Therefore, O Lord, God of Israel, keep for your servant my father David that which you promised him, saying, ‘There shall never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children keep to their way, to walk in my law as you have walked before me.’

Meanwhile, all Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children.

see, the Lord will bring a great plague on your people, your children, your wives, and all your possessions,

But Jehoshabeath, the king’s daughter, took Joash son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the king’s children who were about to be killed; she put him and his nurse in a bedroom. Thus Jehoshabeath daughter of King Jehoram and wife of the priest Jehoiada—because she was a sister of Ahaziah—hid him from Athaliah, so that she did not kill him;

For the children of Athaliah, that wicked woman, had broken into the house of God and had even used all the dedicated things of the house of the Lord for the Baals.

But he did not put their children to death, according to what is written in the law, in the book of Moses, where the Lord commanded, “The parents shall not be put to death for the children or the children be put to death for the parents, but all shall be put to death for their own sins.”

For as you return to the Lord, your kindred and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him.”

They were enrolled with all their little children, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, the whole multitude, for they were faithful in keeping themselves holy.