2 Chronicleschapter 22
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Speaks with:2 Kings 8×42 Chronicles 21×32 Kings 9×22 Kings 10×22 Chronicles 22×2Psalms 73×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Ahaziah reigns one year, with Athaliah his mother as his counsellor to do wickedly and the house of Ahab as his advisors 'to his destruction.' He goes with Joram of Israel against Hazael at Ramoth-gilead and visits him wounded in Jezreel. And 'the destruction of Ahaziah was of God, in that he went unto Joram,' for Jehu, executing judgment on Ahab's house, finds and kills him. Athaliah then destroys all the royal seed of Judah. But Jehoshabeath, the king's daughter and wife of Jehoiada the priest, steals the infant Joash from among the murdered sons and hides him in the house of God six years, while Athaliah reigns. The lamp of David burns down to one child in a temple bedchamber.
Context
History · Ezra — 2 Chronicles overview
- A. 1–9 Ahaziah walks in Ahab's counsel and dies with Ahab's house
- B. 10–12 Athaliah's slaughter and the baby hidden in the temple
The outline
A.Ahaziah walks in Ahab's counsel and dies with Ahab's housevv. 1 to 9
Read vv. 1 to 9 →B.Athaliah's slaughter and the baby hidden in the templevv. 10 to 12
Read vv. 10 to 12 →
The world behind this chapter
2 Chronicles 22The history
Ahaziah is king only because he is the youngest — the raiders had killed his older brothers. His mother Athaliah is Ahab's daughter, and the text says plainly that she was his counsellor to do wickedly and that the house of Ahab supplied his advisers after his father died.
His death comes in someone else's revolution. Jehu was anointed to cut off the house of Ahab, and Ahaziah, visiting his wounded northern relative, was caught in the purge; he hid in Samaria, was found, and was killed. He was given a burial only because he was Jehoshaphat's grandson.
The number given for his age at accession differs between Kings and Chronicles — twenty-two in one, forty-two in the other — and since the larger figure would make him older than his own father, the difference is almost certainly a slip in copying a numeral, the commonest kind of scribal error there is.
Athaliah then destroys all the royal seed of the house of Judah. Killing every possible claimant was the standard method by which a usurper secured a throne in that world, and she was thorough.
The rescue works because of who performed it. Jehoshabeath was a king's daughter and the wife of Jehoiada the priest, which gave her both access to the royal children and a place to hide one. The infant Joash was taken from among the king's sons about to be killed, put in a bedchamber, and kept hidden in the house of God for six years while Athaliah reigned.
What it meant to them
For six years the promise to David was a baby in a store-room, and the only people who knew were a priest and his wife.
The first hearers were themselves a remnant that had nearly disappeared in a foreign empire. This chapter told them the promise had survived a narrower margin than theirs.
Sources cited
- Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings
- Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Chronicles
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on 2 Chronicles 22. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.