Глава 24

1–2. The godly nature of the reign of Joash until the death of the high priest Jehoiada. 4–14. Repairing damage to the church. 15–18. The death of Jehoiada and the emergence of paganism in Judea. 19–22. Prophetic denunciations and the stoning of Jehoiada's son Zechariah for them. 23–27. Invasion of the Syrians; illness and violent death of Joash. 2 Chronicles 24:1. Joash was seven years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem; His mother's name was Zivya from Bathsheba. 2 Chronicles 24:2. And Joash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest. The story of 2 Chronicles about the reign of Joash, precisely the main moments of this reign: the restoration of the church (vv. 4–14), the marriage of the king (vv. 3), the corruption of the people and the king’s crime after the death of Jehoiada (vv. 15–22), finally, the attack of the Syrians on Judah (vv. 23–24) and the details of his death (vv. 25–27), in content and presentation differs significantly from the parallel story (2 Kings 12). Only Art. 1–2 present a literal similarity to (2 Kings 12:1–2). In the following story, the advantage of detail, integrity and chronicle documentation obviously lies on the side of 2 Chronicles. 2 Chronicles 24:3. And Jehoiada took him two wives, and he had sons and daughters by them. The news of Joash's marriage, with the assistance of Jehoiada, to two wives, is found only in 2 Chronicles. The accepted text of the LXX (as well as the Alexandrian codes and some others, together with the Arabic translation and some Jewish rabbis) express the idea that Jehoiada himself took two wives. But such a disagreement already with the context of the chapter (the entire chapter 24 talks about Joash, and the life and work of Jehoiada are introduced into the story only sporadically), also contains an obvious inconsistency due to Jehoiada’s old age. It is therefore true that in other lists of the LXX, for example, in codices 71, 93, 108 in Golmes, Complutensian, as well as in the Vulgate, Syriac, Slavic, Russian, the marriage of Joash is spoken of. 2 Chronicles 24:4. And after this it came into Joash’s heart to renew the house of the Lord, 2 Chronicles 24:5. and he gathered the priests and Levites and said to them: Go through the cities of Judah and collect money from all Israel to support the house of your God from year to year, and make haste in this matter. But the Levites did not hurry. 2 Chronicles 24:6. And the king called Jehoiada, their chief, and said to him: Why do you not demand from the Levites that they deliver from Judah and Jerusalem the tribute established by Moses the servant of the Lord and the congregation of Israel for the tabernacle of meeting? 2 Chronicles 24:7. For the wicked Athaliah and her sons destroyed the house of God and used everything dedicated to the house of the Lord for the Baals. 2 Chronicles 24:8. And the king commanded, and they made one chest, and placed it at the entrance of the house of the Lord from without. 2 Chronicles 24:9. And they proclaimed throughout Judea and Jerusalem that they should bring to the Lord the tribute imposed by Moses the servant of God on the Israelites in the wilderness. 2 Chronicles 24:10. And all the rulers and all the people rejoiced, and they brought it and put it in the box until it was full. 2 Chronicles 24:11. At that time, when the box was brought to the king's officials through the Levites, and when they saw that there was a lot of silver, the king's scribe and the high priest's attorney came and emptied the box, and carried it and put it in its place. So they did this day after day, and they collected a lot of silver. 2 Chronicles 24:12. And the king and Jehoiada gave it to the workers of the house of the Lord, and they hired stonemasons and carpenters to repair the house of the Lord, and also blacksmiths and coppersmiths to strengthen the house of the Lord. 2 Chronicles 24:13. And the workers of the work worked, and the correction was accomplished by their hands, and they brought the house of God into its proper condition, and strengthened it. 2 Chronicles 24:14. And having finished everything, they presented the rest of the silver to the king and Jehoiada. And they made of it vessels for the house of the Lord, vessels for service and for burnt offerings, cups and other vessels of gold and silver. And they offered burnt offerings in the house of the Lord continually all the days of Jehoiada. Wed. (2 Kings 12:5-16). This section contains several additional information to those facts that are given in the chapter (2 Kings 12) about the organization of work to correct and improve the church. From this information we see how the moral level of the priests, in whose hands the offerings of silver to the church of the Lord were concentrated and which were wasted, dropped. (Vlastov, “The Sacred Chronicle”, vol. IV, part III, p. 189). The money for the restoration of the church, according to King Joash, was to come from the regular collection of “the tribute established by Moses for the tabernacle of meeting” (vv. 5–6, 9), i.e. a ransom half-shekel, obligatory paid by every man who has reached the age of twenty and enters the national reckoning, the so-called “ransom of souls” according to the law (Ex. 30:13–16) (see “The Explanatory Bible,” vol. I, p. 380). Under Moses, “everyone who paid this tax participated in the construction of the tabernacle, in that common task that created the religious and political unity of the nation” (Vlastov, “The Sacred Chronicle”, vol. II, 1878, p. 211). And although the book of Exodus does not say that this is an annual tribute, it is obvious that it was considered so (cf. (Neh. 10:32-33; Matt. 17:24); I. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, III, 8,2; Vlastov, “The Sacred Chronicle”, vol. IV, p. 189, note. 15). The money from the capitation salary could also be supplemented by redemption money from persons who dedicated themselves to serving the church, in return for their actual service with it (Lev. 27:1-7), as well as donations for the church (cf. (Ex. 25: 2; Ex. 35: 5,21); see "Explanatory Bible", vol. I, pp. 354,396, vol. II, p. 516). Moreover, according to (2 Chronicles 24:5,9), the priests and Levites had to not only on the spot, at the church, accept all these monetary receipts (2 Kings 12:5), but also for this purpose, go around not only Jerusalem, but also all of Judea. In addition, due to the lack of energy of the priests and Levites in this matter (2 Kings 12:6-7), a special circle was set up at the gates of the church (at the northern gate of the inner courtyard) to receive donations (v. 8), the influx of which then quickly began (v. 10). This was “the first historical circle gathering, which later received great development in the second Jerusalem Temple” (Prof. A. A. Olesnitsky, “The Old Testament Church,” p. 355). Message Art. 14 that the workers, after all the work on repairing the church, made various church vessels from the rest of the silver, apparently contradicts (2 Kings 12:13-14), which says that no vessels were made from the donated silver. But the apparent contradiction is easily explained by the fact that the king and the high priest did not make the vessels according to their orders; the workers, at the end of the correction, donated, out of their zeal, part of the silver from which, at their request, some things were made (Prof. Gulyaev, “Historical Books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament,” p. 553). Thus, the negation of book 4. Kingdoms and the approval of the book. Chronicles refer to different points of the same fact, and both are completely correct. 2 Chronicles 24:15. And Jehoiada grew old, and having had his fill of days of life, he died: he was one hundred and thirty years old when he died. 2 Chronicles 24:16. And they buried him in the city of David with the kings, because he had done good in Israel both for God and for His house. 2 Chronicles 24:17. But after the death of Jehoiada the princes of Judah came and bowed down to the king; then the king began to obey them. 2 Chronicles 24:18. And they left the house of the Lord God of their fathers and began to serve sacred trees and idols, and the Lord was angry with Judah and Jerusalem for this guilt of theirs. 2 Chronicles 24:19. And he sent prophets to them to turn them to the Lord, and they admonished them, but they did not listen. 2 Chronicles 24:20. And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest, and he stood on a high place before the people and said to them, Thus says the Lord: Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord? you will not succeed; and just as you have forsaken the Lord, He will also forsake you. 2 Chronicles 24:21. And they conspired against him, and stoned him, according to the command of the king [Joash], in the courtyard of the house of the Lord. 2 Chronicles 24:22. And King Joash did not remember the good deed that Jehoiada his father had done to him, and he killed his son. And he, dying, said: may the Lord see and seek! Here we find very important information that significantly complements and explains the fragmentary story of the chapter (2 Kings 12) about the second half and end of the reign of Joash. The burial of Jehoiada with the kings (v. 16), i.e. in the royal tombs of Jerusalem, is motivated by those services to the good, both state and religious, which the high priest Jehoiada rendered to Judah (“Israel” verse 16, as in (2 Chronicles 23:2) - in the general sense: the people of God). They are precisely, as can be seen from Art. 17–18, true worship of God was maintained in Judea, and with his death in the kingdom of Judea, under the influence of nobles devoted to paganism, open idolatry began. To expose the latter, Jehovah now raised up many prophets (verses 19–20, 27), among whom (cf. above (2 Chronicles 20:14)) was the son and successor of Jehoiada, the high priest Zechariah, who publicly denounced the king and people in the church for apostasy and foreshadowed their punishment. For this, by order of the king, who did not remember the good deeds of Jehoiada, he was stoned in the courtyard of the house of the Lord (vv. 19-21). The Lord Jesus Christ also spoke about the murder of a certain “Zechariah, the son of Barachi” (Matthew 23:35), between the altar and the church (Luke 11:51), in denouncing the scribes and Pharisees, who concealed in their hearts the plan to kill Him. “The murder of the high priest, who, at the command of the Spirit of God, spoke words of admonition to that people among whom the Messiah was to be born, and to that king who was a descendant of David and in the race in the flesh the Son of God, of course, has a high prophetic and representative significance in relation to the future sacred events of the murder of Christ the Savior by the same people because He spoke words of grace and truth” (Vlastov, “The Sacred Chronicle”, vol. IV, part II, p. 192). Therefore, many, ancient and new, interpreters believed and believe that the Lord in (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51) speaks specifically about Zechariah (2 Chronicles 24:20–22) - the Old Testament martyr and confessor of Jehovah. However, for a long time, doubts have been raised about the two differences in the places compared here. 1) In (Matthew 23:35) Zechariah is called “the son of Barachi” (and not Jehoiada). 2) According to (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51) Zechariah was killed “between the church and the altar” - in a place considered the most important and most sacred after the church (cf. Olesnitsky, “Old Testament Church”, p. 321) - whereas according to (2 Chronicles 24:21) the murder of Zechariah took place “in the courtyard of the house of the Lord.” True, these differences are not so significant that they could make it difficult to identify Zechariah of the Gospel with Zechariah 2 Chronicles. The words “son of Barachi” are not at all in the Gospel of Luke; They are not found in some ancient manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew, for example, according to Tischendorf, in the Codex Sinaiticus of the Gospel of Matthew (Novum Testamentum Graece. Recensuit Constantinus de Tischendorf Lipsiae. 1869, p. 44). According to the testimony of Blessed Jerome (Matthew 23:35), in the Gospel of Matthew, which was used by the Nazarenes, instead of the words: “son of Barachi” there were the words “son of Jehoiada.” The difference in determining the place of the murder is even less significant: it is quite possible that the Lord more accurately and more closely defines and explains the general and vague indication of 2 Chronicles. Nevertheless, already in ancient times, in the Gospel Zechariah they tried to see other persons of this name, such as: one of the minor 12 prophets (Zechariah 1:1) or Father John the Baptist (see “The Works of Blessed Jerome”, Russian translation, part 16: Four books of commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew. Kiev. 1901, pp. 244–245). 2 Chronicles 24:23. And at the end of the year the army of Syria came out against him, and entered Judea and Jerusalem, and destroyed from among the people all the princes of the people, and all the spoil that was taken from them was sent to the king in Damascus. 2 Chronicles 24:24. Although the army of Syria came in a small number of people, the Lord delivered into their hand a very numerous force because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers. And they executed judgment on Joash, 2 Chronicles 24:25. and when they left him, leaving him in serious illness, his servants plotted against him, for the blood of the son of Jehoiada the priest, and killed him on his bed, and he died. And they buried him in the city of David, but they did not bury him in the royal tombs. 2 Chronicles 24:26. The conspirators against him were: Zabad, the son of Shimeath the Ammonite, and Jehozabad, the son of Shimrifah the Moabite. The punishment for the crimes of Joash was: partly the invasion of the Syrians on Judea and Jerusalem ((vv. 23–24), cf. (2 Kings 12:18–19)), and then the serious illness of Joash and his violent death at the hands of the conspirators ((vv. 25–26), cf. (2 Kings 12:20–21)). In 2 Chronicles the causal connection of these disasters with the wickedness and crimes of the king is obvious; that is why the story itself is more complete and clearer than in (2 Kings 12), where there is no mention of the wickedness of Joash. In this case, as in many others, Prince. Chronicles presented by the book. The Kingdoms replenishes the skeleton of historical news with vital content and pragmatic connections. Joash was buried, like Joram (2 Chronicles 21:20), outside the royal tombs. 2 Chronicles 24:27. About his sons and about the many prophecies against him and about the building of the house of God is written in the book of kings. And Amaziah his son reigned in his stead. Details about Joash and his reign were contained “in the book of kings”, Hebrew: bemidrashgamelachim, LXX ἐπὶ τὴν γραφὴν τῶν βασιλέων, Vulgata: in libro regum, glav.: “in the chronicler of the kings” . The Hebrew “midrash” (cf. 2 Chronicles 13:22) in the language of post-exilic Judaism meant an interpretation, a commentary on any biblical book or part of it (for example, “Midrash Mekhilta” - an interpretation of part of the book of Exodus, “Midrash Sifra” - on the book of Leviticus, etc.), often with a predominance of allegorical explanations (cf. Cleric ad 2 Paral. XIII, 22). In this case, one can understand the prophetic post-exilic or even earlier processing of the history of the kings of Judah, which, together with the canonical books of the Kingdoms, served as a source in the compilation of the book. Chronicles (Stade, “Geschichte des Volkes Israel”, I, s. 84; cf. Prof. P.A. Yungerov. Origin and historicity of the book. Chronicles, pp. 16–17). You might be interested in: