Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on 2 Chronicles 16:1
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
War with Baasha, and the weakness of Asa's faith. The end of his reign. - Ch2 16:1-6. Baasha's invasion of Judah, and Asa's prayer for help to the king of Syria. The statement, "In the thirty-sixth year of the reign of Asa, Baasha the king of Israel came up against Judah," is inaccurate, or rather cannot possibly be correct; for, according to Kg1 16:8, Kg1 16:10, Baasha died in the twenty-sixth year of Asa's reign, and his successor Elah was murdered by Zimri in the second year of his reign, i.e., in the twenty-seventh year of Asa. The older commentators, for the most part, accepted the conjecture that the thirty-fifth year (in Ch2 15:19) is to be reckoned from the commencement of the kingdom of Judah; and consequently, since Asa became king in the twentieth year of the kingdom of Judah, that Baasha's invasion occurred in the sixteenth year of his reign, and that the land had enjoyed peace till his fifteenth year; cf. Ramb. ad h. l.; des Vignoles, Chronol. i. p. 299. This is in substance correct; but the statement, "in the thirty-sixth year of Asa's kingship," cannot re reconciled with it. For even if we suppose that the author of the Chronicle derived his information from an authority which reckoned from the rise of the kingdom of Judah, yet it could not have been said on that authority, אסא למלכוּת. This only the author of the Chronicle can have written; but then he cannot also have taken over the statement, "in the thirty-sixth year," unaltered from his authority into his book. There remains therefore no alternative but to regard the text as erroneous - the letters ל (30) and י (10), which are somewhat similar in the ancient Hebrew characters, having been interchanged by a copyist; and hence the numbers 35 and 36 have arisen out of the original 15 and 16. By this alteration all difficulties are removed, and all the statements of the Chronicle as to Asa's reign are harmonized. During the first ten years there was peace ( Ch2 14:1); thereafter, in the eleventh year, the inroad of the Cushites; and after the victory over them there was the continuation of the Cultus reform, and rest until the fifteenth year, in which the renewal of the covenant took place ( Ch2 15:19, cf. with Ch2 15:10); and in the sixteenth year the war with Baasha arose. (Note: Movers, S. 255ff., and Then. on 1 Kings 15, launch out into arbitrary hypotheses, founded in both cases upon the erroneous presumption that the author of the Chronicle copied our canonical books of Kings - they being his authority-partly misunderstanding and partly altering them.) The account of this war in Ch2 16:1-6 agrees with that in Kg1 15:17-22 almost literally, and has been commented upon in the remarks on 1 Kings 15. In Ch2 16:2 the author of the Chronicle has mentioned only the main things. Abel-maim, i.e., Abel in the Water ( Ch2 16:4), is only another name for Abel-Beth-Maachah (Kings); see on Sa2 20:14. In the same verse נפתּלי ערי כּל־מסכּנות ואת is surprising, "and all magazines (or stores) of the cities of Naphtali," instead of נפתּלי כּל־ארץ על כּל־כּנּרות את, "all Kinneroth, together with all the land of Naphtali" (Kings). Then. and Berth. think ערי מסכנות has arisen out of ארץ and כנרות by a misconception of the reading; while Gesen., Dietr. in Lex. sub voce כּנּרות, conjecture that in Kg1 15:20 מסכּנות should be read instead of כּנּרות. Should the difference actually be the result only of a misconception, then the latter conjecture would have much more in its favour than…
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