Commentaria in II Paralipomenon
Chapter 22. Synopsis of the chapter
The impious Joram is succeeded by his impious son Ochozias, whom Jehu slays together with Joram king of Israel. Athalia, the mother of Ochozias, slays all the sons of Ochozias, the one little Joas excepted, whom his aunt Josabeth secretly takes away. Athalia therefore reigns alone.
1. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem made Ochozias his youngest son king in his stead: for all the elder, who were before him, the band of Arabian robbers that had rushed into the camp had slain: and Ochozias the son of Joram king of Juda reigned.
2. Ochozias was forty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem, and the name of his mother was Athalia the daughter of Amri.
3. And he also walked in the ways of the house of Achab: for his mother pushed him on to do wickedly.
4. He did evil therefore in the sight of the Lord, like the house of Achab: for they were his counsellors after the death of his father, to his destruction.
5. And he walked in their counsels. And he went with Joram the son of Achab king of Israel to war against Hazael king of Syria in Ramoth Galaad: and the Syrians wounded Joram.
6. And he returned to be healed in Jezrahel: for he had received many wounds in the aforesaid battle. And Ochozias the son of Joram king of Juda went down to visit Joram the son of Achab in Jezrahel, being sick.
7. For it was the will of God against Ochozias, that he should come to Joram: and when he was come, he went out with him against Jehu the son of Namsi, whom the Lord anointed to destroy the house of Achab.
8. So when Jehu was overthrowing the house of Achab, he found the princes of Juda, and the sons of the brethren of Ochozias, who ministered to him, and he slew them.
9. And seeking Ochozias himself, he took him hiding in Samaria: and brought him to himself, and put him to death, and they buried him: because he was the son of Josaphat, who had sought the Lord with all his heart, and there was no more hope that any of the stock of Ochozias should reign.
10. For Athalia his mother, seeing that her son was dead, rose up, and slew all the royal stock of the house of Joram.
11. But Josabeth the king’s daughter took Joas the son of Ochozias, and stole him away from among the king’s sons when they were slain: and hid him with his nurse in the bedchamber of the beds: and Josabeth, who had hid him, was the daughter of king Joram, wife of Joiada the high priest, and sister of Ochozias, and therefore Athalia did not kill him.
12. So he was with them hid in the house of God six years, during which Athalia reigned over the land.
Verse 1. Ochozias.—This is he who with the name inverted was called Joachaz in the preceding chapter, verse 17: “when he began to reign,” because, as has gone before, Joram began to reign when he was 32 years old, reigned
Verse 2. Forty-two years old was Ochozias, when he began to reign.—Great is the question and contradiction here; for 4 Kings VIII, verse 26, it is said: “Two and twenty years old was Ochozias, when he began to reign.” Joram reigned 8 years, and died in the fortieth year of his age, says Josephus; presently his son Ochozias succeeded him; therefore he could not be 42 years old, for otherwise he would have been two years older than his father Joram, who died in the fortieth year of his age; Ochozias was therefore then 22 years old. First, the Hebrews in Seder Olam, chapter XVII, whom Genebrard and Serarius follow, answer that these 42 years are to be reckoned from the sixth year of Amri, who was the maternal grandfather of Ochozias, whose ways and idols he himself followed; for Amri began to reign alone in Samaria, built by himself and raised to be the capital of the kingdom of Israel, in the sixth year of his reign, and reigned in it eight years; his son Achab succeeded him, who with his son Ochozias reigned 22 years; to him succeeded Joram, likewise his son, for 12 years; in his twelfth and last year this Ochozias the son of Joram began to reign in Juda, and in the same year was slain by Jehu together with Joram king of Israel: now add the 8 years of Amri, the 22 of Achab, the 12 of Joram, and thou shalt have the 42 which we seek. For the Israelites seem to have fixed an Era from the beginning of the kingdom of Samaria, and to have counted the years from it, as historians count from the founding of Rome. So Absalom is said to have rebelled against David after 40 years, to be reckoned namely from the first anointing of David as king, 2 Kings XV, verse 7. But it is against this that these 42 years are said to be those of Ochozias, not of the kingdom of Samaria. Whence the Hebrews have clearly: Ochozias was the son of 42 years when he began to reign. Add: Ochozias was king of Juda; why then should Scripture reckon his years from the kingdom of Samaria, which was different, nay, hostile to it?
Second, St. Jerome in the Traditions, the Gloss, Lyranus, Hugo, Dionysius, Gordonus, Mendoza, Vatablus, and Francis Suarez, part II, vol. I, disp. VI, sect. 1, answer that Joram began to reign in the 32nd year of his age, with his father Josaphat, and reigned with him twenty years; then, he being dead, reigned alone eight years, which eight only are numbered because they belong to the computation of the chronology; wherefore he died not in the fortieth year of his age, as Josephus says, but in the sixtieth; so that Ochozias his son, succeeding him, was 42 years old, who nevertheless, 3 Kings VIII, verse 26, is said to have been 22 years old, because he himself reigned with his father Joram 20 years; wherefore when he began to reign with him, he was 22; but his father dying after 20 years, when Ochozias reigned alone, he was 42 years old.
But in this way Josaphat would have had to beget Joram in the eighth year of his age; for Josaphat began to reign in the 35th year of his age, and reigned 25 years, and died at sixty; add five, or as others say eight years, in which Joram reigned after his death, and the years of Josaphat will be 68, of which 42 are to be assigned to Ochozias, and about eighteen to Joram his father, when he begot him, which together make 60; wherefore only eight years will remain to Josaphat, which he would have had when he begot Joram, which is impossible. I omit that these authors say that three kings reigned at the same time, namely the grandfather Josaphat, the son Joram, and the grandson Ochozias, for 20 years; which is novel and unusual.
Third, Sanchez and others, to avoid this argument, say that Joram reigned with his father Josaphat eight years, and after his death reigned 20 years; but unhappily, as one struck by God with an incurable disease, and that therefore his son Ochozias administered the kingdom for his sick and wasting father, and that therefore these twenty years are included in the 42 years of Ochozias. And so Ochozias, when he began to reign with his father Joram, was 22 years old; but when, his father dying after 20 years, he reigned alone, he was 42 years old.
But first it is against this that Joram his father laboured under this disease only two years, as is said in 2 Paralipomenon XXI, verse 19. Second, that so the twenty years already mentioned would have to be called years of the reign of Ochozias, not of his life, so that the chronology of the years of the reign, in which each king reigned in Juda, might be woven in a continuous series; for otherwise these twenty years will be wanting in the chronology of the kingdom of Juda: wherefore none of the Chronologers enumerates them, which is a sign that they did not exist. Third and chiefly, that the years of Joram king of Juda and of his son Ochozias are included in the years of Joram king of Israel, as is clear from 4 Kings VIII, 16 and 25, and chapter IX, verses 27 and 29. Now Joram king of Israel began to reign in the 18th year of Josaphat, and reigned twelve years, as is said in 4 Kings chapter III, verse 1; he reigned therefore seven years after the death of Josaphat; for the latter reigned 25 years. Both Joram king of Israel, therefore, and Joram king of Juda, and his son Ochozias, died in the seventh year after the death of Josaphat. Therefore none of them could have reigned twenty years after the death of Josaphat: wherefore Ochozias could not then be forty-two years old. So Cajetan, Salianus, and others.
Fourth, therefore, Cajetan, Bellarmine in his manuscript concordance of the years of the kings of Israel and Juda, which I have by me, Tornielli, Salianus, Mariana, Scaliger, and others hold that there is a mistake here, and that for 42 we must substitute 22 years. For so it is clearly said in 4 Kings VIII, verse 26: “Two and twenty years old was Ochozias when he began to reign,” and so the corrected Roman Septuagint has it in this place. Twenty, they say, years old was Ochozias; and in the Notes it is added that other codices have: Twenty-two years old. And easily in the Hebrew for Esrim, that is twenty, arbaim, that is forty, could have crept in: more easily in numerals the error crept in, so that 42 has been put for 22, says Mariana; for the two characters are similar. And here seems to have been the origin of the mistake. I confess that all the Hebrew and Latin Codices have 42 in this place, not 22; but the arguments compel us to put 22 in place of 42. For no other solid solution can be brought here; nor do the Interpreters, but Holy Scripture itself, correct itself from the corruption of the copyists, namely the Book of Kings corrects the Book of Paralipomenon in the years just mentioned, corrupted by the fault of scribes. Many things in the vulgate edition have been corrected by the Romans and more could be corrected, as the correctors themselves confess in the preface, and error in numbers easily happens, and does not concern faith or good morals. So many remove Cainan from the series of generations in the genealogy of Christ, although all the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic copies, etc., constantly have him, Luke III, verse 36. Finally in this place for 42 years old the Syriac has: Ochozias was 22 years old. So also have both Arabic versions, namely the Antiochene, or of mount Sinai, and the Alexandrian, or Coptic, as the most illustrious Lord Sergius Risius the Maronite, Archbishop of Damascus, assured me at Rome.
Athalia the daughter of Amri.—“Daughter,” that is, granddaughter. For she was the daughter of Achab, who was the son of Amri, as is clear from the preceding chapter, verse 6, and 4 Kings VIII,
Verse 10. She slew all the royal stock—namely all the sons of her son king Ochozias, whom he had begotten, many by many wives (as was then the custom of kings). She slew therefore all her own grandchildren by her son Ochozias, that, these as heirs of the kingdom being removed, she herself alone, as grandmother, might reign freely and with impunity. See to what parricides the desire and lust of reigning drove a woman.
Verse 11. But Josabeth the daughter of king Joram (not by Athalia, but by another wife) stole him (Joas) from among the king’s sons when they were slain—“whom,” says Josephus, “among the corpses of the slain brothers, thought dead by Athalia, by the help of a nurse she took away secretly and hid in her own house, and, her husband (the high priest Joiada) alone being privy to it, hid for six years in the temple in the bedchamber of the beds,” that is, in one room or chamber, where was the dining-room in which the priests and Levites ate, who by their turn that week served the temple. For such rooms were very numerous around the temple, and therefore they too are called the temple, that is, appendages of the temple.
I explained the rest of this chapter in 4 Kings IX.