2 Kingschapter 8
29 verses · Jeremiah, by tradition · 6th century BC · History
Key verse
And Elisha said unto him, Go, say unto him, Thou mayest certainly recover: howbeit the Lord hath shewed me that he shall surely die.
It stands in Elisha weeps at what Hazael will do, verses 7 to 15.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The Shunammite, warned of a seven-year famine, sojourns in Philistine country and returns to find her house and land gone; she walks in on Gehazi telling the king that very story, and gets everything back with the produce of the years. Then Elisha goes to Damascus, where the sick Ben-hadad sends Hazael with forty camels' burden of gifts to ask whether he will recover. Elisha stares him down until he is ashamed, and weeps, telling him what he will do to Israel's strongholds and children, and Hazael smothers his master the next day. Judah meanwhile marries into Ahab's house: Jehoram walks in the way of the kings of Israel, and Edom revolts.
Context
History · Jeremiah · 2 Kings overview
The world of this chapter
- Who
- Israelites watching the house of Ahab marry its way into the southern throne
- Where
- The court of Israel, the sickroom of Ben-hadad in Damascus, and Jerusalem
- When
- The rise of Hazael and the Omride marriage in Judah. c. 845 to 841 BC; Jehoram of Judah 848 to 841, Ahaziah of Judah 841 BC on Thiele's reckoning
Historical context
The chapter belongs to three people at once, Elisha in his prophetic office, Hazael as a servant at the court of Damascus, and Jehoram of Judah as a king newly on his father's throne. The years are about 845 to 841 BC on Thiele's reconstruction of the regnal numbers, which is the chronology this site follows.
The places are Israel's own court, the sickroom of a Syrian king in Damascus, and Jerusalem. The occasion is a woman's petition for her land, a foreign king's question about his illness, and two accessions in Judah.
A first hearer knew the property law the opening scene turns on. Land left vacant during a famine could be claimed or taken over by the crown, and a returning owner had to petition to recover the estate and whatever income it had produced. Her case is settled in minutes because she arrives while the king is asking for stories about the prophet.
A first hearer also knew what forty camel loads meant. A sick king sending that much to ask a foreign prophet whether he would recover is a measure of how far Elisha's name had travelled.
Hazael is well attested outside the Bible. Assyrian records of Shalmaneser III call him a son of nobody, their term for a usurper with no royal line, which matches a servant who took the throne. The Tel Dan Stele, an Aramaic victory inscription from the same period, is dated in this estate's record at about 840 to 835 BC and names the house of David as a ruling dynasty.
Significance
Israel was being told who Hazael was before Hazael was anything, and the prophet wept while telling him.
Judah was being told the price of a marriage. Jehoshaphat had married his son to Ahab's daughter, and the next two kings of Judah walked in the way of the kings of Israel because of it. The one thing holding the southern throne up is named in the same chapter, a promise made to David.
Where the chapter sits
2 Kings 8 falls in Elijah's ascension; Elisha's ministry (chapters 1–13). Elijah taken up by whirlwind; double portion; widow's oil; the Shunammite's son raised; Naaman healed; siege of Samaria broken; Elisha dies and his bones raise a man.
After it: Northern kingdom's fall, chapters 14–17.
The whole shape of 2 Kings→The structure of this chapter
Threads running through this chapter
- The lamp for David's sakePattern, v. 19
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Seven years abroad, and a king who restores all her fields
hath called for a famine: Elisha sends away the same woman whose son he raised to life in chapter four, and she obeys a bare command with no reason given beyond the word that the Lord hath called for a famine. Seven years is the whole span named to her, and she keeps a stranger's word in the land of the Philistines for every one of them. She returns at the exact end of the term, going up to the king himself rather than to Elisha, because the loss to be repaired now is her house and her land, not her son's life.
2 Kings 8:1
“The famine here recorded, and the conversation of the monarch with Gehazi, must have been anterior to the events related in 2 Kings 5 since we may be sure that a king of Israel would not have entered into familiar conversation with a confirmed leper. The writer of Kings probably col ected the miracles of Elisha from various sources, and did not always arrange them chronologically. Here the link of connection is to be found in the nature of the miracle. As Elisha on one occasion prophesied plenty, so on another he had prophesied a famine.”
2 Kings 8:2
“The country of the Philistines - the rich low grain-growing plain along the seacoast of Judah - was always a land of plenty compared with the highlands of Palestine. Moreover, if food failed there, it was easily imported by sea from the neighboring Egypt.”
2 Kings 8:3
“During the Shunammite’s absence in Philistia, her dwelling and her grain-fields had been appropriated by some one who refused to restore them. She therefore determined to appeal to the king. Such direct appeals are common in Oriental countries. Compare 2Ki 6:26; 2Sa 14:4; 1Ki 3:16.”
the great things that Elisha: Gehazi stands before the king recounting Elisha's miracles, a scene that most likely falls before his leprosy in chapter five, since a king would not receive a leper at close range, and the compiler groups Elisha's works by kind rather than strict order. The woman walks in at the very sentence naming her son's resurrection, and Gehazi's own testimony becomes the witness that proves her claim before she has said a word. The king restores her house, her land, and every year's produce she lost while she was gone, a magistrate's justice moving on a prophet's word.
2 Kings 8:4
“The king talked with Gehazi - This is supposed to have happened before the cleansing of Naaman, for is it likely that the king would hold conversation with a leprous man; or that, knowing Gehazi had been dismissed with the highest disgrace from the prophet’s service, he could hold any conversation with him concerning his late master, relative to whom he could not expect him to give either a true or impartial account?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 8:5
“And it came to pass, as he was telling the king how he had restored a dead body to life,.... Which was the Shunammite's son: that, behold, the woman whose son he had restored to life cried to the king for her house, and for her land; came and presented her petition to the king at that very instant: and Gehazi said, my lord, O king, this is the woman, and this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life; the very person I am speaking of.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 8:5
“This is the woman, and this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life - This was a very providential occurrence in behalf of the Shunammite. The relation given by Gehazi was now corroborated by the woman herself; the king was duly affected, and gave immediate orders for the restoration of her land.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 8:6
“A certain officer - literally, “a certain eunuch” (margin). Eunuchs were now in common use at the Samaritan court (compare 2Ki 9:32). They are ascribed to the court of David in Chronicles 1Ch 28:1; and we may conjecture that they were maintained by Solomon. But otherwise we do not find them in the kingdom of Judah until the time of Hezekiah Isa 56:3-4.”
Elisha weeps at what Hazael will do
The man of God is come hither: Elisha's ministry now reaches a foreign capital: Ben-hadad, king of Syria, lies sick at Damascus and sends to enquire of the Lord through the man of God rather than through his own gods. This is the same king who once sent an army to take Elisha at Dothan, now sending a servant to ask him a question instead, a man humbled by circumstance rather than by conviction. The present he sends is sized to a king's gratitude, not a subject's need.
2 Kings 8:7
“The hour had come for carrying out the command given by God to Elijah (marginal reference “e”), and by him probably passed on to his successor. Elisha, careless of his own safety, quitted the land of Israel, and proceeded into the enemy’s country, thus putting into the power of the Syrian king that life which he had lately sought so eagerly 2Ki 6:13-19. The man of God - The Damascenes had perhaps known Elisha by this title from the time of his curing Naaman.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 8:7
“This is the more observable, (1.) Because it was not long since a king of Israel had, in his sickness, sent to enquire of the god of Ekron ( ch. i. 2 ), as if there had been no God in Israel. Note, God sometimes fetches to himself that honour from strangers which is denied him and alienated from him by his own professing people.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 8:8
“Inquire of the Lord,&c. - In his health he bowed down in the house of Rimmon; but now he tends to inquire of the God of Israel. Among other instances of the change of mens minds by affliction or sickness, this is one; that it often gives them other thoughts of God's ministers, and teacheth them to value those whom they before hated and despised.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
took a present with him: Hazael arrives with forty camels' burden of Damascus's wealth and puts Ben-hadad's own question in Ben-hadad's own words, shall I recover of this disease. Elisha's answer carries two truths at once: go, say unto him, thou mayest certainly recover, the message Hazael is to deliver, and the Lord hath shewed me that he shall surely die, the fact behind it, which the disease itself will not produce. The two clauses are not a contradiction; the king's sickness is simply not what will kill him.
2 Kings 8:9
“So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him,.... As was usual when a prophet or seer was consulted, see 1Sa 9:7. even of every good thing of Damascus; which was a very fruitful place, and had abundance of gardens and orchards in it, which yielded excellent fruit, and of such it is probable the present consisted, and which was large: even forty camels' burden: which, as they are strong creatures, will bear a great deal.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 8:9
“Every good thing of Damascus - Probably, besides rich robes and precious metals, the luscious wine of Helbon, which was the drink of the Persian kings, the soft white wool of the anti-Libanus Eze 27:18, damask coverings of couches Amo 3:12, and numerous manufactured articles of luxury, which the Syrian capital imported from Tyre, Egypt, Nineveh, and Babylon. Forty camels were laden with it, and this goodly caravan paraded the streets of the town, conveying to the prophet the splendid gift designed for him.”
2 Kings 8:9
“The Orientals are fond of display, and would, ostentatiously, lay upon forty beasts what might very easily have been borne by four. Thy son Ben-hadad--so called from the established usage of designating the prophet "father." This was the same Syrian monarch who had formerly persecuted him (see 2Ki 6:13, 14).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 Kings 8:10
“Thou mayest certainly recover: howbeit the Lord hath showed me that he shall surely die - That is, God has not determined thy death, nor will it be a necessary consequence of the disease by which thou art now afflicted; but this wicked man will abuse the power and trust thou hast reposed in him, and take away thy life. Even when God has not designed nor appointed the death of a person, he may nevertheless die, though not without the permission of God.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 8:10
“Howbeit - Here is no contradiction: for the first words contain an answer to Benhadad's question, shall I recover? To which the answer is, thou mayest, notwithstanding thy disease, which is not mortal.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 8:10
“Thou mayest certainly recover--There was no contradiction in this message. This part was properly the answer to Ben-hadad's inquiry [2Ki 8:9]. The second part was intended for Hazael, who, like an artful and ambitious courtier, reported only as much of the prophet's statement as suited his own views (compare 2Ki 8:14).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
until he was ashamed: Elisha stares at Hazael until Hazael is ashamed, and then the man of God weeps, seeing what Hazael does not yet see in himself: strongholds set on fire, young men put to the sword, children dashed, women with child ripped up. Hazael's protest, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing, is not innocence but the honest horror of a man who does not yet know what a throne will make of him. Elisha does not soften the vision; he answers it with the fact behind it, the Lord hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria, the very crown Hazael will use for exactly what he was just told.
2 Kings 8:11
That is, “And he (Elisha) settled his conntenance, and set it (toward Hazael), until he (Hazael) was ashamed.” Elisha fixed on Hazael a long and meaning look, until the latter’s eyes fell before his, and his cheek flushed. Elisha, it would seem, had detected the guilty thought that was in Hazael’s heart, and Hazael perceived that he had detected it. Hence the “shame.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 8:11
“The man of God could outface the man of war. It was not in Hazael's countenance that Elisha read what he would do, but God did, at this time, reveal it to him, and it fetched tears from his eyes. The more foresight men have the more grief they are liable to.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 8:12
“I know the evil that thou wilt do - We may see something of the accomplishment of this prediction, 2Ki 10:32, 2Ki 10:33; 2Ki 13:3, 2Ki 13:7.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 8:12
“The sins of Israel provoked God to give them up into the hands of their cruel enemies, yet Elisha wept to think that ever Israelites should be thus abused; for, though he foretold, he did not desire the woeful day. See what havock war makes, what havock sin makes, and how the nature of man is changed by the fall, and stripped even of humanity itself.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 8:13
“But what, is thy servant a dog? - This is a mistranslation, and conveys to the English reader a sense quite different from that of the original. Hazael’s speech runs thus - “But what is thy servant, this dog, that he should do this great thing?” He does not shrink from Elisha’s words, or mean to say that he would be a dog, could he act so cruelly as Elisha predicts he will.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 8:13
“A dog - So fierce, barbarous, and inhuman. King - And when thou shalt have power in thy hand, thou wilt discover that bloody disposition, and that hatred against God's people, which now lies hid from others, and possibly from thyself.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 8:13
“Note, We are apt to think ourselves sufficiently armed against those sins which yet we are afterwards overcome by, as Peter, Matt. xxvi. In answer to this Elisha only told him he should be king over Syria; then he would have power to do it, and then he would find in his heart to do it.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
What said Elisha to thee?: Hazael reports only half of what Elisha said, that thou shouldest surely recover, leaving out the word that he shall surely die, and the omission is itself the first move of the murder he commits on the morrow. He takes a thick cloth, dips it in water, and spreads it on the sick king's face until he dies, then reigns in Ben-hadad's stead. Elisha's word is fulfilled by two separate facts at once: the disease was not what killed the king, and the man who did it is the man just told he would be king.
2 Kings 8:14
“Hazael omitted the clause by which Elisha had shown how those words were to be understood. He thus deceived his master, while he could flatter himself that he had not uttered a lie.”
2 Kings 8:15
“A thick cloth - Probably, a cloth or mat placed between the head and the upper part of the bedstead, which in Egypt and Assyria was often so shaped that pillows (in our sense) were unnecessary. The objection that Elisha is involved in the guilt of having suggested the deed, has no real force or value. Hazael was no more obliged to murder Benhadad because a prophet announced to him that he would one day be king of Syria, than David was obliged to murder Saul because another prophet anointed him king in Saul’s room 1Sa 16:1-13.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 8:15
“Hazael, who was Ben-hadad's confidant, was his murderer, and some think, was not suspected, nor did the truth ever come out but by the pen of this inspired historian.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Jehoram of Judah, married into the house of Ahab
Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah: Jehoram of Judah begins his eight-year reign in the fifth year of Joram of Israel, and the text names the reason for what follows in one clause: the daughter of Ahab was his wife. That marriage carries Jezebel's household into David's line, and Jehoram walks in the way of the kings of Israel rather than the way of his own father Jehoshaphat. The wife is not named here, but she is the daughter who will sit on David's own throne herself within a few chapters, the marriage's full cost still ahead of the reader.
2 Kings 8:16
“Jehoram - Jehoram was first made king or vice-roy, by his father divers years before this time, at his expedition to Ramoth- Gilead, which dominion of his, ended at his father's return.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 8:17
“He reigned eight years in Jerusalem - Beginning with the fifth year of Joram, king of Israel. He reigned three years with Jehoshaphat his father, and five years alone; i.e., from A.M. 3112 to 3119, according to Archbishop Usher.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 8:18
“The daughter of Ahab was his wife - This was the infamous Athaliah; and through this marriage Jehoshaphat and Ahab were confederates; and this friendship was continued after Ahab’s death.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 8:18
“This unequal marriage, though Jehoshaphat possibly designed it as a means of uniting the two kingdoms under one head, is here and elsewhere noted, as the cause both of the great wickedness of his posterity, and of those sore calamities which befel them. No good could be reasonably expected from such an union. Those that are ill matched are already half-ruined.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
would not destroy Judah for David: Judah's king can marry into Ahab's house and do evil in the sight of the Lord, and the text still will not let the dynasty fall, because a promise older than Jehoram stands behind it. The alway a light language answers the covenant of 2 Samuel 7 directly, and the same phrase returns at 1 Kings 11:36 and 15:4, then again at 2 Kings 19:34 when Jerusalem itself stands under Assyrian siege. Every king in this book is measured by two things at once, his own conduct and a covenant he did not make, and this verse is where the second overrules the first.
2 Kings 8:19
“Yet the Lord would not destroy Judah for David his servant's sake,.... Not for his merits, but for the mercy he assured him of: as he promised him to give to him always a light, and to his children; or a kingdom, as the Targum; therefore he would not utterly destroy the tribe, nor suffer the sceptre or government to depart from it till the Messiah came, see Psa 132:11.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 8:19
“But when the Messiah, was once come, there was no more need of any succession, and the scepter might and did without any inconvenience depart from Judah, and from all the succeeding branches of David's family, because the Messiah was to hold the kingdom forever in his own person, though not in so gross a way as the carnal Jews imagined.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
made a king over themselves: Edom throws off Judah's rule and sets its own king, undoing the subjugation David had imposed generations earlier. Joram crosses to Zair by night and strikes down the Edomites who surround him, a tactical win the text records without calling it a victory, because the next verse says Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah unto this day. Libnah revolts in the same breath, a town of Judah itself turning away from its own king, and the chapter lets both losses stand as plain fact.
2 Kings 8:20
“In his days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah,.... Who had been tributary to Judah ever since the times of David, for the space of one hundred and fifty years: and made a king over themselves; for though they are said to have kings, those were only deputy kings, as in 1Ki 22:47 and now the prediction of Isaac began to be accomplished, Gen 27:40.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 8:20
“Edom, which had been reduced by David 2Sa 8:14; 1Ki 11:15-16, but had apparently revolted from Solomon 1Ki 11:14, was again subjected to Judah in the reign of Jehoshaphat 2 Kings 3:8-26. The Edomites had, however, retained their native kings, and with them the spirit of independence. They now rose in revolt, and fulfilled the prophecy Gen 27:40, remaining from henceforth a separate and independent people (Jer 25:21; Jer 27:3; Amo 1:11, etc.). Kings of Edom, who seem to be independent monarchs, are often mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions.”
2 Kings 8:21
“Zair - Perhaps Seir, the famous mountain of Edom Gen 14:6. The people - i. e., The Edomites. Yet, notwithstanding his success, Joram was forced to withdraw from the country, and to leave the natives to enjoy that independence 2Ki 8:22, which continued until the time of John Hyrcanus, who once more reduced them.”
2 Kings 8:22
“Libnah revolted - Libnah being toward the southwest of Palestine Jos 15:42, its revolt cannot well have had any direct connection with that of Edom. It had been the capital of a small Canaanite state under a separate king before its conquest by Joshua Jos 10:30; Jos 12:15, and may perhaps always have retained a considerable Canaanite population. Or its loss may have been connected with the attacks made by the Philistines on Jehoram’s territories 2Ch 21:16-17.”
the acts of Joram: The chronicle formula that closes nearly every reign in this book points the reader past the text in hand to a fuller record, the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah, now lost to us. Joram is buried with his fathers in the city of David, the family tomb his own evil did not forfeit him, and Ahaziah his son reigns in his stead. The narrator spends no verse mourning him, moving straight from death to succession in one sentence.
2 Kings 8:23
“And the rest of the acts of Joram, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? Not in the canonical book of Chronicles, though some of his acts are recorded there, see 2Ch 21:1 but in the annals of the kings of Judah, written by persons appointed for that purpose.”
2 Kings 8:24
“And Joram slept with his fathers,.... Died as they did: and was buried with his fathers in the city of David; but not in the sepulchres of the kings, and without any funeral pomp, and without any mourning and lamentation for him, he being not beloved, and his life not at all desirable, 2Ch 21:19, and Ahaziah his son reigned in his stead; of whom more is said in the following verses.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 8:24
“On the death of Jehoram, see 2Ch 21:12-19. His son is also called Jehoahaz (margin) by a transposition of the two elements of the name.”
Ahaziah joins Joram at Ramoth-gilead
In the twelfth year of Joram: Ahaziah begins his one-year reign in the twelfth year of Joram of Israel, and the text names his mother for the first time: Athaliah, the daughter of Omri king of Israel. The formula walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did evil in the sight of the Lord repeats almost word for word what was just said of his father Jehoram, and the text adds that Ahaziah is son in law of the house of Ahab as much as its grandson through his mother. Two generations of Judah's throne are now bound into Ahab's family by marriage, and the chapter states the fact twice in three verses rather than once.
2 Kings 8:25
“In the twelfth year of Joram the son of Ahab, king of Israel did Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah begin to reign. He is called Jehoahaz, and said to be the youngest son of Jehoram, 2Ch 21:17.”
2 Kings 8:27
“And he walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did evil in the sight of the Lord, as did the house of Ahab,.... Worshipping the calves, and Baal also: for he was the son in law of the house of Ahab; he was the son of Jehoram, who was son-in-law to Ahab, having married his daughter, which accounts for his being guilty of the same idolatrous practices.”
the war against Hazael king: Ahaziah joins Joram of Israel in the same war against the Hazael whose crown Elisha wept over, and the Syrians wound Joram at Ramah. Joram withdraws to Jezreel to recover, and Ahaziah goes down from Jerusalem to see him there because he is sick, an ordinary family visit between two kings bound by marriage. Jezreel is Jezebel's own city and Naboth's field, and the next chapter opens on that same ground.
2 Kings 8:28
“And he went with Joram the son of Ahab,.... His mother's brother, and so his uncle: to the war against Hazael king of Syria in Ramothgilead; which he went to recover out of the hands of the king of Syria, as his father Ahab had attempted in his time; in which he was assisted by Jehoshaphat, as now Joram was by a grandson of his: and the Syrians wounded Joram; as they did his father Ahab at the same place, though his wound was not mortal, as his father's was.”
2 Kings 8:29
“From Ramoth, having taken it, and left his army there: to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him at Ramah; the same with Ramothgilead: when he fought against Hazael king of Syria; for Benhadad being dead, he was now king in his room, 2Ki 8:15.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 8:29
“Went back to be healed in Jezreel - And there he continued till Jehu conspired against and slew him there. And thus the blood of the innocents, which had been shed by Ahab and his wife Jezebel, was visited on them in the total extinction of their family. See the following chapters, where the bloody tale of Jehu’s conspiracy is told at large. I Have already had to remark on the chronological difficulties which occur in the historical books; difficulties for which copyists alone are responsible.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Kings 8:29
“Providence so ordered it, that he who had been debauched by the house of Ahab might be cut off with them, when the measure of their iniquity was full, as we shall find in the next chapter. Those who partake with sinners in their sins must expect to partake with them in their plagues.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Keep studying
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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 context
Keil, The Books of the Kings and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments; Alfred Edersheim, Bible History: Old Testament; F. W. Farrar, The Second Book of Kings (Expositor's Bible); Jamieson Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Kings and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.