And they abandoned the house of the LORD, the God of their fathers, and served the Asherim and the idols. And wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this guilt of theirs.
We have here a sad account of the degeneracy and apostasy of Joash. God had done great things for him; he had done something for God; but now he proved ungrateful to his God and false to the engagements he had laid himself under to him. How has the gold become dim, and the most fine gold changed! Here we find, I. The occasions of his apostasy.
Commenting on 2 Chronicles 24:15-27
And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest,.... The spirit of prophecy, as the Targum; he was moved and influenced by it to speak what is after related: which stood above the people; in a desk, or sort of pulpit, in which the priests stood when they taught the people, that they might be the better heard, like...
wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem--The particular mention of Jerusalem as involved in the sin implies that the neglect of the temple and the consequent idolatry received not only the king's toleration, but his sanction; and it naturally occurs to ask how, at his mature age, such a total abandonment of a place with which all his early recollections were associated can be accounted for.