And the seventh year Jehoiada sent and fetched the rulers over hundreds, with the captains and the guard, and brought them to him into the house of the LORD, and made a covenant with them, and took an oath of them in the house of the LORD, and shewed them the king's son.
And the seventh year - namely, of the reign of Athaliah and the rescue of Jehoash.
Jehoiada sent and fetched the rulers ... He could scarcely have obtained such a general convocation except at the time, or on pretext, of a public and solemn festival. Having revealed to them the secret of the young king's preservation, and entered into a covenant with them for the overthrow of the tyrant, he then arranged with them the plan and time of carrying their plot into execution, (see the notes at 2 Chronicles 22:10-12; 2 Chronicles 23:1-21.) The conduct of Jehoiada, who acted the leading and chief part in this conspiracy, admits of an easy and full justification: for, while Athaliah was a usurper, and belonged to a race devoted by divine denunciation to destruction, even his own wife had a better and stronger claim to the throne; the sovereignty of Judah has been divinely appropriated to the family of David, and therefore the young prince on whom it was proposed to confer the crown possessed an inherent right to it, of which a usurper could not deprive him. Moreover, Jehoiada was most probably the high priest, whose official duty it was to watch over the due execution of God's laws, and who, in his present movement, was encouraged and aided by the countenances and support of the chief authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical, in the country. In addition to all these considerations, he seems to have been directed by an impulse of the Divine Spirit, through the counsels and exhortations of the prophets of the time.