Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Chronicles 23-25.

Today’s passage begins when the high priest puts the seven year old Joash on the throne of Judah by staging a coup against his grandmother, who had herself staged a coup to take the throne upon the death of her son.  This passage and others which reference King Joash tell us that he enthusiastically worshiped the Lord while Jehoiada, his foster father and the high priest who put him on the throne, lived, but that he turned to worshiping Asherah poles and other idols once Jehoiada died.  I have always struggled to understand how and why Jehoiada had gone wrong in raising Joash.  Today, some understanding came to me.  Usually when we read the account of Joash restoring the temple we focus on what it says about his desire to worship and serve God.  However, today it struck me that it also tells us a bit about what Jehoiada got wrong.  Initially Joash delegated restoring the temple to the priests and Levites, who answered to the high priest, Jehoiada.  Unfortunately, the priests and Levites did not act on the king’s command.  We do not know why Jehoiada failed to oversee the restoration of the temple.  A likely explanation is that he was too busy administering the government of Judah to take on that responsibility.  So, instead of having trained Joash to rule Judah, and then gradually turned responsibility for doing so over to him, Jehoiada continued to administer everything, distracting Joash with overseeing the restoration of the temple.  It seems likely that for as long as he lived Jehoiada discouraged Joash from taking on his responsibilities as king.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.