2 Chronicleschapter 22
12 verses · Ezra, by tradition · 450 to 400 BC · History
Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem one year. His mother’s name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri.
Introduction
Ezra, by tradition, History, 2 Chronicles Overview.
This chapter was written for a remnant that had nearly disappeared inside a foreign empire. It covers a single year of one king and the first days of a queen who took the throne by murder. The house of David and the house of Ahab are now bound together by marriage, and the cost of that bond comes due here. Listen for the counsellors who shaped the young king. Then watch for the woman who acts in secret while the royal family is being destroyed. The whole promise to David rests, for a time, on one small child.
Context
- Who
- A people who knew the line of David had once come down to a single infant
- What
- The one-year reign of Ahaziah, his death in Jehu's purge of the house of Ahab, and Athaliah's slaughter of the royal family, from which one infant is hidden.
- Where
- Jerusalem, Ramoth-gilead, Jezreel, Samaria, and a bedroom in the temple precinct.
- When
- About 841 BC, the year of Ahaziah and the start of Athaliah's six years.
- Why
- To show that the LORD kept His promise to David alive through the narrowest escape in the history of the line.
Historical context
The chapter belongs to Ahaziah, who reigned one year, and then to his mother Athaliah of the house of Omri, who held the throne for six. Thiele's reconstruction places the accession and the seizure at about 841 BC.
Show the rest of the historical context, 5 more paragraphs
The places are Jerusalem, the battlefield at Ramoth-gilead, Jezreel, Samaria where the king was found, and a bedchamber in the temple precinct.
The occasion of his death is someone else's revolution, since Jehu was anointed to cut off the house of Ahab and Ahaziah was caught in the purge while visiting a wounded northern relative.
A first hearer knew why Athaliah moved as she did. Killing every possible claimant was the standard method by which a usurper secured a throne in that world, and she was thorough.
A first hearer knew why the rescue worked. Jehoshabeath was a king's daughter and the wife of Jehoiada the priest, which gave her access to the royal children and a place to hide one.
The age given at the accession differs between the two books, twenty-two in one place and forty-two in the other, and the larger figure would make him older than his father. The difference is read as a slip in copying a numeral, the commonest scribal error there is.
Significance
For six years the promise to David was a child in a store room, and the only people who knew were a priest and his wife.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The first hearers were themselves a remnant that had nearly disappeared inside a foreign empire. This chapter told them the promise had survived a narrower margin than their own.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
Chronicles stands among the Writings in the Hebrew canon, and the annual cycle of Torah portions and their Haftarot draws on other books. A Jewish reader meets this chapter in study rather than in a reading appointed for a Sabbath or a feast, and the site's own reading data records the same for every chapter.
The chapter reaches the synagogue through the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah. Rashi quotes a poem of Eleazar Kara ha-Kallir composed for the Zichronot of the first day, in the section set to the letter nun (Rashi on II Chronicles 22:11:1). The poem turns the hiding of the infant Joash in the bed chamber into a plea for remembrance and atonement. A worshipper who hears the Zichronot is hearing this chapter behind them.
How it is read
The age given to Ahaziah is the chapter's first question, and Rashi takes it on at length. The parallel in Kings reads twenty-two, and on the plain reckoning the son would be two years older than his father (Rashi on II Chronicles 22:2:1). Rashi answers with a count that begins two years before Jehoram was born, when the decree fell on the house of David that it would end with the house of Ahab. He names his source as Seder Olam chapter 17 and the Tosefta of Sotah 12:3, and says he could not find in Scripture that Jehoshaphat married a daughter of Omri. He then works the arithmetic from the thirty-first year of Asa and reaches forty-two.
The slaughter of the royal seed is read as a thing foreseen. Rashi holds that David saw in the holy spirit that in the eighth generation his descendants would be slain by Athaliah (Rashi on II Chronicles 22:10:1). He reads the psalm for the conductor on the sheminith as David's prayer that his seed survive for a remembrance. Rashi also weighs the two readings of the word for the king's dying sons. One reading has them already dead, the other has them dying in agony over time, and he says both the traditional reading and the Masoretic text have authority.
The hiding place is read two ways in Rashi's own line. The Targum renders the bed chamber as the room where the priests sleep, and Rashi of Troyes on Kings took it as the attic over the Holy of Holies (Rashi on II Chronicles 22:11:1).
Metzudat David comments at 22:1:1, 22:2:1, 22:4:1, 22:5:1, 22:7:1, 22:9:1 and 22:12:1. Radak is heavier on this chapter than on any other in the range, at 22:2:1, 22:5:1, 22:6:1, 22:7:1, 22:8:1, 22:9:1, 22:10:1 and 22:11:1. Malbim comments at 22:3:1. The corpus holds no English text for any of them, so all three stand cited and unquoted.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries seven locators on this chapter and holds the locator alone for each. The chronology is carried at Seder Olam Rabbah 17:2 and 18:2 and at Sifrei Zuta 12:34:1. The reign is carried at Sanhedrin 102b:18. The rest are Eikhah Rabbah Petichta 23, Otzar Midrashim Baraita of Rabbi Pinchas Ben Yair 1:36 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber Vaera 16:3.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on II Chronicles, the Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg (Sefaria, CC-BY); Malbim, Malbim on II Chronicles 22, cited by ref from the Sefaria corpus, which holds no English version of it; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on II Chronicles 22, cited by ref from the Sefaria corpus, which holds no English version of it; Radak, Radak on II Chronicles 22, cited by ref from the Sefaria corpus, which holds no English version of it; The Sefaria corpus on disk, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/2-chronicles/22.json, fetched 2026-09-19; The reading data of this site, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed in this lane: 2-chronicles parashot 0, haftarah uses 0, hasSynagogueReading true for 0 of 36 chapters.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Ahaziah walks in Ahab's counsel and dies with Ahab's house
2 Chronicles 22:1-2
made Ahaziah, the youngest son: Only the youngest son is left to crown. The Hebrew text of Chronicles gives his age as forty-two, and the Berean text follows 2 Kings 8:26 with twenty-two. The gap is read as a scribal slip between the Hebrew letters for twenty and forty.
2 Chronicles 22:1
“Made Ahaziah his youngest son king - All the others had been slain by the Arabians, etc.; see the preceding chapter, 2Ch 21:17 (note).”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
His mother’s name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri: Barnes gives the plain arithmetic for the age: Jehoram died at forty, at 21:20, so a son of forty-two is impossible. The Berean text follows 2 Kings 8:26 with twenty-two. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown record Lightfoot's older view, that forty-two counts the years of the house of Omri.
2 Chronicles 22:2
“Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign--(Compare 2Ki 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].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 more voices on this verse
2 Chronicles 22:2
“Some make this forty-two to be the age of his mother Athaliah, for in the original it is, he was the son of forty-two years, that is, the son of a mother that was of that age; and justly is her age put for his, in reproach to him, because she managed him, and did what she would--she, in effect, reigned, and he had little more than the title of king.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Chronicles 22:2
“Forty and two years old was Ahaziah - See the note on 2Ki 8:26. Ahaziah might have been twenty-two years old, according to 2Ki 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.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Chronicles 22:3-6
his mother was his counselor: The march to Ramoth-gilead and the wound Joram carries back to Jezreel repeat the account of 2 Kings 8:28-29. Chronicles adds the cause: “his mother was his counselor in wickedness”. Verse 4 names the house of Ahab as the counselors who worked his destruction “after the death of his father”.
2 Chronicles 22:3
“His mother was his counsellor - Athaliah, the wicked daughter of a wicked parent, and the wicked spouse of an unprincipled king.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
to his destruction they were his counselors: Gill suggests that these counselors came from the court of Israel, sent for by Athaliah after Jehoram died, and that their advice ruined the king. Matthew Henry notes that they drew the young king into Joram's war at Ramoth-gilead, the first step toward his death.
2 Chronicles 22:4
“Wherefore he did evil in the sight of the Lord, like the house of Ahab,.... See 2Ki 8:27. for they were his counsellors, after the death of his father, to his destruction; both of soul and body; for they gave him bad advice, both in religious and civil things; these were some of the family or court of the king of Israel, that his mother sent for after his father's death to be of his council.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 22:4
“Those that debauch young men destroy them. It was bad enough that they exposed him to the sword of the Syrians, drawing him in to join with Joram king of Israel in an expedition to Ramoth-Gilead, where Joram was wounded, an expedition that was not for his honour.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
to fight against Hazael king of Aram at Ramoth-gilead: Ahaziah repeats his grandfather's error, for Jehoshaphat had gone to war at Ramoth-gilead beside Ahab. Gill notes that the counsel of verse 4 governed his politics as well as his worship. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown add that the names of Jehu and Hazael both appear on Assyrian monuments.
2 Chronicles 22:5
“Went with Jehoram - See on 2Ki 8:28 (note).”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 22:5
“He walked also after their counsel,.... Did as they advised him, as in matters of religion, so in political things, of which there is an instance in this and the next verse; of which see Gill on 2Ki 8:28, 2Ki 8:29.”
went down to Jezreel to visit Joram son of Ahab: The Hebrew text names the visiting king Azariah, as the heading in Jamieson, Fausset and Brown shows. The Berean text reads Ahaziah with the parallel at 2 Kings 8:29. Matthew Henry notes that the visit fell at the very time Jehu was carrying out God's sentence on Ahab's family.
2 Chronicles 22:6
“Azariah went down--that is, from Ramoth-gilead, to visit the king of Israel, who was lying ill of his wounds at Jezreel, and who had fled there on the alarm of Jehu's rebellion.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ahaziah’s downfall came from God: Chronicles states outright what Kings leaves the reader to infer from Jehu's commission: “Ahaziah’s downfall came from God when he went to visit Joram”. He went out with Joram to meet Jehu, so a king of Judah dies inside a purge aimed at Israel's throne.
2 Chronicles 22:7
“His providence brought Ahaziah, just at this fatal juncture, to see Joram, that he might fall with him and be taken as in a snare. This we had an account of before, 2 Kings ix. It is here added that he was decently buried (not as Jehoram, whose dead body was cast into Naboth's vineyard, 2 Kings ix.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 22:7
“The destruction of Ahaziah was of God - i. e. his untimely end was a judgment upon him for his idolatry.”
2 Chronicles 22:8-9
he found the rulers of Judah: Chronicles compresses two episodes Kings tells at length, the killing of Ahaziah's kinsmen at 2 Kings 10:12-14 and his own death at 2 Kings 9:27-28. The reason for his burial has no equivalent in Kings: “He is the grandson of Jehoshaphat, who sought the LORD with all his heart”.
2 Chronicles 22:8
“And it came to pass, that when Jehu was executing judgment on the house of Ahab,.... On Joram, his son, and seventy more sons, his kinsfolks, courtiers, and priests: and found the princes of Judah, and or even the sons of the brethren of Ahaziah; whose number was forty two: that ministered to Ahaziah; had offices in his court, or in obedience to his will, went to visit the children of the king and queen of Israel: and he slew them; Jehu did; of the occasion, time, and place of his meeting with them, and slaying them, see 2Ki 10:12.”
Keil, cited by Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, joins this account to 2 Kings 9:27: Ahaziah hid in Samaria, was wounded, and died at Megiddo. Henry contrasts his burial with Joram's body thrown on Naboth's plot. Jerome cites the verse to show that Jehoshaphat's righteousness still counted after his rebuke.
2 Chronicles 22:9
"Ahaziah fled first to the garden house and escaped to Samaria; but was here, where he had hid himself, taken by Jehu's men who pursued him, brought to Jehu, who was still near or in Jezreel, and at his command slain at the hill Gur, beside Ibleam, in his chariot; that is, mortally wounded with an arrow, so that he, again fleeing, expired at Megiddo" [KEIL].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Athaliah's slaughter and the baby hidden in the temple
annihilate all the royal heirs: Two royal killings fall within two chapters. The Arab raid of 21:16-17 had killed the older sons, and now Athaliah moves “to annihilate all the royal heirs of the house of Judah”. The promise to David's house has one infant standing between it and extinction, the stakes Adam Clarke names.
2 Chronicles 22:10
“All the seed royal of the house of Judah - Nothing but the miraculous intervention of the Divine providence could have saved the line of David at this time, and preserved the prophecy relative to the Messiah. The whole truth of that prophecy, and the salvation of the world, appeared to be now suspended on the brittle thread of the life of an infant of a year old, (see 2Ch 24:1), to destroy whom was the interest of the reigning power! But God can save by few as well as by many.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Chronicles 22:11-12
took Joash son of Ahaziah: Second Kings 11:2 names the rescuer only as Jehosheba, Joram's daughter and Ahaziah's sister. Chronicles adds that she was “the wife of Jehoiada the priest”, so the woman who steals the infant is married into the priesthood. The royal house and the priestly house join in one rescue.
remained hidden with them in the house of God for six years: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown explain the hiding place: priestly families could lodge in the chambers built into the temple's outer walls. The whole enclosure could be called the house of God. Clarke records the Targum's fuller reading, the house of the sanctuary, a place Athaliah could not enter.
2 Chronicles 22:12
“Hid in the house of God - “In the house of the sanctuary of God.” - Targum. Or, as he says on 2Ch 22:11, בקודש קודשיא bekudash kudeshaiya “in the holy of holies.” To this place Athaliah had no access, therefore Joash lay concealed, he and his affectionate aunt-nurse. - See on 2Ki 11:1 (note).”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
How this psalm is built
The form: Historical narrative compressing a one-year reign and the seizure of the throne that followed it, as Keil and Delitzsch classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| Counsel to his destruction | The word for counsel turns on the king three times. His mother is his counsellor in verse 3, the house of Ahab are his counsellors to his destruction in verse 4, and he follows their counsel to Ramoth-gilead in verse 5. John Gill reads the one-year reign as inherited corruption stated by that repeated word.John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, 1748 to 1763, on 2 Chronicles 22:3. | 2 Chronicles 22:3, 2 Chronicles 22:4, 2 Chronicles 22:5 |
| The house of Ahab | The phrase stands at verses 3, 4, 7 and 8, and each time it names the cause of what happens next. Keil and Delitzsch read verse 7 as the Chronicler naming the hand behind an event that the parallel account narrates without comment. A king of Judah dies inside a purge aimed at Israel's throne.Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Books of the Chronicles, on 2 Chronicles 22:7. | 2 Chronicles 22:3, 2 Chronicles 22:4, 2 Chronicles 22:7, 2 Chronicles 22:8 |
| Two cullings of the royal line | The Arab raid of 21:16 to 17 had already killed the elder sons, and verse 10 has Athaliah move against the whole line. Adam Clarke reads the second as finishing what the first began. By verse 11 the promise to David's house has one infant standing between it and the end.Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1832, on 2 Chronicles 22:10. | 2 Chronicles 21:17, 2 Chronicles 22:1, 2 Chronicles 22:10 |
| Hidden in the house of God | Verse 11 has Jehoshabeath steal the child away and put him in a bedroom, and verse 12 leaves him hidden in the house of God for six years. W. H. Bennett reads the two verses as the whole distance between the promise to David and its being cut off. The chapter closes on the hiding rather than on the throne.W. H. Bennett, The Books of Chronicles, the Expositor's Bible, on 2 Chronicles 22:11. | 2 Chronicles 22:11, 2 Chronicles 22:12 |
The debated concept
9 more paragraphs on the patterns
The first question is the king's age at his accession, and the store itself carries the difference. The King James Version and the American Standard Version read forty and two years old at 2 Chronicles 22:2. The Berean Standard Bible, Young's Literal Translation and the Darby Bible read twenty-two there. At 2 Kings 8:26 the Berean reads twenty-two as well.
The commentators read the gap as a slip between the Hebrew letters for twenty and forty rather than two figures to be reconciled. Matthew Henry offers a second reading, that the number first described Athaliah's own age. The dossier's manuscripts section records the same kind of damage to a numeral at 36:9, where the Septuagint preserves eighteen against the Masoretic eight.
The second question is what verse 7 means by saying the downfall came from God. Keil and Delitzsch and Matthew Henry both read it as the Chronicler naming the hand behind an event, so that a visit of family courtesy places a king of Judah inside Jehu's commission. The verse states the outcome without describing the means.
The third is why a wicked king is given a grave at all. The text gives its own reason, that he is the grandson of Jehoshaphat who sought the LORD with all his heart. John Gill reads the burial as granted on the grandfather's account, which is the book's measuring verb applied to a man three generations back.
Where the chapter reaches
The covenant of 2 Samuel 7 is at its thinnest here. Chapter 21 had stated the lamp promise at its verse 7, and this chapter puts the whole promise inside one bedroom with a nurse and a priest's wife.
The marriage that began the trouble is three chapters back. Jehoshaphat's alliance with Ahab brought Athaliah into Judah, and the account of her son and then of her own reign is the working out of it.
The rescue joins the royal house to the priesthood. Jehoshabeath is a king's daughter and a priest's wife, and the same pairing stands at the covenant renewal of the next chapter.
The six years of verse 12 are counted from here. The rising of 23:1 falls in the seventh year, so the hidden child is seven when he is crowned.
Keep studying
Studies1
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Books of the Chronicles, on 2 Chronicles 22:1 and the guide's ledger for this book.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Jamieson Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jerome, Against the Pelagians 2.21; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Chronicles; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and W. H. Bennett, The Books of Chronicles (Expositor's Bible).