(D9) The Story about Joash that Was Told, but Not in the Right Place

Joash the king of Israel was marked in the eyes of the Judean scribes, because he was the only one of the kings of Israel who captured the king of Judah on the battlefield, who conquered a city in Judah and destroyed parts of the wall of Jerusalem. Despite the information the historiographer had about Joash’s successes, as someone who was close to the prophet Elisha, as someone in whose days Israel was freed from the yoke of Aram Damascus, and most importantly – as someone who won a complete victory in the war against Judah, they refused to give him the credit and insert these stories into the frame formulae about the days of his reign. They got the idea for this from the decision to insert the set of Elisha stories in the days of Ahaziah, son of Ahab, in accordance with the ancient prophetic source that they inserted within the historiographical description, and which linked Elijah and Elisha to each other as two prophets who acted in sequence one after the other. In a similar way, the historian placed the story of Elisha’s death after Joash’s final formula, even though it was a central part of the story, and also placed the story of Joash’s victory within the story of the defeated Judean king Amaziah and not within the story of the victorious Israeli king. As a testimony to Amaziah’s small victory, the historiographer added another small jab in Joash’s direction and described how Amaziah continued to live another 15 years after Joash, a true fact according to the data in the opening formulae, but a well-directed stab from a literary and conceptual point of view. This story is a wonderful testimony to a case where the question is not what was told or omitted, but why what was told was not placed where it was so natural and right to place it. How could the historiographers express their opinion about an important and central historical figure, about whose achievements and successes they knew well, but decided to try and make these successes disappear from the main story about this king, and convey a clear message, while clarifying their position and opinion about King Joash, by detaching the stories from his time and placing them outside of the frame verses about his days, while demonstrably leaving the description of the years of Joash’s reign as a short, empty, casual description, almost devoid of details.