From: 2 Chronicles 24:17-25
Joash’s infidelity
[20] Then the Spirit of God took possession of Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the
priest; and he stood above the people, and said to them, “Thus says God, ‘Why
do you transgress the commandments of the Lord, so that you cannot prosper?
Because you have forsaken the Lord, he has forsaken you.’” [21] But they con-
spired against him, and by command of the king they stoned him with stones
in the court of the house of the Lord. [22] Thus Joash the king did not remember
the kindness which Jehoiada, Zechariah’s father, had shown him, but killed his
son. And when he was dying, they said, “May the Lord see and avenge!”
[23] At the end of the year the army of the Syrians came up against Joash. They
came to Judah and Jerusalem, and destroyed all the princes of the people from
among the people, and sent all their spoil to the king of Damascus. [24] Though
the army of the Syrians had come with few men, the Lord delivered into their
hand a very great army, because they had forsaken the Lord, the God of their
fathers. Thus they executed judgment on Joash.
[25] When they had departed from him, leaving him severely wounded, his ser-
vants conspired against him because of the blood of the son of Jehoiada the
priest, and slew him on his bed. So he died; and they buried him in the city of
David, but they did not bury him in the tombs of the kings.
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Commentary:
24:1-27. The account of the reign of Joash is written with a clearly pedagogical
purpose; we divide it into two stages, to help show the religious message it
contains.
The first stage (vv. 1-16) is all about the collection of monies to pay for the re-
storation of the temple (it follows the parallel passage of 2 Kings 12:1-17). Du-
ring these years the real protagonist is Jehoiada the priest, who implemented
the king’s initiatives to do with rebuilding the temple and returning it to its origi-
nal splendour (v. 13). When Jehoiada died, he was buried in the city of David,
that is to say, he was accorded royal honours.
The second stage was marked by disloyalty to the Lord and by idolatry. The
military defeats and conspiracies were forms of punishment for the king’s trans-
gressions (vv. 17-26). Joash’s worst crime was the shameful execution of the
son of Jehoiada, the prophet Zechariah (not the same person as the last of the
minor prophets), who had dared to denounce the king’s crimes. For this sin the
king himself will lose his life at the hands of conspirators (v. 25). Once again we
can see that God does not leave crimes unavenged.
This Zechariah is probably the prophet Jesus referred to as a prime example of
an innocent victim sacrificed by his own people: “that upon you may come all the
righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of the innocent Abel to the blood of
Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and
the altar” (Mt 23:35). The fact that Jesus calls him “son of Barachiah” instead of
“son of Jehoiada” could be because different genealogies were being used, or else
there may have been some error in the transmission of the text. Anyway, given
that the book of Chronicles is the last book in the Hebrew Bible, Jesus is saying
that all innocent victims, from the first (Abel) to the last (Zechariah), are figures of
the Christian martyrs and share in the redemption Christ effected by his death on
the cross: “Moreover, my brothers, you must not think that all those good men
who suffered persecution at the hands of the wicked – including those who were
sent to announce the coming of the Lord – were not members of Christ’s body.
Any man who belongs to the city of which Christ is the king must be a servant of
Christ. That city runs from the blood of the innocent Abel to the blood of Zecha-
riah. And on from there, from the blood of John [the Baptist], through that of the
apostles and martyrs and all those who were faithful to Christ: these people to-
gether make up the city of which we speak” (St Augustine, Enarrationes in
Psalmos, 61, 3).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
From: Matthew 6:24-34
Trust in God’s Fatherly Providence (Continuation)
[25] “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or
what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more
than food, and the body more than clothing? [26] Look at the birds of the air; they
neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not of more value than they? [27] And which of you by being an-
xious can add one cubit to his span of life? [28] And why are you anxious about
clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin;
[29] yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
[30] But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow
is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O men of little faith?
[31] Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we
drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ [32] For the Gentiles seek all these things; and
your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all. [33] But seek first His King-
dom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.
[34] “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious
for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”
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Commentary:
24. Man’s ultimate goal is God; to attain this goal he should commit himself en-
tirely. But in fact some people do not have God as their ultimate goal, and instead
choose wealth of some kind—in which case wealth becomes their god. Man can-
not have two absolute and contrary goals.
25-32. In this beautiful passage Jesus shows us the value of the ordinary things
of life, and teaches us to put our trust in God’s fatherly providence. Using simple
examples and comparisons taken from everyday life, He teaches us to abandon
ourselves into the arms of God.
27. The word “span” could be translated as “stature”, but “span” is closer to the
original (cf. Luke 12:25). A “cubit” is a measure of length which can metaphori-
cally refer to time.
33. Here again the righteousness of the Kingdom means the life of grace in man
—which involves a whole series of spiritual and moral values and can be summed
up in the notion of “holiness”. The search for holiness should be our primary pur-
pose in life. Jesus is again insisting on the primacy of spiritual demands. Com-
menting on this passage, Pope Paul VI says: “Why poverty? It is to give God,
the Kingdom of God, the first place in the scale of values which are the object of
human aspirations. Jesus says: ‘Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness’.
And He says this with regard to all the other temporal goods, even necessary
and legitimate ones, with which human desires are usually concerned. Christ’s
poverty makes possible that detachment from earthly things which allows us to
place the relationship with God at the peak of human aspirations” (”General Au-
dience”, 5 January 1977).
34. Our Lord exhorts us to go about our daily tasks serenely and not to worry
uselessly about what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow. This
is wisdom based on God’s fatherly providence and on our own everyday experi-
ence: “He who observes the wind will not sow; and he who regards the clouds
will not reap” (Eccles 11:4).
What is important, what is within our reach, is to live in God’s presence and
make good use of the present moment: “Do your duty ‘now’, without looking back
on ‘yesterday’, which has already passed, or worrying over ‘tomorrow’, which may
never come for you” (St. J. Escriva, “The Way”, 253).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.