22:1-12 The reign of Ahaziah, Athaliah destroys the royal family. - The counsel of the ungodly ruins many young persons when they are setting out in the world. Ahaziah gave himself up to be led by evil men. Those who advise us to do wickedly, counsel us to our destruction; while they pretend to be friends, they are our worst enemies. See and dread the mischief of bad company. If not the infection, yet let the destruction be feared, Re 18:4. We have here, a wicked woman endeavouring to destroy the house of David, and a good woman preserving it. No word of God shall fall to the ground. The whole truth of the prophecies that the Messiah was to come from David, and thereby the salvation of the world, appeared to be now hung upon the brittle thread of the life of a single infant, to destroy whom was the interest of the reigning power. But God had purposed, and vain were the efforts of earth and hell.

Verse 9. - And he sought Ahaziah: and they caught him... brought him... buried him. This verse, which at the first sight seems at variance with 2 Kings 9:27, 28, is perhaps a simply surprising instance of undesigned corroboration of history by the treatment of different historians. The verse, e.g., corrects the italics of 2 Kings 9:27; expunging them throws their proper force into the words, "at the going up to Gur," showing that Jehu reckoned on that steep kill to enable his pursuing warriors to overtake Ahaziah; makes a sufficiently possible harmony, to say the least, in respect of the remaining incidents narrated of his life - that he made for the time a successful flight to Megiddo, afterwards sought to hide in deeper retirement in Samaria, was thence brought to Jehu at Megiddo, there eventually slain before his eyes, and by his own servants, who must be supposed to have had some attachment to him, but probably with the sanction of Jehu himself, conveyed "in a chariot to Jerusalem" for sepulture "in the sepulchre of his fathers in the city of David" (2 Kings 9:28). The fact that he received decent burial being due to the God-fearing character of his grandfather, and that this should find its record on the page of the book that will last while the world lasts, that very page already two thousand five hundred years old, is a most touching consideration. Megiddo was on the Esdraelon or Jezreel plain, that stretched between the hills of Galilee and those of Mount Ephraim or Samaria. Had no power to keep still the kingdom. The undoubted meaning of this clause is that there was no one of the house of Ahaziah who could succeed him. The Hebrew text does not say, "no one left," etc. But the allusion can scarcely be to anything but the fact that transpires in our ver. 11 (where only Joash is mentioned as a son, and with him a nurse), viz. that his only surviving son was an infant, The king's sons (presumably sons of Ahaziah and grandsons of her own) were among the "seed royal," whom the wicked Athaliah had "destroyed." Gesenius says that the words that wrap in them the slight ambiguity, עָצַר כֹחַ, are a phrase peculiar to the later Hebrew, and he instances nine examples, all of which come from Daniel or Chronicles, the virtue of the phrase amounting to the ports ease of the Latin. Translate, And there was no one of the house of Ahaziah able for the kingdom, the exacter conditions of the case not being recorded.

And he sought Ahaziah,.... Who fled on Joram's being wounded by Jehu:

and they caught him; the soldiers of Jehu, who were sent after him, and bid to smite him:

for he was hid in Samaria; either in some part of the kingdom of Samaria, or in the city itself, whither he fled:

and brought him to Jehu: who was at Jezreel; see Gill on 2 Kings 9:27,

and when they had slain him they buried him; not at Jezreel, but delivered him to his servants to carry him to Jerusalem, and there bury him in the sepulchres of his fathers, 2 Kings 9:28,

because, said they, he is the son of Jehoshaphat, who sought the Lord with all his heart; a grandson of his, and therefore out of respect to the memory of his name, these being religious men, ordered his burial there:

so the house of Ahaziah had no power to keep still the kingdom; his brethren and their sons being slain, and his own children being young fell into the hands of Athaliah, who murdered them all, but one, hid by his aunt, and so got the government into her own hands, as may be observed in the following verses, 2 Chronicles 22:10.

9. he sought Ahaziah, and they caught him (for he was hid in Samaria)—(compare 2Ki 9:27-29). The two accounts are easily reconciled. "Ahaziah fled first to the garden house and escaped to Samaria; but was here, where he had hid himself, taken by Jehu's men who pursued him, brought to Jehu, who was still near or in Jezreel, and at his command slain at the hill Gur, beside Ibleam, in his chariot; that is, mortally wounded with an arrow, so that he, again fleeing, expired at Megiddo" [Keil]. Jehu left the corpse at the disposal of the king of Judah's attendants, who conveyed it to Jerusalem, and out of respect to his grandfather Jehoshaphat's memory, gave him an honorable interment in the tombs of the kings.

So the house of Ahaziah had no power to keep still the kingdom—His children were too young to assume the reins of government, and all the other royal princes had been massacred by Jehu (2Ch 22:8).

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