14 And she looked, and behold, the king stood on the dais, according to the custom, and the princes and the trumpeters were by the king; and all the people of the land rejoiced, and blew with trumpets. And Athaliah rent her garments and cried, Conspiracy! Conspiracy!
And Zadok the priest took the horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, Long live king Solomon! And all the people came up after him, and the people piped with pipes, and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth rent with the sound of them.
After these things I heard as a loud voice of a great multitude in the heaven, saying, Hallelujah: the salvation and the glory and the power of our God: for true and righteous [are] his judgments; for he has judged the great harlot which corrupted the earth with her fornication, and has avenged the blood of his bondmen at her hand. And a second time they said, Hallelujah. And her smoke goes up to the ages of ages. And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and did homage to God who sits upon the throne, saying, Amen, Hallelujah. And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his bondmen, [and] ye that fear him, small and great. And I heard as a voice of a great crowd, and as a voice of many waters, and as a voice of strong thunders, saying, Hallelujah, for [the] Lord our God the Almighty has taken to himself kingly power. Let us rejoice and exult, and give him glory; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife has made herself ready.
And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver; of beaten work shalt thou make them; and they shall serve for the calling together of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps. And when they shall blow with them, the whole assembly shall gather to thee at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And if they blow with one, then the princes, the heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather unto thee. And when ye blow an alarm, the camps that lie eastward shall set forward. And when ye blow an alarm the second time, the camps that lie southward shall set forward; they shall blow an alarm on their setting forward. And when the congregation is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not blow an alarm: the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow with the trumpets; and they shall be to you for an everlasting statute throughout your generations. And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before Jehovah your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies. And in the day of your gladness, and in your set feasts, and in your new moons, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt-offerings and over your sacrifices of peace-offering; and they shall be to you for a memorial before your God: I am Jehovah your God.
And it came to pass when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said to him, Is it thou, the troubler of Israel? And he said, I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of Jehovah, and thou hast followed the Baals.
And when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she rose up and destroyed all the royal seed. But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, the sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah and stole him from among the king's sons that were slain, [and hid] him and his nurse in the bedchamber; and they hid him from Athaliah, so that he was not slain.
And the priest gave to the captains of the hundreds king David's spears and shields which were in the house of Jehovah. And the couriers stood by the king round about, every man with his weapons in his hand, from the right side of the house to the left side of the house, toward the altar and the house.
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Commentary on 2 Kings 11 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 11
2Ki 11:1-3. Jehoash Saved from Athaliah's Massacre.
1. Athaliah—(See on 2Ch 22:2). She had possessed great influence over her son, who, by her counsels, had ruled in the spirit of the house of Ahab.
destroyed all the seed royal—all connected with the royal family who might have urged a claim to the throne, and who had escaped the murderous hands of Jehu (2Ch 21:2-4; 22:1; 2Ki 10:13, 14). This massacre she was incited to perpetrate—partly from a determination not to let David's family outlive hers; partly as a measure of self-defense to secure herself against the violence of Jehu, who was bent on destroying the whole of Ahab's posterity to which she belonged (2Ki 8:18-26); but chiefly from personal ambition to rule, and a desire to establish the worship of Baal. Such was the sad fruit of the unequal alliance between the son of the pious Jehoshaphat and a daughter of the idolatrous and wicked house of Ahab.
2. Jehosheba—or Jehoshabeath (2Ch 22:11).
daughter of King Joram—not by Athaliah, but by a secondary wife.
stole him from among the king's sons which were slain—either from among the corpses, he being considered dead, or out of the palace nursery.
hid him … in the bedchamber—for the use of the priests, which was in some part of the temple (2Ki 11:3), and of which Jehoiada and his wife had the sole charge. What is called, however, the bedchamber in the East is not the kind of apartment that we understand by the name, but a small closet, into which are flung during the day the mattresses and other bedding materials spread on the floors or divans of the sitting-rooms by day. Such a slumber-room was well suited to be a convenient place for the recovery of his wounds, and a hiding-place for the royal infant and his nurse.
2Ki 11:4-12. He Is Made King.
4. the seventh year—namely, of the reign of Athaliah, and the rescue of Jehoash.
Jehoiada sent and fetched the rulers, &c.—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 on 2Ch 22:10-23:21). 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 destined by divine denunciation to destruction, even his own wife had a better and stronger claim to the throne; the sovereignty of Judah had 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 countenance 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.
2Ki 11:13-16. Athaliah Slain.
13. Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the people—The profound secrecy with which the conspiracy had been conducted rendered the unusual acclamations of the vast assembled crowd the more startling and roused the suspicions of the tyrant.
she came … into the temple of the Lord—that is, the courts, which she was permitted to enter by Jehoiada's directions (2Ki 11:8) in order that she might be secured.
14. the king stood by a pillar—or on a platform, erected for that purpose (see on 2Ch 6:13).
15. without the ranges—that is, fences, that the sacred place might not be stained with human blood.
2Ki 11:17-20. Jehoiada Restores God's Worship.
17, 18. a covenant between the Lord and the king and the people—The covenant with the Lord was a renewal of the national covenant with Israel (Ex 19:1-24:18; "to be unto him a people of inheritance," De 4:6; 27:9). The covenant between the king and the people was the consequence of this, and by it the king bound himself to rule according to the divine law, while the people engaged to submit, to give him allegiance as the Lord's anointed. The immediate fruit of this renewal of the covenant was the destruction of the temple and the slaughter of the priests of Baal (see 2Ki 10:27); the restoration of the pure worship of God in all its ancient integrity; and the establishment of the young king on the hereditary throne of Judah [2Ki 11:19].