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2 Kings 11: What the Passage Says

72 claims across 21 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 2 Kings 11 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

When her son Ahaziah dies, Athaliah kills the royal family and rules Judah, but Ahaziah's sister Jehosheba hides the infant Joash in the temple for six years. In the seventh year the priest Jehoiada brings the army commanders into a sworn agreement, posts armed guards around the boy, and crowns him king. Athaliah cries treason and is put to death outside the temple, at the palace. Jehoiada then binds the LORD, the king, and the people in a covenant, the people tear down the temple of Baal and kill its priest, and seven-year-old Joash takes the throne.

Claim by Claim

  1. 11:1
    • Athaliah was the mother of Ahaziah.
    • Athaliah saw that her son was dead.
    • Athaliah arose and destroyed all the royal offspring.
  2. 11:2
    • Jehosheba was the daughter of King Joram.
    • Jehosheba was the sister of Ahaziah.
    • Jehosheba took Joash the son of Ahaziah.
    • Jehosheba stole Joash from among the king's sons who were being killed.
    • Joash and his nurse were hidden in a bedchamber.
    • Joash was hidden from Athaliah.
    • Joash was not killed.
  3. 11:3
    • Joash was hidden with her in the house of the LORD for six years.
    • Athaliah reigned over the land.
  4. 11:4
    • In the seventh year Jehoiada sent for and brought the commanders of hundreds.
    • Jehoiada also sent for the Carite guards and the runners who served as guard.
    • Jehoiada brought them to himself into the house of the LORD.
    • Jehoiada made a covenant with them.
    • Jehoiada put them under an oath in the house of the LORD.
    • Jehoiada showed them the king's son.
  5. 11:5
    • Jehoiada commanded them, saying that this was the thing they were to do.
    • A third of them, those coming on duty on the sabbath, were to keep watch over the king's house.
  6. 11:6
    • A third were to be at the gate of Sur.
    • A third were to be at the gate behind the runners.
    • They were to keep the watch of the house; the term describing this watch is obscure, understood either as keeping the house from being broken into or as guarding in turns.
  7. 11:7
    • Two divisions of them, those going off duty on the sabbath, were to keep the watch of the house of the LORD around the king.
  8. 11:8
    • They were to surround the king on every side.
    • Each man was to have his weapons in his hand.
    • Anyone who came within the ranks was to be put to death.
    • They were to stay with the king when he went out and when he came in.
  9. 11:9
    • The commanders of hundreds did according to everything Jehoiada the priest commanded.
    • Each man took his men who were to come on duty on the sabbath along with those who were to go off duty on the sabbath.
    • They came to Jehoiada the priest.
  10. 11:10
    • The priest gave King David's spears and shields to the commanders of hundreds.
    • Those spears and shields were in the house of the LORD.
  11. 11:11
    • The runners stood, each man with his weapons in his hand, around the king.
    • They stood from the right side of the house to the left side of the house.
    • They stood by the altar and the house.
  12. 11:12
    • Jehoiada brought out the king's son.
    • Jehoiada put the crown on him.
    • Jehoiada gave him the testimony.
    • They made him king.
    • They anointed him.
    • They clapped their hands.
    • They said, Long live the king.
  13. 11:13
    • Athaliah heard the noise of the runners and of the people.
    • Athaliah came to the people into the house of the LORD.
  14. 11:14
    • Athaliah looked and saw the king standing by the pillar according to the custom.
    • The officers and the trumpeters were beside the king.
    • All the people of the land were rejoicing and blowing trumpets.
    • Athaliah tore her clothes.
    • Athaliah cried out, Treason, treason.
  15. 11:15
    • Jehoiada the priest gave a command to the commanders of hundreds who were set over the army.
    • Jehoiada told them to bring her out between the ranks.
    • Jehoiada told them to kill with the sword anyone who followed her.
    • The priest had said that she was not to be killed in the house of the LORD.
  16. 11:16
    • They laid hands on her.
    • She went by the way the horses entered the king's house.
    • She was killed there.
  17. 11:17
    • Jehoiada made a covenant between the LORD and the king and the people, that they should be the LORD's people.
    • Jehoiada also made a covenant between the king and the people.
  18. 11:18
    • All the people of the land went into the house of Baal.
    • They tore the house of Baal down.
    • They broke its altars and its images completely in pieces.
    • They killed Mattan the priest of Baal in front of the altars.
    • The priest appointed overseers over the house of the LORD.
  19. 11:19
    • Jehoiada took the commanders of hundreds, the Carite guards, the runners, and all the people of the land.
    • They brought the king down from the house of the LORD.
    • They came to the king's house by way of the gate of the runners.
    • Joash sat on the throne of the kings.
  20. 11:20
    • All the people of the land rejoiced.
    • The city was quiet.
    • They had killed Athaliah with the sword beside the king's house.
  21. 11:21
    • Jehoash was seven years old when he began to reign.

Words Worth Explaining

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

11:1
Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel of the northern kingdom of Israel, married into the royal family of Judah in the south; her son Ahaziah, king of Judah, had just been killed. Wiping out rival heirs was a standard move for someone seizing a throne, since any surviving descendant of David would have a stronger claim to rule Judah than she did.
11:2
Jehosheba is called a daughter of King Joram (also spelled Jehoram), Athaliah's husband, so she was Ahaziah's sister or half-sister, and not necessarily Athaliah's own daughter. 2 Chronicles 22 adds that she was married to Jehoiada the priest, which is why she had access to the temple buildings. The nurse is a wet nurse, a woman who breastfed and cared for the child; Joash was still an infant.
11:3
"The house of the LORD" is the temple in Jerusalem, built by Solomon. It was not a single hall but a walled compound with courtyards, gates and side rooms used as living quarters, storerooms and offices by the priests, a place where a child could be kept out of sight for years.
11:4
The army was organized in units of a hundred, a thousand and so on, so a "commander of a hundred" is roughly a company officer. Behind "royal bodyguards" is the Hebrew word Carites, apparently foreign mercenary troops kept as the king's personal guard; the palace guards were the regular runners who escorted and protected the king. An agreement of this kind (a covenant) was a formally sworn, binding pact, not a casual understanding.
11:5
The guard units, like the priests, served in rotating shifts that changed over on the Sabbath. That made the changeover day the one day when two sets of troops, those arriving and those leaving, were legitimately in and around the temple at the same time, which is what makes the plan work without arousing suspicion.
11:6
The gate of Sur is otherwise unknown; the parallel account in 2 Chronicles 23 calls it the gate of the foundation. Its exact location in the temple and palace complex is not recoverable.
11:7
This is the second half of the trick. The divisions whose shift was ending were not sent home but kept at the temple around the boy king, so at the moment of the coronation Jehoiada had both the incoming and the outgoing shifts under arms at once.
11:8
The King James "the ranges" means the ranks, the lines of armed guards standing shoulder to shoulder. Anyone crossing into that formation was to be killed on the spot, whoever they were.
11:10
According to 2 Samuel 8, weapons captured in David's wars were dedicated and stored at the sanctuary. Handing these out armed the guard and, because they were David's own, tied the moment publicly to the dynasty the boy belonged to.
11:11
The temple faced east, so a person standing in the doorway looking out had south on the right and north on the left; the King James "right corner" and "left corner" mean the south and north sides. The altar here is the large altar for burnt offerings, which stood in the open courtyard in front of the temple building, so all of this is happening outdoors, in front of a crowd.
11:12
What Jehoiada hands the boy is called in Hebrew the 'edut, "the testimony." It is usually taken as a written copy of the covenant terms or of the law, which Deuteronomy 17 says a king was to keep by him; some scholars instead take it as a royal emblem or a document of the king's protocol. The text does not settle it. Pouring olive oil on the head was the standard public ceremony for installing a king or a priest in office, the origin of the word "anointed."
11:14
The king had a fixed ceremonial station by one of the pillars of the temple; "as the custom was" means this was the recognized spot for a king appearing at the sanctuary. "The people of the land" is a set phrase for the free landholding citizens of Judah, who acted at times as a political body and more than once decided who would sit on the throne. Ripping one's own clothing was the conventional public display of grief, outrage or horror.
11:15
Blood shed inside the sanctuary would have made it ritually unusable until it was purified, so executions were carried out beyond its walls. The instruction is about the location, not about sparing her.
11:17
Two separate sworn agreements are made: one binding the LORD, the king and the people together as the LORD's people, and a second between the king and the people, setting out what each owed the other. Ancient Near Eastern kingship was routinely defined by such mutual obligations rather than by unlimited royal power.
11:18
Baal was the storm and fertility god worshiped across Canaan and Phoenicia, and the chief rival to the worship of the LORD in Israel and Judah; the temple to him in Jerusalem was presumably built or supported during Athaliah's reign, since she came from a family that promoted his worship. The "images" are carved or cast statues of the god. Mattan was the official in charge of sacrifices at that temple, the counterpart to Jehoiada.
11:19
Bringing the king "down" from the temple to the palace is literal geography: the temple stood on higher ground than the royal residence. Sitting on the throne was the act that completed the transfer of power, the moment the coronation became a reign.
11:21
Jehoash and Joash are the long and short forms of the same name and refer to the same boy; English translations vary between them. In Hebrew Bibles this line is numbered as the first verse of chapter 12 rather than the last of chapter 11.

Read 2 Kings 11