GOD’s WORD FOR YOU
2 CHRONICLES 22:10-12
10 Now when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she rose up and destroyed all the royal heirs of the house of Judah. 11 But Jehoshabeath, the king’s daughter, took Joash the son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the king’s sons who were about to be put to death. She put him and his nurse in a bedroom. This is how Jehoshabeath, a sister of Ahaziah, daughter of King Jehoram and wife of Jehoiada the priest, hid him from Athaliah, so that she did not put him to death. 12 And he remained hidden in the house of God with them for six years, while Athaliah reigned over the land.
At this point, we find that nearly all of the heirs of King David’s line had been murdered. The only one left was a baby, an infant named Joash, whose rescuer was the wife of the aging high priest Jehoiada. She was the daughter of King Jehoram and Ahaziah’s sister. How she came to be the wife of the high priest can easily be deduced. A priest could not marry a widow, a divorced woman, a woman defiled by prostitution, or any woman who was not a virgin (Leviticus 21:7,14). He was also unable to marry a woman who possessed property within her own tribe. But since this was unusual, a priest could marry a woman from outside the tribe of Levi. Marriages between Levitical priests and women from the tribe of Judah, therefore, would have been fairly common. When the high priest’s first wife (or second; he was at this time over one hundred) died, he wanted to marry again, and a marriage was arranged with a young virgin girl from the king’s own family. It would have been an honor for her, and he would have had very few prospects except among very young unmarried girls. This princess and high priest’s wife was acting in the best interests of little Joash, and she was able to remove him and his wet nurse from the palace to the temple without being stopped by Athaliah, perhaps by “the ascending passageway Solomon made that went up to the House of the LORD” (2 Chronicles 9:4) that had so impressed the Queen of Sheba at about the time that the high priest Jehoiada– the husband of this princess– was born.
It is interesting but only a coincidence that the woman’s name, Jehoshabeath, is pronounced in Hebrew almost exactly the same as the baby’s grandfather, Jehoshaphat.
She hid the baby somewhere in the house of God, although not of course in the holy place (or the Most Holy Place!). But there were many apartments and rooms all around and under the temple complex (1 Kings 6:5; 1 Chronicles 9:33; 23:28; 28:11-12), and there would have been someplace where a bed, a cradle, a rocking chair, and the other necessities of raising an infant could have been found or put in place without arousing too much suspicion. Certainly where the future of the throne of Judah was in jeopardy, the high priest could have found trustworthy associates who were willing to say to a monarch, at least with their actions, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Solomon himself had said, “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures” (Proverbs 24:3-4). The only surviving male descendant of David and Solomon could surely be described as a rare and beautiful treasure.
Another advantage of keeping the baby in the temple courts was that he could be dressed in the clothing of a Levite boy as he entered into his toddler years, and could be instructed with the other boys without any suspicion at all. The sounds of a crying baby somewhere in the temple walls would not reach the ears of Athaliah, the pagan daughter of a pagan king. She would have avoided the temple with every passing day as she sat and failed, again and again, day after day, to do anything in the least that would please Almighty God.
What Jehoshabeath and her husband Jehoiada the priest (and the wet nurse) did was a good work indeed; done out of faith in God and through knowledge of the promise of the gospel. Each year for six years, Jehoiada entered the Most Holy Place to sprinkle the Ark of the Covenant with blood and offer prayers of repentance on behalf of Judah, words such as Hosea spoke: “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips” (Hosea 14:2), or that Amos cried out so passionately: “Sovereign LORD, forgive! How can Jacob survive?” (Amos 7:2).
And the Levite Asaph had written so prophetically: “Help us, O God our Savior, for the glory of your name; deliver us and forgive our sins for your name’s sake. Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’ Before our eyes, make known among the nations that you avenge the outpoured blood of your servants” (Psalm 79:9-10).
Those six years began with dozens upon dozens of funerals, beginning with Ahaziah, and then his sons, and nephews and cousins. It is at this point that the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel skips from Jehoram, Ahaziah’s father, to Uzziah, who would be the grandson of this baby Joash (Matthew 1:8). The details of this savage moment were not necessary for Matthew to record; the Levite Apostle knew that anyone who was curious could easily find the account and praise God that the line of the Savior was preserved through this child, whose running bare feet and hushed childhood laughter echoed through the marble hallways of Solomon’s magnificent structure, his prayer of devotion in stone to the Holy One of Israel.
The task of raising a child, whether the heir of David or the baby of your own marriage, is in itself a good work for the believer. Each task, each diaper change, every lullaby, the little games we play with children to teach them the joy of being with people, teaching them everything from rolling over to taking their first steps to using a fork and spoon and of singing along with the liturgy in church and learning to pray– all of these things please God and give him glory. “Good works are the actions of the reborn, which God has prescribed in the Law, done in true faith in Christ by the illuminating efficacy of the Holy Spirit for this purpose: that honor and obedience be given to God. He causes us to be rich in them, dear to God, and useful to our neighbor– he, I say, upon whom whom every ability to do good depends, who commands what he wants and gives what he commands, who by grace crowns the very thing he works in us and through us by grace, who is to be praised forever.” (Gerhard)
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – 2 Chronicles 22:10-12 A rare and beautiful treasure