2 Kings 12:19 - Exposition

And the rest of the acts of Joash, and all that he did, are they not written in the chronicles of the kings of Judah? This formal phrase, with which he concludes his account of almost every Jewish king ( 1 Kings 14:29 ; 1 Kings 15:7 , 1 Kings 15:23 ; 1 Kings 22:45 ; 2 Kings 8:23 ; 2 Kings 14:18 ; 2 Kings 15:6 , etc.), cannot be regarded as an acknowledgment by the author of any special or designed reticence with respect to the reign of Joash. We must suppose him unconscious of any such design. He had to omit much in every case; in the present he happened to omit all the darker shades; and the result was an over-favorable portraiture of the monarch. But, in the providence of God, complete historical justice was secured by the labors and researches of a second inspired writer.