Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said, The LORD look upon [it], and require [it].
Ver. 22. Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness.] This was monstrous ingratitude, such as was that also of Hercules, who, for a sharp word, knocked on the head his tutor Linus: Hoc ictu ceu didactro accepto Linus mortuus est. Johannes Scotus and Cassianus Brixiensis, two famous schoolmasters, were stabbed to death by their unruly scholars with their penknives; Seneca was suffocated in a bath by the command of his pupil Nero. a παλαια μεν ευδει χαρις: αμναμονες δε ανθρωποι, saith Pindarus: Good turns are as soon forgotten by men, as eaten bread is by children. Do them nineteen kindnesses, and if ye fail them in the twentieth - which yet, perhaps, would prove no kindness to them - all is lost.
“ Sunt homines humeris quos siquis gestat ad urbem
Ausoniam, domiti quae caput orbis erat;
Nec tamen ad portam placide deponat eosdem,
Gratia praeteriti nulla laboris eris. ” - Ausonius.
Pythias royally entertained and feasted Xerxes and all his huge army, proffering him also a great sum of gold toward the charges of the war, after which, Xerxes having pressed his five sons for the war, Pythias went to him entreating him to release his eldest son, to be a comfort and support to his old age; but Xerxes, being angry at his request, most ungratefully caused his son to be cut into two pieces, and laid in the way for his army to march over. b
The Lord look upon it.] Or, The Lord will look upon it and require it. He did so, and that forthwith, 2Ch 24:23-26 for "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints," his suffering saints especially. Epiphanius c saith that from the death of this high priest, God answered the Jews no more by Urim and Thummim.
a Cicero was beheaded by Papilius Laenas, a soldier whose life he had saved.
b Herodot.
c In Vit. Zacha.