King Jehoshaphat dies and his son Jehoram becomes king. Jehoram aims to stay king, so he kills all his brothers, ensuring that only he can claim the throne. He's also married to a daughter of the evil Israelite king Ahab and followers her ways, which are evil.
He receives a letter from the prophet Elijah*, rebuking him for not following God. The letter lists a series of calamities to befall Jehoram, including a disease of the bowels which will plague him until, um, his "bowels come out, day after day, because of the disease" (21:15). Uh...did Elijah just curse a king with extreme diarrhea? Well, let's just see what happens in verse 19. "In course of time, at the end of two years, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great agony." Um...wow. Nice one, Elijah. I think I would rather have Elisha's BEARS!
So Ahaziah is now king. He's also evil and teams up with the king of Israel to fight some Arameans. Here, the Chronicler briefly covers the story of Jehu killing both the king of Israel and Ahaziah, the king of Judah. Then Ahaziah's mother kills the rest of the royal family so she can rule. But little Joash hides in a room for half a dozen years. Duh duh dun!
Now we get the story of the super good priest Jehoiada, who conspires to anoint the boy king and kill Ahaziah's mother. All this comes to pass and the 7 year old becomes king. The Chronicler has a high opinion of Jehoiada, for he says that Joash was a good king until the priest died. Then things started to fall apart.
Joash strayed from God and things went bad. Then Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, prophesied against Joash because of the evil he was doing. Joash killed him. Ahem. Joash killed the son of the dude that made him king! Joash would still be locked up in that room if it was for Zechariah's father! Dude! But Joash's servants notice the cruelty, conspire, and kill the king.
His son, the amazing Amaziah, takes the throne. And then he killed the dudes who killed his father. Then he has a major victory over Edom and starts worshiping the foreign gods he brings back with him. Full of hubris, he challenges the king of Israel to battle. That king says he'll crush Amaziah, so he should just go away. Amaziah doesn't listen, goes to war anyway, and totally gets his butt kicked. After this embarrassing defeat, some of the locals are like "screw this." They try to kill the king, but he flees. They catch up with him, though, and Amaziah is no more.
*Since Elijah and Elisha are active mainly in the northern kingdom of Israel, and the Chronicler says poo poo to Israel, mentions of them are scarce in this book. Unfortunately, that probably means the Chronicler won't cover Elisha's awesome power to have BEARS kill children.
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