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2 Kings 15:1
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Adam Clarke Bible Commentary
In the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam - Dr. Kennicott complains loudly here, because of "the corruption in the name of this king of Judah, who is expressed by four different names in this chapter: Ozriah, Oziah, Ozrihu, and Ozihu. Our oldest Hebrew MS. relieves us here by reading truly, in Kg2 15:1, Kg2 15:6, Kg2 15:7, עזיהו Uzziah, where the printed text is differently corrupted. This reading is called true, 1. Because it is supported by the Syriac and Arabic versions in these three verses. 2. Because the printed text itself has it so in Kg2 15:32, Kg2 15:34 of this very chapter. 3. Because it is so expressed in the parallel place in Chronicles; and, 4. Because it is not Αζαριας, Azariah, but Οζιας, Oziah, (Uzziah), in St. Matthew's genealogy." There are insuperable difficulties in the chronology of this place. The marginal note says, "This is the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam's partnership in the kingdom with his father, who made him consort at his going to the Syrian wars. It is the sixteenth year of Jeroboam's monarchy." Dr. Lightfoot endeavors to reconcile this place with Kg2 14:16, Kg2 14:17, thus: "At the death of Amaziah, his son and heir Uzziah was but four years old, for he was about sixteen in Jeroboam's twenty-seventh year; therefore, the throne must have been empty eleven years, and the government administered by protectors while Uzziah was in his minority." Learned men are not agreed concerning the mode of reconciling these differences; there is probably some mistake in the numbers. I must say to all the contending chronologers: - Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites. When such men disagree, I can't decide.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary
Reign of Azariah (Uzziah) or Judah (cf. 2 Chron 26). - The statement that "in the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam Azariah began to reign" is at variance with Kg2 14:2, Kg2 14:16-17, and Kg2 14:23. If, for example, Azariah ascended the throne in the fifteenth year of Joash of Israel, and with his twenty-nine years' reign outlived Joash fifteen years (Kg2 14:2, Kg2 14:17); if, moreover, Jeroboam followed his father Joash in the fifteenth year of Amaziah (Kg2 14:23), and Amaziah died in the fifteenth year of Jeroboam; Azariah (Uzziah) must have become king in the fifteenth year of Jeroboam, since, according to Kg2 14:21, the people made him king after the murder of his father, which precludes the supposition of an interregnum. Consequently the datum "in the twenty-seventh year" can only have crept into the text through the confounding of the numerals טו (15) with כז (27), and we must therefore read "in the fifteenth year." Kg2 15:2-6 Beside the general characteristics of Uzziah's fifty-two years' reign, which are given in the standing formula, not a single special act is mentioned, although, according to 2 Chron 26, he raised his kingdom to great earthly power and prosperity; probably for no other reason than because his enterprises had exerted no permanent influence upon the development of the kingdom of Judah, but all the useful fruits of his reign were destroyed again by the ungodly Ahaz. Uzziah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Amaziah had done. For as the latter was unfaithful to the Lord in the closing years of his reign, so did Uzziah seek God only so long as Zechariah, who was experienced in divine visions, remained alive, and God gave success to his enterprises, so that during this time he carried on successful wars against the Philistines and Arabians, fortified the walls of Jerusalem with strong towers, built watch-towers in the desert, and constructed cisterns for the protection and supply of his numerous flocks, promoted agriculture and vine-growing, and organized a numerous and well-furnished army (Ch2 26:5-15). But the great power to which he thereby attained produced such haughtiness, that he wanted to make himself high priest in his kingdom after the manner of the heathen kings, and usurping the sacred functions, which belonged according to the law to the Levitical priests alone, to offer incense in the temple, for which he was punished with leprosy upon the spot (Kg2 15:5 compared with Ch2 26:16.). The king's leprosy is described in our account also as a punishment from God. יי ויננּע: Jehovah smote him, and he became leprous. This presupposes an act of guilt, and confirms the fuller account of this guilt given in the Chronicles, which Thenius, following the example of De Wette and Winer, could only call in question on the erroneous assumption "that the powerful king wanted to restore the regal high-priesthood exercised by David and Solomon" Oehler (Herzog's Cycl.) has already shown that such an opinion is perfectly "groundless," since it is nowhere stated that David and Solomon performed with their own hands the functions assigned in the law to the priests in connection with the offering of sacrifice, as the co-operation of the priests is not precluded in connection with the sacrifices presented by these kings (Sa2 6:17, and Kg1 3:4, etc.). - Uzziah being afflicted with leprosy, was obliged to live in a separate house, and appoint his son Jotham as president of the royal house to judge the people, i.e., to conduct the administration of the kingdom. - The time when this event occurred is not stated either in our account or in the Chronicles. But this punishment from God cannot have fallen upon him before the last ten years of his fifty-two years' reign, because his son, who was only twenty-five years old when his father died (Kg2 15:33, and Ch2 27:1), undertook the administration of the affairs of the kingdom at once, and therefore must have been at least fifteen years old. החפשׁית בּית is taken by Winer, Gesenius, and others, after the example of Iken, to signify nosocomium, an infirmary or lazar-house, in accordance with the verb Arab. xfs̆, fecit, II debilis, imbecillis fuit. But this meaning cannot be traced in Hebrew, where חפשׁי is used in no other sense than free, set at liberty, manumissus. Consequently the rendering adopted by Aquila is correct, οἶκος ἐλευθερίας; and the explanation given by Kimchi of this epithet is, that the persons who lived there were those who were sent away from human society, or perhaps more correctly, those who were released from the world and its privileges and duties, or cut off from intercourse with God and man. Kg2 15:7 When Uzziah died, he was buried with his fathers in the city of David, but because he died of leprosy, not in the royal family tomb, but, as the Chronicles (Kg2 15:23) add to complete the account, "in the burial-field of the kings;" so that he was probably buried in the earth according to our mode. His son Jotham did not become king till after Uzziah's death, as he had not been regent, but only the administrator of the affairs of the kingdom during his father's leprosy.
John Gill Bible Commentary
In the twenty amd seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel began Azariah the son on Amaziah king of Judah to reign. Now Amaziah lived only to the fifteenth year of Jeroboam, Kg2 14:2 in which year, and not in his twenty seventh, it might be thought Azariah his son began to reign. There are various ways taken to remove this difficulty, not to take notice of a corruption of numbers, "twenty seven for seventeen", which some insist on. Ben Gersom and Abarbinel are of opinion, that those twenty seven years of Jeroboam's reign are not to be understood of what were past, but of what were to come before the family of Jehu was extinct; and that he reigned twenty six years, and his son six months, which made twenty seven imperfect years. Others suppose that Jeroboam reigned with his father eleven or twelve years before his death; and, reckoning from the different periods of his reign, this was either the twenty seventh year, or the fifteenth or sixteenth: and others, that the reign of Azariah may be differently reckoned, either from the time his father fled to Lachish, where he might remain eleven or twelve years, or from his death, and so may be said to begin to reign either in the fifteenth or twenty seventh of Jeroboam; or there was an interregnum of eleven or twelve years after the death of his father, he being a minor of about four years of age, which was the fifteenth of Jeroboam, during which time the government was in the hands of the princes and great men of the nation; and it was not till Azariah was sixteen years of age, and when it was the twenty seventh of Jeroboam's reign, that the people agreed to make him king, see Kg2 14:21 and which seems to be the best way of accounting for it. and which seems to be the best way of accounting for it. 2 Kings 15:2 kg2 15:2 kg2 15:2 kg2 15:2Sixteen years old was he when he began to reign,.... By the consent of the people and princes of Judah, Kg2 14:21. and he reigned fifty and two years in Jerusalem: exclusive of the eleven or twelve years of his minority, from his father's death: and his mother's name was Jecholiah of Jerusalem; of whom there is no further account any where.
Matthew Henry Bible Commentary
This is a short account of the reign of Azariah. 1. Most of it is general, and the same that has been given of others; he began young and reigned long (Kg2 15:2), did, for the most part, that which was right, Kg2 15:3 (it was happy for the kingdom that a good reign was a long one), only he had not zeal and courage enough to take away the high places, Kg2 15:4. 2. That which is peculiar, Kg2 15:5 (that God smote him with a leprosy) is more largely related, with the occasion of it, Ch2 26:16, etc., where we have also a fuller account of the glories of the former part of his reign, as well as of the disgraces of the latter part of it. He did that which was right, as Amaziah had done; like him, he began well, but failed before he finished. Here we are told, (1.) That he was a leper. The greatest of men are not only subject to the common calamities, but also to the common infirmities, of human nature; and, if they be guilty of any heinous sin, they lie as open as the meanest to the most grievous strokes of divine vengeance. (2.) God smote him with this leprosy, to chastise him for his presumptuous invasion of the priests' office. If great men be proud men, some way or other God will humble them, and make them know he is both above them and against them, for he resisteth the proud. (3.) That he was a leper to the day of his death. Though we have reason to think he repented and the sin was pardoned, yet, for warning to others, he was continued under this mark of God's displeasure as long as he lived, and perhaps it was for the good of his soul that he was so. (4.) That he dwelt in a separate house, as being made ceremonially unclean by the law, to the discipline of which, though a king, he must submit. He that presumptuously intruded into God's temple, and pretended to be a priest, was justly shut out from his own palace, and shut up as a prisoner or recluse, ever after. We suppose that his separate house was made as convenient and agreeable as might be. Some translate it a free house, where he had liberty to take his pleasure. However, it was a great mortification to one that had been so much a man of honour, and a man of business, as he had been, to be cut off from society and dwell always in a separate house: it would almost make life itself a burden, even to kings, though they have never any to converse with but their inferiors; the most contemplative men would soon be weary of it. (5.) That his son was his viceroy in the affairs both of his court (for he was over the house) and of his kingdom (for he was judging the people of the land); and it was both a comfort to him and a blessing to his kingdom that he had such a son to fill up his room.
Tyndale Open Study Notes
15:1-3 The name Uzziah means Yahweh is my strength. • fifty-two years: The length of Uzziah’s reign (792–740 BC) reflects changed conditions in the early 700s BC. Assyria was in decline and relations between Israel and Judah were cordial. Uzziah’s spiritual convictions earned God’s blessing so that Judah enjoyed its greatest prosperity since the days of Solomon (2 Chr 26:9-10).
2 Kings 15:1
Azariah Reigns in Judah
1In the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam’s reign over Israel, Azariah son of Amaziah became king of Judah.2He was sixteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-two years. His mother’s name was Jecoliah; she was from Jerusalem.
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Adam Clarke Bible Commentary
In the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam - Dr. Kennicott complains loudly here, because of "the corruption in the name of this king of Judah, who is expressed by four different names in this chapter: Ozriah, Oziah, Ozrihu, and Ozihu. Our oldest Hebrew MS. relieves us here by reading truly, in Kg2 15:1, Kg2 15:6, Kg2 15:7, עזיהו Uzziah, where the printed text is differently corrupted. This reading is called true, 1. Because it is supported by the Syriac and Arabic versions in these three verses. 2. Because the printed text itself has it so in Kg2 15:32, Kg2 15:34 of this very chapter. 3. Because it is so expressed in the parallel place in Chronicles; and, 4. Because it is not Αζαριας, Azariah, but Οζιας, Oziah, (Uzziah), in St. Matthew's genealogy." There are insuperable difficulties in the chronology of this place. The marginal note says, "This is the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam's partnership in the kingdom with his father, who made him consort at his going to the Syrian wars. It is the sixteenth year of Jeroboam's monarchy." Dr. Lightfoot endeavors to reconcile this place with Kg2 14:16, Kg2 14:17, thus: "At the death of Amaziah, his son and heir Uzziah was but four years old, for he was about sixteen in Jeroboam's twenty-seventh year; therefore, the throne must have been empty eleven years, and the government administered by protectors while Uzziah was in his minority." Learned men are not agreed concerning the mode of reconciling these differences; there is probably some mistake in the numbers. I must say to all the contending chronologers: - Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites. When such men disagree, I can't decide.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary
Reign of Azariah (Uzziah) or Judah (cf. 2 Chron 26). - The statement that "in the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam Azariah began to reign" is at variance with Kg2 14:2, Kg2 14:16-17, and Kg2 14:23. If, for example, Azariah ascended the throne in the fifteenth year of Joash of Israel, and with his twenty-nine years' reign outlived Joash fifteen years (Kg2 14:2, Kg2 14:17); if, moreover, Jeroboam followed his father Joash in the fifteenth year of Amaziah (Kg2 14:23), and Amaziah died in the fifteenth year of Jeroboam; Azariah (Uzziah) must have become king in the fifteenth year of Jeroboam, since, according to Kg2 14:21, the people made him king after the murder of his father, which precludes the supposition of an interregnum. Consequently the datum "in the twenty-seventh year" can only have crept into the text through the confounding of the numerals טו (15) with כז (27), and we must therefore read "in the fifteenth year." Kg2 15:2-6 Beside the general characteristics of Uzziah's fifty-two years' reign, which are given in the standing formula, not a single special act is mentioned, although, according to 2 Chron 26, he raised his kingdom to great earthly power and prosperity; probably for no other reason than because his enterprises had exerted no permanent influence upon the development of the kingdom of Judah, but all the useful fruits of his reign were destroyed again by the ungodly Ahaz. Uzziah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Amaziah had done. For as the latter was unfaithful to the Lord in the closing years of his reign, so did Uzziah seek God only so long as Zechariah, who was experienced in divine visions, remained alive, and God gave success to his enterprises, so that during this time he carried on successful wars against the Philistines and Arabians, fortified the walls of Jerusalem with strong towers, built watch-towers in the desert, and constructed cisterns for the protection and supply of his numerous flocks, promoted agriculture and vine-growing, and organized a numerous and well-furnished army (Ch2 26:5-15). But the great power to which he thereby attained produced such haughtiness, that he wanted to make himself high priest in his kingdom after the manner of the heathen kings, and usurping the sacred functions, which belonged according to the law to the Levitical priests alone, to offer incense in the temple, for which he was punished with leprosy upon the spot (Kg2 15:5 compared with Ch2 26:16.). The king's leprosy is described in our account also as a punishment from God. יי ויננּע: Jehovah smote him, and he became leprous. This presupposes an act of guilt, and confirms the fuller account of this guilt given in the Chronicles, which Thenius, following the example of De Wette and Winer, could only call in question on the erroneous assumption "that the powerful king wanted to restore the regal high-priesthood exercised by David and Solomon" Oehler (Herzog's Cycl.) has already shown that such an opinion is perfectly "groundless," since it is nowhere stated that David and Solomon performed with their own hands the functions assigned in the law to the priests in connection with the offering of sacrifice, as the co-operation of the priests is not precluded in connection with the sacrifices presented by these kings (Sa2 6:17, and Kg1 3:4, etc.). - Uzziah being afflicted with leprosy, was obliged to live in a separate house, and appoint his son Jotham as president of the royal house to judge the people, i.e., to conduct the administration of the kingdom. - The time when this event occurred is not stated either in our account or in the Chronicles. But this punishment from God cannot have fallen upon him before the last ten years of his fifty-two years' reign, because his son, who was only twenty-five years old when his father died (Kg2 15:33, and Ch2 27:1), undertook the administration of the affairs of the kingdom at once, and therefore must have been at least fifteen years old. החפשׁית בּית is taken by Winer, Gesenius, and others, after the example of Iken, to signify nosocomium, an infirmary or lazar-house, in accordance with the verb Arab. xfs̆, fecit, II debilis, imbecillis fuit. But this meaning cannot be traced in Hebrew, where חפשׁי is used in no other sense than free, set at liberty, manumissus. Consequently the rendering adopted by Aquila is correct, οἶκος ἐλευθερίας; and the explanation given by Kimchi of this epithet is, that the persons who lived there were those who were sent away from human society, or perhaps more correctly, those who were released from the world and its privileges and duties, or cut off from intercourse with God and man. Kg2 15:7 When Uzziah died, he was buried with his fathers in the city of David, but because he died of leprosy, not in the royal family tomb, but, as the Chronicles (Kg2 15:23) add to complete the account, "in the burial-field of the kings;" so that he was probably buried in the earth according to our mode. His son Jotham did not become king till after Uzziah's death, as he had not been regent, but only the administrator of the affairs of the kingdom during his father's leprosy.
John Gill Bible Commentary
In the twenty amd seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel began Azariah the son on Amaziah king of Judah to reign. Now Amaziah lived only to the fifteenth year of Jeroboam, Kg2 14:2 in which year, and not in his twenty seventh, it might be thought Azariah his son began to reign. There are various ways taken to remove this difficulty, not to take notice of a corruption of numbers, "twenty seven for seventeen", which some insist on. Ben Gersom and Abarbinel are of opinion, that those twenty seven years of Jeroboam's reign are not to be understood of what were past, but of what were to come before the family of Jehu was extinct; and that he reigned twenty six years, and his son six months, which made twenty seven imperfect years. Others suppose that Jeroboam reigned with his father eleven or twelve years before his death; and, reckoning from the different periods of his reign, this was either the twenty seventh year, or the fifteenth or sixteenth: and others, that the reign of Azariah may be differently reckoned, either from the time his father fled to Lachish, where he might remain eleven or twelve years, or from his death, and so may be said to begin to reign either in the fifteenth or twenty seventh of Jeroboam; or there was an interregnum of eleven or twelve years after the death of his father, he being a minor of about four years of age, which was the fifteenth of Jeroboam, during which time the government was in the hands of the princes and great men of the nation; and it was not till Azariah was sixteen years of age, and when it was the twenty seventh of Jeroboam's reign, that the people agreed to make him king, see Kg2 14:21 and which seems to be the best way of accounting for it. and which seems to be the best way of accounting for it. 2 Kings 15:2 kg2 15:2 kg2 15:2 kg2 15:2Sixteen years old was he when he began to reign,.... By the consent of the people and princes of Judah, Kg2 14:21. and he reigned fifty and two years in Jerusalem: exclusive of the eleven or twelve years of his minority, from his father's death: and his mother's name was Jecholiah of Jerusalem; of whom there is no further account any where.
Matthew Henry Bible Commentary
This is a short account of the reign of Azariah. 1. Most of it is general, and the same that has been given of others; he began young and reigned long (Kg2 15:2), did, for the most part, that which was right, Kg2 15:3 (it was happy for the kingdom that a good reign was a long one), only he had not zeal and courage enough to take away the high places, Kg2 15:4. 2. That which is peculiar, Kg2 15:5 (that God smote him with a leprosy) is more largely related, with the occasion of it, Ch2 26:16, etc., where we have also a fuller account of the glories of the former part of his reign, as well as of the disgraces of the latter part of it. He did that which was right, as Amaziah had done; like him, he began well, but failed before he finished. Here we are told, (1.) That he was a leper. The greatest of men are not only subject to the common calamities, but also to the common infirmities, of human nature; and, if they be guilty of any heinous sin, they lie as open as the meanest to the most grievous strokes of divine vengeance. (2.) God smote him with this leprosy, to chastise him for his presumptuous invasion of the priests' office. If great men be proud men, some way or other God will humble them, and make them know he is both above them and against them, for he resisteth the proud. (3.) That he was a leper to the day of his death. Though we have reason to think he repented and the sin was pardoned, yet, for warning to others, he was continued under this mark of God's displeasure as long as he lived, and perhaps it was for the good of his soul that he was so. (4.) That he dwelt in a separate house, as being made ceremonially unclean by the law, to the discipline of which, though a king, he must submit. He that presumptuously intruded into God's temple, and pretended to be a priest, was justly shut out from his own palace, and shut up as a prisoner or recluse, ever after. We suppose that his separate house was made as convenient and agreeable as might be. Some translate it a free house, where he had liberty to take his pleasure. However, it was a great mortification to one that had been so much a man of honour, and a man of business, as he had been, to be cut off from society and dwell always in a separate house: it would almost make life itself a burden, even to kings, though they have never any to converse with but their inferiors; the most contemplative men would soon be weary of it. (5.) That his son was his viceroy in the affairs both of his court (for he was over the house) and of his kingdom (for he was judging the people of the land); and it was both a comfort to him and a blessing to his kingdom that he had such a son to fill up his room.
Tyndale Open Study Notes
15:1-3 The name Uzziah means Yahweh is my strength. • fifty-two years: The length of Uzziah’s reign (792–740 BC) reflects changed conditions in the early 700s BC. Assyria was in decline and relations between Israel and Judah were cordial. Uzziah’s spiritual convictions earned God’s blessing so that Judah enjoyed its greatest prosperity since the days of Solomon (2 Chr 26:9-10).