Athaliah and the Hidden Prince
When Ahaziah king of Judah was killed by Jehu, his mother Athaliah saw that her son was dead and moved immediately to destroy the entire royal family. Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel — her presence on the Davidic throne was itself a product of the political marriage that had allied the northern and southern kingdoms under the Omride era. She seized the throne and began killing off the royal offspring. But Jehosheba, sister of Ahaziah and wife of the priest Jehoiada, took Joash son of Ahaziah and hid him and his nurse in a bedroom away from the sons of the king who were being put to death. He was hidden in the house of the LORD for six years while Athaliah ruled the land.
The Davidic covenant promised that a lamp would always remain for David in Jerusalem. Here the fulfillment of that promise hung on a priest's wife hiding an infant in a bedroom. The covenant promise to David that his line would endure was preserved not through military power or prophetic intervention but through a woman's quickness and courage.
In the seventh year, Jehoiada the priest organized the coup with careful precision. He distributed to the captains the spears and shields that had belonged to King David and were kept in the temple. The guards took their positions. Jehoiada brought out the king's son and put the crown on him and gave him the testimony — the covenant document — and proclaimed him king. They anointed him and clapped their hands and said, "Long live the king!" Athaliah heard the noise, came to the house of the LORD, and saw the king standing by the pillar with captains and trumpets beside him and all the people of the land rejoicing. She tore her clothes and cried: "Treason! Treason!" Jehoiada commanded: bring her out between the ranks, and kill anyone who follows her. They laid hands on her and she was put to death.
Jehoiada made a covenant between the LORD and the king and people — a covenant renewal ceremony at the founding of the new Davidic reign — and between the king and the people. All the people went to the house of Baal and tore it down, breaking the altars and images into pieces, and killing Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars. The house of the LORD was restored. Joash the king sat on the throne of the kings, and all the people of the land rejoiced. The city was quiet.
Joash was seven years old when he began to reign. As long as Jehoiada the priest guided him, he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD. He gave attention to the repair of the temple and reorganized the collection system — a chest beside the altar — and the skilled workers repaired the house of the LORD. The one compromise the narrator notes: the high places were not taken away, and people still sacrificed and made offerings there. After Jehoiada died at one hundred and thirty years old, Joash listened to the officials of Judah who came and bowed to him, and abandoned the house of the LORD and served the Asherim and the idols. When Zechariah son of Jehoiada prophesied against them, King Joash commanded that he be stoned to death in the court of the house of the LORD. He showed no kindness to the son of Jehoiada the priest. Hazael of Aram came against Jerusalem, and Joash bought him off with the dedicated gifts of the temple. Joash was killed by his own servants in his bed. He was not buried in the tombs of the kings.
What strikes us here is the trajectory of Joash. He was saved as an infant by Jehoiada's family. Raised in the temple. Crowned by Jehoiada. And then the moment Jehoiada died, officials came bowing before the king and the king listened to them. And he killed Zechariah — Jehoiada's own son — in the temple court. 2 Chronicles 24 records Zechariah's dying words: "May the LORD see and avenge!" The man who had spent his childhood in the house of the LORD died ordering its priest killed in its own courts. That arc is devastating.
Kings in the North: The Accelerating Decline
The northern kingdom's history in chapters 13–16 reads as a series of abbreviated reigns, each evaluated against the same standard and most found wanting. Jehoahaz son of Jehu saw Israel oppressed by Hazael — the LORD had given them into his hand because of the sins of Jeroboam. The army of Jehoahaz was reduced to fifty horsemen, ten chariots, and ten thousand foot soldiers. But he sought the favor of the LORD, and the LORD heard him, and the LORD gave Israel a savior, and they escaped from the hand of Aram — though they did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam.
Jehoash son of Jehoahaz visited the dying Elisha and wept before him: "My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" Elisha told him to take a bow and arrows and shoot eastward — the LORD's arrow of victory over Aram. He told him to strike the ground with the arrows; the king struck three times and stopped. Elisha was angry: you should have struck five or six times; now you will strike Aram only three times. The anger of the prophet at a king who stopped too soon carries its own weight: limited faith produced limited victory. What was offered was more than what was taken.
Elisha died and was buried. A man being buried was hastily put in the same tomb when a Moabite raiding party appeared, and when the man touched Elisha's bones, he revived and stood on his feet. Even in death, Elisha's story closed with an act of life restoration. The double portion that rested on him in life had not entirely spent itself.
Jeroboam II son of Jehoash reigned forty-one years — the longest reign in northern kingdom history — and he restored the territory of Israel from Lebo-hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD through Jonah son of Amittai. He did evil in the sight of the LORD, but the LORD saw how bitterly Israel was afflicted and had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel; he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam II. The prosperity under Jeroboam II is attested in Amos and Hosea, prophets who condemned the wealth alongside the injustice it concealed.
After Jeroboam II, the northern kingdom's political history disintegrated rapidly. Zechariah son of Jeroboam II reigned six months and was struck down by Shallum, who reigned one month before being struck down by Menahem. Menahem paid tribute to the Assyrian king Pul (Tiglath-pileser III) in silver taken by taxing all the wealthy men of Israel fifty shekels apiece — the first direct Assyrian tribute recorded in Kings, a mark of how far the northern kingdom's geopolitical situation had deteriorated. Pekahiah son of Menahem was killed after two years by Pekah his captain. Pekah reigned twenty years before being killed by Hoshea son of Elah, who would be the last king of Israel.
The Fall of Samaria
Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Hoshea, who had been paying tribute. When Shalmaneser discovered that Hoshea had sent messengers to So king of Egypt and had not brought the tribute, he seized Hoshea and put him in prison. He then came up and besieged Samaria for three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, Samaria fell. The king of Assyria carried Israel away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habur, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
Then the narrator pauses the historical account and delivers what amounts to a theological essay on why this happened — 2 Kings 17:7–23 is the most extended interpretive passage in the book:
"And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced." — 2 Kings 17:7–8 (ESV)
The passage works through a legal indictment. The people had built high places everywhere. They had set up pillars and Asherim. They had burned their sons and daughters as offerings, used divination and omens, and sold themselves to do evil. The LORD had warned them repeatedly through prophets and seers: turn from your evil ways, keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the Law. But they would not hear and they stiffened their neck as their fathers had stiffened it, not believing in the LORD their God. They rejected his statutes and his covenant. They went after false idols and became false, following the nations around them.
The repetition and accumulation of the indictment is the literary equivalent of judicial sentencing: every element of the charge is named, the warnings given and ignored are named, the nature of the persistence is named. The text insists this was not divine capriciousness — it was the covenant working exactly as it had been designed. The exile announced at the very beginning of the divided kingdom in 1 Kings 14, when Ahijah spoke to Jeroboam's wife, had now arrived. The warning had been real. The warnings had been ignored. And the sentence fell.
We find it significant that 2 Kings 17 provides the interpretive key not just for the northern kingdom but for the entire book. Exile is not a political accident but a covenant consequence. And the same logic that applied to Israel would apply to Judah if it followed the same path. The text is making sure the reader understands this. The fall of Samaria was not the end of the covenant story — it was a warning addressed to Jerusalem. The reader of Kings, standing on this side of the exile of both kingdoms, is meant to feel the weight of that.
Last updated: March 3, 2026.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.