2 Chronicles 24:20-27: a reflection

20The Spirit of God came on Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest; and he stood above the people, and said to them, “God says, ‘Why do you disobey the LORD’s commandments, so that you can’t prosper? Because you have forsaken the LORD, he has also forsaken you.’” 21They conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the LORD’s house. 22Thus Joash the king didn’t remember the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but killed his son. When he died, he said, “May the LORD look at it, and repay it.” 23At the end of the year, the army of the Syrians came up against him. They came to Judah and Jerusalem, and destroyed all the princes of the people from among the people, and sent all their plunder to the king of Damascus. 24For the army of the Syrians came with a small company of men; and the LORD delivered a very great army into their hand, because they had forsaken the LORD, the God of their fathers. So they executed judgment on Joash. 25When they had departed from him (for they left him seriously wounded), his own servants conspired against him for the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the priest, and killed him on his bed, and he died. They buried him in David’s city, but they didn’t bury him in the tombs of the kings. 26These are those who conspired against him: Zabad the son of Shimeath the Ammonitess and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith the Moabitess. 27Now concerning his sons, the greatness of the burdens laid on him, and the rebuilding of God’s house, behold, they are written in the commentary of the book of the kings. Amaziah his son reigned in his place.

King Joash had been rescued and raised by the priest Jehoiada, who had preserved his life and guided his reign. But after Jehoiada died, Joash drifted, and when Jehoiada's own son Zechariah stood up, filled with God's Spirit, to call the people back, Joash gave the order to have him killed in the very courts of the temple. He repaid the man who had saved him by taking the life of that man's son. Scripture notes the bitter truth plainly: he did not remember the kindness Jehoiada had shown him.

The story is a study in the corrosion of ingratitude. As long as Jehoiada lived, Joash did well; without that steadying influence, and having forgotten all he owed, the king turned on the messenger who told him the truth. Forgetting kindness made him capable of terrible cruelty. The judgment that followed was severe, but the deepest tragedy is the forgotten debt, a man who could not recall the love that had once saved him.

Ingratitude is more dangerous than it looks. When we forget the kindness others have shown us, and above all the mercy God has shown us, our hearts grow hard and capable of wrongs we would once have thought impossible. Guard your memory. Hold onto the debts of love you owe, to those who have helped you and to the God who saved you. A grateful heart, one that remembers kindness, is protected from much evil.

Lord, Joash forgot the kindness that had saved him, and a forgotten debt made his heart cruel. Guard me from that same forgetting. Help me to remember the love others have shown me, and above all the mercy you have shown me at the cross. Keep my heart grateful and soft, protected by memory from the hardness that forgetting brings. Amen.