2 Chronicles 22:1,2

2 Chr. 22:1, 2. "So Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, reigned; forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign." Here a great difficulty arises, for whereas Joram was thirty and two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem, and so he died when he was forty years old; and immediately the inhabitants of Jerusalem set Ahaziah upon the throne, who was his youngest son, yet this Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he began to reign, and so he will prove to be two years older than his father.

Answer. The book of Chronicles doth not mean in this place that Ahaziah was so old when he began to reign, for the book of Kings tells us plainly that he was twenty-two at that time, so that those forty-two years have reference to another thing, particularly to the house of Omri, and not the age of Ahaziah, for if we count from the beginning of the reign of Omri, we shall find that Ahaziah entered into his reign in the two and fortieth year from thence. The original words therefore are not to be translated as we render them. Ahaziah was two and forty years old, but Ahaziah was the son of the two and forty years, and this was anciently observed in that history among the Jews, called Soder Olam, or the order of the world. Now the reason why his reign is dated differently from all the rest of the kings of Judah, is because he did according to all the wickedness of the house of Omri, for Athaliah his mother was Ahab's daughter, and she both perverted her husband Joram, and brought up this her son, Ahaziah, in all the idolatry of that wicked house; and therefore Ahaziah is not thought fit to be reckoned by the line of the kings of Judah (and of the house of David, and the ancestors of Christ), but by the house of Omri and Ahab. Thus a particular mark is set upon Joram by the evangelist Matthew, who leaves out the three succeeding generations, viz. Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah, and mentions Uzziah as the next. Here the three descents are omitted, according to what the psalmist saith, Psalms 37:28. "The seed of the wicked shall be cut off." [The Hebrew word for] the seed, and [the Hebrew word for] the wicked have the same last letter. But out of that acrostical and alphabetical Psalm, in that very place, Dr. Lightfoot, vol. 1. p. 417. saith that this omission is most divinely done from the threatening of the second commandment, "Thou shalt not commit idolatry, for I will visit the sins of the fathers on the children unto the third and fourth generation." It is the manner of Scripture very often to leave out men's names from certain stories and records, to show a distaste at some evil in them. Thus all Cain's posterity is blotted out of the book of Chronicles, as it was out of the world by the flood. So Simeon is omitted in Moses's blessings, Deu. 33, for his cruelty at Shechem, and to Joseph. So Dan and Ephraim, at the sealing of the Lord's people, Rev. 7, because of idolatry, which began in the tribe of Dan. Jdg. 18. (and afterwards had its principal seat in the tribe of Ephraim). So Joab, from among David's worthies, 2 Samuel 23, because of his bloodiness to Abner and Amasa. And such another close intimation of God's displeasure at the wickedness of Joram, is to be seen, 2 Chronicles 22:1; 2 Chronicles 22:2, where the reign of his son Ahaziah is not dated according to the custom and manner of the other kings of Judah, but by the style of the continuance of the house of Omri.

And Ahaziah alone, among all the kings of Israel, might be reckoned in this manner, because in his time the whole house of Ahab was cut off by Jehu, after the battle at the field of Naboth, the Jezreelite, where Joram, the last king of Israel, of the house of Ahab, or Omri, was slain, and Ahaziah was slain with him, and two and forty of his brethren perished with the house of Ahab. (This I suppose is from Bedford.) It is not unusual in Scripture to mention a number of years as a certain date, without expressing the epocha. So in Ezekiel 1:1; Ezekiel 8:1; Ezekiel 20:1; Ezekiel 24:1; Ezekiel 26:1; Ezekiel 29:1; Ezekiel 31:1; Ezekiel 32:1; Ezekiel 29:17; Ezekiel 30:20. That Hebrew phrase, The son of (so many) years does not always signify the person's being so old. As for instance, 1 Samuel 13:1. Saul reigned one year; in the original it is, Saul was the son of one year. It may be noted further, that the Scriptures, in dating kings' reigns, do not always make the person's birth that epoch from whence the date is taken, as concerning Absalom, 2 Samuel 15:7. See also Notes on 2 Kings 24:8.

2 Chr. 25:9