2 Chronicles 24 explained: A Good Start, A Bitter End

A boy king with a guide (vv. 1-3)

Joash came to the throne at seven, and the writer ties his good years directly to the priest Jehoiada, who had protected him and put him on the throne. Most interpreters read verse 3 as Jehoiada arranging the young king's marriages, possibly because earlier royal marriages had brought disaster on the family.

Repairing the temple (vv. 4-14)

The sons of Athaliah, the queen who had seized power before Joash, had broken into the temple and given its sacred objects to other gods, so Joash revived an old yearly temple tax traced back to Moses. When the Levites, the temple workers, were slow to collect it, a public chest at the gate worked, and the money was handled carefully and spent honestly on the repairs.

Jehoiada's honored burial (vv. 15-16)

Burial inside Jerusalem among the kings was a rare honor, given here to a priest because of the good he had done for the nation and its worship. The great age of 130 is what the text reports.

The king turns away (vv. 17-19)

With Jehoiada gone, Judah's leading officials won the king over, and the nation went back to worshiping idols and Asherah poles, wooden objects honoring a Canaanite goddess. The writer says prophets kept warning them, but no one listened.

Zechariah is stoned (vv. 20-22)

When Jehoiada's own son Zechariah warned the people, the king had him stoned in the temple courtyard, turning on the family that saved his life, and Zechariah died asking the LORD to see it and call them to account. Christians often read him as the murdered Zechariah Jesus mentions in Matthew 23:35, though the father's name given there differs, so scholars debate the link.

Defeat and murder (vv. 23-27)

A small army from Aram, the kingdom based in Damascus, beat Judah's larger army, and the writer presents this as judgment for abandoning the LORD. Joash, badly wounded, was killed in his bed by his own officials over Zechariah's death and denied burial in the royal tombs; why the writer notes the killers' foreign mothers is unclear.

Key verse: 2 Chronicles 24:2

Something to think about

How much of what you hold to be right is truly your own, and how much rests on the people who happen to be around you?