the sword. This is the way, so far as the sense is concerned, in which the last two clauses are to be connected.
Chap. 12
Verse 1
Reign of King Joash of Judah, and Repairing of the Temple - 2 Kings 12
All that is recorded of the forty years’ reign of Joash, in addition to the general characteristics of the reign (2Ki 12:1-4), is the repairing of the temple which was effected by him (2Ki 12:5-17), and the purchased retreat of the Syrians from their invasion of Judah (2Ki 12:18 and 2Ki 12:19), and finally his violent death in consequence of a conspiracy formed against him, of which we have only a brief notice in 2Ki 12:20-21. The parallel account in 2 Chron 24 supplies several additions to this: viz., concerning the wives of Joash, the distribution of the Levites at the repairing of the temple, the death of Jehoiada, and the seduction of Joash to idolatry by the chief men of Judah, and the stoning of the prophet Zechariah, who condemned this rebellion - all of which can easily be fitted into our account.
Reign of Joash. - 2Ki 12:1 (1, 2). His age on ascending the throne, viz., seven years (cf. 2Ki 11:4). - Commencement and length of his reign. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba.
Verse 2
2Ki 12:2 (3). Joash did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord וגו אשׁר כּל־ימין, “all his days that,” etc., i.e., during the whole period of his life that Jehoiada instructed him (for אשׁר after substantives indicating time, place, and mode, see Ewald, §331, c., 3; and for the use of the suffix attached to the noun defined by וגו אשׁר, compare 2Ki 13:14); not “all his life long, because Jehoiada had instructed him,” although the Athnach under ימין favours this view. For Jehoiada had not instructed him before he began to reign, but he instructed him after he had been raised to the throne at the age of seven years, that is to say, so long as Jehoiada himself lived. The יהוידע כּל־ימי of the Chronicles is therefore a correct explanation. But after Jehoiada’s death, Joash yielded to the petitions of the princes of Judah that he would assent to their worshipping idols, and at length went so far as to stone the son of his benefactor, the prophet Zechariah, on account of his candid reproof of this apostasy (2Ch 24:17-22).
Verse 3
2Ki 12:3 (4). But the worship on the high places was not entirely suppressed, notwithstanding the fact that Jehoiada instructed him (on this standing formula see the Comm. on 1Ki 15:14).
