I. JUDAH INVADED BY THE SYRIANS. (Ver. 23.) Zechariah had predicted that prosperity should no longer attend Judah in consequence of her apostasy from Jehovah (ver. 20); and, before breathing his last, had prayed, and so practically predicted (James 5:16), that Jehovah would avenge his murder upon the king, his princes, and people (ver. 22). That this incursion of Hazael (1 Kings 19:15), who had first assassinated Benhadad II. and seized upon the throne (2 Kings 8:7-15), and whose historicity is guaranteed by an inscription on Shalmaneser's black obelisk, which says, "In my eighteenth year, for the sixteenth time the Euphrates I crossed. Hazael of Damascus to battle came ... . In my twenty-first campaign, to the cities of Hazael of Damascus I went. Four of his fortresses I took" ('Records,' etc., 5:34, 35; Schrader, 'Keilinschriften,' p. 206) - that this incursion of the Syrian monarch into Judaean territory, as far even as to Jerusalem, was an instalment of the wrath which the nation's apostasy had stirred up against itself, several things convinced the Chronicler.

1. The time when it happened. "At the end," or revolution, "of the year." No doubt Divine judgment often tarries, and when it does inert are apt to question its existence (Psalm

1. 20). But sometimes it hastens on the heels of crime, as it did in the cases of Cain (Genesis 4:8, 9), Pharaoh (Exodus 14:27), Israel in Shittim (Numbers 25:4), the murderers of Ishbosheth (2 Samuel 4:12), Ahab (1 Kings 22:34-37), Haman (Esther 7:10), Judas (Acts 1:18; Matthew 27:5), and others; and their observers instinctively exclaim, "Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth" (Psalm 58:11).

2. The success it attained.

(1) The Syrian army, having probably conquered Israel, succeeded in capturing Gath, one of the five cities of the Philistines (Joshua 13:3), which David annexed to Judah (1 Chronicles 18:1), and which may still have belonged to the kingdom of Jonah.

(2) Next it moved upon Jerusalem, which was not far distant, and defeated the Judaean troops in a pitched battle, in which all the princes of Judah were cut off, and Joash himself seriously wounded.

(3) As an inducement to make peace and withdraw his forces from the capital, Hazael obtained from Joash "all the hallowed things that Jehoshaphat, and Jehoram, and Ahaziah his fathers, kings of Judah, had dedicated," which had been recovered from the temple of Baal (ver. 7), "and his own hallowed things, and all the gold that was found in the treasures of the house of the Lord and in the king's house" (2 Kings 12:18).

(4) That which specially revealed the hand of God in this disaster was not so much the extent as the incidence of it. The blow descended, indeed, upon the common people, who are chief sufferers in most wars; but in this instance a striking fitness was visible in the cutting off of the princes who had instigated the sovereign and his subjects to idolatry, and in the despoliation of the temple, which they had desecrated by their idolatries.

3. The weapon it employed. A small army, which had routed Judah's large host. This was reversing the experience of Judah, as, e.g., when Asa with five hundred and eighty thousand soldiers defeated Zerah with a million of infantry and three hundred charioteers (2 Chronicles 14:10). As Asa's victory was due to Jehovah's help, so Joash's surrender was explicable only on the supposition that Jehovah had forsaken him and Hazael been commissioned to execute wrath upon him.

II. JOASH SLAIN BY CONSPIRATORS. (Ver. 25.)

1. When? "After the Syrians had departed from him." Though he had escaped the doom which sought him on the battlefield, it seemed as if justice would not suffer him to live (cf. Acts 28:4). Scarcely had the Syrians departed than the sleuth-hound of retribution was again upon his trail. Only wounded by soldiers' spears, he was slaughtered by assassins' swords.

2. Where? In his castle-palace at Mille (2 Kings 12:20), and on his bed, i.e. while invalided by his wounds. Death found him in a fortress, behind which he doubtless expected to be secure, and at a moment when, perhaps, that expectation was high through the healing of his wounds.

3. By whom? His own servants, whose names are given: "Zabad [or Jozakat, Kings] the son of Shimeath an Ammonitess, and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith a Moabitess." Led astray by those who should have been his servants, the princes, he was put to death by his actual servants. He had betrayed his country to foreign gods, by men of foreign extraction he was destroyed. Divine retributions frequently correspond to the character of the offence they punish.

4. Why? Because of the "blood of the son of Jehoiada the priest." They meant to reward him for his truculent deed against Zechariah. How they came to champion the cause of Jehoiada's murdered son is not said. Perhaps they shared the popular feeling, which trod never wholly approved of the murder; and when they witnessed the disaster which had come upon their arms, with the judgment that had fallen on the princes, they concluded that Zechariah's blood must be avenged if prosperity was again to return to Judah; and believing they would find, in the public mind, approval for their action, they despatched the wounded man upon his bed at Mille. Their calculations concerning the verdict of the people were not astray. Nobody regretted Joash's untimely end. His subjects "buried him in the city of David," where his fathers lay entombed, but they suffered not his carcase to desecrate the mausoleum of the kings. Learn:

1. The overruling providence of God. Things come to pass at his ordering.

2. The certainty that sin will be punished. Though judgment be delayed, it is not averted. - W.

The picture here drawn of the failure of the best of tutors and governors is unfortunately only too typical. was educated by a distinguished Christian prelate, , and was trained in a strict routine of religious observances; yet he repudiated Christianity at the earliest safe opportunity. His apostasy, like that of Joash, was probably characterised by base ingratitude. At Constantine's death the troops in Constantinople massacred nearly all the princes of the imperial family, and Julian, then only six years old, is said to have been saved and concealed in a church by Mark, Bishop of Arethusa. When Julian became emperor, he repaid this obligation by subjecting his benefactor to cruel tortures because he had destroyed a heathen temple and refused to make any compensation.

(W. H. Bennett, M.A.)