When comparing II Kings 8:26 and II Chronicles 22:2, which is the true age of Ahaziah when he began to reign?<\/p>\n\t
“Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah the granddaughter of Omri, king of Israel”<\/i> (II Kings 8:26).<\/p>\n
“Ahaziah<\/em> was forty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah the granddaughter of Omri” (<\/i>II Chronicles 22:2).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is a case where it appears a scribe made a mistake in copying\u00a0II Chronicles 22:2. Scholars are confident of this because\u00a0II Chronicles 21:20\u00a0and\u00a0II Kings 8:17\u00a0tells us that Ahaziah’s father died at the age of 40. If Ahaziah was 42 at the time of his father’s death, he would have been two years older than his father — an impossibility. In older Hebrew, numbers were represented by single letters. The letter for forty was\u00a0mem<\/i>\u00a0and the letter for twenty was\u00a0kaph<\/i>. It is possible that these two similar letters in ancient Hebrew were confused in the ancient Hebrew manuscripts. When the letters were expanded to words, the error was carried over. This is further supported in that some Septuagint translations of the Hebrew Bible, the Arabic manuscript, and the Syriac manuscript have twenty-two in\u00a0II Chronicles 22:2\u00a0instead of forty-two as found in the Masoretic family of manuscripts.<\/p>\n
Some try to make both texts “right” by asserting that Ahaziah did not immediately start his reign, but was under the thumb of his regent mother. This doesn’t work as we look at the reign of Jehoram, Ahaziah’s uncle. In\u00a0II Kings 3:1\u00a0we learn that Jehoram ruled twelve years, starting at the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat’s reign in Israel. During Jehoram of Israel’s fifth year of reign, Jehoram of Judah began to reign (II Kings 8:16). Azahiah began his reign during Jehoram of Israel’s final year and died with him at the hand of Jehu. There is no room to slip in an extra 20 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Question: When comparing II Kings 8:26 and II Chronicles 22:2, which is the true age of Ahaziah when he began to reign? Answer: “Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah the granddaughter of Omri, king of Israel” (II Kings 8:26). “Ahaziah…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[425,421],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-ahaziah","tag-conflicts-in-the-bible"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":20313,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/did-ahaziah-begin-to-reign-in-the-eleventh-or-twelfth-year-of-jorams-reign\/","url_meta":{"origin":1687,"position":0},"title":"Did Ahaziah begin to reign in the eleventh or twelfth year of Joram’s reign?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I have another question regarding a couple of passages in II Kings. II Kings 8:25 and II Kings 9:29 concerning when Ahaziah began to reign as king. One passage says in the twelfth year of Joram and the other passage says in the eleventh year of Joram. This was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28936,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/im-confused-by-the-story-of-athaliah\/","url_meta":{"origin":1687,"position":1},"title":"I’m confused by the story of Athaliah","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Okay, so in II Chronicles 21, we're told that Jehoram was a very bad king and walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, so God sent a message to Him through Elijah stating that God would take away Jehoram's children, wives, and possessions, and furthermore He would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17770,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/did-asa-and-jehoshaphats-reigns-overlap-in-judah\/","url_meta":{"origin":1687,"position":2},"title":"Did Asa and Jehoshaphat’s reigns overlap in Judah?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: From the dates I can find, King Asa and Jehoshaphat overlapped in their reigns as kings. 873 - 870. Is that correct? And why the overlap? Also, when Elijah was fleeing from Jezebel and went to Judah do we know for sure which king was reigning over Judah (Asa\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28948,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-would-kings-name-their-children-after-other-kings\/","url_meta":{"origin":1687,"position":3},"title":"Why would kings name their children after other kings?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: One thing I still don't understand is how the kings intertwined and started naming their children after relatives, which is very confusing.\u00a0 Why would kings do that when the entire pride of a king rests on the fact of all they have accomplished in their reign and in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":94314,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/mistakes-in-the-bible\/","url_meta":{"origin":1687,"position":4},"title":"Mistakes in the Bible","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 4, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"by Allen Dvorak \"Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem\" (II Kings 8:26). \"Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem\" (II Chronicles 22:2). Bible critics love to point to such numerical discrepancies\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29055,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/when-ahab-humbled-himself\/","url_meta":{"origin":1687,"position":5},"title":"When Ahab Humbled Himself","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 27, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jeffrey W. Hamilton It might seem odd, but I love it when a student in a Bible class asks a deep question -- you know, a question that shows the student was thinking far beyond the immediate lesson. This morning, a student was working on a lesson about greed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}