But Jehosheba... sister of Ahaziah. — By a different mother (see Josephus). Athaliah would not have allowed her daughter to marry the high priest of Jehovah. (Comp. 2 Kings 11:3 with 2 Chronicles 22:11.) This marriage with a sister of the king shows what almost royal dignity belonged to the high priest’s office.
The king’s sons which were slain. — Rather, which were to be put to death. At the time when the order for slaying the princes had been given, Jehosheba (or Jehoshabeath; Chronicles) concealed the infant Joash. The fact of his infancy caused him to be overlooked. [The Hebrew text here reads by mistake a word meaning deaths (Jeremiah 16:4). Chronicles supports the Hebrew margin.]
And they hid him. — This clause is out of its place here. The Hebrew is, him and his nurse in the chamber of the beds; and they hid him from Athaliah, and he was not put to death. Clearly the word, “and she put,” supplied in Chronicles, has fallen out before this. The Targum and Syriac read, “and she hid him and his nurse,” &c.
In the bedchamber. — In the chamber of beds, i.e., the room in the palace where the mattresses and the coverlets were kept, according to a custom still prevalent in the East. This chamber being unoccupied was the nearest hiding-place at first. The babe was afterwards secretly conveyed within the Temple precincts.