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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 King 15:30 - 15:30
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Pekah met with his death in a conspiracy organized by Hosea the son of Elah, who made himself king “in the twentieth year of Jotham.” There is something very strange in this chronological datum, as Jotham only reigned sixteen years (2Ki 15:33), and Ahaz began to reign in the seventeenth year of Pekah (2Ki 16:1); so that Pekah's death would fall in the fourth year of Ahaz. The reason for this striking statement can only be found, as Usher has shown (Chronol. sacr. p. 80), in the fact that nothing has yet been said about Jotham's successor Ahaz, because the reign of Jotham himself is not mentioned till 2Ki 15:32.
(Note: Other attempts to solve this difficulty are either arbitrary and precarious, e.g., the conjectures of the earlier chronologists quoted by Winer (R. W. s. v. Jotham), or forced, like the notion of Vaihinger in Herzog's Cycl. (art. Jotham), that the words בן־עזיה ליותם are to be eliminated as an interpolation, in which case the datum “in the twentieth year” becomes perfectly enigmatical; and again the assertion of Hitzig (Comm. z. Jesaj. pp. 72, 73), that instead of in the twentieth year of Jotham, we should read “in the twentieth year of Ahaz the son of Jotham,” which could only be consistently carried out by altering the text of not less than seven passages (viz., 2Ki 15:33; 2Ki 16:1, and 2Ki 16:2, 2Ki 16:17; 2Ch 27:1 and 2Ch 27:8, and 2Ch 28:1); and lastly, the assumption of Thenius, that the words from בשׁנת to עזיה have crept into the text through a double mistake of the copyist and an arbitrary alteration of what had been thus falsely written, which is much too complicated to appear at all credible, even if the reasons which are supposed to render it probable had been more forcible and correct than they really are. For the first reason, viz., that the statement in what year of the contemporaneous ruler a king came to the throne is always first given when the history of this king commences, is disproved by 2Ki 1:17; the second, that the name of the king by the year of whose reign the accession of another is defined is invariably introduced with the epithet king of Judah or king of Israel, is shown by 2Ki 12:2 and 2Ki 16:1 to be not in accordance with fact; and the third, that this very king is never described by the introduction of his father's name, as he is here, except where the intention is to prevent misunderstanding, as in 2Ki 14:1, 2Ki 14:23, or in the case of usurpers without ancestors (2Ki 15:32, 2Ki 16:1 and 2Ki 16:15), is also incorrect in its first portion, for in the case of Amaziah in 2Ki 14:23 there was no misunderstanding to prevent, and even in the case of Joash in 2Ki 14:1 the epithet king of Israel would have been quite sufficient to guard against any misunderstanding.)