Judah’s evil queen Athaliah
11
📚And when Athaliah 📖, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal offspring 📖. 2 📚But Jehosheba 📖, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king’s sons who were killed. And they hid him from Athaliah, him and his nurse, in a bedroom, so that he was not killed. 3 📚And he was with her hidden at the house of the LORD for six years. And Athaliah reigned over the land.4 📚And the seventh year Jehoiada 📖 sent men and brought the rulers over hundreds, with the captains and the guard, brought them to him into the house of the LORD, and made a covenant with them, and took an oath from them in the house of the LORD, and showed them the king’s son 📖. 5 📚And he commanded them, saying, “This is what you must do: a third of you who come on duty on the Sabbath shall keep watch over the king’s house, 6 📚and a third will be at the Sur gate, and a third at the gate behind the guard. So you must keep watch over the house, that it be not broken into. 7 📚And two-thirds of all of you who go off duty on the Sabbath, shall keep watch over the house of the LORD, around the king. 8 📚And you shall surround the king, each man with his weapons in his hand. And whoever comes near your ranks must be killed. And you shall be with the king as he goes out and as he comes in”.
9 📚And the captains over the hundreds acted in accordance with everything that Jehoiada the priest commanded, and each one took his men who were to come on duty on the Sabbath, with those who would go off duty on the Sabbath, and came to Jehoiada the priest. 10 📚And the priest gave to the captains over hundreds King David’s spears and shields, that were in the temple of the LORD. 11 📚And the guards stood, each man with his weapons in his hand, all around the king, from the right corner of the temple to the left corner of the temple, along by the altar and the temple.
12 📚And he brought out the king’s son, and put the crown on him and gave him the Testimony 📖; and they made him king and anointed 📖 him, and clapped their hands and said, “God save the king!”
13 📚And when Athaliah heard the voice of the guards and of the people, she came to the people into the temple of the LORD. 14 📚And when she looked, there stood the king by a pillar, as the custom was, and the leaders and the trumpeters by the king, and all the people of the land rejoicing and blowing with trumpets. And Athaliah tore her clothes and cried out, “Treason! Treason!”
11:14 See note at 2 Kings 9:23.⚜
15 📚But Jehoiada the priest gave a command to the captains of the hundreds, the officers of the army, saying to them, “Take her out of the area, and kill with the sword anyone who follows her”. For the priest had said, “Do not let her be killed in the house of the LORD”. 16 📚And they seized her; and she arrived at the path by which the horses came to the king’s house, and she was killed there.
Joash becomes king at age 7
17 📚And Jehoiada made a covenant between the LORD and the king and the people, that they would be the LORD’s people; also between the king and the people.
11:17 Josh 24:25; 1 Sam 10:25; 2 Chron 15:12-15. Jehoiada was a godly man who had the best interests of the people in his heart (2 Chron 24:15-16). And he knew there could be no lasting good for the people if they forsook the true God.⚜
18 📚And all the people of the land went into the house of Baal and broke it down. They completely smashed his altars and his images and killed Mattan, the priest of Baal, before the altars. And Jehoiada the priest appointed officers over the house of the LORD.
11:18 Deut 12:2-3; 1 Kings 18:40; 2 Kings 10:11, 26, 27. Baal worship had been introduced into Judah probably by king Jehoram and his wife Athaliah (2 Kings 8:16-18).⚜
19 📚And he took the rulers over hundreds and the captains and the guard, and all the people of the land, and they brought the king down from the house of the LORD, and came by the road of the Gate of the Guard to the king’s house. And he sat on the throne of the kings. 20 📚And all the people of the land rejoiced 📖, and the city was quiet, for they had killed Athaliah with the sword beside the king’s house.
21 📚Jehoash 📖 was seven years old when he began to reign.