The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Chronicles — Section 269

(Keil). "In a well cloRe by, as at Cawnpore, they were all slaughtered" (Sbnley). 4. By whom they were killed. Jehu, whose motive may have been either (1) because ho regarded their death us embraced within the scope of his commission, or (2) because he feared the exaction by some of them of blood-vengeance, or (3) becauge he wiHhed to render impossible any future attempt at the subversion of his authority. IV. 'l'HE ABBABBINATION Oll' AHAZIAII, (Ver. 9.) I. .After a brief reign. Ahaziah sncceeded to his father's throne in his forty-second year, or in his twenty-second (2 Kings viii. 26)-a discrepancy removed by supposing the forty-two to indicate the age of the kingdom of his mother's family (Lightfoot), but best explained by con- ceding that an error has crept into the text (Keil, Bertheau, Bahr). After enjoying regal power for one year, he fell a victim to the sword of Jehu-a startling reminder of the uncertainty of life and the vanity of human greatness. 2. By the hand of Providence. "'l'he destruction of Ahaziah was of God" (ver. 7); not merely as all things are under the Divine control, but in the special sense that the incidents which led to Ahaziah's destruction were of God's permitting, if not ordering. (1) God allowed J ehoram to go to war, as his father had done, with the Syrian kin11:, now not Benbadad II., hut Hazael the usurper (ver. 6), who is mentioned along with Jebu in the Assyrian inscriptions, and with whom Shalmaneser II., in the eighteenth year of his reign, fought at Damascus, capturing his camp with 1221 chariots and 470 war-carriages (Schrader, 'Keilinschriften,' p. 210; 'Records,' etc., v. 34; Sayce, 'Fresh Light,' etc., p. 123). (2) Ahaziah of Judah be permitted to go to Ramoth-Gilead with his uncle. (3) In the war Jehovah ordered it that Jehoram should be wounded and return to Jezreel to be healed, and that Ahaziah should afterwards also leave Ramoth and go to the Israelitish capital to inquire for his mother's brother. (4) Heuce it came to pass that he was found in Jehoram's company when Jehu came to Jezreel on his murderous errand (2 Kings ix. 21). (5) Had this train of circumstances not preceded, Ahaziah's death might not have followed, at least at the time when and the place where it did. 3. .As a just retribution/or his wickedness. For Ahaziah a tremendous misfortune, for which he was in no way responsible, thai he had Jehoram and Athaliah for his parents. If any ma.n might be said to have "a double <lose of original sin," or inherited corruption, he had. If he may be pronounced happy who has the piety of generations at his back and within his veins, propelling him forward in the ways of virtue and religion, on the other hand he should be deemed an object of pity who is not only held back from the paths of godliness, but urged into the broad road8 of sin and vice by secret forces of heredity that have been gathering momentum through a long succession of wicked ancestors. Disadvantageously placed as Ahaziah was, he was under no compulsion to yield to the evil influences by which he was snrrounded. That he did not resist them, but abandoned himself to them without let or hindrance, was his sin. (1) He "walked in the ways of the house of Ahab," and "did evil in the sight of the Lord like the house of Ahab." He copied their idolatries and their immo- ralities. (2) He took as his example the house of Ahab, and especially his mother, Athaliah, whom the Chronicler, with reference to her wicked propensities, fitly designates " the daughter of Omri." 4. In spite of strenuous efforts to escape. The accounts given of these efforts to escape are considerably divergent. According to the Chronicler, when Ahaziah saw Jehoram sink down in his chariot after being struck with Jehu's arrow, he fled by the way or the garden house, but was followed by Jehu, and, like his uncle, wounded with an arrow at the going up to Gur, which is by lbleam, whence he fled to Megiddo, and died there (2 Kings ix. 27). According to 2 Kings, A.haziah had hid himself in Samaria, and, being found there, was slain by Jehu's servants. The accounts are pronounced irreconcilable, that of Kings being the older and more authentic (Bahr, Bertheau); but the explanations ordinarily proffered (Lightfoot, Keil) are deserving of consideration-that Ahaziah, on first escaping, fled to Samaria, and was a.fterward~ found there by Jehu's servants, who brought him to Jehu, at whose co=and he was shot while in his chariot at Gur, beside Ibleam, and that, once more escapiug, though this time mortally wounded, he reached Megiddo, and perished there. On the sites here mentioned, consult the Exposition. V. THE DESTRU0TION OF THE SEED ROYAL o:r THE HOUSE OF JUDAH. (Ver. 10.) 1. The victims of this massacre. All the seed royal, i.e. all the direct descendants of the kingly house, all who might in any measure or degree a.spire to the throne. As  270 THE SECOND BOOK OF THE OHRONICLES. [oH. xxn.1-12,