-Jehoash/Joash:
King of.Israel.B.C.E
840-825. The son and successor of Jehoahaz:.2Kings
13:10,11 "In the thirty and seventh year of Joash king of.Judah.began
Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz
to reign over.Israel.in
Samaria
and reigned sixteen years. And he did that which was evil in the sight
of the Lord. He departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam
I the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, but he walked therein."
Jehoash/Joash fought and
with God's help, won three battles against the strong enemy of Israel at
the time:.2Kings
13:25.
Jehoash/Joash did his best
to stay out of trouble.(Proverbs
1:10-14), but when you're dealing
with the low consciousness
ego
having the boastful pride and stubbornness
of a bully who
is blinded to consequences,
well, what can you do? Such was Amaziah king of Judah:.2Chronicles
25:14-22.
When Jehoash/Joash ascended
the throne the kingdom was suffering from the invasion of the Syrians.
He tolerated the worship of the golden calves the people were accustomed
to, yet seems to have manifested a character of sincere devotion to the
God of his fathers.
There was much in the conduct
of Joash to commend.
He
had a great regard for the prophet Elisha
and visited him on his deathbed, where he was told by Elisha that he would
be successful against the Syrians:.2Kings
13:14 "Now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died.
And Joash the king of Israel came down unto him and wept over his face
and said, O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen
thereof."
Jehoash/Joash spawned
an evil son, Jeroboam II:.2Kings
14.23,24.
Johash/Joash's time was now
over:.2Kings
13:12,13.
-Jehoash/Joash:
The eighth king of.Judah,
B.C.E.
878-838, began to reign at 7 years old:.2Kings
11:21. He was a good king.at
first:.2Kngs
12:1,2. He reigned forty years and the prophet Joel
was contemporary
with him.
Jehoash/Joash's father was
Ahaziah
and his son was Amaziah.
While yet an infant, he was
saved from the general massacre
of the family by the usurping
bitch Athaliah. And this thanks to
Jehoash/Joash's aunt Jehosheba, wife
of the good high priest Jehoiada.
Jehoash/Joash was apparently
the only surviving descendant of Solomon:.2Chronicles
21:4,17. He was also the only son of Ahaziah king of Judah, who was
not slain by his evil grandmother Athaliah, who attempted to cut off all
the royal seed.
Being rescued by Jehoshebah
his aunt, the wife of Jehoiada the high priest.(2Chronicles
24:3), Jehoash/Joash was secluded
six years in her bedchamber.(2Kings
11:2).until
being raised to the throne by the efforts of Jehoiada when Jehoash/Joash
was seven years of age, thus preserving the seed of David on the throne.
While this venerable high
priest survived, Joash served God and prospered. Idols were banished and
the temple was repaired. But afterwards he followed less wholesome counsels.
Idolatry revived and later when Zechariah
the high priest, the son of Jehoiada, rebuked the guilty people, this ungrateful
king caused this servant of God to be stoned to death:.2Chronicles
24:15-27.
God sent the Syrian
army.(2Kings
12:17).to
hopefully turn him and those of Judah who followed his now evil ways away
from their ego
induced errors and back to the good ways they had enjoyed after they
got rid of that evil bitch Athaliah:.2Kings
11:20.
The Syrian army was a small
company of whom overcame the very great host of Judah, destroying them
and causing Joash to give all the treasures of the temple and of the king's
house to the Syrians:.2Kings
12:18-21 "And Jehoash.(also
called Joash, so Jehoash/Joash).king
of Judah took all the hallowed
things that Jehoshaphat
and Jehoram
and Ahaziah,
his fathers, kings of Judah, had dedicated 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 and sent it to Hazael king of Syria and he went
away from Jerusalem. And the rest of the acts of Joash and all that he
did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of
Judah? And his servants arose and made a conspiracy and slew Joash in the
house of Millo, which goeth down to Silla. For Jozachar the son of Shimeath
and Jehozabad the son of Shomer, his servants, smote him and he died and
they buried him with his fathers in the city of David and Amaziah
his son reigned in his stead.".Also
see:.2Chronicles
21:17.
Joash/Jehoash's problems
were to awaken him, but he didn't
listen to what his life was all about. He didn't seem able to intelligently
relate the feedback from circumstances he was causing. He probably was
not too bright,
not even considering what he could be bringing upon his children.(*).
And, because there was no change in his heart, his son was like him, thus,
living the same sort of evil life and with similar consequences.
Later, after the Syrians
came, even the king of Israel came against Judah, their brother nation,
when Jehoash/Joash's son was king:.2Chronicles
25:23 "And Joash
the king of.Israel.took
Amaziah
king of.Judah,
the son of Joash,
the son of Jehoahaz,
at Bethshemesh and brought him to Jerusalem and brake down the wall of
Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate, four hundred cubits."
Misfortunes multiplied on
Jehoash/Joash's head. He was repeatedly humbled by the Syrians and gave
them the temple treasures as ransom.
Joash became greatly diseased after the Syrians came against him. A loathsome
disease imbittered
his life, which was very soon cut short by a conspiracy
of his servants and he was not buried in the sepulchre
of the kings:.2Chronicles
24:22-25 "Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada
his father.(was
his uncle, but was like a father to him).had
done to him...".
Jehoash/Joash ceme to his
end:.2Kings
12:20,21. His son Amaziah reigned in his stead:.2Kings
14:1 "In the second year of Joash
son of Jehoahaz
king of Israel reigned Amaziah
the son of Joash
king of Judah.".There
was a Joash king
of Israel and this Joash, king of Judah.
-Jeroboam
I. Name means 'enlarger of the people',
He was the Son of a man named Nebat, of the tribe of Ephraim.
Jeroboam I was the first king of Israel at the time the single nation of
Israel split
into two nations. He reigned twenty-two years B.C.E.
975-954. He lived over 100 years before Jeroboam
II.
He seems to have had a chance
to turn out ok. The people liked him. He started off being 'for the people',
but he and the people were treated terribly by the king in charge at the
time, who was Rehoboam:.1Kings
12:1-20. Alas,
Jeroboam I turned out to be just
as evil once he became king.
On the
division of the kingdom into the names of Israel and Judah,
Jeroboam I was made ruler by Solomon
of this new Israel of ten tribes:.1Kings
11:28. At the same time Solomon's son Rehoboam
was made king of the new nation of Judah having two tribes.
Jeroboam I had been an officer
under Solomon.and
a mighty man of valor,
but Ahijah
the prophet,
having found Jeroboam I, tore his new garment into twelve pieces and gave
him ten of them, telling him that he should be king over ten of the tribes:.1Kings
11:29-35.
Solomon sought to kill Jeroboam
I.(1Kings
11:34-40).when
he heard of the prophet.Ahijah's
message from the Creator.(1Kings
11:29-39).about
ten of the twelve tribes to be put under Jeroboam. Because of this, Jeroboam
fled to Egypt and stayed there till the death of Solomon. Solomon thought
that all should be under one king, maybe not wanting the people to think
that it was he who put in as king, the man who split the nation into two.
Jeroboam I's son Abijah,
heir to the throne died very young.
Fearing that his subjects,
if they went up to Jerusalem in this new nation of Judah to worship, would
be alienated from him, Jeroboam I takes a step in the wrong direction and
had made two golden calves.(he
copied what those long before him did in the time of Moses when they got
fed up waiting for Moses and made their a golden calf for themselves to
worship:.Exodus
32:1-8).for
the people to worship, placing one in Bethel.(Amos
7:10-17).in
the south and the other in Dan in the north and declared that these were
the Gods that had brought Israel out of Egypt:.2Kings
10:29-31.
Jeroboam I must have been
a little nuts by this time, thinking that the people would buy his new
way of worship, but as usual, most of the people just went along with whatever
the king says.
But, I mean, really, a calf
is an animal, below man and these golden calves made with
their own hands to worship are just
too.ridiculous
for words. Had these men and women any intelligence at all? Just no commonsense.
The low consciousness mind of man seems to need physical things that they
can look at and touch to worship.
Jeroboam-I
even raised up priests of the common people, which was not allowed under
the
Mosaic Law which was extant
at the time. He also instituted sacrifices and feastdays were devised.
Thus the nation through their king sank at once into open idolatry.
A warning from back then
to those who may devise
out of their own heart their forms of worship:.1Kings
14:20 "And the days which Jeroboam-I reigned were two and twenty years
and he slept with his fathers..."
Baasha
later slayed Jeroboam-I's reigning son Nadab:.1Kings
15:28,29 "...Baasha slayed him and reigned in his stead. And it came
to pass, when he reigned, that he smote all the house of Jeroboam I. He
left not to Jeroboam any that breathed, until he had destroyed him, according
unto the saying of the Lord, which he spake by his servant
Ahijah
the Shilonite.".Ezekiel
37:23.
So Baasha, though
an evil king, was an instrument in the hand of God.(as
also was Nebuchadnezzar-II who came on the scene some 300 years later:.Jeremiah
27:6).to
get rid of evil Jeroboam-I and bring to an end any of the family of Jeroboam-I
from ruling over Israel.
2Chronicles
13:16-20 "And the children of Israel fled before Judah and God delivered
them into their hand. And Abijah
and his people slew them with a great slaughter, so there fell down slain
of Israel five hundred thousand chosen men. Thus the children of Israel
were brought under at that time and the children of Judah prevailed,.because
they relied upon the Lord God of their fathers. And Abijah pursued
after Jeroboam and took cities from him, Bethel with the towns thereof
and Jeshanah with the towns thereof and Ephrain with the towns thereof.
Neither did Jeroboam recover strength again in the days of Abijah and the
Lord struck him and he died.".2Kings
10:32.
Amos
7:11 "For thus Amos
said, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away
captive out of their own land."
-Jeroboam
II. 13th king of Israel from the first
king, who was Jeroboam
I over 100 years before.
Jeroboam II was the son and
successor of Jehoash/Joash
on the throne, that is, on the throne of the
ten of the original
twelve tribes.(map).that
were now Israel, with the other two tribes being them which became Judah.
Jeroboam II was made coregent
in B.C.E. 836 and then reigned
alone 41 years, from B.C.E.
825-784. He obtained victories over the Syrians
and cities of Hamath and Damascus were recovered out of Judah's hands,
for the Lord had mercy on Israel:.2Kings
14.23-27.
After Jeroboam II, the kingdom
of Israel continued its decline.
Jeroboam II's son Zachariah
was just as bad as he was.
Jeroboam II was contemporary
with prophets
Amos and
Hosea
and with kings of Judah Amaziah
and Uzziah:.2Kings
14:23; 15:1.
Jeroboam II was as bad as
Jeroboam
I. He followed the example of Jeroboam I in keeping up the worship
of golden calves:.2Kings
14:23,24 "...Jeroboam II, the son of.Joash
king of Israel.began
to reign in Samaria
and reigned forty and one years. And he did that which was evil in the
sight of the Lord. He departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam I the
son of Nebat.(who
ruled in time past), who made Israel
to sin."
Other kings of Judah in between
the reigns of I and II did follow God. But, Jeroboam I and II were always
looking to the false prophet priests of Baal,
instead of the true God.
As a result, the people in
the reigns of I and II were."not
able to bear".the
words of the true prophet Amos. When they heard them, they couldn't take
them to heart. They had no example of leaders who did. Amos spoke about
the critical state of the county due to the actions of the king and people
toward idolatry:.Amos
7:10-17.
Israel was being oppressed
at the time and so Jeroboam II went to war and was victorious
against the Syrian
oppressors:.2Kings
13:3-7; 14:26,27. This
extended Israel to its former limits, from."the
entering of Hamath to the sea of the plain":.2Kings
14:25; Amos 6:14. But with the joy
this brought, they didn't change.
2Kings
14:29 "And Jeroboam II slept with his fathers, even with the kings
of Israel and Zachariah
his son reigned in his stead."
-Jezreel:
The name means 'God scatters'. Jezreel was a town of Issachar.(map).where
the kings of Israel often resided:.1Kings
18:45; 21:1; 2Kings
10:6. Here Elijah met Ahab,
Jehu
and Bidkar and here Jehu executed his dreadful commission against the house
of Ahab:.2Kings
9:14-37; 10:1-11. It has
been identified with the modern Zerin on the most western point of the
range of Gilboa, reaching down into the great and fertile valley of Jezreel,
to which it gave its name.
-Josiah:
15th king of Judah and son of Amon.
He began to reign at the age of 8 years in and reigned 31 years, B.C.E.
641-610. He was a good king who had a good mom:.2Kings
22:1,2. In his 8th year of his reign, at 16 years of age, he."began
to seek after the God of David his father".and
that in the 12th year he began straitening out Judah and its main city
of Jerusalem:.2Chronicles
34:3-5.
Josiah had three sons, all
corrupt:.1Chronicles
3:15 "And the sons of Josiah were, the firstborn Johanan.(nothing
more said of him), the second Jehoiakim,
the third Zedekiah,
the fourth Shallum."
Josiah was great grandson
of Hezekiah,
a previous good king of Judah.
Regarding Josiah, like others,
including
Jesus
much later, whose names begin with a 'J' in the Bible, before the
17th century
A.D., there was no 'J'
in the alphabet.
In the thirty-first year
of his reign, Josiah went out to oppose the king of Egypt, even when there
was no threat from the Egyptians.
It seems that as Josiah aged
so did the
stubbornness
of his ego and this
brought his death in B.C.E. 610:.2Chronicles
35:20-24; 2Kings 23:28-30.
