2Ch 22:2 | Clarke | e4.org | Verse 2. Forty and two years old was Ahaziah ] . Ahaziah might have been twenty-two years old, according to , but he could not have been forty-two , as stated here, without being two years older than his own father ! See the note there. The Syriac and Arabic have twenty-two , and the Septuagint , in some copies, twenty . And it is very probable that the Hebrew text read so originally; for when numbers were expressed by single letters , it was easy to mistake mem , FORTY, for caph , TWENTY. And if this book was written by a scribe who used the ancient Hebrew letters , now called the Samaritan , the mistake was still more easy and probable, as the difference between [Samaritan] caph and [Samaritan] mem is very small, and can in many instances be discerned only by an accustomed eye. The reading in is right , and any attempt to reconcile this in Chronicles with that is equally futile and absurd. Both readings cannot be true ; is that therefore likely to be genuine that makes the son two years older than the father who begat him? Apage hae nugae !

‏ 2 Chronicles 22:2

Verse 2. Forty and two years old was Ahaziah] See Clarke on 2Ki 8:26. Ahaziah might have been twenty-two years old, according to 2Ki 8:26, but he could not have been forty-two, as stated here, without being two years older than his own father! See the note there. The Syriac and Arabic have twenty-two, and the Septuagint, in some copies, twenty. And it is very probable that the Hebrew text read so originally; for when numbers were expressed by single letters, it was easy to mistake mem, FORTY, for caph, TWENTY. And if this book was written by a scribe who used the ancient Hebrew letters, now called the Samaritan, the mistake was still more easy and probable, as the difference between [Samaritan] caph and [Samaritan] mem is very small, and can in many instances be discerned only by an accustomed eye.

The reading in 2Ki 8:26 is right, and any attempt to reconcile this in Chronicles with that is equally futile and absurd. Both readings cannot be true; is that therefore likely to be genuine that makes the son two years older than the father who begat him? Apage hae nugae!