II. JoABH BLAIN DY ooNSrIRATORS. (Ver. 25,) 1. When, "After the Syrians had departed from him." Though he had escaped the doom which sought him on the battle- field, it seemed as if justice would not suffer him to live (cf. Acts xxviii, 4). Scarcely bad the Syrians departed than the sleuth-hound of retribtttion was again upon his trail. Only wounded by soldiers' spea.rs, be was slaughtered by assassins' swords. 2. . Where? In his castle-palace at Millo (2 Kings xii. 20), and on his bed, i.e. while invalided by his wounds. Death found him in a fortress, behind which he doubtless expected to be secure, and at a moment when, perhaps, that expectation was high through the healing of his wounds. 3. By whom 1 His own servants, whose names are given: "Zabad [or Jozakat, Kings] the son of Shimeath an Ammonites&, and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith a Moabitess." Led astray by those who should have been his servants, the princes, he was put to death by his actual servants. He had betrayed his country to foreign gods, by men of foreign extraction he was destroyed. Divine retributions frequently correspond to the character of the offence they punish. 4. Why 1 Because of the "blood of the son of Jehoiada the priest." 'l'hey meant to reward him for his truculent deed against Zechariah. How they came to champion the cause of Jehoiada.'s murdered son is not said. Perhaps they shared the popular feeling, which had never wholly approved of the mnrdcr; and when they witnessed the disaster which had come upon their arms, with the judgment that had fallen on the princes, they con- cluded that Zechariah's blood must be avenged if prosperity was again to return to Judah; and believing they would find, in the public mind, approval for their action, they despatched the wounded man upon his bed at Millo. Their calculations concern- ing the verdict of the people were not astray. Nobody regretted Joash's untimely end, His subjects "buried him in the city of David," where his fathers lay entombed, but they suffered not his carcase to desecrate the mausoleum of the kings. Learn : 1. The overruling providence of God. Things come to pass at his ordering. 2. The certainty that sin will be punished. Though judgment be delayed, it is not averted.-W.
EXPOSITION. reigned twenty and nine years. Glance at CHAPTER XXV. notes on verl!. I, 15, 17 of foregoing chapter, This chapter is filled up with a very from which it appears that, as Joash died graphic e.ccount of the entire career of retat. forty-seven, and Amaziah was now twenty-five, he must have been born when Ame.zie.h, and its twenty-eight verses are his father was twenty-two years old, and paralleled by the twenty verses of 2 Kings Jehoaddan corres'!)ondingly likely to have xiv. 1-20, where the ne.rra.tive reads in been one of the two wives Jehoiado. selected several places mnch more curtly. Our for J oash, at the age, on other data, of twenty- chapter opens with the fe.milio.r anticipatory one years. Of Jerusalem. This affix to the mother's name may perhaps carry credit to snmmary of the man. his age, pedigree, and the memory of Jehoiada, for having been character, whose course is to be detailed careful to select a woman of the honoured more precisely in following verses, e.go.in city rather than of any provincial or even e.nd yet again sounding the clear key-note less worthy city, of an unclean character and reign (vers. I, Ver. 2.-Not with a perfeot heart. This is illustrated by his coming "to set up the 2) ; it proceeds to record the king's avenging gods of Edom" (vers. 14--16, 20); also by of his fe.ther's murder (vers. 3, 4); his suc- what the parallel supplies, the.the resembled cessful sally against "the children of Seir," Joo.eh rather than David, and did not sup- with the incident of the affronted division of press "the high places, sacrifices, and in- army, formed of them that "came to him cense-burning" (2 Kings xiv. 3, 4). In almost all cases, the Mt-perfect heart spee1ks out of Ephraim" (vers. 5-13); l:.is defec- of that which began well, but did not "endure tion to idolatry, and insult put npon the unto the end." fe.ithfnl "prophet" (vers. 14-16); his Ver. 3.-We.s established to him ; Hebrew, jaunty e.nd provocative challenge to Joash np;i;i. This is kal conjugation of the verb, ofLrael, to his own overthrow (vers. 17-24); wliich we found in piel in ver. 5 of foregoing hiH end (vers. 25-28). chapter, and there rendered "repair." The kal force of the word is simply to "be Ver. 1.-Twenty and 11.ve :,ean old ... strong" (Gen. xli. 57; Josh. xvii. 13; 2 OH, xxv. 1-28.] THE SECOND BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. 29!)