God’s Word for You

2 Chronicles 23:1-7 Stay close to the king

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, April 21, 2025

We return now to the days of the divided kingdom. It was nearly one hundred years since the death of King Solomon, and six kings had followed David’s son on the throne of Judah. The sixth of those kings, Ahaziah, only reigned for one year. At the Lord’s command, the prophet Elisha had anointed a man named Jehu to be the new king of Israel (that is, the northern kingdom, 2 Kings 9:1-3). Jehu proceeded to attack the northern king (Joram), but Ahaziah was with Joram when this happened, and Jehu chased after the King of Judah and wounded him, too, and he died in Megiddo (2 Kings 9:27-29). Ahaziah’s mother, a cruel woman named Athaliah, made herself queen after her son died, and then she set out to destroy the royal line of David and Solomon (the family of her own son and also of her late husband, Jehoram). The last branch of that family line was a newborn named Joash, who was hidden away in the temple in Jerusalem just a few yards away from the royal palace. Athaliah never suspected that the baby she doubtless heard crying outside her window from time to time was her own grandson, and would become her successor far sooner than she imagined…

23:1 In the seventh year Jehoiada exerted his strength by making a covenant with the commanders of a hundred: Azariah son of Jeroham, Ishmael son of Jehohanan, Azariah son of Obed, Maaseiah son of Adaiah, and Elishaphat son of Zicri. 2 They went throughout Judah and gathered the Levites and the heads of Israelite families from all the towns of Judah. Then they came to Jerusalem.

Jehoiada was the high priest at this time. He waited a certain amount of time before putting his plan into action. We might surmise that this was partly to allow the baby to grow up at least enough to be able to read and write (he was the equivalent of a second-grader in our education system), but whether there was some other factor, such as a change in policy from Athaliah, we cannot say.

Our prophet calls it the “seventh year,” and this is really a reference to the boy’s age (2 Kings 11:3-4), although it also happens to correspond to the year of the new king of Israel, Jehu, since he assassinated both the king of Israel and of Judah at the same time, and Athaliah’s reign, although the Holy Spirit is noticeably silent about Athaliah as a legitimate monarch. There is no summary of her reign as there is for the other kings of Judah in either Kings or Chronicles. She is mentioned the way that assassins and incidental figures are mentioned in the historical books.

The high priest gathered men whose title we usually translated “commanders (or captains) of one hundred.” It’s a military rank similar to a Roman Centurion. It doesn’t seem to have an equivalent in our military, but perhaps colonel comes close, or a navy commander. Five men are mentioned in particular by our prophet. So military and spiritual leaders were gathered first, and then they came to Jerusalem. Verse 2 makes it clear that things were organized before they arrived in the city of David.

3 The whole assembly made a covenant with the king at the House of God. Jehoiada said to them, “Behold! The king’s son. He shall reign, as the LORD promised about the descendants of David. 4 This is what you are to do: One third of you priests and Levites who are going on duty on the Sabbath are to keep watch at the gates. 5 One third of you will be at the royal palace, and one third at the Foundation Gate, and all the other men are to be in the courtyards of the House of the LORD. 6 No one is to enter the House of the LORD except the priests and Levites who are on duty. They may enter because they are consecrated, but all the other men are to guard what the LORD has assigned to them. 7 The Levites are to station themselves all around the king, each man with his weapons in his hand. Anyone who enters the House must be put to death. Stay close to the king when he comes in and when he goes out.”

All of this planning is about the safety of the child. Notice that his name is not even used here, after the fact, in the record of either Kings or Chronicles. He is only referred to as “the king’s son” (verse 3) or “the king” (verse 7). Not sure of how the change of power would go, the high priest did not assume that Athaliah would be put to death, or that she might escape and contrive to have the boy killed as she had with all the other members of her family. Therefore the priest stationed guards with weapons ready all around the young man.

Assassinations of political leaders are not foreign to any nation. There have been four successful assassinations of presidents so far in American history: Abraham Lincoln was killed in 1865 by an actor. Originally planned as a kidnapping (to bargain for the release of Confederate prisoners) the actor changed his mind and shot the president. It was the fifth attempted on Lincoln’s life. In 1881, President James Garfield was shot in the back by a lawyer who was disappointed that he didn’t receive a cabinet position. Mr. Garfield died after more than two months of excruciating pain. President William McKinley was shot and killed by an anarchist in the fall of 1901. And in 1963, President John Kennedy was murdered during a parade in Dallas, Texas. The identity of his assassin(s) remains a mystery.

I have pointed out these things to show the wisdom of Jehoiada the high priest and the precautions he took. The only people that were to be allowed in the temple after the boy was brought in were those priests and Levites who were “on duty,” that is, scheduled to be ministering on that day. The priests had been divided by David to serve in a particular order according to twenty-four divisions (1 Chronicles 24:1-18). Athaliah would not be made suspicious by the change of Levites and priests, nor was it likely that after more than six years on the throne she would bother to find out which division was serving during any given fortnight.

These were not all of the preparations that the high priest made. We will learn about more in the next section. What we begin to see is the value of planning in the service of God’s kingdom. While the government may take pains to achieve its own ends, the work of the kingdom of God continues. But the church may find that it needs to make alternative plans, and that things cannot continue as they have in the past.

What does that mean for us today? We need to do some encouraging, especially within families, to suggest that our young people consider studying for the ministry. Ministers, teachers and pastors are needed all over our synod and all over the world. This also means that congregations need to take care of their pastors and teachers—not only with regard to a salary that is truly a living wage, but also with their prayers and other encouragement. It is a blessing to serve in God’s holy church and so watch over the flock of the Great Shepherd. In our text, the high priest Jehoiada used his abilities and his position to serve God in a way that almost no one else in the kingdom could have done at that moment. Remember the words that were spoken to Esther: “Who knows but that you have come to [your] position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14).

While we use our many abilities to serve, we remember what motivates all of our actions. In Christ, we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins (Colossians 1:14). He has supremacy in all things, and we serve him in whatever way we can.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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