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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 Chronicles 23:1 - 23:1
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Joash raised to the throne, and Athaliah slain. - In 2 Kings 11:4-20 we have another account of these events, in which the matter is in several points more briefly narrated, and apparently differently represented. According to both narratives, the thing was undertaken and carried out by the high priest Jehoiada; but according to 2 Kings 11, the high priest would appear to have mainly availed himself of the co-operation of the royal body-guard in the execution of his plan, while according to the Chronicle it is the Levites and the heads of the fathers'-houses who are made use of. Thereupon De Wette, Movers, Thenius, and Bertheau consequently maintain that the author of the Chronicle, proceeding on the view that the high priest, the chief of so many priests and Levites, would not have recourse to the assistance of the royal body-guard, has altered the statements in the second book of Kings accordingly, and wishes to represent the matter in a different way. But this assertion can be made with an appearance of truth only on the presupposition, already repeatedly shown to be erroneous, that the author of the Chronicle has made the account in 2 Kings 11 the basis of his narrative, and designedly altered it, and can scarcely be upheld even by the incorrect interpretation of various words. That 2 Kings 11 is not the source from which our account has been derived, nor the basis on which it is founded, is manifest from the very first verses of the chronicler's narrative, where the names of the five princes over hundreds, with whose co-operation Jehoiada elaborated his plan and carried it into execution, are individually enumerated; while in 2 Kings 11, where the preparations for the accomplishment of the work are very briefly treated of, they will be sought for in vain. But if, on the contrary, the two accounts be recognised to be extracts confining themselves to the main points, excerpted from a more detailed narrative of the event from different points of view, the discrepancies may be at once reconciled. Instead of the short statement, 2Ki 11:4, that the high priest Jehoiada ordered the centurions of the royal body-guard to come to him in the temple (וַיָּבֵא...יִקַּח), made a covenant with them, caused them to swear, and showed them the king's son, we read in the Chronicle (2Ch 23:1-3), that the high priest Jehoiada took five centurions, whose names are stated with historical exactitude, into covenant with him, i.e., sent for them and made a covenant with them, and that these men then went throughout Judah, and summoned the Levites from all the cities of Judah, and the heads of the fathers'-houses of Israel, to Jerusalem; whereupon Jehoiada with the whole assembly made a covenant with the king in the house of God, and Jehoiada said to the people, “The king's son shall be king, as Jahve hath said of the sons of David.” That this more expanded narrative can without difficulty be reconciled with the summary statement in 2Ki 11:4, is perfectly manifest. By various devices, however, Berth. tries to bring out some discrepancies. In the first place, in the words, “Jehoiada sent and brought the princes of hundreds” (2Ki 11:4), he presses the שָׁלַח, which is not found in the Chronicle, translates it by “he sent out,” and interprets it with 2Ch 23:2 of the Chronicle; in the second, he takes כָּל־הַקָּהָל in 2Ch 23:3 of the Chronicle to mean “the whole congregation,” whereas it denotes only the assembly of the men named in 2Ch 23:1 and 2Ch 23:2; and, thirdly, he opposes the expression, “they made a covenant with the king” (2Ch 23:3, Chron.), to the statement (2Ki 11:2) that Jehoiada made a covenant to the princes, by making this latter statement mean that Jehoiada made a covenant with the princes, but not with the king, as if this covenant concerning the coronation of Joash as king might not be called, by a shorter mode of expression, a covenant with the king, especially when the declaration, “the son of the king shall reign,” follows immediately.