2 Chronicles 24:15

DEATH AND BURIAL OF JEHOIADA. NATIONAL APOSTACY AND MURDER OF ZECHARIAH BEN JEHOIADA THE PROPHET (2 Chronicles 24:15).

This section is wholly wanting in the Kings. It serves as a moral explanation of the after-history of Joash, recorded there and here (2 Kings 12:17).

(15) But Jehoiada... when he died. — Literally, And Jehoiada became old, and was satisfied with days, and he died. The verb “to be satisfied” is only so used here and in 1 Chronicles 23:1. (Comp. Psalms 91:16.) The ancient expression was adjectival, “full of days” (Genesis 25:8; Genesis 35:29; Job 42:17; 1 Chronicles 29:28, only).

An hundred and thirty years old. — According to some modern physiologists, one hundred and five is the proper limit of human life; that is to say, five times the period usually required for the attainment of full growth. Under favourable conditions it is even supposed that life might extend to half a century longer (M. Flourens, of the French Academy of Sciences). When persons of advanced age (eighty to one hundred) die, it is usually from preventible causes, As a French medical writer has remarked, “Men do not commonly die; they kill themselves.” The ago of Jehoiada, then, would seem to be not impossible, although an error of transcription in our text is also not impossible.