Joash

Joash, also written Jehoash, is the name of the king of Israel who reigned sixteen years in Samaria, the son of Jehoahaz and grandson of Jehu (2 Kings 13:10; 2 Kings 14:8). The two spellings are the same Hebrew name in its longer and shorter forms, the longer preserving the divine name element, so that a single king is called Joash in some verses and Jehoash in others. The text also shows the name borne by the king of Judah against whom he fought, since his reign is dated to the thirty-seventh year of Joash king of Judah (2 Kings 13:10), and Amaziah of Judah is identified as the son of Joash son of Ahaziah (2 Kings 14:13).

What Scripture records of him is chiefly two episodes. When Elisha lay sick with the illness of which he died, Joash came down to him and wept, saying, "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" (2 Kings 13:14). And he recovered from Benhadad son of Hazael the cities his father had lost by war, striking him three times (2 Kings 13:25).

The second episode is his war with Amaziah of Judah. When Amaziah proposed, "Come, let's look one another in the face," Joash answered with the parable of the thistle and the cedar of Lebanon (2 Kings 14:8-9). Amaziah would not listen, and the two kings met at Beth Shemesh, which belongs to Judah (2 Kings 14:11). Joash took Amaziah captive there, brought him to Jerusalem, and broke down the city wall from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate, four hundred cubits (2 Kings 14:13; 2 Chronicles 25:23). He died and was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel, and his son Jeroboam reigned in his place (2 Kings 14:16); the text says Yahweh saved Israel by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash (2 Kings 14:27), and both Hosea and Amos are dated to that reign (Hosea 1:1; Amos 1:1).

Christian traditions do not divide sharply over Joash, and the differences are matters of interpretation rather than doctrine. One reading hears genuine grief and filial reverence in his weeping over Elisha; another hears the formal court address a king might give a prophet, since the same words are used elsewhere of Elisha himself. The thistle-and-cedar reply is read by some as a rebuke of Amaziah's presumption and by others as a prudent warning declined by a proud rival. The report that deliverance came by Jeroboam's hand, not Joash's, is taken in one tradition as evidence of divine patience with Israel despite its kings, and in another simply as the narrator's plain account of the dynasty's fortunes.

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.