It’s become something of a recurring theme in recent weeks, but normally Parshat Shekalim is read before its occurrence in the natural order in Ki Tissa, and usually this haftara is not read immediately after the haftara for Ki Tissa as it is this year. Once again we discover unique and interesting synergies because our haftara this week presents something of an epilogue to last week’s tale of Achav and Izevel, and of Eliyahu HaNavi.
Yehoash (also known as Yoash) is the grandson of that wicked couple, elevated to the monarchy as a child as a result of intrigue and rebellion and the violent deaths of the adults of the House of the Kings of Yehuda. Under the tutelage of the Kohen Gadol, Yehoyada, Yehoash learns of the customs of Israel, the Torah laws and the service in the Beit HaMikdash. In our haftara we learn of his efforts to restore the practice of collecting the half-shekel – the topic of our special pre-Pesach reading – for the purpose of sustaining the Beit HaMikdash and purchasing its necessities.
But if we go forward a little further and follow the sordid saga of Achav and Izevel to its bitter resolution, we see even this temporary idyll turned dark and bloody. Of Hashem we know that at times He imputes the transgressions of the fathers to their sons and grandsons to the third and fourth generations. (Shemot 20:4 and Devarim 5:8). The transgressions of Achav and Izevel were legion, and unfortunately their story does not have a happy ending.
In our haftara, as noted, Yoash is rededicating the Beit HaMikdash and purifying its precincts, and returning Israel to the faith of their fathers after his parents and grandparents had led them after the Baals and Ashtarot. In this he was the student of Yehoyada. After the death of Yehoyada and the waning of his influence, there was a widespread return of Israel to idolatry. The kohanim tried to speak and teach against this but they were widely disregarded. There was a prevailing sense that Yoash, although guided by good intentions, was hapless and ineffective.
Then Zecharia HaNavi, the son of Yehoyada, rose up among the people demanding to know why they persisted in their offenses against Hashem. Zecharia felt empowered, according to some midrashim (see especially Kohelet Rabbah 10) to speak so frankly against the king because of the special status he enjoyed as the son of the king’s tutor and patron. But Yoash took this as an affront to his own authority and decreed that Zecharia was a traitor and a rebel, sentencing him to death. Zecharia was seized in the courtyard of the Beit HaMikdash and stoned to death. According to the well-known and horrifying midrash, the blood of Zecharia boiled on the floor of the Beit HaMikdash until its destruction.
In the same midrash (Kohelet Rabbah 10), we learn in the name of Rabbi Yudan that the people of Israel committed seven grave sins on the day that Zecharia was slain. And the midrash doesn’t say that Yoash or his servants committed these sins, but all of Israel shared the guilt and all of Israel ultimately shared in the punishment. They slaughtered a kohen, a navi, and a judge of Israel; they spilled pure blood (i.e., Zecharia was murdered although he was without blame); they tainted the interior courtyard of the Beit HaMikdash (which Yoash and Yehoyada had labored to purify!); and they shed the blood on Shabbat which also happened to be Yom Kippur.
Perhaps it isn’t such a nice thought for approaching Pesach, but we do have an extra month still to prepare and reflect this year. The wickedness of men and women can live long after they are gone. The blood still seethes until the crime has been properly atoned for, and some crimes may be too terrible for an individual or even a generation to expiate.
