2 Chronicles 22 Devotional

Mercy Behind Closed Doors

“And Joash remained hidden with them in the house of God for six years while Athaliah ruled the land.”2 Chronicles 22:12 (BSB)

Ahaziah reigns for only a year, and the chapter is blunt about why it went so badly. His mother Athaliah counseled him in wickedness, and Ahab's family became his advisers, to his ruin (22:3-4). His downfall, the narrator says, came from God, when he went to visit Joram and was caught up in Jehu's judgment on Ahab's house (22:7-9).

Then Athaliah sets out to wipe out the entire royal family of Judah (22:10). If she succeeds, David's line is gone. But a princess named Jehoshabeath, the wife of Jehoiada the priest, takes young Joash and hides him with his nurse in a bedroom (22:11). For six years he stays hidden in the house of God while Athaliah rules (22:12). God's promise to David survives in a small child, kept out of sight, under the very roof of the temple. God often works unseen while evil seems to rule. A hidden work is not an absent one, and you can trust him in seasons when you see little of what he is doing.

To think about: Where does God seem absent to you right now, and what would it mean to trust that he may be working out of sight?