xxix. 26 we read his reproof and doom of the lying prophecy of the

priest Shemaiah the Nehelamite, because as a priest he had sent a letter to the chief priest Zephaniah and all the priests, urging them as the successors of Jehoiada to follow the ruling of Jehoiada, which was to put Jeremiah in a collar. For Jehoiada, he said, "had ordered the priests, as officers [_pakidim_] in the house of Jehovah, to put in the stocks every one that is mad and maketh himself a prophet."[271] If, then, the Jehoiada referred to is the priest-regent, as seems undoubtedly to be the case, we see that he hated all interference of Jehovah's prophets with his rule. That the prophets were usually regarded by the world and by priests as "mad," we see from the fact that the title is given by Jehu's captains to Elisha's emissary;[272] and that this continued to be the case we see from the fact that the priests and Pharisees of Jerusalem said of John the Baptist that he had a devil, and of Christ that He was a Samaritan, and that He, too, had a devil. If Joash was in opposition to the priestly party, he was in the same position as all God's greatest saints and reformers have ever been from the days of Moses to the days of John Wesley. The dominance of priestcraft is the invariable and inevitable death of true, as apart from functional, religion. Priests are always apt to concentrate their attention upon their temples, altars, religious practices and rites--in a word, upon the externals of religion. If they gain a complete ascendency over their fellow-believers, the faithful become their absolute slaves, religion degenerates into formalism, "and the life of the soul is choked by the observance of the ceremonial law." It was a misfortune for the Chosen People that, except among the prophets and the wise men, the external worship was thought much more of than the moral law. "To the ordinary man," says Wellhausen, "it was not moral but liturgical acts which seemed to be religious." This accounts for the monotonous iteration of judgments on the character of kings, based primarily, not upon their essential character, but on their relation to the _bamoth_ and the calves.

Although the historian of the Kings gives no hint of this dark story of Zechariah's murder, or of the apostasy of Joash, and indeed narrates no other event of the long reign of forty years, he tells us of the deplorable close. Hazael's ambition had been fatal to Israel; and now, in the cessation of Assyrian inroads upon Aram, he extended his arms towards Judah. He went up against Gath and took it, and cherished designs against Jerusalem. Apparently he did not head the expedition in person, and the historian implies that Joash bought off the attack of his "general." But the Chronicler makes things far worse. He says that the Syrian host marched to Jerusalem, destroyed all the princes of the people, plundered the city, and sent the spoil to Hazael, who was at Damascus. Judah, he says, had assembled a vast army to resist the small force of the Syrian raid; but Joash was ignominiously defeated, and was driven to pay blackmail to the invader. As to this defeat in battle the historian is silent; but he mentions what the Chronicler omits--namely, that the only way in which Joash could raise the requisite bribe was by once more stripping the Temple and the palace, and sending to Damascus all the treasures which his three predecessors had consecrated,--though we are surprised to learn that after so many strippings and plunderings any of them could still be left.

The anguish and mortification of mind caused by these disasters, and perhaps the wounds he had received in the defeat of his army, threw Joash into "great diseases." But he was not suffered to die of these.[273] His servants--perhaps, if that story be authentic, to avenge the slain son of Jehoiada, but doubtless also in disgust at the national humiliation--rose in conspiracy against him, and smote him at Beth-Millo,[274] where he was lying sick. The Septuagint, in 2 Chron. xxiv. 27, adds the dark fact that _all his sons_ joined in the conspiracy.[275] This cannot be true of Amaziah, who put the murderer to death. Such, however, was the deplorable end of the king who had stood by the Temple pillar in his fair childhood, amid the shouts and trumpet-blasts of a rejoicing people. At that time all things seemed full of promise and of hope. Who could have anticipated that the boy whose head had been touched with the sacred oil and over-shadowed with the Testimony--the young king who had made a covenant with Jehovah, and had initiated the task of restoring the ruined Temple to its pristine beauty--would end his reign in earthquake and eclipse? If indeed he had been guilty of the black ingratitude and murderous apostasy which tradition laid to his charge, we see in his end the Nemesis of his ill-doing; yet we cannot but pity one who, after so long a reign, perished amid the spoliation of his people, and was not even allowed to end his days by the sore sickness into which he had fallen, but was hurried into the next world by the assassin's knife.

It is impossible not to hope that his deeds were less black than the Chronicler painted. He had made the priests feel his power and resentment, and their Levitic recorder was not likely to take a lenient view of his offences. He says that though Joash was buried in the City of David, he was not buried in the sepulchres of his fathers. The historian of the Kings, however, expressly says that "they buried him with his fathers in the City of David," and he was peaceably succeeded by Amaziah his son.

There is a curious, though it may be an accidental, circumstance about the name of the two conspirators who slew him. They are called "Jozacar, the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad, the son of Shomer, his servants." The names mean "Jehovah remembers," the son of "Hearer," and "Jehovah awards," the son of "Watcher"; and this strangely recalls the last words attributed in the Book of Chronicles to the martyred Zechariah. "Jehovah look upon it, and require it!" The Chronicler turns the names into "Zabad, the son of Shimeath, an Ammonitess, and Jehozabad, the son of Shimrith, a Moabitess." Does he record this to account for their murderous deed by the blood of hated nations which ran in their veins?

FOOTNOTES:

[233] 2 Chron. xxi. 2-4.

[234] 2 Chron. xxi. 17.

[235] ὁμοπάτριος ἀδελφή (Jos.).

[236] 2 Chron. xxii. 11. There are undoubted difficulties about the statement (see _infra_). There is no other instance of the marriage of a princess with a priest.

[237] Jos., _Antt._, IX. vii. 1: τὸ ταμιεῖον τῶν κλινῶν. The chamber of beds was a sort of unoccupied wardrobe-room.

[238] 2 Kings xi. 4: "The centurions of the Carians and of the runners."

[239] This is the second time that the word "Sabbath" occurs, or that the institution is alluded to, in the history of either monarchy.

[240] Nothing is known of סוּר, Sur, or יְסוֹד _y'sôd_, the Foundation (2 Chron. xxiii. 5). They are not mentioned elsewhere. LXX., εν τῇ πύλῃ τῶν ὁδῶν, and (in Chronicles) ἐν τῇ πύλῃ τῇ μέσῃ.

[241] Not as in A.V., "that it be not broken down."

[242] In reading side by side the narratives in the Books of Kings and Chronicles (2 Chron. xxiii.), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the main anxiety of the Chronicler is to leave the impression that the work in the Temple was chiefly done by the Levites, and that the sacred precincts were not polluted by the presence of alien troops. He evidently stumbled at the notion, conveyed by the older narrative, that Carians and suchlike semi-heathen mercenaries should have stood by the altar at a high priest's command; so he substitutes Levites for guardsmen, and the profane laymen are relegated outside. In details the two accounts are only reconcilable by a special pleading which would reconcile _any_ discrepancy.

[243] 1 Kings vii. 21. Comp., however, 2 Kings xxiii. 3.

[244] See Exod. xxv. 16, 21, xvi. 34. הָצֵדוּת (see 2 Chron. xxiii. 11). Kimchi takes it to mean "a royal robe," and other Rabbis a phylactery on the coronet (Deut. vi. 8). In the Targum to Chronicles it is explained to mean the costly jewel (2 Sam. xii. 30), of which none but a descendant of David could bear the weight. For _ha'edôth_ Klostermann therefore suggests _hats'adôth_, "the royal bracelets."

[245] So says Josephus (μετὰ τῆς ἰδίας στρατίας), and it is certain that she would hardly go unattended.

[246] Jos., _Antt._, IX. vii. 3: Τὸυς δὲ ἑπομένους ὁπλίτας εἶρξαν εἰσελθεῖν.

[247] The meaning of _al-ha'amôd_ is uncertain (A.V., "by a pillar"; Vulg., "on the tribunal"). Comp. 2 Kings xxiii. 3; 2 Chron. xxiii. 13; 1 Kings viii. 22; 2 Chron. vi. 13.

[248] 2 Kings xi. 15. Not as in A.V., "without the ranges." Heb., _lash'dêrôth_; LXX., ἔσωθεν τῶν σαδηρώθ.

[249] A.V., "And they laid hands on her"; LXX., ἐπέβαλον αὐτῃ χεῖρας; Vulg., _imposuerunt ci manus_. But R.V. as in the text, following the Targum, and the Jewish commentators, "They made for her two sides."

[250] This is usually understood to be the "horse gate" of the city (Neh. iii. 28), and so Josephus seems to have taken it, for he says that Athaliah was killed in "the Kedron Valley." Canon Rawlinson says that it was more probably in the Tyropœon Valley. But there could have been no object in dragging the wretched queen all this way. Jehoiada was only anxious that she should not stain the Temple with her blood, and "the way by which the horses came into the king's house" seems to be some private palace-gate. We are expressly told (ver. 16) that Athaliah was slain "at the king's house," probably in "the king's garden" (2 Kings xxv. 4).

[251] Wellhausen, _Isr. and Jud._, p. 96.

[252] 2 Chron. xv. 9-15.

[253] 2 Chron. xxix. 10.

[254] 2 Chron. xxxiv. 31.

[255] The name is perhaps an abbreviation from Mattan-Baal, "gift of Baal." Comp. "Methumballes" (Plaut.). The names of Tyrian kings, Mitinna, Mattun, occur in inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser II. See Herod., vii. 98 (Bahr, _ad loc._). "Methumbaal of Arvad" is mentioned on a monument of Tiglath-Pileser II. (Schrader, ii. 249).

[256] 2 Kings xii. 10; Jer. xxix. 26; 2 Chron. xxiv. 6. Stanley, _Lectures_, ii. 399.

[257] 2 Kings xii. 2. After "all his days," the R.V. and A.V. add "_wherein_ Jehoiada instructed him." This, however, is not accurate. There is a stop at days, and "wherein" should be "_because_." There seems, however, from the LXX., to be some variation in the text, and according to the Chronicler Joash became an apostate. LXX., Πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας ἅς ἐφώτιζεν αὐτὸν ὁ ἱερεύς; Vulg., _Cunctis diebus quibus docuit eum Jojadas sacerdos_.

[258] The Chronicler (2 Chron. xxiv. 1, 2) _more suo_ copies 2 Kings