Jehoash
The name Jehoash — and its short form Joash — is borne by eight different men in the Hebrew narrative, two of them kings whose reigns overlap in time and collide in war. The Davidic king of Judah, Joash son of Ahaziah, is "also called Jehoash" in the kings-list; the Jehu-line king of Israel, Jehoash son of Jehoahaz, is "also called Joash." The shared name draws the two thrones into a single Beth-shemesh meeting that the chronicler frames as a face-to-face encounter between a Davidic son named Joash and a northern king who answers to the same name.
The Lesser Bearers of the Name
Six of the men called Joash sit at the edges of the genealogies and royal staff-lists. Joash is named among the sons of Becher (1 Chronicles 7:8), among the descendants of Shelah who "had dominion in Moab" before returning to Lehem (1 Chronicles 4:22), and among the Benjaminite warriors who came over to David at Ziklag, where "the chief was Ahiezer; then Joash, the sons of Shemaah the Gibeathite" (1 Chronicles 12:3). Another Joash is one of David's officers in the agricultural administration: "over the cellars of oil was Joash" (1 Chronicles 27:28). A Joash described as "the king's son" appears in the Micaiah episode, where Ahab orders the prophet handed back to "Amon the governor of the city, and to Joash the king's son" (1 Kings 22:26; 2 Chronicles 18:25). These are short notices — a name in a family tree, a post in a logistical register, a custodian of an unhappy prophet — and they fix the name across tribal, military, and palace contexts long before the two Joash-kings emerge.
The Father of Gideon
The most fully drawn Joash apart from the two kings is Gideon's father, Joash the Abiezrite of Ophrah. The angel of Yahweh "came, and sat under the oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained to Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from the Midianites" (Judges 6:11). When Gideon tears down the Baal altar, the city men trace the act to "Gideon the son of Joash" (Judges 6:29) and demand his death; Joash himself takes the courtroom, turning the crowd back with a Baal-must-defend-himself reply: "Will you⁺ contend for Baal? Or will you⁺ save him? He who will contend for him, let him be put to death while [it is yet] morning: if he is a god, let him contend for himself, because one has broken down his altar" (Judges 6:31).
The patronymic "son of Joash" then follows Gideon through the campaign and afterward. The Midianite soldier in the dream-camp identifies the threatening sword as "the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: into his hand God has delivered Midian, and all the host" (Judges 7:14). Gideon "the son of Joash" returns from the battle (Judges 8:13), and at the end of his life "Gideon the son of Joash died in a good old age, and was buried in the tomb of Joash his father, in Ophrah of the Abiezrites" (Judges 8:32). Joash is exhibited here as the named father under whose household the Yahweh-commanded altar-demolition is carried out at Ophrah, and whose tomb at Ophrah receives his son.
The Hidden Child of the Davidic House
Joash of Judah enters the narrative as the lone Davidide rescued from his grandmother Athaliah's massacre of "the king's sons." The Kings account names the rescuer as Jehosheba and the hiding-place as the temple: "Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king's sons who were slain, even him and his nurse [and put them] in the bedchamber; and they hid him from Athaliah, so that he was not slain ... And he was hid with her in the house of Yahweh six years" (2 Kings 11:2-3). The chronicler names her Jehoshabeath and adds that she is the wife of the priest: "Jehoshabeath, the daughter of King Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest (for she was the sister of Ahaziah), hid him from Athaliah, so that she did not slay him. And he was hid with them in the house of God six years: and Athaliah reigned over the land" (2 Chronicles 22:11-12). Joash is exhibited here as the preserved child-Davidide whose six-year temple-concealment carries the throne-line through the Omride interregnum.
Anointed by Jehoiada
In the seventh year the priest-regent Jehoiada brings the hidden boy out into a covenanted public coronation. He gathers captains and Levites in covenant and declares to them, "the king's son will reign, as Yahweh has spoken concerning the sons of David" (2 Chronicles 23:3). The boy is brought out to the temple-pillar with crown and testimony: "Then they brought out the king's son, and put the crown on him, and [gave him] the testimony, and made him king: and Jehoiada and his sons anointed him; and they said, [Long] live the king" (2 Chronicles 23:11). Athaliah hears the noise, comes to the temple, sees the king "by his pillar at the entrance," tears her clothes and cries "Treason! Treason!" (2 Chronicles 23:13), and is led out and slain at the horse-gate entrance (2 Chronicles 23:15). Jehoiada then makes a covenant "between himself, and all the people, and the king, that they should be Yahweh's people," and the people break down "the house of Baal" and slay "Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars" (2 Chronicles 23:16-17). The Kings account closes the scene with the accession-formula: "Jehoash was seven years old when he began to reign" (2 Kings 11:21).
The Temple Repair
The Kings narrator dates the reign and grades its early conduct: "In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash began to reign; and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem ... And Jehoash did that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him" (2 Kings 12:1-2). The chronicler matches the verdict precisely to Jehoiada's lifetime: "Joash did that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh all the days of Jehoiada the priest" (2 Chronicles 24:2). The reign's first major undertaking is a breach-repair of the temple, which the king drives through a confrontation with the priests: "Then King Jehoash called for Jehoiada the priest, and for the [other] priests, and said to them, Why aren't you⁺ repairing the breaches of the house?" (2 Kings 12:7).
The chronicler tells the same story through the chest-reform: "Joash was minded to restore the house of Yahweh ... the king commanded, and they made a chest, and set it outside at the gate of the house of Yahweh" (2 Chronicles 24:4,8). Princes and people cast in their silver, the king's scribe and the chief priest's officer empty it day by day, and "they hired masons and carpenters to restore the house of Yahweh, and also such as wrought iron and bronze to repair the house of Yahweh" (2 Chronicles 24:12). The closing note ties the offerings to Jehoiada's living days: "they offered burnt-offerings in the house of Yahweh continually all the days of Jehoiada" (2 Chronicles 24:14).
The Pivot After Jehoiada's Death
The chronicler plants the reign's hinge at the moment the priest-regent dies: "Now after the death of Jehoiada, came the princes of Judah, and made obeisance to the king. Then the king listened to them" (2 Chronicles 24:17). Joash is graded here at the priest-removed / princes-listened pivot register, and the result is forsaken worship: "they forsook the house of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, and served the Asherim and the idols: and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this their guiltiness" (2 Chronicles 24:18). Yahweh sends prophets, but the king will not give ear (2 Chronicles 24:19).
The Spirit of God then comes on Zechariah the son of Jehoiada in the very court the priest had defended, and his oracle is hurled back in his own blood: "Why do you⁺ transgress the commandments of Yahweh, so that you⁺ can't prosper? Because you⁺ have forsaken Yahweh, he has also forsaken you⁺. And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of Yahweh" (2 Chronicles 24:20-21). The chronicler's verdict on the deed is bound to the kindness Joash owed the murdered man's father: "Thus Joash the king didn't remember the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said, Yahweh, look at it, and require it" (2 Chronicles 24:22). Joash is exhibited here as the king whose late-reign content is the bloody inversion of his benefactor's house.
Hazael, the Syrian Strike, and Joash's End
The Syrian invasion that follows is read by the chronicler as Yahweh's reckoning. The Kings account names the price Joash paid Hazael to keep him from Jerusalem: "Jehoash 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 Yahweh, and of the king's house, and sent it to Hazael king of Syria: and he went away from Jerusalem" (2 Kings 12:18). The chronicler reads the same defeat as a Yahweh-orchestrated sentence: "the army of the Syrians came with a small company of men; and Yahweh delivered a very great host into their hand, because they had forsaken Yahweh, the God of their fathers. So they executed judgment on Joash" (2 Chronicles 24:24).
Joash dies at the hands of his own household, sick from the Syrian campaign and avenged for Zechariah's blood: "his own slaves conspired against him for the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the priest, and slew him on his bed, and he died; and they buried him in the city of David, but they did not bury him in the tombs of the kings" (2 Chronicles 24:25). The conspirators are named — "Zabad the son of Shimeath the Ammonitess, and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith the Moabitess" (2 Chronicles 24:26) — and the throne passes on: "And Amaziah his son reigned in his stead" (2 Chronicles 24:27).
The Northern Jehoash, Son of Jehoahaz
The other king the name binds is Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz, the third in the Jehu line of Israel. His reign-summary opens with the synchronism and verdict-clause that locks him inside the Jeroboam-line sin-pattern: "Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz began to reign over Israel in Samaria, [and reigned] sixteen years," and he "did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam" (2 Kings 13:10-11). The reign's most charged scene is at Elisha's deathbed, where the king's lament reverses the prophet's own words over Elijah: "Now Elisha had fallen sick of his sickness of which he died: and Joash the king of Israel came down to him, and wept over him, and said, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" (2 Kings 13:14).
Elisha then directs a joint-grip oracle. The king lays his hand on the bow, the prophet lays his hands on the king's hands, and the arrow shot eastward is named "Yahweh's arrow of victory" — but the follow-on ground-strike obedience is graded as half-done, locked at exactly three strikes. The fulfillment matches: "Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz took again out of the hand of Benhadad the son of Hazael the cities which he had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz his father by war. Three times Joash struck him, and recovered the cities of Israel" (2 Kings 13:25). The Aphek-tied Syria-victories recover but do not finish his father's losses.
The Two Joashes Meet at Beth-shemesh
The umbrella's most distinctive moment is the collision between the Davidic king and the northern king who shares his name. The Davidide here is not Joash of Judah but his son Amaziah; the northern king is Jehoash himself. Amaziah, fresh from his Edom-victory and the Edom-gods apostasy, sends the war-summons: "Amaziah king of Judah took advice, and sent to Joash, the son of Jehoahaz the son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, Come, let us look one another in the face" (2 Chronicles 25:17). The Kings parallel preserves the same address and adds Jehoash's reply in the form of a self-diminishing thistle-and-cedar fable: "The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give your daughter to my son as wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trod down the thistle" (2 Kings 14:9). Amaziah will not hear, "So Jehoash king of Israel went up; and he and Amaziah king of Judah looked one another in the face at Beth-shemesh, which belongs to Judah" (2 Kings 14:11).
The outcome is a humiliation of the Davidic capital: "Joash king of Israel took Amaziah king of Judah, the son of Joash the son of Jehoahaz, at Beth-shemesh, and brought him to Jerusalem, and broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate, four hundred cubits" (2 Chronicles 25:23). The northern king carries off "all the gold and silver, and all the vessels that were found in the house of Yahweh, and in the treasures of the king's house, the hostages also, and returned to Samaria" (2 Kings 14:14). His reign closes on the dynastic-succession formula: "Jehoash slept with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel; and Jeroboam his son reigned in his stead" (2 Kings 14:16).
The two thrones the name binds are thus exhibited at opposite poles. The Judahite Joash is the rescued infant who repairs the temple under his priest-regent and then forsakes it once the priest is dead, dying on his bed at the hands of his own slaves and refused burial in the kings' tombs. The Israelite Jehoash is the Jehu-line northern king whose grief at Elisha's bed wins three Syria-victories and whose Beth-shemesh capture, Jerusalem-transport, and four-hundred-cubit wall-breach humiliate the Davidic city — the same city in which his Judahite namesake had once cast silver into a chest to repair Yahweh's house.