Jehoash

Jehoash — also written Joash — is a Hebrew personal name composed of a form of the divine name YHWH with a verb meaning "has given" or "has bestowed," and in Scripture it is chiefly the name of two kings of the divided monarchy: Jehoash of Israel, son of Jehoahaz (2 Kings 13:25), and Joash of Judah, a descendant of David who reigned in Jerusalem (2 Kings 12:1). The same text uses both spellings for the same Israelite king, sometimes within a single verse (2 Kings 13:25), so "Jehoash" and "Joash" in these passages are not two figures but one name under two transliterations.

The Israelite Jehoash, descendant of Jehu, comes to the throne when the Aramean king Hazael is oppressing Israel (2 Kings 13:22). The narrative around him turns on endings and beginnings: the prophet Elisha is dying, and Jehoash visits him weeping and calls him "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" (2 Kings 13:14). Elisha has him strike the ground with arrows and is angry when he stops at three, saying he "should have struck five or six times" and would then have consumed Syria (2 Kings 13:19). What follows is recounted as a partial outcome — Joash "struck him three times, and recovered the cities of Israel" (2 Kings 13:25) — set against the further notice that Yahweh was gracious and compassionate to Israel "because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (2 Kings 13:23). Two strange details bracket his reign: Israelite raiders appear at a burial and the man thrown into Elisha's tomb revives on touching the bones (2 Kings 13:21), and — established in the text, whatever one makes of it — Jehoash's military recovery is exactly its prophecy.

Jehoash of Israel is also remembered for his war with Amaziah of Judah. Amaziah challenges him with "Come, let's look one another in the face" (2 Kings 14:8), and Jehoash answers with the parable of the thistle in Lebanon that asked the cedar for its daughter in marriage and was trampled by a wild animal (2 Kings 14:9) — historically, a diplomatic rebuke warning that Amaziah's boast over Edom has lifted his heart beyond his strength, and counsel to "stay at home" (2 Kings 14:10; 2 Chronicles 25:19). Amaziah does not listen; the text records that Judah was defeated, each man fleeing to his tent (2 Kings 14:12), and that Joash took Amaziah at Beth Shemesh, brought him to Jerusalem, and broke down the city wall from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate (2 Chronicles 25:23).

Christian traditions read the episode in 2 Kings 13:21 in noticeably different ways. Some (notably Catholic and Orthodox writers) cite the revival at Elisha's bones as scriptural warrant for treating the remains of holy people with reverence; many Protestant interpreters read the same verse as a testimony to Elisha's prophetic standing and God's word through him, not as a mandate concerning relics. The "my father, my father, the chariots of Israel" cry of 2 Kings 13:14, which had earlier been Elisha's own words for Elijah (2 Kings 2:12), is variously read as a mark of royal dependence on prophecy or as an epitaph of Israel's true defense.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.