Was Joash buried with his fathers, or outside the tombs of the kings?

Both accounts put the grave in the same place, the city of David. Kings uses its usual closing formula for a king of Judah, ‘buried with his fathers in the city of David’, which tells us that he was laid to rest in the royal city among his family’s dead. Chronicles adds a sharper detail: he was not given a place in the royal tombs themselves. The Hebrew preposition ‘im (‘with’) can mean ‘beside’ or ‘near’; the BSB renders the same formula in 2 Kings 15:7 as “buried near them in the City of David”.

Chronicles also tells us why Joash was kept out. After the death of Jehoiada the priest, who had saved and raised him, Joash turned to idols and had Jehoiada’s son Zechariah stoned in the temple court (2 Chronicles 24:17–22). The contrast is deliberate: Jehoiada, a priest, was buried “in the city of David among the kings, because he had done good in Israel” (2 Chronicles 24:16), while the king he had raised was refused that honour. The first-century historian Josephus tells it the same way: Joash was buried in Jerusalem, ‘but not in the royal sepulchers of his forefathers, because of his impiety’.

Chronicles says the same of Jehoram, Uzziah and Ahaz, so this is a pattern in the book, not a slip. Keil and Delitzsch concluded that ‘the two statements are not irreconcilable’.