THE USURPATION OF ATHALIAH IN JUDAH
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2 Kings 11:1. Athaliah destroyed all the seed royal—She herself usurped the throne; and, to ensure her hold, slew all rival claimants. Jehu had already destroyed “forty-two” brethren or relations of Ahaziah (2 Kings 10:13).
2 Kings 11:2. Jehosheba, &c.—Her father was king Jehoram, but her mother was not the queen Athaliah; she and her sister Ahaziah were daughters by another wife of Jehoram. Took Joash and hid him in the bedchamber—i.e., not the sleeping apartment, but the storeroom in which bedding was kept, for so בַּחֲדַר הַמִּטּוֹת means. No one would be supposed to occupy that storeroom.
2 Kings 11:3. Hid in the house of the Lord—After a temporary hiding in the storeroom, he was removed into one of the temple chambers, and thus placed in greatest security under Jehoiada, the high priest’s care.
HOMILETICS OF 2 Kings 11:1-3
THE DESPERATION OF REVENGE
I. Is mingled with an ungovernable ambition.—As soon as Athaliah heard of the death of her son Ahaziah, and of the sanguinary policy pursued by Jehu, she determined to be revenged, and she set about the work with all the ferocity and unrelenting hardihood that characterised her mother Jezebel. Her imperious Zidonian nature and love of power were gratified, as well as her thirst for revenge. Through the path of vengeance she saw her way to a throne. A savage nature is always a suspicious one, and Athaliah saw that to make her power secure, her work of revenge must be thorough and complete. Revenge is a mean, paltry feeling, and cannot be cherished long, except in connection with selfish and ambitious schemes.
II. Hesitates not to adopt the cruellest measures to attain its object.—“She arose and destroyed all the seed-royal (2 Kings 11:1). This insatiable ogress, this she-vampire, was so utterly insensible to all natural affection, or had become so consummate a mistress in the art of dissembling and stifling emotion, that, without a tear or a sob, she massacred her own grandchildren. She revelled in bloodshed, and rejoiced to “wade through slaughter to a throne.” It was an evidence of her great capabilities and domineering influence, or of the utter moral degeneracy of Judah, that she, a foreigner and an idolater, should be allowed to reach supreme authority, and by such unnaturally cruel methods. Ambition, rendered desperate by revenge, is reckless as to the means used to achieve its purpose.
III. Is unconsciously frustrated when its plans seem most completely carried out (2 Kings 11:2). Joash, the infant son of Ahaziah, was snatched from the general massacre, and hid in a room used for stowing away beds. Little did Athaliah dream that that helpless infant was to be the instrument of her fall. Revenge is ever a mistaken policy. The ancient poet tells us that Nemesis was transformed by Jupiter into a goose, to point out the folly of revenge. “Suppose a mad dog bites me,” argues Feltham in his Resolves, “shall I be mad, and bite that dog again? If I kill him, it is not so much to help myself, as to keep others from harm. My interest is to seek a present remedy, while, pursuing the cur, I may at once both lose my wit and my cure. If a wasp sting me, I pursue not the winged insect through the air, but straight apply to draw the venom forth.” The right of vengeance belongs to God alone. To take the matter into our own hands we usurp His authority and insult His righteous Majesty. In seeking to rectify a wrong, we inflict a greater, and bring ruin and confusion upon ourselves. “While we throw a petty vengeance on the head of our offending brother, we boldly pull the Almighty’s on our own.”
IV. Cannot give permanency to its triumphs. “He was hid six years. And Athaliah did reign over the land” (2 Kings 11:3). Only six years, and then—the swift-footed Nemesis—“the bitterest of the immortals”—overtook the imperial murderess. Six years of tyrannising power, of regal display, of cringing adulation on the part of her professed supporters, and then—a sudden and ignominious downfall. Six years of patient waiting, of vigilant watching, of careful preparation on the part of those who had to redress the wrong, and then—the blow fell with crushing and decisive effect. Was it worth while to commit such horrible crimes for such brief, illusive, and equivocal results? It does not pay to sin. The triumph snatched by the red hand of crime withered in the grasp. The sceptre is transformed into an avenging sword, the crown into a wreath of torture, and the throne into a tomb.
LESSONS:—
1. An ambitious spirit has great temptations to do wrong.
2. Revenge is blind to the consequences of its Acts 3. It is God-like to forgive rather than retaliate, to suffer wrong than resent it.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2 Kings 11:1-3. Queen Athaliah.
1. Her wicked plans. Idolatrous and fond of power, like her mother Jezebel, she takesthe royal authority into her own hands, in self-will and contrary to right, and murders all the male seed, in order to put an end for ever to the house of David. We see here whither ambition and love of rule may lead men.
2. The frustration of her plans. No one can tread down him whom God sustains. Thus, Pharaoh would have been glad to destroy Israel; Saul would have slain David; Herod the child Jesus. They could not accomplish it. They only injured themselves and perished, as Athaliah did.—Wurt. Summ.
—We have reached the eve of a great revolution and counter revolution, which alone of all the events in the history of the kingdom of Judah possesses the dramatic interest belonging to so many other parts of the sacred story, and which is told with a vividness of detail, implying its lasting significance, and contrasting remarkably with the scanty outlines of the earlier reigns. The friendly policy of the two royal houses had culminated in the marriage of Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, with Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab. In her, the fierce determined energy which ran through the Phœnician princes and princesses of that generation—Jezebel, Dido, Pygmalion—was fully developed. Already in her husband’s reign the worship of Baal was restored; and when the tidings reached Jerusalem of the overthrow of her father’s house, of the dreadful end of her mother, and of the fall of her ancestral religion in Samaria, instead of daunting her resolute spirit, it moved her to a still grander effort. It was a critical moment for the house of David. Once from a struggle within the royal household itself, a second time from an invasion of Arabs, a third time from the revolution in the massacres of Jehu’s accession, the dynasty had been thinned and thinned till all the outlying branches of those vast polygamous households had been reduced to the single family of Ahaziah. Ahaziah himself had perished with his uncle on the plain of Esdraelon, and now, when Athaliah saw that Ahaziah was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal. The whole race of David seemed to be swept away. In the general massacre of the princes one boy, still a babe in arms, had been rescued by Jehosheba. He was known as “the king’s son.” The light of David was burnt down to its socket, but there it still flickered. The stem of Jesse was cut down to the very roots; one tender shoot was all that remained On him rested the whole hope of carrying on the lineage of David.—Stanley.
2 Kings 11:1. When the corpse of her son was brought to Jerusalem—when she heard how horribly her mother and how treacherously her brother had been slain—that her son’s kindred had been cut off at the pit of the shearing house, and that the worshippers of Baal had been immolated in Samaria—Athaliah caught the strong contagion of blood-thirstiness from the report of these doings. She saw herself a stranger in a strange land, an alien by birth and by religion, without common sympathies between herself and the people among whom she occupied so high a place, and without support from the remaining members of the family to which she had become allied. All the strong ones were gone. What hindered that she should herself seize the dropped reigns of government, and guide the fierce steeds of ruin which threatened to whirl her to destruction? What had she to expect from the spirit which had gone abroad, and from the ulterior designs of Jehu, unless she entered upon a bold course of reaction which might insure both her safety and her greatness! There have been those who deemed themselves compelled to leap into a throne to save themselves from utter ruin; and we would fain believe this was the case with Athaliah.—Kitto.
—Such another imperious woman was Semiramis, Queen of Assyria; Irene, empress of Constantinople and mother of Constantinus Copronymus, whose eyes she put out to make him incapable of the empire, that she might reign alone (vide “Gibbon’s Roman Empire,” ch. 47); and Brumchildis, queen of France, who is said to have been the death of ten princes of the blood, and was herself afterwards put to a cruel death. But the likest in cruelty to Athaliah was Laodice, the wife of Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, who, her husband being dead, seized upon the government, raged cruelly against both nobility and commons, whom she caused to be murdered; poisoned six of her own sons that she might keep the kingdom more securely; only one little one escaped her fury, whom the people at last advanced to the crown, and slew her.—Trapp.
—Jehoshaphat’s marriage of his son with a daughter of the house of Ahab, although he brought it about in a good intention, produced the result that Athaliah ruled over Judah, and brought the dynasty of David to the brink of ruin. So many a quiet, humble, God-fearing family has been brought into calamities, affecting both body and soul, by a thoughtless marriage. The hope that those who are brought up by godless parents will themselves reform and turn to the fear of God has very slight foundation.—Lange.
2 Kings 11:2-3. Stolen from death. Grandmothers are more lenient with their children’s children than they were with their own. At forty years of age, if discipline be necessary, chastisement is used; but at seventy, the grandmother, looking upon the misbehaviour of the grandchild, is apologetic, and disposed to substitute confectionary for whip. There is nothing more beautiful than this mellowing of old age toward childhood. But here, we have a contrast. It is old Athaliah, the queenly murderess. She ought to have been honourable. Her father was a king; her husband was a king; her son was a king. And yet we find her plotting for the extermination of the entire royal family, including her own grandchildren. But while the ivory floors of the palace run with carnage, and the whole land is under the shadow of a great horror, a fleet-footed woman, a clergyman’s wife, Jehosheba by name, stealthily approaches the imperial nursery, seizes upon the grandchild that had somehow as yet escaped massacre, wraps it up tenderly but in haste flies down the palace stairs, her heart in her throat lest she be discovered in this Christian abduction. With this youthful prize she presses into the room of the ancient temple, the church of olden time, unwraps the young king, and puts him down, sound asleep as he is, and unconscious of the peril that has been threatened; and there for six years he is secreted in that church apartment. Meanwhile old Athaliah smacks her lips with satisfaction, and thinks that all the royal family are dead.
I. The first thought is that the extermination of righteousness in an impossibility. When a woman is good, she is apt to be very good; and when she is bad, she is apt to be very bad, and this Athaliah was one of the latter sort. She would exterminate the last scion of the house of David, through whom Jesus was to come. She folds her hands, and says: The work is done—is completely done. Is it? In the swaddling-clothes of that church apartment are wrapped the cause of God and the cause of good government. That is the scion of the house of David; it is Joash, the religious reformer; it is Joash, the friend of God; it is Joash, the demolisher of Baalitish idolatry. Rock him tenderly; nurse him gently. Athaliah, you may kill all the other children, but you cannot kill him. Eternal defences are thrown all around him, and this clergyman’s wife, Jehosheba, will snatch him up, will hide him for six years, and at the end of that time he will come forth for your dethronement and obliteration. Just as poor a botch does the world always make of extinguishing righteousness. Just at the time when they thought they had slain all the royal family of Jesus, some Joash would spring up and take the throne of power. Infidelity says: “I’ll just exterminate the Bible,” and the Scriptures were thrown into the street for the mob to trample on, and they were piled up in the public squares and set on fire, and mountains of indignant contempt were hurled on them, and learned universities decreed the Bible out of existence. If there should come a time of persecution in which all the known Bibles of the earth should be destroyed—all these lamps of life that blaze in our pulpits and in our families extinguished—in the very day that infidelity and sin should be holding jubilee over the universal extinction, there shall be a secreted copy of the Bible; and this Joash of eternal literature would come out and come up and take the throne, and the Athaliah of infidelity and persecution would fly out of the back door of the palace, and drop her miserable carcase under the hoofs of the horses of the king’s stables. You cannot exterminate Christianity. You cannot kill Joash.
II. The second thought is: That there are opportunities in which we may save royal life. You know that profane history is replete with stories of strangled monarchs and of young princes who have been put out of the way. Here is the story of a young king saved. Jehosheba, you hold in your arms the cause of God and good government. Fail, and he is slain; succeed, and you turn the tide of the world’s history in the right direction. It seems as if between that young king and his assassins there is nothing but the frail arm of a woman. But why should we spend our time in praising this bravery of expedition, when God asks the same thing of you and me? All around us are the imperilled children of a great king. They are born of Almighty parentage, and will come to a throne or a crown if permitted. But sin, the old Athaliah, goes forth to the massacre. There are sleeping in your cradles by night, there are playing in your nurseries by day, imperial souls waiting for dominion, and whichever side the cradle they get out will decide the destiny of empires. For each one of those children sin and holiness contend—Athaliah on the one side, Jehosheba on the other. Jehosheba knew right well that unless that day the young king was rescued, he would never be rescued at all. The reason we don’t reclaim all our children from worldliness is because we begin too late. Parents wait until their children lie before they teach them the value of truth. They wait until their children swear before they teach them the importance of righteous conversation. They wait until their children are all wrapped up in this world before they tell them of a better world. May God arm us all for this work of snatching royal souls from death to coronation. Can you imagine any sublimer work than this soul saving?
III. The third thought is: That the church of God is a good hiding place. Would God that we were all as wise as Jehosheba, and knew that the church of God is the best hiding-place. Perhaps our parents took us there in early days; they snatched us away from the world and bid us behind the baptismal font, and amid the bibles and the psalm books. Oh, glorious enclosure! How few of us appreciate the fact that the church of God is a hiding-place! There are many people who put the church at so low a mark that they begrudge it everything, even the few dollars they give towards it. They make no sacrifice. If your children are to come up to lives of virtue and happiness, they will come up under the shadow of the church. If the church does not get them, the world will. Ah! when you pass away—and it will not be long before you do—it will be a satisfaction to see your children in Christian society. You want to have them sitting at the holy sacraments. You want them mingling in Christian associations. You would like to have them die in the sacred precincts! Oh! church of God, gate of heaven, let me go through it! All other institutions are going to fail. Jay Cooke’s banking institution went down, Duncan, Sherman, and Co. went down, and all earthly institutions will perish; but the church of God, its foundation is the “Rock of Ages,” its charter is for everlasting years, its keys are held by the universal proprietor, its dividend is heaven, its president is God. God grant that all this audience, the youngest, the eldest, the worst, the best, may find their safe and glorious hiding-place, where Joash found it, in the temple.—(Talmage in C. W. P.)
—O God! how worthy of wonder are thy just and merciful dispensations, in that thou sufferest the seed of good Jehoshaphat to be destroyed by her hand in whose affinity he offended, and yet savest one branch of this stock of Jehoshaphat for the sake of so faithful a progenitor!—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 11:2. The great agents of the world’s reformation.
1. Are prepared in secret.
2. May depend upon a single life.
3. Cannot be destroyed by the hatred and cruelty of the wicked.
4. Will inevitably come to the front
—The perils of a good movement.
1. May appear to be extinct when its reviving force is but in hiding.
2. Its hopes may be suspended on a frail infant life.
3. It is opposed with unrelenting cruelty.
4. It is unexpectedly befriended in its greatest extremity.
—We have an instance in Jehosheba how, even in the midst of godlessness in a family, any one who will, can make an exception. Jehosheba stole him. That was not stealing the child, but saving him. What can a woman do better and nobler than to save an infant from danger of soul and body, and take him under her protection for the sake of God and his promises?—Lange.
2 Kings 11:3. As mother of the king she had great power, high influence, and many dependants, which rendered her, in default of a king and of a capable heir to the throne, the most powerful person in the land. She was thus enabled to accomplish all her objects; and Judah beheld the strange sight of a woman, and that woman a foreigner, seated upon the throne of David. Under such auspices, idolatry became rampant in Judah. It would seem that nothing had been gained by the expression of idolatry in Israel; the same thing existed still, the place only having been changed, just as the piece of wood which disappears for a moment under the water comes up again a little way off. No doubt, the cause of the Baal-worship was strengthened by large accessions of fugitives who stole away from Israel.—Kitto.
—When the godless appear to have succeeded in the attainment of their objects, and believe that they have conquered, the very moment of their victory is the unperceived commencement of their ruin. The cross of Christ was the victory of His enemies, but this very victory was what brought about their total defeat.—Krummacher.
—Mischief sometimes fails of those appointments wherein it thinks to have made the surest work. God laughs in Heaven at the plots of tyrants, and befools them in their deepest projects. He had said to David—“Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy seat.” In vain shall earth and hell conspire to frustrate it.—Bp. Hall.