2 Kings 13:1-7

1 In the twenty-third year of the reign of Joash son of Ahaziah as king of Judah, Jehoahaz son of Jehu became king of Israel, and he ruled in Samaria for seventeen years.

2 Like King Jeroboam before him, he sinned against the Lord and led Israel into sin; he never gave up his evil ways.

3 So the Lord was angry with Israel, and he allowed King Hazael of Syria and his son Benhadad to defeat Israel time after time.

4 Then Jehoahaz prayed to the Lord, and the Lord, seeing how harshly the king of Syria was oppressing the Israelites, answered his prayer.

5 The Lord sent Israel a leader, who freed them from the Syrians, and so the Israelites lived in peace, as before.

6 But they still did not give up the sins into which King Jeroboam had led Israel, but kept on committing them; and the image of the goddess Asherah remained in Samaria.

7 Jehoahaz had no armed forces left except fifty cavalry troops, ten chariots, and ten thousand foot soldiers, because the king of Syria had destroyed the rest, trampling them down like dust.

2 Kings 13:1-7 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO 2 KINGS 13

This chapter gives an account of the wicked reign of Jehoahaz son of Jehu king of Israel, and of the low estate he was brought into by the Syrians, 2Ki 13:1-9, and of the reign of his son Joash, 2Ki 13:10-13, and of the sickness and death of Elisha; of the visit Joash made him in his sickness; and of his prediction of the king's success against the Syrians; and of the reviving of a dead man cast into the prophet's sepulchre, 2Ki 13:14-21 and of the success of Joash against the Syrians, according to the prediction of the prophet, 2Ki 13:22-25.

\\of Judah\\ The same year he was so zealous and busy in repairing the temple, 2Ki 12:6,

\\Jehoahaz the son of Jehu began to reign over Israel in Samaria\\; whereas Joash began to reign in the seventh year of Jehu, and Jehu reigned but twenty eight years, 2Ki 10:36, and 2Ki 12:1, this could be but the twenty first of Joash; to reconcile which it must be observed, that it was at the beginning of the seventh year of Jehu that Joash began to reign, and at the beginning of the twenty third of Joash that Jehoahaz began to reign, as the Jewish commentators observe:

\\and reigned seventeen years\\; the two last of which were in common with his son, as Junius, see 2Ki 13:10 17831-941219-2104-2Ki13.2

Footnotes

• [a]. [Some ancient translations] kept on; [Hebrew] he kept on.