. The current opinion, that by those who come on the Sabbath and those who go out on the Sabbath we are to understand the king's halberdiers or the guard of the palace, is therefore proved to be unfounded and untenable. And if there could be any doubt on the matter, it would be removed by vers. 7 and 10. According to ver. 7, two parts of those who went away (were relieved) on the Sabbath were to undertake the guarding of the house of Jehovah about the king, i.<\ to keep guard over that room in the temple where the king then was. Could Jehoiada have used the royal body-guard, that was being relieved from guarding the palace, for Buch a purpose as this 1 Who can imagine that this is a credible thing? According to ver. 10, Jehoiada gave to the captains over a hundred the weapons of king David, which were in the house of Jehovah. Did the palace-guard then return without weapons? In 2 Chron. xxiii. 4, " those coming on the Sabbath " are correctly described as the priests and Levites coming on the Sabbath, i.e. the priests and Levites who entered upon their week's duty at the temple on the Sabbath. According to this explanation of the words, which is the only one that can be grammatically sustained, the facts wrere as follows: "When Jehoiada had initiated the captains of the royal halberdiers, and with their help the heads of families of the people generally, into his plan of raising the youthful Joash to the throne and dethroning Athaliah, he determined to carry out the affair chiefly with the help of the priests and Levites who entered upon their duty in the temple on the Sabbath, and of those who left or were relieved at the same time, and entrusted the command over these men to the captains of the royal halberdiers, that they might occupy the approaches to the temple with the priests and Levites under their command, so as to prevent the approach of any military from the king's palace and protect the youthful king. These captains had come to the temple without weapons, to avoid attracting attention. Jehoiada therefore gave them the weapons of king David that were kept in the temple.
With regard to the distribution of the different posts, the fact that two-thirds are spoken of first of all in vers. 5, 6, and then two parts in ver. 7, occasions no difficulty. For the two-thirds mentioned in vers. 5, 6 were those who came on the Sabbath, whereas the " two divisions " (nVljn *flP) referred to in ver. 7 were all who went awTay on the Sabbath. Consequently the priests and Levites, who came on the Sabbath and entered upon the week's service, were divided into three sections; and those who should have been relieved, but were detained, into two. Probably the number of those who came this time to perform service at the temple was much larger than usual, as the priests were initiated into Jehoiada's secret; so that it was possible to make three divisions of those who arrived, whereas those who were about to depart could only be formed into two. The three divisions of those who were entering upon duty are also distinctly mentioned in the Chronicles; whereas, instead of the two divisions of those who were relieved, " all the people " are spoken of. The description of the different posts which were assigned to these several companies causes some difficulty. In general, so much is clearly indicated in vers. 7 and 8, that the two divisions of those who were relieved on the Sabbath were to keep guard over the young king in_the_houj>e of Jehovah, and therefore to remain in the inner spaces of the temple- court for his protection; whereas the three divisions of tKose who were entering upon, duty were charged with the occupation of the external approaches to the temple. Onethird was to " keep wratch over the king's house," i.e. to observe whatever had to be observed in relation to the king's palace; not to occupy the king's palace, or to keep guard in the citadel at the palace gate (Thenius), but to keep wratch towards the^ royal palace, i.e. to post themselves so that no one could force a way into the temple, with which the indefinite "^?- ni3? in the
Chronicles harmonizes, if we only translate it " against (at) the king's house.'' The idea that the palace was guarded is precluded not only by ver. 13, according to which Athaliah came out of the palace to the people to the house of Jehovah, which she would not have been able to do if the palace had been guarded, but also by the circumstance that, according to ver. 19, the chief men were in the temple with the whole of the (assembled) people, and did not go out of the house of Jehovah into the kind's house till after the anointing of Joash and the death of Athaliah. The other third was to station itself at the gate Swr ("WD), or, according to the Chronicles, Ycsod (^d1), "foundation-gate. There is no doubt as to the identity of the gate Sur and the gate Yesod; only we cannot decide whether one of these names has simply sprung from a copyist's error, or whether the gate had two different names. The name *nD* ij?tr foundation-gate, suggests a gate in the outer court of the temple, at the hollow of either the Tyropceon or the Kedron; lor the context precludes our thinking of a palace gate. The third division was to be posted " at the gate behind the runners;" or, as it is stated in ver. 19, "at the gate of the runners." It is very evident from ver. 19 that this gate led from the temple-court to the royal palace upon Zion, and was therefortran the western side of the court of the temple. This also follows from ver. 4 of the Chronicles, according to which this division was to act as "doorkeepers of the thresholds" pTSjfey D^pn)^ i.e. to keep guard at the gate of the thresholds. For we may saiVly infer, from a comparison with 1 Chron. ix. 19, that D^pn were the thresholds of the ascent to the temple. The last clause, " and shall keep guard over the house for defence," refers to all three divisions, and serves to define with greater precision the object for which they were stationed there, npp is not a proper name (LXX., Luther, and others), but an appellative in the sense of defence or resistance, from np^ depellcrc. The meaning is, that they were to guard the house, to keep off the people, and not to let any of the jpartv of Athaliah force a way into the temple. — In ver 7, 'km ^s *>3 is an explanatory apposition to ED3 niTn vr^ u and the two parts in (of) you," namely, all who go out on the Sabbath, i.e. are relieved from duty. Their task, tn_nhgprvp t.hp. wfltrVi nf Hip, honsp. nf Jehovah with jregard to the king, is more precisely defined in ver. 8 as signifying, that they were to surround the king with \yeapons in their hands, and slay every one who attempted to force a way into their ranks. llfcUS V1KV3, i.e. in all his under takings, or in all his steps; Ntal HK? being applied to the actions and pursuits of a man, as in Deut. xxviii. 6, xxxi. 2, etc. (see the Comm. on Num. xxvii. 17). Thenius has explained this incorrectly: " in his going out of the temple and entering into the palace." — Vers. 9-11. The execution of these plans. The high priest gave the captains " the spears and shields (2'P^: see at 2 Sam. viii. 7) which (belonged) to king David, that were in the house of Jehovah," i.e. the weapons which David had presented to the sanctuary as dedicatory oHermffiT" Instead of n^nil we ought probably to read niVjinn (cf. Mic. iv. 3, Isa. ii. 4), after the DW?nn of the Chronicles, since the collective force of rvjn is very improbable in prose, and a n might easily drop out through a copyist's error. Jehoiada gave the captains weapons from the temple, because, as has been already observed, they had come unarmed, and not, as Thenius imagines, to provide them with old and sacred weapons instead of their ordinary ones. In ver. 11 the position of all the divisions is given in a comprehensive manner, for the purpose of appending the further course of the affair, namely, the coronation of the king. " Thus the halberdiers stood, every one with his weapons in his hand, from the right wing of the house to the left wing, towards the altar (of burnt-offering) and the (temple-) house, round about the king," i.e. to cover the king on all sides. For it is evident that we are not to understand MD ^terwJJ as signifying the encircling of the king, from the statement in ver. 12, according to which Jehoiada did not bring out the king's son till after the men had taken up their positions. The use of DTJ?, to signify the captains with the armed priests and Levites put under their command for this purpose, is an uncommon one, but it may be explained from the fact that D^ had retained the general meaning of royal halberdiers; and the priests and Levites under the command of the captains of the royal body-guard by this very act discharged the duty of the royal body-guard itself. The chronicler has used the indefinite expression Djjrrpa, the whole of the people assembled in the temple-court. — Ver. 12. After the approaches to the temple had all been occupied in this manner, Jehoiada brought out the king's son from his home in the temple; or, he brought him forth, set the crown upon him, and handed him the testimony, i.e. the book of the law, as the rule of his life and action as king, according to the precept in Deut. xvii. 18, 19. rfflgrmw is connected with |*v igrrTIK Y?V, because ivy;jv has the general meaning " delivered to him, handed him," and does not specially affirm the putting on of the crown. « w, they made him king. The subject is the persons present, though, as a matter of course, the anointing was performed by Jehoiada and the priests, as the Chonicles expressly affirm. Clapping the hands was a sign of joyful acclamation, like the cry, " Long live the king" (cf. 1 Kings i. 39).
Vers. 13-16. Death of Athaliah. — Vers. 13, 14. As soon as Athaliah heard the loud rejoicing of the people, she came to the people into the temple, and when she saw the youthful king in his standing-place surrounded by the princes, the trumpeters, and the whole of the people, rejoicing and blowing the trumpets, she rent her clothes with horror, and cried out, Conspiracy, conspiracy! cvn pnn does not mean the people running together, but the original reading in the text was probably DJ?™ TV"!?, the people and the halberdiers, and the Vav dropped out through an oversight of the copyist. By Pfl? we are to understand the captains of the halberdiers with the armed Levites, as in ver. 11; and &y? is the people who had assembled besides (cf. ver. 19). In the Chronicles IJOH DWioni Wfin is in apposition to DVn: the noise of the people, the halberdiers, and those who praised the king. The "NEW, upon which the king stood, was not a pillar, but an elevated standing-place (suggestvs) for the king at the eastern gate of the inner court (ttfasa, 2 Chron. xxiii 13 compared with Ezek. xlvi. 2), when he visited the temple on festive occasions (cf. ch. xxiii. 3), and it was most probably identical with the brazen scaffold p^3) mentioned in 2 Chron. vi. 13, which would serve to explain DMtod, " according to the right " (Angl V. M as the manner was "). B^irn are not merely the captains mentioned in vers. 4, 9, and 10, but these together with the rest of the assembled heads of the nation (^3«n »wni 2 Chron. xiii. 2). nnvsnn^ the trumpets, is an abbreviated expression for those blowing the trumpets, the trumpeters. The reference is to the Levitical musicians mentioned in 1 Chron. xiii. 8, xv. 24, etc.; for they are distinguished from 'Ul D^A >S, " all the people of the land rejoicing and blowing the trumpets," i.e. not all the military men of the land who were present in Jerusalem (Tlienius), but the mass of the people present in the temple (Bertheau). — Yer. 15. Jehoiada then commanded the captains
^l1 *7.?bj those placed over the army, i.e. the armed men of the Levites, to lead out Athaliah between the ranks, and to slay every one who followed her, i.e. who took her part (p^}, inf. abs. instead of imperative); for, as is added supplementally in explanation of this command, the priest had (previously) said: " Let her not be slain in the house of Jehovah." The temple was not to be denied with the blood of the usurper and murderess.— Ver. 16. Thus they made way for her on both sides, or, according to the correct explanation given by the Chaldee, WW\ &?.\ rb, they formed lines (Spalicr, fences) and escorted her back, and she came by the way of the horses' entrance into the palace, and was there put to death. D^piDn Kino is explained in the Chronicles by D^Dn "W ^3?, entrance of the horse-gate. The entrance for the horses, i.e. the way which led to the royal mews, is not to be identified with the horse-gate mentioned in jSTeh. iii. 28; for this was a gate in the city wall, whereas the road from the temple to the royal mews, which were no doubt near the palace, was inside the wall.
Vers. 17-20. Renewal of the covenant, extermination of the worship of Baal, and entrance of the king into the palace. — Ver.
17. After Jehoash was crowned and Athaliah put to death, Jehoiada concluded the covenant (1) between Jehovah on the one hand and the king and people on the other, and (2) between the king and the people. The former was simply a renewal of the covenant which the Lord had made with Israel through Moses (Ex. xxiv.), whereby the king and the people bound themselves HjiTp Dy? nvnp, i.e. to live as the people of the Lord, or to keep His law (cf. Deut. iv. 20, xxvii 9, 10), and was based upon the " testimony " handed to the king. This covenant naturally led to the covenant between the king and the people, whereby the king bound himself to rule his people according to the law of the Lord, and the people vowed that they would be obedient and subject to the king as the ruler appointed by the Lord (cf. 2 Sam. v. 3). The renewal of the covenant with the Lord was necessary, because under the former kings the people had fallen away from the Lord and served Baal. The immediate consequence of the renewal of the covenant, therefore, was the extermination of the worship of Baal, which is mentioned at once in ver. 18, although its proper place in order of time is after ver.
1 8. All the people (H?? ^8^?j as m ver- 14) went to the temple of Baal, threw down his altars, broke his images (the columns of
Baal and Astarte) rightly, i.e. completely pWJ as in Deut. ix. 21), and slew the priest Mattan, probably the chief priest of Baal, before his altars. That the temple of Baal stood within the limits of the sanctuary, i.e. of the temple of Jehovah (Thenius), cannot be shown to be probable either from 2 Chron. xxiv. 7 or from the last clause of this verse. (For 2 Chron. xxiv. 7 see the fuller remarks on ch. xii. 5.) The words " and the priest set overseers over the house of Jehovah " do not affirm that Jehoiada created the office of overseer over the temple for the purpose of guarding against a fresh desecration of the temple by idolatry (Thenius), but simply that he appointed overseers over the temple, namely, priests and Levites entrusted with the duty of watching over the performance of worship according to the precepts of the law, as is more minutely described in vers. 18 and 19. — Ver. 19. And he took the captains, and they brought the king down out of the house of Jehovah, etc. The word H£ is not to be pressed, but simply affirms that Jehoiada entrusted the persons named with the duty o{ conducting the king into his palace. Beside the captains over a handled (see at ver. 4) there are mentioned DTVJ1 nr?, '*'•''• the royal halberdiers (the body-guard), who had passed over to the new king immediately after the fall of Athaliah and now followed their captains, and jnNPi Diri>3, all the rest of the people assembled Instead of the halberdiers there are mentioned in the Chronicles DyPttan D*iTwn DJD, the nobles and lords in the nation, — a completion implied in the facts themselves, since Jehoiada had drawn the heads of the nation into his plan, and on the other hand the express allusion to the body-guard might be omitted as of inferior importance. We cannot infer from ¥Ty* that the bridge between Moriah and Zion was not yet in existence, as Thenius supposes, but simply that the bridge was lower than the temple-courts. Instead of D?yj **Wi the gate of the runners (i.e. of the halberdiers), we find in the Chronicles P7^ "W, the upper gate, which appears to have been a gate of the temple, according to ch. xv. 35 and 2 Chron. xxvii. 3. The statement that they came by the way of the runners' gate into the house of the king is not at variance with this, for it may be understood as meaning that it was by the halberdiers' gate of the temple that the entry into the palace was carried out. — In ver. 20 this account is concluded with the general remark that all the people rejoiced, sc. at the coronation of Joash, and the city was quiet, when they slew Athaliah with the sword. This is the way, so far as the sense is concerned, in which the last two clauses are to be connected.
All that is recorded of the forty years' reign of Joash, in addition to the general characteristics of the reign (vers. 1-4), is the repairing of the temple which was effected by him (vers. 5-17), and the purchased retreat of the Syrians from their invasion of Judah (vers. 18 and 19), and finally his violent death in consequence of a conspiracy formed against him, of which we have only a brief notice in vers. 20-22. The parallel account in 2 Chron. xxiv. supplies several additions to this: viz. concerning the wives of Joash, the distribution of the Levites at the repairing of the temple, the death of Jehoiada, and the seduction of Joash to idolatry by the chief men of Judah, and the stoning of the prophet Zechariah, who condemned this rebellion, — all of which can easily be fitted into our account.