Thus Joash the king did not remember the kindness that Jehoiada, Zechariah’s father, had shown him, but killed his son. And when he was dying, he said, “May the LORD see and avenge!”
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
For the army of the Syrians came with a small company of men,.... It consisted but of few: and the Lord delivered a very great host into their hand; which the king of Judah and his princes had got together to oppose them: because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers; therefore the Lord forsook them, and gave them up into the hand...
when he died, he said, The Lord look upon it and require it--These dying words, if they implied a vindictive imprecation, exhibit a striking contrast to the spirit of the first Christian martyr (Act 7:60). But, instead of being the expression of a personal wish, they might be the utterance of a prophetic doom.