⁹And Jehoiada the priest delivered to the captains of hundreds the spears, and bucklers, and shields, that had been king David’s, which were in the house of God.
9. shields] Hebrew shĕlāṭīm; see note on 1 Chronicles xviii. 7.
¹⁰And he set all the people, every man with his weapon in his hand, from the right side[¹] of the house to the left side of the house, along by the altar and the house, by the king round about.
[¹] Hebrew shoulder.
10. with his weapon] The Hebrew word (shelaḥ) means a “missile weapon.”
¹¹Then they brought out the king’s son, and put the crown upon him[¹], and gave him the testimony, and made him king: and Jehoiada and his sons anointed him; and they said, God save the king[²].
[¹] Or, put upon him the crown and the testimony.
[²] Hebrew Let the king live.
11. put the crown upon him, and gave him the testimony] So LXX. and Hebrew both here and in 2 Kings xi. 12. Note that the words “gave him” are not in the Hebrew What then is the meaning of “put the crown ... the testimony”? It is supposed that by “the testimony” some document inscribed with laws, a charter binding king and people to live according to its precepts, is meant, and that this document was placed in the hands or on the head of Joash along with the crown. The wearing of an inscription or of a document on a solemn occasion, though strange to Western thought, is not alien from Eastern methods; compare Exodus xxviii. 36 ff.; Deuteronomy vi. 6–8; Job xxxi. 35, 36; but evidence of such a ceremony at the coronation of a monarch is lacking. Hence it is tempting to think that we should read as the true text of Kings “put upon him the crown and the bracelets”—a brilliant conjecture made by Wellhausen, which involves in Hebrew only the addition of one consonant to the present text, but again there is no satisfactory evidence that bracelets were put on the king at his coronation: Wellhausen relied on 2 Samuel i. 10. Further, it is very probable that the error (if it is one) was present in the text of Kings which lay before the Chronicler, and therefore in Chronicles “the testimony” may be the original reading.
Jehoiada and his sons] In Kings, “they anointed him” (without specifying the actors).