2Ki 8:25-26
Reign of Ahaziah of Judah (cf. 2Ch 22:1-6). - Ahaziah, the youngest son of Joram, ascended the throne in the twenty-second year of his age. The statement in 2Ch 22:2, that he was forty-two years old when he became king, rests upon a copyist’s error, namely, a confusion of כ twenty with מ forty. Now, since his father became king at the age of thirty-two, and reigned eight years, Ahaziah must have been born in the nineteenth year of his age. Consequently it may appear strange that Ahaziah had brothers still older than himself (2Ch 21:17); but as early marriages are common in the East, and the royal princes had generally concubines along with their wife of the first rank, as is expressly stated of Joram in 2Ch 21:17, he might have had some sons in his nineteenth year. His mother was called Athaliah, and was a daughter of the idolatrous Jezebel. In 2Ki 8:26 and 2Ch 22:2 she is called the daughter, i.e., grand-daughter, of Omri; for, according to 2Ki 8:18, she was a daughter of Ahab. Omri, the grand-father, is mentioned in 2Ki 8:26 as the founder of the dynasty which brought so much trouble upon Israel and Judah through its idolatry.