Bible Commentaries

2 Kings 11:1-3. Jehoash saved from Athaliah‘s massacre.

Athaliah — (See on 2 Chronicles 22:2). She had possessed great influence over her son, who, by her counsels, had ruled in the spirit of the house of Ahab.

destroyed all the seed royal — all connected with the royal family who might have urged a claim to the throne, and who had escaped the murderous hands of Jehu (2 Chronicles 21:2-4; 2 Chronicles 22:1; 2 Kings 10:13, 2 Kings 10:14). This massacre she was incited to perpetrate - partly from a determination not to let David‘s family outlive hers; partly as a measure of self-defense to secure herself against the violence of Jehu, who was bent on destroying the whole of Ahab‘s posterity to which she belonged (2 Kings 8:18-26); but chiefly from personal ambition to rule, and a desire to establish the worship of Baal. Such was the sad fruit of the unequal alliance between the son of the pious Jehoshaphat and a daughter of the idolatrous and wicked house of Ahab.

Jehosheba — or Jehoshabeath (2 Chronicles 22:11).

daughter of King Joram — not by Athaliah, but by a secondary wife.

stole him from among the king‘s sons which were slain — either from among the corpses, he being considered dead, or out of the palace nursery.

hid him … in the bedchamber — for the use of the priests, which was in some part of the temple (2 Kings 11:3), and of which Jehoiada and his wife had the sole charge. What is called, however, the bedchamber in the East is not the kind of apartment that we understand by the name, but a small closet, into which are flung during the day the mattresses and other bedding materials spread on the floors or divans of the sitting-rooms by day. Such a slumber-room was well suited to be a convenient place for the recovery of his wounds, and a hiding-place for the royal infant and his nurse.

2 Kings 11:4-12. He is made king.

the seventh year — namely, of the reign of Athaliah, and the rescue of Jehoash.

Jehoiada sent and fetched the rulers, etc. — He could scarcely have obtained such a general convocation except at the time, or on pretext, of a public and solemn festival. Having revealed to them the secret of the young king‘s preservation and entered into a covenant with them for the overthrow of the tyrant, he then arranged with them the plan and time of carrying their plot into execution (see on 2 Chronicles 22:10-23:21). The conduct of Jehoiada, who acted the leading and chief part in this conspiracy, admits of an easy and full justification; for, while Athaliah was a usurper, and belonged to a race destined by divine denunciation to destruction, even his own wife had a better and stronger claim to the throne; the sovereignty of Judah had been divinely appropriated to the family of David, and therefore the young prince on whom it was proposed to confer the crown, possessed an inherent right to it, of which a usurper could not deprive him. Moreover, Jehoiada was most probably the high priest, whose official duty it was to watch over the due execution of God‘s laws, and who in his present movement, was encouraged and aided by the countenance and support of the chief authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical, in the country. In addition to all these considerations, he seems to have been directed by an impulse of the Divine Spirit, through the counsels and exhortations of the prophets of the time.

2 Kings 11:13-16. Athaliah slain.

Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the people — The profound secrecy with which the conspiracy had been conducted rendered the unusual acclamations of the vast assembled crowd the more startling and roused the suspicions of the tyrant.

she came … into the temple of the Lord — that is, the courts, which she was permitted to enter by Jehoiada‘s directions (2 Kings 11:8) in order that she might be secured.

the king stood by a pillar — or on a platform, erected for that purpose (see on 2 Chronicles 6:13).

without the ranges — that is, fences, that the sacred place might not be stained with human blood.

2 Kings 11:17-20. Jehoiada restores God‘s worship.

a covenant between the Lord and the king and the people — The covenant with the Lord was a renewal of the national covenant with Israel (Exodus 19:1-24:18; “to be unto him a people of inheritance,” Deuteronomy 4:6; Deuteronomy 27:9). The covenant between the king and the people was the consequence of this, and by it the king bound himself to rule according to the divine law, while the people engaged to submit, to give him allegiance as the Lord‘s anointed. The immediate fruit of this renewal of the covenant was the destruction of the temple and the slaughter of the priests of Baal (see 2 Kings 10:27); the restoration of the pure worship of God in all its ancient integrity; and the establishment of the young king on the hereditary throne of Judah [2 Kings 11:19 ].