2 Chronicles 22:1-4
Introduction
Ahaziah beans to reign; and reigns wickedly under the counsels of his bad mother, 2Chr 22:1-4. He is slain by Jehu, who destroys all the house of Ahab, 2Chr 22:5-9. Athaliah destroys all the seed royal of Judah, except Joash, who is hidden by his nurse in the temple six years, 2Chr 22:10-12. Verse 1 Made Ahaziah his youngest son king - All the others had been slain by the Arabians, etc.; see the preceding chapter, 2Chr 21:17 (note). Verse 2 Forty and two years old was Ahaziah - See the note on 2Kgs 8:26. Ahaziah might have been twenty-two years old, according to 2Kgs 8:26 (note), but he could not have been forty-two, as stated here, without being two years older than his own father! See the note there. The Syriac and Arabic have twenty-two, and the Septuagint, in some copies, twenty. And it is very probable that the Hebrew text read so originally; for when numbers were expressed by single letters, it was easy to mistake מ mem, Forty, for כ caph, Twenty. And if this book was written by a scribe who used the ancient Hebrew letters, now called the Samaritan, the mistake was still more easy and probable, as the difference between caph and mem is very small, and can in many instances be discerned only by an accustomed eye. The reading in 2Kgs 8:26 is right, and any attempt to reconcile this in Chronicles with that is equally futile and absurd. Both readings cannot be true; is that therefore likely to be genuine that makes the son two years older than the father who begat him? Apage hae nugae! Verse 3 His mother was his counsellor - Athaliah, the wicked daughter of a wicked parent, and the wicked spouse of an unprincipled king.
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