You'll recall that the mother of King Ahaziah is Athaliah, the daughter of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Athaliah became the wife of Jehoram, the son of King Jehoshaphat of Judah, in an arranged marriage earlier in the Bible in order to form an alliance between the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Athaliah is a Baal-worshiper just like her parents and she was a bad spiritual influence on her husband, who followed her into Baal-worship, and on her son, the now-deceased Ahaziah. When Ahaziah's servants bring his dead body back from Israel to bury it in his tomb in the City of David, Athaliah learns of his death and of the death of her brother, King Joram, and does not react in the manner we would expect a grieving mother or sister to react. She doesn't gather her fatherless grandchildren in her arms and comfort them over their father's death. She doesn't take steps to preserve the dynasty of her son and protect the security of the nation by having Ahaziah's eldest son crowned king of Judah. Instead she begins taking steps to secure the crown for herself. This is why the author of 2 Chronicles concludes the account of King Ahaziah's death and burial by saying, "So there was no one in the house of Ahaziah powerful enough to retain the kingdom." (2 Chronicles 22:9b)
Why was no one in the house of Ahaziah powerful enough to retain the kingdom? The Bible doesn't say but I believe the safest assumption is that none of Ahaziah's sons is old enough to oppose anyone who makes a claim to the throne. Ahaziah came to the throne when he was twenty-two years old and he only reigned for one year. Even if his eldest son were declared king immediately upon the news of Ahaziah's death, a co-regent would have had to be appointed to guide him until he reached the age of majority. It is not likely that anyone in Judah would have wanted to appoint Athaliah as a co-regent, not with her being a woman and an idolater from the northern kingdom. She knows that if one of Ahaziah's sons is declared king, the officials and elders of Judah will appoint a man of their own choosing to serve as co-regent, and she will lose all of the power and influence she has enjoyed up until now.
Athaliah is so power-hungry that she lacks the normal affection a grandmother should have for her grandchildren. Instead of wanting to see them succeed in life, she would rather have them taken out of this life so she can reign unopposed. "When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to destroy the whole royal family of the house of Judah." (2 Chronicles 22:10)
This woman orders all of her grandsons killed! We don't know how many of them there were but in our passage today it sounds like there must have been at least three, for we will be told that the youngest is saved from extermination by being stolen away from the other "royal princes", plural. I believe that there were a number of royal princes because Ahaziah, like most kings, probably had a queen plus several other wives and perhaps many foreign concubines. But Athaliah's plan to wipe out all the males of her son's line is not successful because the Lord keeps the promise He made to David that there will always be a man of the direct line of David with the right to sit on the throne. "But Jehosheba, the daughter of King Jehoram, took Joash son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the royal princes who were about to be murdered and put him and his nurse in a bedroom." (2 Chronicles 22:11a)
Joash's life is saved by his aunt, Jehosheba, one of the daughters of the late King Jehoram, who was Athaliah's husband. This does not mean Jehosheba is Athaliah's daughter, since we would expect King Jehoram to have had multiple wives. Many scholars believe Jehosheba is Jehoram's daughter by one of his other wives, hence her willingness to oppose Athaliah. Another clue that Jehosheba is likely Jehoram's daughter by a different wife, and therefore only a half-sister to the late King Ahaziah, is that we will learn she is married to a priest---not a priest of Baal but a priest who serves the Lord. It's possible that a daughter of Athaliah would eschew Baal-worship and give her heart to the one true God, but it's not very likely. Athaliah's influence of Ahaziah was so great that he worshiped Baal wholeheartedly just as she did; Athaliah would have had even more influence on a daughter because a daughter would have grown up primarily in the company of the women of the royal household. A daughter would have spent more time with her than would a son. So I lean towards the opinion that Jehosheba is Jehoram's daughter by a different wife.
Jehosheba manages to get Joash out of the nursery and hidden in a bedroom (the ancient historian Josephus says this was a bedroom that had been converted into a storage room for cast-off furniture) somewhere within the palace before the executioners carry out their abominable orders against the sons of Ahaziah. Then she spirits him away to the house of God where he is concealed for six years. "Because Jehosheba, the daughter of King Jehoram and wife of the priest Jehoiada, was Ahaziah's sister, she hid the child from Athaliah so she could not kill him. He remained hidden with them at the temple of God for six years while Athaliah ruled the land." (2 Chronicles 22:11b-12)
Joash is only about a year old when he is rescued by Jehosheba, hidden temporarily in an extra room of the palace, then smuggled to the temple where he is kept out of sight of the public. We know he is only a year old at the time of his rescue because later he will become king at age seven, six years after Athaliah assumed the throne herself. I believe he is the youngest of Ahaziah's sons and that, because of his small size, Athaliah's henchmen miss him in the panic and carnage that ensues when they enter the royal nursery with swords drawn. We can only imagine the horror that comes over the nursemaids and schoolteachers and servants when soldiers come bursting in and striking down anyone who tries to stand in their path. I think perhaps Jehosheba is already in the nursery when this attack commenced, maybe because she is doing what the king's mother Athaliah is not doing: comforting the boys in the loss of their father. If she is not already there, then because she is a member of the royal household she gets an inkling or a warning about what is going to happen and rushes to the nursery to pick up and conceal the only child small enough to conceal. The mission of the murderous soldiers is to kill all the male heirs, not a royal princess, so they do not focus on her. She may have snatched the child up, wrapped the voluminous layers of all her royal robes around him, and made her escape in the ensuing pandemonium without the swordsmen noticing the extra bulk beneath her clothing.
Athaliah thinks she has been successful in eliminating any claims to the throne from among her grandsons. Scholars are divided in their opinions as to whether she believes she can continue to reign long term on her own or whether she intends to install one of her relatives from the northern kingdom of Israel as king over Judah, thus combining the two kingdoms and reviving the dynasty of her late father Ahab over a united twelve tribes. But while she is slaughtering her grandsons, the man who killed her son and her brother is busy slaughtering all the male relatives of Ahab, and any plan to install one of them on the throne of Judah is thwarted. Her hold on the crown is tenuous and will last only until enough of a resistance against her is built up to successfully reveal the existence of an heir to Ahaziah, to declare him king, and to defend his right to the crown.
Our study today is titled "A Tale Of Two Women" because it is a tale of an extremely evil woman and a tale of an extremely godly woman. It is a tale of a woman who tried to wipe out an entire dynasty of Judah---her own flesh and blood!---and it is a tale of a woman who allows herself to be used by the Lord to fulfill a promise He made to David---a promise He will not break. By one woman's courage a small child is saved from death and the royal line of Judah is preserved, ensuring that the Promised One of the Davidic dynasty will still come.
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