2 Kings 13:1-9

Jehoahaz rules Israel

1 Jehoahaz, Jehu's son, became king of Israel in Samaria in the twenty-third year of Judah's King Jehoash, who was Ahaziah's son. He ruled for seventeen years.

2 He did what was evil in the LORD's eyes. He walked in the sins that Jeroboam, Nebat's son, had caused Israel to commit. He didn't deviate from them.

3 So the LORD was angry at Israel. Time after time God handed them over to Aram's king Hazael, and to Hazael's son Ben-hadad.

4 But Jehoahaz sought the LORD's presence, and the LORD listened to him because he saw how badly Aram's king was oppressing Israel.

5 The LORD sent Israel a savior, and they escaped from Aram's power. Then the Israelites lived peacefully at home, just as they had in the past.

6 But they didn't deviate from the sins that Jeroboam's dynasty had caused Israel to commit; they walked in them! Moreover, a sacred pole stood in Samaria.

7 No, nothing was left of Jehoahaz's army except fifty chariot riders, ten chariots, and ten thousand foot soldiers, because Aram's king had decimated them, trampling them as if they were dirt.

8 The rest of Jehoahaz's deeds, all that he accomplished, and all his powerful acts, aren't they written in the official records of Israel's kings?

9 Jehoahaz lay down with this ancestors. He was buried in Samaria. His son Joash succeeded him as king.

2 Kings 13:1-9 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]. Heb Joash (also in 13:10); the king’s name is variously spelled in either long Jehoash or short Joash form. The latter is the form used in 2 Chron.
• [b]. Heb asherah, perhaps an object devoted to the goddess Asherah