2 Chronicles 22:8

And it came to pass, that when Jehu was executing judgment on the house of Ahab,.... On Joram, his son, and seventy more sons, his kinsfolks, courtiers, and priests: and found the princes of Judah, and or even the sons of the brethren of Ahaziah; whose number was forty two: that ministered to Ahaziah; had offices in his court, or in obedience to his will, went to visit the children of the king and queen of Israel: and he slew them; Jehu did; of the occasion, time, and place of his meeting with them, and slaying them, see 2 Kings 10:12.

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.

8 . And it came to pass, that when … and found … that ministered to Ahaziah, he slew them ] R.V. And it came to pass, when … that he found … ministering to Ahaziah, and slew them . the sons of the brethren of Ahaziah ] In 2 Kings 10:13 , “the brethren (i.e. kinsmen) of Ahaziah.” The brethren (in the strict sense of the word) of Ahaziah had already been killed ( 2 Chronicles 22:1 ). that ministered ] R.V. ministering . According to 2 Kin. they were going to “salute the children of the king and the children of the queen” (probably a courtly expression for “salute the king and the queen”).

The sons of the brethren of Ahaziah; either properly so called; or the sons of his cousins or near kinsmen, who are oft called brethren; for his brethren were slain, 2 Chronicles 22:8 . That ministered to Ahaziah; that came thither to wait upon their king Ahaziah, as is here implied, and withal to visit Joram and his children, as is noted, 2 Kings 10:13 .

Verse 8. - Executing judgment upon the house of Ahab . The description of all this is sufficiently graphically scattered along the verses of 2 Kings 9:24 - 11:20 . And found the princes of Judah (see especially 2 Kings 10:7, 11 ; 2 Kings 11:13-20 ). And the sons of the brethren of Ahaziah . This both explains and is explained by 2 Kings 10:12-14 . That ministered to Ahaziah . Even this enigmatical little clause receives its probable explanation from the last clause of ver. 13 in last quotation foregoing. 2 Chronicles 22:8

(8) When Jehu was executing judgment upon the house of Ahab. —The Hebrew phrase strictly means to plead with, or argue a cause with. (Comp. 1Samuel 12:7 .) When God is said to plead with men, the notion of judicial punishment is often involved, as in Joel 3:2 ; Isaiah 66:16 ; and such is the meaning here. Jehu was an instrument of Divine vengeance, even when fulfilling the projects of his own ambition, as were the savage Assyrian conquerors ( Isaiah 10:5-7 ). And found.—Rather, he found. The sons of the brethren of Ahaziah.—Comp. 2Kings 10:12-14, where the details are given. The persons whom Jehu slew are there called Ahaziah’s “brethren”—i.e., kinsmen (a common use; so LXX. here), and are said to have been forty-two in number. The Hebrew term is wide enough to include cousins and grandsons as well as nephews of the king. The “princes of Judah” who accompanied them would naturally be members of the court in charge of them, and are perhaps to be included in the total of forty-two persons.

Thenius, indeed, in his note on 2Kings 10:13, alleges that we must understand the real brothers of Ahaziah, whom the chronicler gets rid of (!) on an earlier occasion (i.e., 2Chronicles 21:17; 2Chronicles 22:1), because he required a Divine judgment in the lifetime of Jehoram. buch arbitrary criticism hardly deserves refutation; we may, however, remark that Thenius relies on the untenable assumption that Jehoram could not have begotten any children before Ahaziah, whom he begot in his eighteenth or nineteenth year. That ministered to Ahaziah.—In attendance on Ahaziah—i.e., attached to the retinue of Ahaziah as pages, &c. He slew them.—And slew them.

When Jehu was executing judgment upon the house of Ahab (נשׁפּט usually construed with את, to be at law with any one, to administer justice; cf. Isaiah 46:13 , Ezekiel 38:22 ), he found the princes of Judah, and the sons of the brothers of Ahaziah, serving Ahaziah, and slew them. משׁרתים, i.e., in the train of King Ahaziah as his servants. As to when and where Jehu met the brothers' sons of Ahaziah and slew them, we have no further statement, as the author of the Chronicle mentions that fact only as a proof of the divinely directed extirpation of all the members of the idolatrous royal house. In 2 Kings 10:12-14 we read that Jehu, after he had extirpated the whole Israelite royal house - Joram and Jezebel, and the seventy sons of Ahab - went to Samaria, there to eradicate the Baal-worship, and upon his way thither met the brothers of Ahaziah the king of Judah, and caused them to be taken alive, and then slain, to the number of forty-two. These עחזיהוּ אחי, forty-two men, cannot have been actual brothers of Ahaziah, since all Ahaziah's brethren had, according to 2 Chronicles 22:1 and 2 Chronicles 21:17 , been slain in the reign of Joram, in the invasion of the Philistines and Arabians. They must be brothers only in the wider sense, i.e., cousins and nephews of Ahaziah, as Movers (S. 258) and Ewald recognise, along with the older commentators.

The Chronicle, therefore, is quite correct in saying, "sons of the brethren of Ahaziah," and along with these princes of Judah, who, according to the context, can only be princes who held offices at court, especially such as were entrusted with the education and guardianship of the royal princes. Perhaps these are included in the number forty-two (Kings). But even if this be not the case, we need not suppose that there were forty-two brothers' sons, or nephews of Ahaziah, since אחים includes cousins also, and in the text of the Chronicle no number is stated, although forty-two nephews would not be an unheard-of number; and we do not know how many elder brothers Ahaziah had. Certainly the nephews or brothers' sons of Ahaziah cannot have been very old, since Ahaziah's father Joram died at the age of forty, and Ahaziah, who became king in his twenty-second year, reigned only one year. But from the early development of posterity in southern lands, and the polygamy practised by the royal princes, Joram might easily have had in his fortieth year a considerable number of grandsons from five to eight years old, and boys of from six to nine years might quite well make a journey with their tutors to Jezreel to visit their relations.