2 Kings 15:1
INTRODUCTION TO 2 KINGS 15
This chapter begins with the reign of Azariah king of Judah, 2Ki 15:1, and then gives a short account of the several kings of Israel, to the last of them; of Zachariah, 2Ki 15:8, of Shallum, 2Ki 15:13 of Menahem, 2Ki 15:16 of Pekahiah, 2Ki 15:23, of Pekah, succeeded by Hoshea, the last of them, 2Ki 15:27, and is included with the reign of Jotham king of Judah, 2Ki 15:32.
Ver. 1. In the twenty amd seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel began Azariah the son on Amaziah king of Judah to reign. Now Amaziah lived only to the fifteenth year of Jeroboam, 2Ki 14:2 in which year, and not in his twenty seventh, it might be thought Azariah his son began to reign. There are various ways taken to remove this difficulty, not to take notice of a corruption of numbers, "twenty seven for seventeen", which some insist on. Ben Gersom and Abarbinel are of opinion, that those twenty seven years of Jeroboam's reign are not to be understood of what were past, but of what were to come before the family of Jehu was extinct; and that he reigned twenty six years, and his son six months, which made twenty seven imperfect years. Others suppose that Jeroboam reigned with his father eleven or twelve years before his death; and, reckoning from the different periods of his reign, this was either the twenty seventh year, or the fifteenth or sixteenth: and others, that the reign of Azariah may be differently reckoned, either from the time his father fled to Lachish, where he might remain eleven or twelve years, or from his death, and so may be said to begin to reign either in the fifteenth or twenty seventh of Jeroboam; or there was an interregnum of eleven or twelve years after the death of his father, he being a minor of about four years of age, which was the fifteenth of Jeroboam, during which time the government was in the hands of the princes and great men of the nation; and it was not till Azariah was sixteen years of age, and when it was the twenty seventh of Jeroboam's reign, that the people agreed to make him king, see 2Ki 14:21 and which seems to be the best way of accounting for it.