2 Kings 11:19 Komentář

The revolution in the kingdom of Israel was soon perfected in Jehu's settlement; we must now enquire into the affairs of the kingdom of Judah, which lost its head (such as it was) at the same time, and by the same hand, as Israel lost its head; but things continued longer there in distraction than in Israel, yet, after some years, they were brought into a good posture, as we find in this chapter. I. Athaliah usurps the government and destroys all the seed-royal (Kg2 11:1). II. Joash, a child of a year old, is wonderfully preserved (Kg2 11:2, Kg2 11:3). III. At six years' end he is produced, and, by the agency of Jehoiada, made king (Kg2 11:4-12). IV. Athaliah is slain (Kg2 11:13-16). V. Both the civil and religious interests of the kingdom are well settled in the hands of Joash (Kg2 11:17-21). And thus, after some interruption, things returned with advantage into the old channel.

INTRODUCTION TO 2 KINGS 11 This chapter relates how that Joash the son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, being hid and preserved, when his grandmother murdered all the seed royal, after six years was produced, Kg2 11:1, when Jehoiada the priest set a sufficient guard about him, and the king's house, and anointed him king, Kg2 11:4, and Athaliah his grandmother, who had reigned six years, was put to death by the order of the priest, Kg2 10:13, and then a covenant was made between the Lord, and the king, and the people, and between the king and the people; and he was placed on the throne, to the satisfaction of the people, and the quiet thereof, Kg2 10:17.

And all the people of the land rejoiced,.... That one of the house of David was set upon the throne, which they might fear was extinct, as it very near was; the lamp of David was almost quenched, only this single life left, from whom a line of kings proceeded, and the King Messiah; the promise of God cannot fail see Psa 132:11, this occasioned great joy: and the city was quiet: was very easy at, yea, pleased with, the dethroning and death of Athaliah; there was no tumult on account thereof, nor such disturbances as she occasioned in her life: and they slew Athaliah with the sword beside the king's house; as related in Kg2 11:16 where she was buried, or what became of her carcass, is not said; some have thought she was cast into the brook Kidron, because Josephus says (h) Jehoiada ordered her to be had into that valley, and there slain. (h) Antiqu. l. 9. c. 7. sect. 3.

Athaliah destroys all that remain of the seed royal of Judah, Kg2 11:1. Jehosheba hides Joash the son of Ahaziah, and he remains hidden in the house of the Lord six years; and Athaliah reigns over the land, Kg2 11:2, Kg2 11:3. Jehoiada, the high priest, calls the nobles privately together into the temple, shows them the kings son, takes an oath of them, arms them, places guards around the temple, and around the young king's person; they anoint and proclaim him, Kg2 11:4-12. Athaliah is alarmed, comes into the temple, is seized, carried forth, and slain, Kg2 11:13-16. Jehoiada causes the people to enter into a covenant with the Lord; they destroy Baal's house, priest, and images, Kg2 11:17, Kg2 11:18. Joash is brought to the king's house, reigns, and all the land rejoices, Kg2 11:19-21.

JEHOASH SAVED FROM ATHALIAH'S MASSACRE. (Kg2 11:1-3) Athaliah--(See on Ch2 22:2). She had possessed great influence over her son, who, by her counsels, had ruled in the spirit of the house of Ahab. destroyed all the seed royal--all connected with the royal family who might have urged a claim to the throne, and who had escaped the murderous hands of Jehu (Ch2 21:2-4; Ch2 22:1; Kg2 10:13-14). This massacre she was incited to perpetrate--partly from a determination not to let David's family outlive hers; partly as a measure of self-defense to secure herself against the violence of Jehu, who was bent on destroying the whole of Ahab's posterity to which she belonged (Kg2 8:18-26); but chiefly from personal ambition to rule, and a desire to establish the worship of Baal. Such was the sad fruit of the unequal alliance between the son of the pious Jehoshaphat and a daughter of the idolatrous and wicked house of Ahab.

The Government of Athaliah (cf. Ch2 22:10-12). After the death of Ahaziah of Judah, his mother Athaliah, a daughter of Ahab and Jezebel (see at Kg2 8:18 and Kg2 8:26), seized upon the government, by putting to death all the king's descendants with the exception of Joash, a son of Ahaziah of only a year old, who had been secretly carried off from the midst of the royal children, who were put to death, by Jehosheba, his father's sister, the wife of the high priest Jehoiada, and was first of all hidden with his nurse in the bed-chamber, and afterwards kept concealed from Athaliah for six years in the high priest's house. The ו before ראתה is no doubt original, the subject, Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah, being placed at the head absolutely, and a circumstantial clause introduced with וראתה: "Athaliah, when she saw that, etc., rose up." המּמלכה כּל־זרע, all the royal seed, i.e., all the sons and relations of Ahaziah, who could put in any claim to succeed to the throne. At the same time there were hardly any other direct descendants of the royal family in existence beside the sons of Ahaziah, since the elder brothers of Ahaziah had been carried away by the Arabs and put to death, and the rest of the closer blood-relations of the male sex had been slain by Jehu (see at Kg2 10:13). - Jehosheba (יהושׁבע, in the Chronicles יהושׁבעת), the wife of the high priest Jehoiada (Ch2 22:11), was a daughter of king Joram and a sister of Ahaziah, but she was most likely not a daughter of Athaliah, as this worshipper of Baal would hardly have allowed her own daughter to marry the high priest, but had been born to Joram by a wife of the second rank. ממותים (Chethb), generally a substantive, mortes (Jer 16:4; Eze 28:8), here an adjective: slain or set apart for death. The Keri מוּמתים is the participle Hophal, as in Ch2 22:11. הם בּחדר is to be taken in connection with תּגנב: she stole him (took him away secretly) from the rest of the king's sons, who were about to be put to death, into the chamber of the beds, i.e., not the children's bed-room, but a room in the palace where the beds (mattresses and counterpanes) were kept, for which in the East there is a special room that is not used as a dwelling-room (see Chardin in Harm. Beobb. iii. p. 357). This was the place in which at first it was easiest to conceal the child and its nurse. ויּסתּרוּ, "they (Jehosheba and the nurse) concealed him," is not to be altered into ותּסתּירהוּ after the Chronicles, as Thenius maintains. The masculine is used in the place of the feminine, as is frequently the case. Afterwards he was concealed with her (with Jehosheba) in the house of Jehovah, i.e., in the home of the high-priest in one of the buildings of the court of the temple.

And he took the captains, and they brought the king down out of the house of Jehovah, etc. The word יקּח is not to be pressed, but simply affirms that Jehoiada entrusted the persons named with the duty of conducting the king into his palace. Beside the captains over a hundred (see at Kg2 11:4) there are mentioned והרצים הכּרי, i.e., the royal halberdiers (the body-guard), who had passed over to the new king immediately after the fall of Athaliah and now followed their captains, and הארץ כּל־עם, all the rest of the people assembled. Instead of the halberdiers there are mentioned in the Chronicles בּעם המּושׁלים האדּירים, the nobles and lords in the nation-a completion implied in the facts themselves, since Jehoiada had drawn the heads of the nation into his plan, and on the other hand the express allusion to the body-guard might be omitted as of inferior importance. We cannot infer from ירידוּ that the bridge between Moriah and Zion was not yet in existence, as Thenius supposes, but simply that the bridge was lower than the temple-courts. Instead of הרצים שׁער, the gate of the runners (i.e., of the halberdiers), we find in the Chronicles העליון שׁער, the upper gate, which appears to have been a gate of the temple, according to Kg2 15:35 and Ch2 27:3. The statement that they came by the way of the runners' gate into the house of the king is not at variance with this, for it may be understood as meaning that it was by the halberdiers' gate of the temple that the entry into the palace was carried out. - In Kg2 11:20 this account is concluded with the general remark that all the people rejoiced, sc. at the coronation of Joash, and the city was quiet, when they slew Athaliah with the sword. This is the way, so far as the sense is concerned, in which the last two clauses are to be connected.