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CHAPTER 16 : JORAM AND JEHU, (TENTH AND ELEVENTH)
KINGS OF ISRAEL. AHAZIAH, (SIXTH) KING OF JUDAH. -
Accession of Ahaziah - Character of his Reign - Expedition of
Joram and Ahaziah against Hazael and taking of Ramoth-
Gilead - Joram returns Wounded to Jezreel - Visit of Ahaziah –
Jehu anointed King - Rapid March on Jezreel - Joram killed –
Pursuit and Death of Ahaziah - Jezebel killed - Fulfillment of
the Divine sentence by Elijah. (2 Kings 8:25-9:37; 2 Chronicles
22:1-9.)
THE brief reign of Ahaziah, or Jehoahaz (2 Chronicles 21:17) - for the names are
precisely the same, the two words of which they are compounded being only
reversed^262 ) - may be regarded as marking the crisis in the history alike of the
northern and the southern kingdom. The young prince was twenty-two years old^263
when he ascended the throne (2 Kings 8:26).^264
To say that he followed the evil example set by his father, would not express the
whole truth. Holy Scripture designates his course as a walking "in the ways of the
house of Ahab," explaining that his mother Athaliah a was his counselor, and that he
was also influenced by the other members of that family. It was by their advice that
he united with his uncle Joram in that expedition which ended in the death of the two
kings, although there is no evidence that a Judaean army was actually joined to the
forces of Israel.^265
We remember that fourteen years before, Jehoshaphat, the grandfather of Ahaziah,
had joined Ahab in a similar undertaking, which had proved unsuccessful, and in
which Ahab lost his life. We might wonder at the renewal of an attempt upon
Ramoth-Gilead, when a man like Hazael occupied the throne of Syria; but the
Assyrian monuments explain alike the expedition and its opening success. From
these we learn that there was repeated war between Assyria and Hazael, in which, to
judge from the number of Syrian war chariots captured (1121), the whole force of the
country must have been engaged and exhausted. On another occasion we read of a
war in which after a great victory^266 an Assyrian monarch pursued his enemy from
city to city, and even into the mountains, burning and destroying everything before
him.^267
We may therefore conjecture that if Joram was not actually in league with Assyria -
as Jehu afterwards was - the Israelitish king availed himself of the opportunity for an
attack upon Ramoth-Gilead. In this he seems to have been successful (2 Kings 9:14),
although he was wounded by the Syrians - as Josephus has it, by an arrow during the
(^)