2 Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was A

<p>Verse 2. Forty and two years old was Ahaziah]

See Clarke on 2Ki 8:26. Ahaziah might have been

twenty-two years old, according to 2Ki 8:26, 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 mem, FORTY, for caph, TWENTY. And if this book

was written by a scribe who used the ancient Hebrew letters, now

called the Samaritan, the mistake was still more easy and

probable, as the difference between [Samaritan] caph and

[Samaritan] mem is very small, and can in many instances be

discerned only by an accustomed eye.

The reading in 2Ki 8:26 is

right, and any attempt to reconcile this in Chronicles with that

is equally futile and absurd. Both readings cannot be true; is

that therefore likely to be genuine that makes the son two years

older than the father who begat him? Apage hae nugae!</p>