Lives of Scripture

Jehosheba was the daughter of King Jehoram of Judah, and, uniquely for a princess, the wife of the priest Jehoiada (2 Chronicles 22:11). When her brother King Ahaziah was killed by Jehu, their mother Athaliah seized the opportunity to eliminate every rival to the throne and "proceeded to destroy all the royal offspring" of the house of Judah (2 Kings 11:1). In the middle of this massacre, Jehosheba took Ahaziah's infant son Joash, stole him away from among the king's sons who were about to be put to death, and hid him along with his nurse in a bedroom (11:2). She kept him concealed in the house of the LORD for six years while Athaliah reigned over the land, unaware that an heir had survived (11:3; 2 Chronicles 22:11-12). Her husband Jehoiada later orchestrated Joash's public coronation as the rightful king at age seven, ending Athaliah's usurpation (2 Kings 11:4-16). Jehosheba's quiet, dangerous act of hiding one baby in a moment of royal bloodshed preserved the entire Davidic royal line at the point of its greatest threat -- without her, the promised line through which the Messiah would come could have been extinguished entirely in a single afternoon.