2 Chronicles 24: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Joash becomes king at seven years old and does what is right while Jehoiada the priest is alive. He orders a collection of the tax set by Moses, and the money is used to repair and refit the LORD's house. After Jehoiada dies, Joash listens to the officials of Judah, the people serve Asherah poles and idols, and Joash has Jehoiada's son Zechariah stoned in the temple courtyard. A small Aramean force then defeats Judah's army, and Joash's own servants kill him in his bed for shedding Zechariah's blood.

Claim by Claim

1. 24:1
   • Joash was seven years old when he began to reign.
   • Joash reigned forty years in Jerusalem.
   • Joash's mother was named Zibiah.
   • Zibiah was from Beersheba.
2. 24:2
   • Joash did what was right in the sight of the LORD.
   • Joash did what was right all the days of Jehoiada the priest.
3. 24:3
   • Jehoiada took two wives for Joash.
   • He fathered sons and daughters.
4. 24:4
   • After this, Joash intended to renovate the house of the LORD.
5. 24:5
   • Joash gathered together the priests and the Levites.
   • Joash told them to go out to the cities of Judah.
   • Joash told them to collect money from all Israel year by year to repair the house of their God.
   • Joash told them to act quickly in the matter.
   • The Levites did not act quickly.
6. 24:6
   • The king summoned Jehoiada the chief priest.
   • The king asked Jehoiada why he had not required the Levites to bring in the levy from Judah and Jerusalem.
   • The king said the levy was commanded by Moses the servant of the LORD.
   • The king said the levy was commanded by the assembly of Israel.
   • The king said the levy was for the tent of the testimony.
7. 24:7
   • The sons of Athaliah had broken into the house of God.
   • Athaliah was a wicked woman.
   • They used all the dedicated things of the house of the LORD for the Baals.
8. 24:8
   • At the king's command they made a chest.
   • They placed the chest outside, at the gate of the house of the LORD.
9. 24:9
   • They issued a proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem.
   • The proclamation said to bring to the LORD the levy that Moses the servant of God imposed on Israel in the wilderness.
10. 24:10
    • All the officials rejoiced.
    • All the people rejoiced.
    • They brought their contributions and threw them into the chest.
    • They continued until the collection was completed.
11. 24:11
    • The chest was brought by the hand of the Levites to the king's officers.
    • When they saw that there was much money, the king's scribe and the chief priest's officer came.
    • The king's scribe and the chief priest's officer emptied the chest.
    • They took the chest and returned it to its place.
    • They did this day by day.
    • They gathered money in abundance.
12. 24:12
    • The king and Jehoiada gave the money to those who did the work of the service of the house of the LORD.
    • They hired stonecutters and craftsmen to renovate the house of the LORD.
    • They also hired workers in iron and bronze to repair the house of the LORD.
13. 24:13
    • The workmen did the work.
    • The repair work went forward under their hands.
    • They restored the house of God according to its proper design.
    • They strengthened it.
14. 24:14
    • When they had finished, they brought the rest of the money before the king and Jehoiada.
    • The rest of the money was made into vessels for the house of the LORD.
    • The vessels included implements for service.
    • The vessels included implements for burnt offerings.
    • The vessels included dishes.
    • The vessels included objects of gold and silver.
    • They offered burnt offerings in the house of the LORD continually all the days of Jehoiada.
15. 24:15
    • Jehoiada grew old.
    • Jehoiada was full of days.
    • Jehoiada died.
    • Jehoiada was one hundred and thirty years old when he died.
16. 24:16
    • They buried Jehoiada in the city of David among the kings.
    • The reason was that he had done good in Israel.
    • He had done good toward God and toward his house.
17. 24:17
    • After the death of Jehoiada, the officials of Judah came and bowed down to the king.
    • The king listened to them.
18. 24:18
    • They abandoned the house of the LORD, the God of their fathers.
    • They served the Asherah poles and idols.
    • Wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem because of this guilt of theirs.
19. 24:19
    • He sent prophets among them to bring them back to the LORD.
    • The prophets testified against them.
    • They would not listen.
20. 24:20
    • The Spirit of God clothed Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest.
    • Zechariah stood above the people.
    • Zechariah said to them that this is what God says.
    • Zechariah asked why they transgress the commandments of the LORD.
    • Zechariah said they would not prosper.
    • Zechariah said they had forsaken the LORD.
    • Zechariah said the LORD had forsaken them.
21. 24:21
    • They conspired against Zechariah.
    • They stoned him with stones.
    • The stoning was at the command of the king.
    • The stoning happened in the court of the house of the LORD.
22. 24:22
    • King Joash did not remember the kindness that Jehoiada his father had shown him.
    • Joash killed Jehoiada's son.
    • As he was dying, Zechariah said that the LORD should see it and call it to account.
23. 24:23
    • At the turn of the year, the army of Aram came up against Joash.
    • They came to Judah and Jerusalem.
    • They destroyed all the officials of the people from among the people.
    • They sent all their plunder to the king of Damascus.
24. 24:24
    • The army of Aram came with a small number of men.
    • The LORD delivered a very great army into their hand.
    • The reason was that they had forsaken the LORD, the God of their fathers.
    • They executed judgment against Joash.
25. 24:25
    • When they departed from Joash, they left him with severe injuries.
    • His own servants conspired against him.
    • The conspiracy was on account of the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the priest.
    • They killed Joash on his bed.
    • Joash died.
    • They buried Joash in the city of David.
    • They did not bury him in the tombs of the kings.
26. 24:26
    • Those who conspired against Joash were Zabad and Jehozabad.
    • Zabad was the son of Shimeath an Ammonitess.
    • Jehozabad was the son of Shimrith a Moabitess.
27. 24:27
    • The account of Joash's sons is written in the commentary of the book of the kings.
    • The account of the many oracles, or burdens, laid upon him is written there, the sense being ambiguous.
    • The account of the founding, or repair, of the house of God is written there.
    • Amaziah his son reigned in his place.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

24:1

Joash came to the throne as a small child because his grandmother Athaliah had killed off the rest of the royal family and seized power; he had been hidden in the temple for six years before the priest Jehoiada crowned him (chapters 22–23). Beersheba was a town at the far southern edge of Judah.

24:2

"Right in the sight of the LORD" is the standard formula this book uses to grade each king, the opposite verdict being "evil in the sight of the LORD." Jehoiada was the chief priest who had hidden Joash as a baby and organized the takeover that put him on the throne, so he was effectively the boy king's guardian.

24:3

The Hebrew is ambiguous about who the wives were for. It can mean Jehoiada chose two wives for the young king, the reading followed here, or that Jehoiada took two wives for himself. Kings normally married more than one wife; two is a modest number by royal standards.

24:4

The temple was the one Solomon built, by this point around a hundred and fifty years old, worn down and damaged, and stripped of some of its fittings during Athaliah's reign.

24:5

The Levites were the tribe set apart for work at the sanctuary: they assisted the priests, guarded the building, handled money and materials, and led music. Priests were a family within that tribe, descended from Aaron. "All Israel" here means the people of the southern kingdom, Judah; Chronicles keeps using the older name for the whole nation even after the northern tribes broke away.

24:6

The Tent of the Testimony was the portable sanctuary Israel carried through the desert before the temple was built. "Testimony" refers to the stone tablets of the covenant kept inside it. The tax is the half-shekel per adult male required in Exodus 30:11–16 for the upkeep of the sanctuary, a shekel being a weight of silver of about two-fifths of an ounce, roughly two days' wages for a laborer.

24:7

Athaliah was Joash's grandmother, daughter of the northern king Ahab, who ruled Judah for six years after murdering the royal heirs. The King James "Baalim" is simply the plural of Baal, the Canaanite storm and fertility god; the plural refers to the many local images and shrines of him.

24:8

The chest was set outside the gate on purpose, so ordinary worshipers could give directly without going into areas of the temple that were closed to them.

24:9

"The desert" means the forty years Israel spent wandering after God brought them out of slavery in Egypt, long before there were kings.

24:10

The King James calls the leaders "princes." Here that does not mean the king's sons. It means important men who helped run the country.

24:11

The king's "scribe" or secretary was not a copyist but one of the highest officials of the royal government, roughly a secretary of state, who handled records and revenue.

24:12

The KJV's "brass" means bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. Brass as we know it, copper mixed with zinc, was not yet in use.

24:13

The KJV's "set the house of God in his state" means they restored it to its original design. In 1611 English "his" often does the work our "its" does now.

24:14

A burnt offering was an animal placed on the altar and burned whole, rather than eaten in part by priests or worshipers. The "tools for the service" are the bowls, forks, shovels and sprinkling vessels used to carry out these rites.

24:15

The figure is exceptionally high: no one else in this period of the history is given so long a life, and it exceeds even Moses' 120 years. The parallel account in 2 Kings gives no age for Jehoiada.

24:16

The City of David was the oldest fortified ridge of Jerusalem, the part David captured and where the royal tombs lay. Burial there was normally reserved for kings; a priest laid among them is an unusual honor. Compare verse 25, where Joash himself is denied it.

24:17

Bowing low here is the gesture of courtiers coming to ask a favor. The text does not spell out what they wanted, only that the king gave in to them, and the next verse shows the result.

24:18

The King James "groves" renders a Hebrew word for Asherah poles, carved wooden posts or stylized trees set up beside altars to represent the goddess Asherah, a Canaanite mother goddess.

24:19

"Testified against them" means laid out the charges publicly, the way a witness does in court. "Would not give ear" simply means they refused to listen.

24:20

"The Spirit of God came upon" someone is a standard phrase for a person being seized and empowered to speak a message from God, whether or not they were a prophet by profession. Zechariah "stood above the people" probably on a raised platform or step in the temple court, the normal place for a public address.

24:21

Stoning was the ordinary form of public execution, carried out by the community rather than an executioner. Doing it inside the temple courtyard (ground reserved for worship, where bloodshed made the area ritually unclean) made the act doubly shocking to the first readers.

24:22

"Call you to account" translates a legal term: the demand that a killing be investigated and paid for, either by a court or by the dead man's kin.

24:23

"When the year came around again" refers to spring, the season when ancient armies normally took the field, after the rains and before harvest. "Aram", the King James "Syria", was the Aramean kingdom centered on Damascus, north-east of Israel; it is not modern Syria, though it covered some of the same ground.

24:24

The KJV's "host" means army. "Delivered into their hand" means handed over to them, a standard Hebrew way of saying one side was given the victory.

24:25

The tombs of the kings were the royal burial vaults in the City of David. Burying a king in the city but outside those tombs was a deliberate public verdict on his reign. Note also that the Hebrew here says "sons" of Jehoiada in one place and "son" in another; only Zechariah's death has been narrated.

24:26

Naming the assassins' mothers, and naming them as an Ammonite and a Moabite, marks the killers as of foreign descent. Ammon and Moab were neighboring peoples east of the Jordan and long-standing enemies of Judah.

24:27

"The burdens laid upon him" translates a Hebrew word that means both a load to be carried and a prophetic pronouncement, usually a threatening one, hence "prophecies spoken about him." The "book of the kings" named here is a lost source document the writer is citing, not the biblical books of Kings.