Biblion Bible Commentary
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Joash: the Chest, and the Stoning
2 Chronicles 24:1-27
1 Joash was seven years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah, of Beersheba. · WEB
A king does right for as long as one man is alive, and the reign ends by killing that man's son in the courtyard he restored.
The verdict is given in the second verse and it contains a time limit. Joash did right all the days of Jehoiada the priest 2 Chronicles 24:2. Everything in the chapter is arranged around that clause.
The repair project shows the king at his best and is worth the detail the writer gives it. The first method fails: he tells the Levites to go and collect, and they do not hurry 2 Chronicles 24:5. He confronts the high priest about it directly, and cites the authority — the levy Moses laid on Israel in the wilderness 2 Chronicles 24:6.
The second method works, and the change is simple. Instead of collectors going out, a chest is set at the gate and a proclamation made 2 Chronicles 24:8–9. People bring it in themselves, and all the princes and all the people rejoiced, and brought in, and cast into the chest, until they had filled it 2 Chronicles 24:10.
The emptying is done by two officers together, one royal and one priestly, day after day 2 Chronicles 24:11. Neither side handles the money alone. And the surplus at the end is turned into vessels for the service rather than returned to the treasury 2 Chronicles 24:14.
Then Jehoiada dies at a great age and is buried among the kings because he had done good in Israel, and toward God and his house 2 Chronicles 24:16 — the only man in either volume given a royal tomb who was not a king.
The collapse begins in the next verse and its mechanism is flattery. The princes come and bow, then the king listened to them 2 Chronicles 24:17. He is forty years into a reign, and the moment the man who raised him is gone, the courtiers arrive and he does what they want. The parallel with Rehoboam and his young advisers is exact, and both kings had the older counsel available.
Prophets are sent and are not heard 2 Chronicles 24:19. Then Jehoiada's own son stands above the people and states the rule the whole book turns on: because you have forsaken Yahweh, he has also forsaken you 2 Chronicles 24:20.
He is stoned in the courtyard, at the commandment of the king, in the court of the house his father had rescued and his king had repaired 2 Chronicles 24:21. The writer will not let the debt go unstated: Joash didn't remember the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but killed his son 2 Chronicles 24:22.
The dying man's words are not a curse but a referral: may Yahweh look at it, and repay it.
The repayment is reported in the same terms it was asked for. A small company of Syrians defeats a very great army, because they had forsaken Yahweh 2 Chronicles 24:24. And the king is killed in his bed by his own servants for the blood of the sons of Jehoiada 2 Chronicles 24:25 — not for policy, and not by an enemy. He is buried in the city and not in the tombs of the kings, where the priest lies.
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