2 Chronicles 22:2 注釈

We read, in the foregoing chapter, of the carrying away of Jehoram's sons and his wives; but here we find one of his sons and one of his wives left, his son Ahaziah and his wife Athaliah, both reserved to be the shame and plague of his family. I. Ahaziah was the shame of it as a partaker, 1. In the sin, and, 2. In the destruction, of the house of Ahab (Ch2 22:1-9). II. Athaliah was the plague of it, for she destroyed all the seed-royal, and usurped the throne (Ch2 22:10-12).

INTRODUCTION TO 2 CHRONICLES 22 In this chapter we have an account of the wicked reign of Ahaziah the son of Jehoram, Ch2 22:1 of his death, the occasion and manner of it, Ch2 22:5 and of his mother Athaliah destroying all the royal seed, excepting one, who was hid by the king's sister, and assuming the government to herself, Ch2 22:10.

Forty two and years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign,.... In Kg2 8:26, he is said to be but twenty two years old at his accession to the throne, which is undoubtedly most correct; for this makes him to be two years older than his father when he died, who was thirty two when he began to reign, and reigned eight years, Ch2 21:20, different ways are taken to solve this difficulty; some refer this to Jehoram, that he was forty two when Ahaziah began to reign, but he was but forty when he died; others to the age of Athaliah his mother, as if he was the son of one that was forty two, when he himself was but twenty two; but no instance is given of any such way of writing, nor any just reason for it; others make these forty two years reach to the twentieth of his son Joash, his age twenty two, his reign one, Athaliah six, and Joash thirteen; but the two principal solutions which seem most to satisfy learned men are, the one, that he was twenty two when he began to reign in his father's lifetime, and forty two when he began to reign in his own right; but then he must reign twenty years with his father, whereas his father reigned but eight years: to make this clear they observe (b), as Kimchi and Abarbinel, from whom this solution is taken, that he reigned eight years very happily when his son was twenty two, and taken on the throne with him, after which he reigned twenty more ingloriously, and died, when his son was forty two; this has been greedily received by many, but without any proof: the other is, that these forty two years are not the date of the age of Ahaziah, but of the reign of the family of Omri king of Israel; so the Jewish chronology (c); but how impertinent must the use of such a date be in the account of the reign of a king of Judah? all that can be said is, his mother was of that family, which is a trifling reason for such an unusual method of reckoning: it seems best to acknowledge a mistake of the copier, which might easily be made through a similarity of the numeral letters, forty two, for twenty two (d); and the rather since some copies of the Septuagint, and the Syriac and Arabic versions, read twenty two, as in Kings; particularly the Syriac version, used in the church of Antioch from the most early times; a copy of which Bishop Usher obtained at a very great price, and in which the number is twenty two, as he assures us; and that the difficulty here is owing to the carelessness of the transcribers is owned by Glassius (e), a warm advocate for the integrity of the Hebrew text, and so by Vitringa (f): and indeed it is more to the honour of the sacred Scriptures to acknowledge here and there a mistake in the copiers, especially in the historical books, where there is sometimes a strange difference of names and numbers, than to give in to wild and distorted interpretations of them, in order to reconcile them, where there is no danger with respect to any article of faith or manners; and, as a learned man (g) has observed of the New Testament,"it is an invincible reason for the Scripture's part, that other escapes should be so purposely and infinitely let pass, and yet no saving and substantial part at all scarce moved out of its place; to say the truth, these varieties of readings, in a few by-places, do the same office to the main Scriptures, as the variation of the compass to the whole magnet of the earth, the mariner knows so much the better for these how to steer his course;''and, with respect to some various readings in the Old Testament, Dr. Owen (h) observes, God has suffered this lesser variety to fall out, in or among the copies we have, for the quickening and exercising of our diligence in our search of his word: he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri, see Kg2 8:26. (b) In Hieron. Trad. Heb. in Paralip. fol. 85. E. (c) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 17. So Ben Gersom. (d) See Kennicott's Dissert. 1. p. 98. (e) Philolog. Sacr. p. 114. (f) Hypotypol Hist. Sacr. p. 67. (g) J. Gregory's Preface to his Works. (h) Divine Original of the Scripture, p. 14.

Ahaziah beans to reign; and reigns wickedly under the counsels of his bad mother, Ch2 22:1-4. He is slain by Jehu, who destroys all the house of Ahab, Ch2 22:5-9. Athaliah destroys all the seed royal of Judah, except Joash, who is hidden by his nurse in the temple six years, Ch2 22:10-12.

Forty and two years old was Ahaziah - See the note on Kg2 8:26. Ahaziah might have been twenty-two years old, according to Kg2 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 Kg2 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!

AHAZIAH SUCCEEDING JEHORAM, REIGNS WICKEDLY. (Ch2 22:1-9) the inhabitants of Jerusalem made Ahaziah . . . king--or Jehoahaz (Ch2 21:17). All his older brothers having been slaughtered by the Arab marauders, the throne of Judah rightfully belonged to him as the only legitimate heir.

Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign--(Compare Kg2 8:26). According to that passage, the commencement of his reign is dated in the twenty-second year of his age, and, according to this, in the forty-second year of the kingdom of his mother's family [LIGHTFOOT]. "If Ahaziah ascended the throne in the twenty-second year of his life, he must have been born in his father's nineteenth year. Hence, it may seem strange that he had older brothers; but in the East they marry early, and royal princes had, besides the wife of the first rank, usually concubines, as Jehoram had (Ch2 21:17); he might, therefore, in the nineteenth year of his age, very well have several sons" [KEIL] (compare Ch2 21:20; Kg2 8:17). Athaliah the daughter of Omri--more properly, "granddaughter." The expression is used loosely, as the statement was made simply for the purpose of intimating that she belonged to that idolatrous race.