2 Crônicas 22

2 Crônicas 22

Wiersbe - The reports of Ahaziah’s death in 2 Kings 9:27–29 and 2 Chronicles 22:7–9 aren’t easy to harmonize, but we suggest a scenario. Ahaziah was wounded as he fled from Jezreel (v. 27). He made it to Beth-haggan and then turned northwest at the Ascent of Gur and headed for Megiddo where he tried to hide from Jehu. But Jehu’s men tracked him down and killed him at Megiddo. Ahaziah’s servants carried his body from Megiddo to Jerusalem where he was buried with the kings, for he was a descendant of David. Had he not compromised with Joram, worshipped Baal, and followed his mother, Athaliah’s, counsel, he would have been spared all this shame and defeat. Paul House addresses this difficult passage 2Ki 9:27 - Here the account differs somewhat from that of 2 Chr 22:9. The Chronicler does not mention the wounding of Ahaziah, his fleeing to Megiddo, or the location of his death. He does add that at some point Ahaziah hid in Samaria, was “captured,” and was “brought to Jehu and put to death.” As Patterson and Austel explain (ED: see quote below), however, there is nothing in either passage that directly contradicts the other. Jehu apparently was in Megiddo, where Ahaziah was brought before he died. No reason is given why Jehu kills him. Hobbs suggests that his marriage to Ahab’s daughter, Athaliah, is enough motivation in Jehu’s mind to commit the deed. (Hobbs, 2 Kings, 117–18) Gray thinks Jehu views Ahaziah as Joram’s avenger, which means he could be a future threat if he is not eliminated.(Gray, 1 and 2 Kings, 494) Ahaziah only rules during 841 B.C., then, which is Joram’s twelfth year by the northern method of counting years (2 Kgs 8:25) and the eleventh year of Joram’s rule by the southern means of counting regnal years. (Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, 101.) (SEE 1, 2 Kings - Volume 8 - Page 290) Patterson and Austel - The circumstances of Ahaziah’s flight, capture, death, and burial have been much discussed. Taken at face value, the Kings account seems to say that Ahaziah was wounded on the ascent to Gur and died in Megiddo, from which his body was taken to Jerusalem for burial. 2 Chron 22:8–9 seems to indicate that Ahaziah was overtaken in Samaria where he had sought refuge with relatives and was brought to Jehu and executed, his body being interred with honor by Jehu’s men. One possibility of reconciling the problem is to suggest that although Ahaziah was wounded at the ascent to Gur, he was apprehended by Jehu’s men in Samaria (where he lay recovering from his wounds) and then taken to Megiddo where he was put to death, his body being given to his servants who took him to Jerusalem for burial in the royal tomb (v.28; cf. 2 Chronicles 22:9). Whereas the author of Kings emphasized Ahaziah’s flight and eventual execution in Megiddo, the Chronicler laid stress on his arrest. The accounts, therefore, are supplementary, not contradictory. (SEE 1 and 2 Kings) 2 Chronicles 22:10 Now when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she rose and destroyed all the royal offspring of the house of Judah. Athaliah: 2Ch 22:2-4 2Ki 11:1-2 Related Passage: 2 Kings 11:1 When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she rose and destroyed all the royal offspring (Chronicles adds "of the house of Judah"). Athaliah's Purge of Davidic Line ATHALIAH SECURES RULE IN JUDAH Now when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she rose and destroyed all the royal offspring of the house of Judah - All the royal offspring refers to all she could find! She rose indicates this is her decisive resolve and in context signals imminent evil action. The royal offspring refers to the legitimate heirs of David and would likely include her own grandchildren! She is definitely not a doting grandmother! She is a tool of Satan seeking to destroy the seed in order to destroy the promise (of Messiah). The house of Judah is the line of David from which the Lion of the tribe of Judah must come. Athaliah is not just carrying out political assassinations but is attempting to erase God covenant promise (2Sa 7:12,13+). And she comes within one heart beat of snuffing out the line of the Messiah! Athaliah is not merely a grieving mother; she is a Baal-saturated (demonically directed) usurper, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, married into the Davidic line for political alliance. Her reaction to her son’s death reveals she has no repentance (from Baal worship she and her husband introduced), no submission to Yahweh and no trust in God’s providence. Therefore instead of mourning, she calculates for in the death of her husband she sees a power vacuum. The same phraseology is used in Judges 9:18 of rising to seize power. Kevin Zuber - The crisis of Ahaziah’s death led to one of the most troublesome eras in the nation’s history and brought the only regnant queen of Judah to the throne. Athaliah’s reign was one of the lowest points in the history of the Davidic line. The appalling indifference of Athaliah at the news of her son’s death was exceeded only by her shocking cruelty and lust for power. (Page 617 Moody Bible commentary) Andrew Hill: Athaliah tyrannizes Judah for six years . . . She attempts to do what God himself will not do – completely destroy the house of David (2Ch 22:10; cf. 2Ch 21:7). The term “destroy” (Piel of dbr) has the sense “obliterate” or “exterminate” here. Whatever her motivation, Athaliah seeks to eliminate all rivals to the throne of David. According to Gray, much like Jehoram she seeks to quell any nationalist uprising under a prince from the royal family by massacring the Davidic line. (See 1 and 2 Chronicles - Page 33) Frederick Mabie: Athaliah takes the killing of her son Ahaziah by Jehu (cf. 2Ch 22:7-9) as an opportunity to expand her power beyond her position as Queen Mother. In the aftermath of the chaos and instability within the southern kingdom, she proceeds to eliminate all Davidic claimants to the Judean throne (with the unintentional exception of Joash; cf. 2Ch 22:11-12) and rules for about six years (ca. 841-36 BC). The six/sevenyear reign of Athaliah is the only time ancient Judah or Israel is ruled by a queen. Athaliah’s ability to engineer this anti-Davidic coup and reign for about six years in Judah implies a considerable amount of preexisting power, authority, and influence. This dark episode in Judah’s history provides the Judahites with a taste of exile without actually leaving the land. (See The Expositor's Bible Commentary: 1 Chronicles-Job - Page 255) McConville: The story of Athaliah, like that of Jehoram and Ahaziah, is a testimony to the ephemeral and ultimately illusory character of brute power exercised in a self serving way. (BORROW I & II Chronicles) (Or see I and II Chronicles - Page 206) John Walton - Athaliah’s executions. As queen mother (see comment on 1 Kings 2:19) during the reign of her son Ahaziah, Athaliah enjoyed an exalted position as “sovereign,” which was evidently an official title. This afforded her a special influence on ceremonial and political matters. Following the custom of other dynasts, the usurper Athaliah attempted to destroy the members of the previous Davidic dynasty, in the same fashion that usurpers in the northern kingdom had killed off members of the previous dynasty. Such annihilations of ruling families was common practice both in Israel and in the ancient Near East at large. There is wide precedent in Mesopotamian texts for the elimination of all rival claimants to the throne when a king comes to power.(IVP Background Commentary - OT - page 443) (See also Wikipedia) Josephus Antiquities 9.7.3. records the following about this event... 1. [An. 885.] Now when Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab, heard of the death of her brother Joram, and of her son Ahaziah, and of the royal family, she endeavoured that none of the house of David might be left alive; but that the whole family might be exterminated: that no King might arise out of it afterward. And, as she thought, she had actually done it. But one of Ahaziah’s sons was preserved; who escaped death after the manner following. Ahaziah had a sister, by the same father, whose name was Jehosheba; and she was married to the High Priest Jehoiada. She went into the King’s palace, and found Jehoash, for that was the little child’s name, who was not above a year old, among those that were slain, but concealed, with his nurse. So she took him with her into a secret bedchamber, and shut him up there; and she and her husband Jehoiada brought him up privately in the temple, six years: during which time Athaliah reigned over Jerusalem, and the two tribes. John Kitto - Athaliah—II Kings 11:1–2; II Chronicles 22:10 Jezebel is dead; but her daughter Athaliah lives, and the mother’s spirit yet haunts the earth in her. Athaliah had been married to Jehoram, the eldest son of Jehoshaphat, the good king of Judah. We hear nothing more of her than the simple fact of this marriage, until the time to which we have come; but, considering the spirit she now evinces, and recollecting the nature of the influence which her mother had set her the example of exerting over first her own husband, and then her sons, we may not be far wrong in ascribing to this true daughter of Jezebel, much of the evil which characterized the reign of her husband Jehoram, and her son Ahaziah. The former no sooner mounted the throne than he destroyed all his brothers,—a piece of eastern state policy, indeed, but alien to the spirit of Judaism; and which her own later conduct enables us to attribute to her influence over her weak husband. To that also may be ascribed the extent to which this king went into “the ways of the kings of Israel, like as did the house of Ahab.” Indeed, it is all but expressly said so; for, as a cause for this, it is immediately added—“for he had the daughter of Ahab to wife.” So Ahab-like, indeed, was Jehoram’s conduct, that it was only the Lord’s regard for his covenant with David which prevented the same doom upon his house as had been denounced upon Ahab’s. He was, however, not suffered to escape punishment. His realm was invaded by the Philistines and Arabians, he was bereft of all his treasures, and his wives and children were carried away captive. Athaliah only remained, and the youngest of his sons, Ahaziah. To crown all, his latter days were full of torture from a grievous disease, of which he prematurely died; and the people marked their sense of the ignominy of his reign by refusing his corpse a royal burial. No burnings of costly incense honored his funeral; and although his remains were not cast out from the city of David, he was denied a place in the sepulcher of the kings. His son Ahaziah reigned but one year; and being as much under Athaliah’s influence as his father had been, he followed the same course. It is expressly stated that “his mother was his counsellor to do wickedly.” The end of this unhappy prince we have already seen. When the corpse of her son was brought to Jerusalem,—when she heard how horridly her mother, and how treacherously her brother, had been slain,—that her son’s kindred had been cut off at “the pit of the shearing-house,” and that the worshippers of Baal had been immolated in Samaria,—she caught the strong contagion of blood-thirstiness from the report of these doings. She saw herself a stranger in a strange land—an alien by birth and by religion,—without common sympathies between herself and the people among whom she occupied so high a place, and without support from the remaining members of the family to which she had become allied. All the strong ones were gone. What hindered that she should herself seize the dropped reigns of the government, and guide the fierce steeds of ruin which threatened to whirl her to destruction? Her son had been slain because he was the grandson of Ahab and Jezebel;—what had she, their daughter, to expect from the spirit which had gone abroad, and from the ulterior designs of Jehu, unless she entered upon a bold course of re-action, which might in sure both her safety and her greatness? There have been those who deemed themselves compelled to leap into a throne to save themselves from utter ruin; and we would fain believe that this was the case with Athaliah. But what of the house of David,—surely that was not extinct? No: there were many who had a right to the throne,—all of them young, children of Ahaziah, her own grand children. These stood in her way; or, though in now, might live to become a terror to her. Such natures as hers are incapable of relentings or tenderness, or account the feelings of natural pity as weaknesses to be crushed down, when they stand in the way of selfish interests or daring hopes; so, though blood of her blood, the young princes perished. As mother of the king, she had great power, high influence, and many dependents, which rendered her, in the absence of the king and of a reigning heir, the most powerful person in the land. She was thus enabled to accomplish all her objects; and Judah beheld the strange sight of a woman seated on the throne of David. She lacked not ability for that place. The conception and the realization of this object by a woman, among a people to whom the ostensible rule of females was unknown, shows that her talents were great; but far greater was her wickedness, and had she been as eminent for virtues as she was for crimes, it would have been impossible for her long to maintain her footing in a station promised and covenanted to the house of David. With that house her connection had been extinguished by the very steps which she had took, to “Wade through slaughter to a throne,” and she stood in Judah as a princess of Tyre and of Israel—in the former capacity an upholder of Baal, and in the latter the representative and avenger of Ahab’s slaughtered house. Under such auspices, idolatry became rampant in Judah; the very abominations which, with his strong and bloody hand, Jehu had put down in Israel, re-appeared in the neighboring realm, which had hitherto been comparatively free from these grosser abominations. It would have seemed to a cursory observer, that nothing had been gained by the repression of idolatry in Israel; that the same thing existed still, the place only having been changed, just as the piece of wood which disappears for a moment under the water comes up again a little way off. No doubt the cause of the Baalite worship was strengthened by large accessions of fugitives, who stole away from Israel when the change of affairs in Judah offered them a prospect of that safety and protection which they could no longer find in Israel. It does not appear that Athaliah attempted to avenge on the priests of Jehovah the massacre which Jehu had made of the priests of Baal, or that the worship of the Lord was forbidden by her, or his worshippers persecuted. Had that been the case, the temple itself would probably have been applied to idolatrous uses. From this she abstained, partly, as we have already explained, because idolatry was not adverse to the worship of other gods; and partly, because her sagacity must have shown her the danger of the attempt. The worship of Jehovah was therefore permitted to exist on sufferance. It was tolerated, while that of Baal was patronized and favored. A temple had been erected to the Phoenician god in the holy city; and for its furniture and decoration, the Lord’s house was stripped of its treasures and “dedicated things,”—a fact which transpires incidentally in II Chronicles 24:7; and it is there ascribed, it is curious to observe, not to Athaliah herself, but to her sons. What sons? We thought they had all been destroyed. Certainly her sons by Jehoram had been lost in captivity; and her grandsons, the children of Ahaziah, had also perished. Some suggest that, after the death of her husband, she had married another man, and that these were her children by him, But this is untenable; because Ahaziah, who succeeded his father, had reigned but a year; and even supposing that she had married immediately on the death of Jehoram, and assuming that this sacrilege took place towards the close of her reign, the eldest of any children she might have had by a second marriage could not have been more than six years old. It is not even said that the Baalite temple was built by her. It merely transpires that it was in existence at the time of her death. Putting all these circumstances together, it would appear that the erection of this temple was among the enormities committed at her suggestion in the time of Jehoram, and in which, particularly, the sons of Jehoram, brought up under the influence of such a mother, actively exerted themselves. We thus arrive at the fact, that it was not less for their own sins, than for the sins of their father and their mother, that these princes were sold into captivity, and heard of no more. 2 Chronicles 22:11 But Jehoshabeath the king’s daughter took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’s sons who were being put to death, and placed him and his nurse in the bedroom. So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of King Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest (for she was the sister of Ahaziah), hid him from Athaliah so that she would not put him to death. AMP But Jehoshabeath, the king’s daughter, took Joash the [infant] son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the king’s sons who were being put to death, and she placed him and his nurse in the bedroom. So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of King Jehoram [of Judah] and wife of Jehoiada the priest, hid Joash from [his grandmother] Athaliah so that she did not murder him (for Jehoshabeath was the sister of Ahaziah). MSG When Ahaziah’s mother Athaliah saw that her son was dead, she took over. She began by massacring the entire royal family. Jehosheba, daughter of King Jehoram, took Ahaziah’s son Joash, and kidnapped him from among the king’s sons slated for slaughter. She hid him and his nurse in a private room away from Athaliah. So Jehosheba, daughter of King Jehoram and Ahaziah’s sister—she was also the wife of Jehoiada the priest—saved Joash from the murderous Queen Athaliah. He was there with her, hidden away for six years in The Temple of God. Athaliah, oblivious to his existence, ruled the country. Jehoshabeath: 2Ki 11:2 bedchamber: Eze 40:45,46 Jehoiada: 2Ch 23:1 put him to death: 2Ch 21:7 2Sa 7:13 1Ki 15:4 Ps 33:10 76:10 Pr 21:30 Isa 65:8 Ac 4:28 Related Passage: 2 Kings 11:2+ But Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah and stole him from among the king’s sons who were being put to death, and placed him and his nurse in the bedroom. So they hid him from Athaliah, and he was not put to death. Athaliah's Purge Misses One Infant - Joash JEHOSHABEATH RESCUES THE LINE OF THE MESSIAH! But - Term of contrast. This strategic hinge word marks a turning point in what could have been a messianic catastrophe and on this "hinge" swings open the door of hope! (See also How Understanding One Word Can Change the Way You Read the Bible). Athaliah believed she had secured victory, removing every piece from the board. Yet unseen by her, God was positioning the final move—“Checkmate.” Jehoshabeath (Jehosheba) the king’s (King Joram's) daughter took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’s sons who were being put to death, and placed him and his nurse in the bedroom. So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of King Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest (for she was the sister of Ahaziah), hid him from Athaliah so that she would not put him to death - This passage is evidence of the amazing sovereignty of God for the line of David had been reduced to one child—Joash, the son of Ahaziah. If Joash had been killed then the promise to David (1Ch 17:10–14) could not be fulfilled and the Messiah could not have come from his line! God's sovereignty clearly was in play and yet we see Him use a courageous woman who surely knew she was taking her life in her hands by thwarting evil Athaliah's plans. who were being put to death - This pictures the executions were actually taking place when the infant Joash was stolen. Now think about this for a moment. Surely Athaliah must have known about Joash for she was his grandmother. And yet she does not do what King Herod did and go on a search and destroy mission for Joash. One has to believe that God's sovereignty was clearly at work, perhaps giving her something like selective amnesia. Yahweh was going to make sure His promises to David were fulfilled! Bob