- 9 -
When tidings successively reached Athaliah, first of the death of Ahaziah, and then of the
murder of presumably the great majority of the royal princes, the thought would naturally
suggest itself to such an ambitious and unscrupulous woman permanently to seize the
reins of the government. Other motives may also have contributed to this resolve. She
must have known that, despite all that had been done in the two previous reigns to
denationalize Judah, her party formed only a small and unreliable minority even in the
capital. Both in Jerusalem and throughout the country the great majority were, as events
afterwards proved, opposed to the queen-mother, or at least attached to the old order in
State and Church. The acknowledged and natural head of this party was the active and
energetic high-priest, Jehoiada, the husband of Jehosheba or Jehoshabeath, the half-
sister of the late King Ahaziah. And Athaliah must have felt that if, after the slaughter
of the other princes by Jehu, a minor were proclaimed king, his guardianship and the
government would naturally pass into other hands than hers.
- From the absence of any designation to that effect, it has been doubted whether
Jehoiada was actually the high-priest. But this seems implied throughout the narrative,
and also indicated in 2 Kings 12, specially in verse 10.
** The two names are identical in meaning, and only differ in form. The signification is
almost the same as that of Elisheba or Elisabeth. 162
*** Every probability attaches to the statement of Josephus (Ant. 9. 7, 10), that
Jehosheba was the daughter of Jehoram {half-sister to Ahaziah) by another mother than
Athaliah. Whether or not she was full sister of Joash, whose mother was "Zibiah of Beer-
sheba" (2 Chronicles 24:1), must remain undetermined.
In view of such possible dangers to herself, but especially for the realization of her own
ambitious designs, the queen-mother resolved, in true Oriental fashion, on the slaughter
of all that remained of the house of David. On its extinction there could no longer be any
possible rival, nor yet any center around which an opposition could gather. It casts
manifold light on the institution and the position of the priesthood, with its central
national sanctuary in the capital, that at such a period the safety of the people ultimately
rested with it. Evidently it must have been an institution of the highest antiquity;
evidently, it must have formed part of the central life of Israel; evidently, it was from the
first invested with all the dignity and influence which we associate with it in the Mosaic
legislation; evidently, it was intended as, and did constitute, the religiously preservative
and conservative element in the commonwealth, the guardian of Israel's religion, the
rallying-point of civil rights and of true national life. Even the fact that in such a time the
high-priest was wedded to the king's sister is significant.
From the general massacre of the royal house by Athaliah, Jehosheba had succeeded in
rescuing an infant son of Ahaziah, Joash by name. Together with his nurse, he was for a
short time concealed in "the chamber of beds," apparently that where the mattresses and
(^)