TEXT [Commentary]

2. Ahaziah rules in Israel (22:51-53 [22:52-54])

51 Ahaziah son of Ahab began to rule over Israel in the seventeenth year of King Jehoshaphat’s reign in Judah. He reigned in Samaria two years. 52 But he did what was evil in the LORD’s sight, following the example of his father and mother and the example of Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had led Israel to sin. 53 He served Baal and worshiped him, provoking the anger of the LORD, the God of Israel, just as his father had done.

NOTES

22:51 [52] Ahaziah. This was the first of two sons of Ahab who succeeded their father to the throne (cf. 2 Kgs 1:17). Ahaziah’s name probably means “Yah(weh) has grasped, taken hold of.” It is interesting that Ahab’s children seem to bear Yahwistic names (cf. Joram, and also Joash [22:26], if indeed Joash was literally the king’s son).

COMMENTARY [Text]

We will hear more about Ahaziah in the very next chapter (i.e., 2 Kgs 1, as the book is now divided); this is a good reminder that the division of Kings into two volumes is secondary and not editorially significant (cf. “Canonicity and Textual History” in the Introduction).

The Deuteronomistic denunciation here for Ahaziah is general and formulaic (cf. endnote 1 of the Introduction), nothing more. Perhaps a modicum of sympathy may be extended by the modern hearer/reader of this ancient text for this seemingly colorless descendant and successor of the vigorous King Ahab of Israel, whose dramatic story has just been told at some length. Still, all the northern kings were deemed “evil” to some extent (see endnotes 1 and 33 of the Introduction), and Ahaziah proved to be no exception. What a sad way to end 1 Kings: “Like father, like son” (cf. 22:53)—end of subject. But that, in its own way, is the epitaph of the entirety of 1–2 Kings: The fathers sin, and the children do the same, and eventually, exile (northern, and later southern) has to happen.

Seow (1999:198) contrasts the legacy of Jehoshaphat in 22:50 (“buried with his ancestors in the City of David”) with that of Ahaziah in 22:53 (“provok[ed] the anger of the LORD . . . just as his father [Ahab] had done”). One king’s legacy is relatively positive, the other utterly negative. But the real difference between the two is that one of them was heir to the throne of David, the other was not; and this was due only to the sovereign will of God. (Our legacies, likewise, depend much on God’s utter sovereignty and the resulting parental legacy we inherit.) This will be the burden, not so much of the brief discussions found in the final 13 verses of the present chapter (22:41-53), but of the entirety of the next. “Is there no God in Israel?” (2 Kgs 1:3, 16) is the question repeated therein. Thus, in conclusion, we need to realize that we cannot control either our parental legacies or our birthright, but we can control our theological responses to whatever setting they may place us in (cf. 2 Kgs 3:2 about Ahab’s other son, Joram). And we are indeed responsible for those responses. This very biblical message is something we can and must take away from the present short passages about Jehoshaphat of Judah and Ahaziah of Israel.