Commenting
on a small, purposeful and theologically-motivated change to the biblical texts
by the Chronicler, Müller, Pakkala, and ter Haar Romeny wrote:
A Small Omission with a Large
Impact:
Jehoiada the Priest Teaches Joash
Jehoiada the Priest Teaches Joash
The Chronicler’s account of Joash’s reign in
2 Chr 24:1-27 is thoroughly different from that of 2 Kgs 12:1-22, but the
beginning of the story was taken almost word for word from 2 Kgs 12. Many
details in the source text conflicted with the Chronicler’s theological and
other conceptions, but especially the basic development of the events as
described in 2 Kgs 12 would have been difficult if not impossible for him to accept
According to 2 Kgs 12, King Joash was a good
king because Jehoiada, the priest, had taught him, and consequently Joash took
interest in the temple and restored it. Except for the high places, which are a
recurrent sin of all good and evil kings of Judah up to King Hezekiah, King
Joash is said to have done nothing wrong. According to 2 Kgs 12:19, however, he
said to give all the votive gifts (כל-הקדשים) from the temple as well as the gold of the
temple and of the palace to King Hazael of Aram. This was done in order to save
Jerusalem from an imminent attack by the Arameans. The author of 2 Kgs 12 does
not appear to blame the king at all, and the event is described rather neutrally
as a necessary action to save Jerusalem from destruction.
For the Chronicler the temple was the center
of his theology, and he would have regarded Joash’s act of giving the votive offerings
and temple measures to the Arameans as a total catastrophe and a sign of Yhweh’s
anger and punishment. In view of his conceptions of divine justice and just
retribution, there was an evident contradiction between the goodness of King
Joash and the robbing of the temple. The course and development of the events
as described in 2 Kgs 12 would hardly have been possible for the Chronicler,
and this is probably the main reason for most of the changes he made in
relation to the source text.
It may have been difficult for the Chronicler
to change the general evaluation of Joash as a good king, because he is said to
have done many good deeds, such as the repairing of the temple, but at the same
time the plundering of the temple had to be given an interpretation. A small omission
in the evaluation of the king’s reign solved the problem.
2 Kgs 12:1-3
בן־שבע שנים יהואש במלכו
בשנת־שבע ליהוא מלך יהואש וארבעים שנה מלך בירושלם ושם אמו צביה מבארשבע
ויעש יהואש הישר בעיני יהוה כל־ימיו אשר הורהו יהוידע הכהן
1 Joash was seven years old when he began to
reign, 2 in the seventh year of Jehu Joash began to reign,
and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah from
Beer-sheba. 3 Joash did what was right in the sight of Yhweh all his
days, because the priest Jehoiada instructed him.
2 Chron 24:1-2
בן־שבע שנים יאש במלכו וארבעים שנה מלך בירושלם ושם אמו צביה
מבאר שבע
ויעש יואש הישר בעיני יהוה כל־ימי יהוידע הכהן
1 Joash was seven years old when he began to
reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah
from Beer-sheba. 2 Joash did what was right in the sight of Yhweh
all the days of the priest Jehoiada.
According to 2 Kgs 12:3, Joash was a good
king all the days of his life (כל-ימין) because Jehoiada had taught him. However, the Chronicler omitted
a small section of this sentence, thereby changing the whole idea. According to
his account, Joash was a good king all the days of Jehoiada (כל-ימין יהוידע), which implies that he was not good al the days of his own life.
It is not explicitly stated that Joash was evil, but it is implied that
Jehoiada kept him from committing evil deeds. That the sentence in 2 Kgs is
somewhat ambiguous (whether אשר should be understood as
introducing a relative or explicative clause) may have been caused by earlier
editing, since the whole sentence beginning with אשר could be a later addition to 2 Kgs 12:3, as some scholars have suggested.
Nonetheless, this does not change our case, because the Chronicler was
evidently aware of this part of the text: in Chronicles the references to
Jehoiada has been changed so that Joash’s piety is limited to a part of his
life.
Once Joash’s piety was restricted to the time
that Jehoiada lived, the door was open for the other changes in the passage
that explained the contradiction between the king’s goodness and the
restoration of the temple on the one hand (2 Kgs 12:2-17) and the catastrophe
later in the king’s reign is divided by Jehoiada’s death into two different
periods. The temple is restored during the time that Jehoiada lived, whereas
the time after his death is characterized by sin and punishment. Because of
this division, the idea of Jehoiada’s death had to be added to the Chronicler’s
account (2 Chr 24:15-16). This was followed by several other insertions.
Immediately after Jehoiada has died, Joash listens to the leaders of Judah (v.
17), which then leads to the neglect of the temple and the worship of the Asherim
and the idols (v. 18). The prophets sent by Yhweh (vv. 19-20) are ignored, and
finally Joash orders Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, to be stoned to death (vv.
21-22). The words of the dying Zechariah function as the bridge from the sins
to the ensuing catastrophe: “May Yhwh see and avenge” (v. 22).
The attack of the Arameans is described in
the following verse. The additional material in vv. 15-22 serves the Chronicler’s
broader conception that a catastrophe is always a punishment for sins. These
verses explain how the king’s initial goodness eventually turned into evil.
They are necessary to the Chronicler’s attempt to transform the story to
conform to his theological conceptions.
Consequently, a comparison between 2 Kgs
12:1-3 and 2 Chr 24:1-2 illustrates how theological reasoning could justify an
omission of a part of the source text that changed the meaning of the sentence
substantially. This small omission then enabled the Chronicler to make other
more extensive changes throughout the passage. (Reinhard Müller, Juha Pakkala,
and Bas ter Haar Romeny, Evidence of
Editing: Growth and Change of Texts in the Hebrew Bible [Atlanta: Society
of Biblical Literature, 2014], 209-12)
For more
examples of the Chronicler editing his source material, including biblical
texts, for theological and other reasons, see:
Isaac
Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient
Israelite History in Chronicles (Eisenbrauns, 2004)