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2 Kings 12:21 says Joash was buried with his fathers in the city of David — the standard royal-burial formula. 2 Chronicles 24:25 says he was buried in the city of David but explicitly "not in the sepulchres of the kings," because of his apostasy. The Chronicler is rewriting the Kings account to insert a posthumous demerit.
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
Cited passages
His servants arose, and made a conspiracy, and struck Joash at the house of Millo, on the way that goes down to Silla. For Jozacar the son of Shimeath, and Jehozabad the son of Shomer, his servants, struck him, and he died; and they buried him with his fathers in David’s city; and Amaziah his son reigned in his place.
Cited passages
For the army of the Syrians came with a small company of men; and Yahweh delivered a very great army into their hand, because they had forsaken Yahweh, the God of their fathers. So they executed judgment on Joash. When they had departed from him (for they left him very sick), his own servants conspired against him for the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the priest, and killed him on his bed, and he died. They buried him in David’s city, but they didn’t bury him in the tombs of the kings.
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Leans toward a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The contradiction here is real but operates at the level of evaluation rather than brute geography, and pinning down exactly where the texts diverge is the whole point. The Deuteronomistic Historian closes Joash (Jehoash) of Judah's reign in 2 Kings 12:20-21 with the standard royal formula: he was killed in a conspiracy, "they buried him with his fathers in the city of David," and his son Amaziah succeeded him. The phrase "buried with his fathers" (Hebrew *wayyiqqaver 'im-'avotaw*) is the Historian's stock notice of an honorable royal interment. The Chronicler, working from the Kings narrative, reproduces "the city of David" but appends a pointed qualifier in 2 Chronicles 24:25: "and they buried him in the city of David, but they buried him not in the sepulchres of the kings" (*we-lo' qevaruhu be-qivrot ha-melakim*).
The apologetic harmonization, defended by Eugene Merrill and Martin Selman, treats the two as compatible at different levels of specificity. Kings gives the general fact — burial in the city of David — while Chronicles supplies a further detail, that within that city he was not laid in the royal tombs proper. "With his fathers" need denote only ancestral burial within the Davidic city, not a specific sepulchre, so there is no logical contradiction: a man can be buried in the city of David and not in the kings' sepulchres simultaneously. As a matter of bare logic this is correct, and it is why this entry is better classed as partially harmonized rather than a flat factual collision.
What the leveling harmonization obscures is the literary and theological character of the Chronicler's change. Sara Japhet, Ralph Klein, Raymond Dillard, and Steven McKenzie all read the added clause as a deliberate redactional comment driven by the Chronicler's pervasive theology of immediate retribution: faithful kings prosper and are honored in death, apostate kings die badly and are denied honor. Joash fits the schema precisely — he begins well under the priest Jehoiada, restores the temple, then after Jehoiada's death leads the nation into idolatry, murders Jehoiada's son Zechariah, suffers an Aramean invasion, and is assassinated by his own servants. The denial of royal burial is the narrative seal on this decline. The Chronicler deploys the identical device elsewhere: Jehoram is buried in the city of David "but not in the sepulchres of the kings" (2 Chronicles 21:20), Uzziah the leper is buried "with his fathers in the field of burial which belonged to the kings" but not in the tombs themselves (2 Chronicles 26:23), and Ahaz is brought into the city "but they brought him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israel" (2 Chronicles 28:27). The recurrence shows a systematic editorial hand, not four independent archival memories.
Gary Knoppers and Klein accordingly classify the burial notices as Chronistic theology rather than recovered historical data. The Chronicler had no new information about Joash's tomb; he was interpreting the Kings record through his retributive grid, converting an unremarkable royal burial into a posthumous demerit. So the texts do not collide over the physical location of a body — both place it in the city of David — but over the canonical verdict on Joash's reign, which Kings leaves neutral and Chronicles marks as disgraced.
Where the critical reading lands: harmonizable as a general-versus-specific report at the level of geography, but the divergence is a genuine, theologically motivated rewriting of Joash's standing; the tension is real and resolves only by recognizing the Chronicler's redactional program.
Sources for this reading