In the thirty-eighth year of Azariah king of Judah, Zechariah the son of Jeroboam reigned over Israel in Samaria, six months.
This verse opens the last stretch of the northern kingdom's history: a king who lasted half a year, then a run of murders and seized thrones. Why did Jeroboam II's son fall so fast, and why does Scripture say so little about the years just before him?
The dates in Kings leave a gap between Jeroboam II's death and the start of his son's reign. One commentator notes that God chose not to fill it in.
Anarchy probably ruled during that period with no king. Hosea prophesied about this time (as regards Israel, see Hosea 1:1), and he seems to refer often to this season of lawlessness and revolution... But God has said next to nothing about this period in between, and we dare not say more. To speculate here would be worse than folly, since God's wisdom has chosen to give us no record of it. Where nothing useful would come of it, He always hides the sins and errors of His people from curious eyes.
The silence does not hide who was really in charge.
Scripture does not give us details about all that happened then. It does show us that despite all that may happen in political affairs to earthly rulers, God is in ultimate control, and He keeps His promises.
Zechariah's place in the family line explains his six months. A word spoken long before had set a limit on Jehu's line.
Zechariah was the son of Jeroboam II and the fourth and last ruler of the dynasty of Jehu. So the word of the LORD was literally fulfilled (2 Kings 10:30). His reign lasted only six months. Shallum assassinated him in public.
Jehu himself had shed blood, and God had said nothing about it. One writer shows how the same word that rewarded this family also judged it.
The time had come when God would punish the house of Jehu for the blood shed at Jezreel, and bring the kingdom of the house of Israel to an end (Hosea 1:4). The Lord had kept silent about the blood Jehu shed at Jezreel. He had not spoken of it to anyone — not even to guilty Jehu. God had told Jehu that he had done right in His eyes and would be rewarded (2 Kings 10:30). It might have seemed to Jehu that God approved everything he had done. Far from it! The word of the Lord — "Your sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation" — had been carried out as reward. Now His word was being carried out in retribution and in righteous judgment. What a God is ours! Who but He can weigh in the same balance both the acts He approves and those He condemns, to reward and to punish them?
Even the king's name pointed to God's long memory.
Zechariah's name — Jah has remembered — was strikingly fitting. God did not forget the wholesale slaughter of men — many of them, perhaps, better than their executioner. Though a century had passed, Jah remembered, and the reckoning for blood fell, as it had to, on the fifth and final member of the murderer's line.
Half a year was still time to turn back.
Zechariah did not use the time allotted him to repent! His time was soon up. After six months he was openly assassinated "before the people," by Shallum who had "conspired against him."
Zechariah's murder was not an isolated crime. It was one of many.
We are touching the reason for all these acts of violence: each is wanting to seize power for his own gain. When conscience no longer speaks up, sinners are given over to every instinct of their evil nature.
Yet as the darkness thickened, God did not go quiet.
God's eyes were upon "the sinful kingdom" (Amos 9:8), and upon its sinful kings. From the time of Jeroboam's death, decline set in. Less than seventy years later it ended in the kingdom's final overthrow and collapse. From this time on, prophetic ministry greatly increased. "Such is the way of our gracious God," an unknown writer says, "that when judgment is near, then testimony is multiplied."
- Remembered. Zechariah's name means "Jah has remembered." A century after Jehu shed blood at Jezreel, God had not forgotten. The reckoning fell on the last king of his line.
- Promised. God told Jehu his sons would reign to the fourth generation. Zechariah was that fourth — so the same word that seated him also set his limit.
- Weighed. God rewards what He approves and punishes what He condemns. He weighs both in the same balance, and both fell on the same house.
- Warned. As the kingdom slid toward its end, prophetic ministry increased. When judgment draws near, God multiplies testimony.
- Wasted. Zechariah had six months to repent and did not use them. When conscience falls silent, men grab for power until the kingdom collapses.
And he did evil in the sight of Jehovah, according as his fathers had done he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.
Zechariah ruled Israel for six months, and the record gives him one sentence of judgment — the same one it gives the kings before him. Two questions follow: what were "the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat," and why would no king of Israel leave them?
Zechariah inherited a throne, and with it a way of life he never questioned. One writer sets the kings of Israel beside the kings of Judah and finds the difference in energy.
Zechariah, the last king descended from Jehu, reigns only six months at Samaria. As we have seen, the godly kings of Judah lacked the energy to abolish the high places. Solomon's negligence about this had worked out with disastrous results among his successors, who were used to patterning themselves on the glorious head of their dynasty. The kings of Israel, by contrast, had walked resolutely in the custom set up by Jeroboam I.
In these quotations, "Jehovah" is the name the ESV prints as "the LORD." The Jeroboam named in this verse is not Zechariah's own father, who carried the same name. Another writer places Zechariah in the family line:
Zechariah was the son of the second Jeroboam and he reigned only six months in Israel. He was the fourth in the line of Jehu to reign, and the last, as the Lord had told Jehu.
The phrase in this verse points back to the first king of the ten northern tribes. What he set up was not one idol but a whole system of worship.
Jeroboam judged by human wisdom and forgot the fear of Jehovah. He made two golden calves to break the powerful links of a shared worship, so that those links would no longer tie his subjects to Judah and Jerusalem. He had to set up a new priesthood, and he devised everything to do with worship out of his own heart. Israel's sin became an established rule, and the phrase, "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin," became the sad title of their first king.
If the calves were so wrong, why did the kings of Israel never remove them? One writer answers that the idols were holding the kingdom together.
The golden calves were a political religion, and it suited the policy of the ten tribes to keep it. Without calves of gold, the ten tribes would have gone back to their allegiance to Jehovah in Jerusalem. The calves were the great means of having another centre. If Jerusalem had been the one centre for the ten tribes as well as for the two, the twelve tribes of Israel would have united. And if they had united in the worship of God, they would have united under the same king. So Jeroboam devised this very crafty scheme to make the split between the two kingdoms clear, wide, and always widening. To make a kingdom he had to make a religion.
The wording of this verse is not unique to Zechariah. The same words follow king after king through the chapter.
Like a death knell, the Spirit marks this man out with the same sad words again and again: "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin." One chapter alone repeats it four times (2 Kings 15:9, 18, 24, 28). There is something appalling about it. This special repetition marks out how terrible this man's sin is in God's sight. It strikes every true heart with a sense of how awful it is. Personal sins are bad enough, but to turn away God's people from the centre which He has set up — what could be worse?
Zechariah's death ended the line of Jehu, just as the Lord had said. His name carried a meaning that fit that ending.
Zechariah's name — Jah has remembered — was strikingly significant. God did not forget the wholesale slaughter of men, many of them perhaps better than their executioner. Though a century had passed, Jah remembered. He called the fifth and last member of the murderer's line to account for the blood that had been shed.
Yet as things grew worse, God sent more warning, not less:
God's eyes were upon "the sinful kingdom," and its sinful kings. From the time of Jeroboam's death, decline set in. Less than seventy years later it ended in the kingdom's final overthrow and break-up. From this time on, prophetic ministry greatly increased. "Such is the way of our gracious God," an unknown writer says, "that when judgment is near to approach, then testimony is multiplied."
- Inherited — Zechariah did evil "as his fathers had done." He never chose the sin. He just never left it, and that was enough.
- Invented — Jeroboam's sin was worship he devised out of his own heart: two calves, a new priesthood, a rival centre to Jerusalem.
- Useful — the calves lasted because they were a political religion. To keep the kingdom, the kings kept the idols.
- Repeated — the same refrain tolls four times in this one chapter. Personal sins are bad enough; turning God's people from His centre is worse.
- Remembered — "Jah has remembered." A century on, God called the last man of Jehu's line to account for blood shed long before. As judgment drew near, He multiplied His warnings.
And Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him, and smote him before the people, and slew him, and reigned in his stead.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And the rest of the acts of Zechariah, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.
Zechariah ruled Israel for six months before Shallum killed him in public. The verse ends his story by pointing to another book, which raises two questions: what was that book of the chronicles, and why has God kept so little of what it held?
The chronicles named here were royal state records, and one writer draws a sharp line between them and Scripture:
Reference is made quite frequently in these books to the chronicles of the kings of Israel or to those of the kings of Judah. These chronicles were drawn up during the course of the reign of all the sovereigns of those times, whether Jewish or Gentile. They have nothing to do with the Word of God. Whatever the Lord did not choose to record or explain is written there. These chronicles have been lost; perhaps someone will one day find some fragments of them. The believer has no need for any of them; he has God's Word. There in God's account he finds all that is necessary for him as well as the divine evaluation of people, events, and things. Writings that are not inspired may record certain deeds, and record them very exactly. But nothing more than human evaluation ever comes with those deeds.
Yet the lost book was not wasted. The writer of Kings drew on it, and another commentator notes who was guiding his hand:
In various places reference is made to books, which contain more about the life of the king in question, on which the writer may have based his accounts... several times to the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel (1 Kings 14:19; 2 Kings 15:31)... The author of the books of Kings was able to use these "references" under the guidance of the Holy Spirit while writing his God-inspired work.
Whatever those records held about Zechariah, Scripture's account of his reign is short and gives him no credit:
Zechariah was the son of the second Jeroboam and he reigned only six months in Israel. He was the fourth in the line of Jehu to reign, and the last, as the Lord had told Jehu (ch. 10:30). He continued the evil ways of the kings of Israel before him. Nothing is said in his favour. Then another Israelite, Shallum, conspired against him and killed him in public (v. 10). So Shallum seized the throne for himself.
Comparing dates leaves roughly eleven years unaccounted for between Jeroboam's death and his son's accession. One commentator uses that gap to teach a discipline about reading Scripture:
The people were probably unwilling to have Zechariah succeed his father to the throne. He appears to have been quite unpopular with most of the nation, for Shallum killed him "before the people" without fear. But God has said next to nothing about this in-between period, and we dare not say more. To speculate here would be worse than folly, since God's wisdom has chosen to give us no record of it; and where no useful end is served, He always hides the sins and errors of His people from the gaze of the curious. Dates elsewhere in Scripture do show that such a gap must have come between the end of Jeroboam's reign and the start of his son's, though God has passed over it in silence.
The next verse explains the whole reign. God promised Jehu that his sons would hold the throne to the fourth generation, and Zechariah was the fourth. Rossier reads God's dealings with that family from both sides at once:
The Lord had kept silent about the blood shed by Jehu at Jezreel... On the contrary, it might have seemed to Jehu that God approved everything he had done. God had said to him, "You have done well in carrying out what is right in My sight," and, I will reward you. Far from it! The Lord had raised him up for judgment and approved him in that. Even so, the time had come when this king's cunning and furious violence must meet their punishment. The Lord's word, "Your sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation," had come true as reward. Now the same word was coming true in retribution and righteous judgment. What a God is ours!
Zechariah means "Jah has remembered," and the timing of his death gives the name its edge:
Zechariah's name — Jah has remembered — carried a striking meaning. God did not forget the wholesale slaughter of men — many of them, perhaps, better than their executioner. Though a century had passed, Jah remembered. He made the inevitable reckoning for blood with the fifth and final member of the murderer's line.
Commentators count the line differently. Grant calls Zechariah the fourth in Jehu's line, matching the promise of four generations. Knapp calls him the fifth and final member of Jehu's house.
- Remembered. The king's name means "Jah has remembered," and his fall showed that a century's delay is not forgetfulness in God.
- Recorded. Men's chronicles kept the deeds. Scripture keeps God's estimate of the man — and only Scripture has survived.
- Rationed. The Spirit used those state records but kept only what serves the reader — six months, with nothing said in Zechariah's favour.
- Reserved. A silent gap sits behind this reign, and where God gives no record we are not to invent one.
- Requited. The same word that rewarded Jehu with four generations closed his house in judgment. God weighs reward and retribution in one balance.
This was the word of Jehovah which he spoke to Jehu saying, Thy sons shall sit upon the throne of Israel unto the fourth [generation]. And so it came to pass.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.