The Fallible Study Bible

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1 Kings15:33–34

Baasha Reigns in Israel

✦ Public-domain source — quoted & attributed⚙ AI synthesis — generated, verify

1 Kings 15:33–34 — Baasha Reigns in Israel. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

33

In the third year of Asa’s reign over Judah, Baasha son of Ahijah became king of all Israel, and he reigned in Tirzah twenty-four years.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

šā·lōš biš·naṯ lə·’ā·sā me·leḵ yə·hū·ḏāh ba‘·šā ḇen- ’ă·ḥî·yāh mā·laḵ ‘al- kāl- yiś·rā·’êl bə·ṯir·ṣāh ‘eś·rîm wə·’ar·ba‘ šā·nāh

Word by word16 · parsed
שָׁלֹ֔שׁšā·lōšIn the thirdH7969
√ shâlôwsh — threeNumberfeminine singular
shâlôwsh — three A common number (381 verses), here doing chronological work: Israel's dynastic convulsions are dated by the regnal year of Judah's king. The narrator's clock runs on Judah even when the story is Israel's.
בִּשְׁנַ֣תbiš·naṯyearH8141
√ shâneh — a year (as a revolution of time)Preposition-bNounfeminine singular construct
לְאָסָ֖אlə·’ā·sāof Asa’sH609
√ ʼÂçâʼ — Asa, the name of a king and of a LevitePreposition-lNounpropermasculine singular
ʼÂçâʼ — Asa, king of Judah Asa is the fixed point. Henry observes that during Asa's one reign the government of Israel passed through six or seven different hands. The stability of the southern throne is the measuring rod against which northern chaos is recorded.
מֶ֣לֶךְme·leḵreignH4428
√ melek — a kingNounmasculine singular construct
melek — king Noun in the construct state, "king of Judah," binding Asa to his people. The same lexeme will not be repeated for Baasha, who instead gets the verb mālak: Asa is king; Baasha became one.
יְהוּדָ֑הyə·hū·ḏāhover JudahH3063
√ Yᵉhûwdâh — Jehudah (or Judah), the name of five IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
בַּעְשָׁ֨אba‘·šāBaashaH1201
√ Baʻshâʼ — Basha, a king of IsraelNounpropermasculine singular
Baʻshâʼ — Baasha, king of Israel A relatively rare name (26 verses), almost all of them in this stretch of Kings and in the later prophetic verdicts that invoke his house as a byword (1 Kings 21:22; 2 Kings 9:9). K&D note that the later word against him speaks of God exalting him "out of the dust," which suggests he rose to the throne from a very low station.
בֶן־ḇen-sonH1121
√ bên — a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etcNounmasculine singular construct
אֲחִיָּ֤ה’ă·ḥî·yāhof AhijahH281
√ ʼĂchîyâh — Achijah, the name of nine IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
ʼĂchîyâh — Ahijah The name of Baasha's father is also the name of the prophet who pronounced the doom of Jeroboam's house (1 Kings 14). The brief's lexicon records it as a name borne by nine Israelites, so the identity is not the same man; the narrator simply lets the two Ahijahs stand side by side in the same chapter, the prophet who spoke the sentence and the father of the man who carried it out.
מָ֠לַךְmā·laḵbecame kingH4427
√ mâlak — to reignVerbQalPerfectthird person masculine singular
mâlak — to reign (Qal Perfect) The Perfect states a settled fact, not a process: the throne is his. Placed immediately after 15:27 to 15:29, where Baasha struck down Nadab and wiped out the house of Jeroboam, the verb is deliberately bare. JFB calls the extermination a barbarous Eastern practice that nonetheless fulfilled Ahijah's prophecy; the Hebrew here makes no such comment, and that silence is itself the historian's method.
עַל־‘al-ofH5921
√ ʻal — above, over, upon, or against (yet always in this last relation with a downward aspect) in a great variety of applicationsPreposition
כָּל־kāl-allH3605
√ kôl — properly, the wholeNounmasculine singular construct
יִשְׂרָאֵל֙yiś·rā·’êlIsraelH3478
√ Yisrâʼêl — Jisrael, a symbolical name of JacobNounpropermasculine singular
Yisrâʼêl — Israel The covenant name of Jacob now attaches to the ten tribes under a murderer's crown. The narrator will not surrender the name: the people remain Israel even when the throne is seized, which is exactly what makes the next verse's verdict a covenant verdict and not mere political comment.
בְּתִרְצָ֔הbə·ṯir·ṣāhand he reigned in TirzahH8656
√ Tirtsâh — Tirtsah, a place in PalestinePreposition-bNounproperfeminine singular
Tirtsâh — Tirzah A rare place-name (17 verses). Cambridge judges that Tirzah had by now become a more common royal residence than Shechem, perhaps because its beauty drew the kings and their households, citing Song of Solomon 6:4, "Thou art beautiful as Tirzah." The same town appears at 1 Kings 14:17 as the place to which Jeroboam's wife returned to find her child dead at the threshold. The city where the word against one dynasty began to fall becomes the capital of the man who finished it.
עֶשְׂרִ֥ים‘eś·rîmtwenty-fourH6242
√ ʻesrîym — twentyNumbercommon plural
וְאַרְבַּ֖עwə·’ar·ba‘. . .H702
√ ʼarbaʻ — fourConjunctive wawNumberfeminine singular
שָׁנָֽה׃šā·nāhyearsH8141
√ shâneh — a year (as a revolution of time)Nounfeminine singular
shâneh — year Singular after the compound numeral, as Hebrew requires. The regnal total is the last item in the formula and the first thing the next verse overturns: length of reign settles nothing about its worth.
34

And Baasha did evil in the sight of the LORD and walked in the way of Jeroboam and in his sin, which he had caused Israel to commit.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

way·ya·‘aś hā·ra‘ bə·‘ê·nê Yah·weh way·yê·leḵ bə·ḏe·reḵ yā·rā·ḇə·‘ām ū·ḇə·ḥaṭ·ṭā·ṯōw ’ă·šer yiś·rā·’êl he·ḥĕ·ṭî ’eṯ-

Word by word12 · parsed
וַיַּ֥עַשׂway·ya·‘aśAnd [Baasha] didH6213
√ ʻâsâh — to do or make, in the broadest sense and widest applicationConjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
ʻâsâh — to do, make (Qal consecutive imperfect) The wayyiqtol chain drives the standing verdict formula of Kings. Doing, not merely believing, is what the formula weighs.
הָרַ֖עhā·ra‘evilH7451
√ raʻ — bad or (as noun) evil (natural or moral)ArticleAdjectivemasculine singular
raʻ — evil, bad (with article) The article is load-bearing. Cambridge flags the R.V.'s "that which was evil," which is the accurate rendering: a definite, already identified evil. In the grammar of Kings this article points backward to a fixed catalogue, the calves at Bethel and Dan, and forward to every king who will be measured by the same entry.
בְּעֵינֵ֣יbə·‘ê·nêin the sightH5869
√ ʻayin — an eye (literally or figuratively)Preposition-bNouncdc
ʻayin — an eye (dual construct) The idiom in the eyes of YHWH relocates the verdict. Baasha's contemporaries saw a successful coup and a twenty four year reign from a beautiful capital; the narrator reports what the only competent eyes saw.
יְהוָ֑הYah·wehof the LORDH3068
√ Yᵉhôvâh — Jehovah, Jewish national name of GodNounpropermasculine singular
Yᵉhôvâh — the covenant name The indictment is covenantal, not merely moral. It is the God who bound himself to this people by name who registers the failure, which is why the sentence can be executed by history (1 Kings 16:1 to 4) rather than by mere consequence.
וַיֵּ֙לֶךְ֙way·yê·leḵand walkedH1980
√ hâlak — to walk (in a great variety of applications, literally and figuratively)Conjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
hâlak — to walk The verb of ordered life in Hebrew (literal and figurative alike, as the lexicon notes). Paired with derek it makes conduct a route rather than a mood: one enters a road already cut.
בְּדֶ֣רֶךְbə·ḏe·reḵin the wayH1870
√ derek — a road (as trodden)Preposition-bNouncommon singular construct
derek — a road, as trodden A worn track, not an abstraction. Baasha's originality is nil: he exterminates a dynasty and then inherits its religion. Gill puts the two clauses side by side, "walked in the way of Jeroboam; whose family he destroyed," and draws the motive out of the contradiction.
יָרָבְעָ֔םyā·rā·ḇə·‘āmof JeroboamH3379
√ Yârobʻâm — Jarobam, the name of two Israelite kingsNounpropermasculine singular
Yârobʻâm — Jeroboam By this point in Kings the name has become a measure rather than a man. Whatever the individual king's policy, the narrator files him under Jeroboam, and the later prophetic verdicts (1 Kings 21:22; 2 Kings 9:9) pair "the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat" and "the house of Baasha son of Ahijah" as one category.
וּ֨בְחַטָּאת֔וֹū·ḇə·ḥaṭ·ṭā·ṯōwand in his sinH2403
√ chaṭṭâʼâh — an offence (sometimes habitual sinfulness), and its penalty, occasion, sacrifice, or expiationConjunctive waw, Preposition-bNounfeminine singular constructthird person masculine singular
chaṭṭâʼâh — an offence, and its penalty or expiation The lexicon's range is worth holding open: the same noun covers the offence, its penalty, and the sacrifice that expiates it. Here only the first sense is in play, with the suffix "his sin" making it Jeroboam's personal property that Baasha takes up as if it were part of the estate.
אֲשֶׁ֥ר’ă·šerwhichH834
√ ʼăsher — who, which, what, thatPronounrelative
יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃סyiś·rā·’êlhe had caused IsraelH3478
√ Yisrâʼêl — Jisrael, a symbolical name of JacobNounpropermasculine singular
הֶחֱטִ֖יאhe·ḥĕ·ṭîto commitH2398
√ châṭâʼ — properly, to missVerbHifilPerfectthird person masculine singular
châṭâʼ — properly, to miss (Hiphil) The causative stem is the hinge of the whole formula. A king does not merely miss the mark; he makes a nation miss it. This is why the verdicts in Kings fall on dynasties rather than on individuals, and why K&D can note that the word of Jehu against Baasha's house coincides almost exactly, with the names changed, with Ahijah's word against Jeroboam's.
אֶת־’eṯ-H853
√ ʼêth — properly, self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely)Direct object marker
ʼêth — direct object marker Untranslatable; it marks Israel as the definite object of the causative verb. The nation is what is acted upon.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. The formula that repeats itself, and the compiler who lets it — 15:33

Verse 33 has been said already. Barnes records it plainly: it is an exact repetition, because the compiler has drawn the same notice out of two different court records and declines to tidy the seam. Pulpit says the same from the other side, that these iterations are thoroughly in accord with Eastern usage, cross-referencing verses 26, 30 and 34 and 1 Kings 16:1 and 7. ⚙ The seam is worth keeping. A historian who smooths his sources produces a narrative; a historian who prints both copies produces a record, and a record is what can be tested. The Hebrew of the verse is correspondingly bare: מָלַךְ (mā·laḵ, H4427, Qal Perfect), he became king, and then the two coordinates that a chronicler owes his reader, the place and the span. Cambridge notes that the R.V. had to insert "and reigned" in italics to complete the English sentence, which measures how little the Hebrew actually asserts. Nothing here says how the crown was obtained. Six verses earlier it says: he conspired, he struck down Nadab at Gibbethon, he killed all the house of Jeroboam.

ii. Tirzah: a beautiful capital for an ugly reign — 15:33

Cambridge supplies the detail that makes the verse more than an entry: Tirzah seems to have become by this time a more common royal residence than Shechem, and perhaps its extreme beauty attracted the kings and their families, with Song of Solomon 6:4 cited, "Thou art beautiful as Tirzah." Geneva says only that it was the place where the kings of Israel remained. ⚙ The Verifier records תִּרְצָה (Tirtsâh, H8656) as a rare lexeme, 17 verses in the whole canon, and the shape of those 17 is the commentary. Tirzah is a Canaanite royal city in the conquest list (Joshua 12:24); it is where Jeroboam's wife walked home to find her son dead on the threshold of the word of God (1 Kings 14:17); it is where Baasha now sits; it is where Elah will be killed drunk in a steward's house and where Zimri will burn the palace over himself (1 Kings 16:9, 16:17). ⚙ The loveliest name in the northern kingdom is the address of four consecutive catastrophes. That is an editorial reading, offered as such; the sourced fact is only the shared rare lexeme and the verses it occurs in.

iii. The verdict: he walked in a road already trodden — 15:34

Everything the chronicler actually wants said arrives in one verse. Benson draws the inference that the narrative invites and refuses to state: this makes it evident that Baasha did not cut off Jeroboam's family because they were idolaters, but because he aspired to the throne. Gill sets the two clauses against each other in the same breath, walking in the way of Jeroboam, whose family he destroyed, and concludes it was malice and ambition, not any dislike of idolatry. ⚙ The Hebrew backs them with its vocabulary rather than its argument. דֶּרֶךְ (derek, H1870) is a road as trodden, a track beaten flat by earlier feet; וַיֵּלֶךְ (way·yê·leḵ, H1980) puts Baasha's own feet in it. And the article on הָרַע (hā·ra‘) is not decorative: Cambridge notes the R.V. rendering "that which was evil," a definite and already catalogued item. Baasha is not charged with inventing anything. He is charged with inheriting.

iv. The causative: sin as something a king does to a nation — 15:34

The last clause is the heaviest word in the unit. הֶחֱטִיא (he·ḥĕ·ṭî, Hiphil of châṭâʼ, H2398) is causative: not that Jeroboam missed the mark but that he made Israel miss it, and the noun just before it, חַטָּאתוֹ (chaṭṭâʼâh, H2403), is cut from the same root, so the Hebrew reads as his missing by which he made Israel miss. ⚙ That grammar is why the judgments in Kings land on houses rather than on men. K&D observe that the prophet Jehu's words against Baasha in 1 Kings 16:1 to 4 coincide exactly, with the necessary changes of name, with Ahijah's words against Jeroboam: the same sentence, reissued, because the same offence has been reissued. The Latin note K&D preserve from C. a Lapide states the pattern with no varnish at all, that through the just judgment of God they all became executioners of one another in turn. Henry, reading the whole span, keeps the theological nerve of it: no word of God shall fall to the ground, and ungodly men execute the just judgments of God upon each other. And JFB, on the massacre itself, holds the same two facts together without dissolving either, that it was a barbarous practice common in the East and that it was an accomplishment of Ahijah's prophecy. ⚙ The narrator never resolves that tension, and neither should we.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text. Two verses, and they say opposite things about what a reign is. Verse 33 is the world's account: a date, a father's name, a capital, a number. By that account Baasha is a success. He outlasted the house he destroyed; he reigned twenty four years, which Gill notes is exactly as long as Jeroboam and his son together; he held the whole of Israel, כָּל־יִשְׂרָאֵל, and he held it from the most beautiful town in the north. Verse 34 is the other account, and it is one sentence long: in the eyes of YHWH. Nothing in verse 33 is denied. It is simply weighed on a different instrument and found to be about something else. What the second account measures is not achievement but direction, and the two verbs are he walked and he caused to miss. A man who has just butchered a dynasty for its throne then takes up that dynasty's religion unchanged, because the religion was never the grievance. Benson and Gill both say this, and the text lets them. ⚙ The sober part is that the road was already there. Baasha did not have to choose idolatry; he only had to not choose otherwise, and the ruts carried him. That is how derek works, and it is how most of us are carried. The judgment in Kings falls on a house because a king's private drift becomes a nation's default, and the Hiphil says so in one syllable. A crown got by the sword still has to be worn in front of God, and the only question the record finally asks of any reign is not how long or how splendid, but whose road it walked and who else was taken down it.

A crown taken by the sword still has to be worn in front of God.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

Tirzah: the beautiful town with the worst address in the north verbal / quotation: confirmed

The Verifier marks תִּרְצָה (Tirtsâh, H8656) as rare, 17 verses in the whole canon, and every candidate it returns for this unit turns on that one word. Joshua 12:24 lists Tirzah among the conquered Canaanite royal cities. 1 Kings 14:17 puts Jeroboam's wife walking home to Tirzah as her son dies at the threshold, the first instalment of Ahijah's word. Baasha now reigns there twenty four years. 1 Kings 16:9 kills Elah drunk in Tirzah and 16:17 has Zimri burn the palace of Tirzah down on himself. ⚙ Cambridge, citing Song of Solomon 6:4, "Thou art beautiful as Tirzah," and guessing that its beauty is what drew the kings, hands us the irony without naming it: the town whose name is used as the canon's standard of loveliness is where the northern monarchy repeatedly dies. The link is lexical repetition of a rare proper noun, not a quotation of one passage by another.

Song of Solomon 6:4 · Joshua 12:24 · 1 Kings 14:17 · 1 Kings 16:9 · 1 Kings 16:17

basis: Verifier: shared rare Hebrew lexeme H8656 Tirtsâh (in 17 vv) across all listed refs. Rare-lexeme repetition only; no passage here cites another, and Numbers 27:1 (Tirzah daughter of Zelophehad) shares the lexeme as a personal name and is deliberately excluded.

"The house of Baasha son of Ahijah" becomes a formula of doom structural / thematic: confirmed

The two proper names joined in 15:33, בַּעְשָׁא (H1201, 26 verses) and אֲחִיָּה (H281, 23 verses), are later welded into a standing prophetic phrase. At 1 Kings 21:22 Elijah tells Ahab his house will be made like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah, and the Verifier records châṭâʼ (H2398) shared there as well, the verb of this unit's final clause. At 2 Kings 9:9 the same pairing returns in the commission against the house of Ahab. ⚙ So the man introduced in 15:33 by father's name and capital city is, within a few chapters, a unit of measurement for ruin. K&D note the mechanism: Jehu's words against Baasha's house in 1 Kings 16:1 to 4 coincide exactly, the names changed, with Ahijah's against Jeroboam's. This is a recurring narrative formula rather than one text quoting another, so the tier is kept structural.

1 Kings 21:22 · 2 Kings 9:9 · 1 Kings 16:1

basis: Verifier: 1 Kings 21:22 shares H1201 Baʻshâʼ (in 26 vv), H281 ʼĂchîyâh (in 23 vv), H2398 châṭâʼ (in 220 vv); 2 Kings 9:9 shares H1201, H281, H3379 Yârobʻâm (in 95 vv). Shared proper names plus a common verb inside a repeated regnal-judgment formula, not a quotation.

The coup that frames the reign: 15:27 to 15:28, and the death that closes it structural / thematic: confirmed

Verse 33 is, as Barnes says, an exact repetition of what the compiler already had, and Pulpit calls it practically a repetition of verse 28. The Verifier confirms the overlap by lexeme: 15:27 shares Baasha and Ahijah, 15:28 adds shâlôwsh (H7969) and Asa, the same dating formula. 1 Kings 16:6 and 16:8 close the bracket, Baasha sleeping with his fathers and buried in Tirzah, Elah succeeding him in the twenty sixth year of Asa. ⚙ Read together, the frame is the argument. The accession notice in this unit sits between the murder that produced it and the burial that ends it, and the reign it encloses gets exactly one line of evaluation. The chronicler's proportions are the chronicler's theology.

1 Kings 15:27 · 1 Kings 15:28 · 1 Kings 16:6 · 1 Kings 16:8

basis: Verifier: 15:27 shares H1201 Baʻshâʼ (26 vv), H281 ʼĂchîyâh (23 vv); 15:28 shares H1201, H7969 shâlôwsh (381 vv), H609 ʼÂçâʼ (52 vv); 16:6 shares H1201, H8656 Tirtsâh (17 vv), H4427 mâlak (284 vv); 16:8 shares H1201, H8656, H609. Shared regnal-formula vocabulary inside one continuous narrative, not a citation.

The trodden road, and the other ways the canon names structural / thematic: confirmed

דֶּרֶךְ (derek, H1870) is a road as trodden, and Kings turns it into a verdict: to walk in the way of Jeroboam. ⚙ The New Testament keeps the same figure with Greek vocabulary. 2 Peter 2:15 speaks of those who, forsaking the right way, have followed the way of Balaam; Jude 11 names the way of Cain; Matthew 7:13 sets a broad road against a narrow one. No shared Strong's number is possible here, since the link crosses Hebrew and Greek, so nothing verbal is being claimed. What is shared is the moral geometry: a person is described by whose track his feet are in, and the track was cut by someone else first. Baasha, who destroyed Jeroboam's family and then adopted Jeroboam's religion, is the Old Testament's cleanest illustration of the figure.

2 Peter 2:15 · Jude 1:11 · Matthew 7:13

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew): shared Strong's numbers are impossible by definition, so no verbal tier. Basis is the shared 'way of X' motif attaching a person's identity to a road already trodden by a named predecessor. ⚙ editorial link, not Verifier-computed.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The king of whom the formula is finally reversed ancient/widely-held

The judgment formula of Kings, he did the evil in the eyes of YHWH, is a machine that never produces a different result in the north. Not one king of Israel escapes it, and Baasha, who had every motive to break with Jeroboam's religion and did not, shows why: the road was already trodden and nobody stepped off it. ⚙ Henry, reading the whole passage, insists that no word of God shall fall to the ground, and that in the midst of this confusion the Lord carries on his own plan. The plan requires a king of whom the opposite sentence can be said. When the voice at the Jordan says of Jesus "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17), it is the covenant court of 1 Kings 15:34 sitting again, in the same eyes, with the verdict inverted for the first time. The reading of the failed monarchy as a pointer to the true King is ancient and widely held; the specific pairing with this verse's formula is our own application of it.

Matthew 3:17 · John 8:29 · 1 Kings 15:11

He made Israel to sin; He was made sin for them novel

The unit ends on a causative: הֶחֱטִיא (he·ḥĕ·ṭî, Hiphil of châṭâʼ, H2398), he made Israel miss the mark. ⚙ This is the peculiar horror of kingship in Kings, that the head's sin is transitive and lands on the body. Paul states the answer in exactly reversed terms: God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). One head transmits guilt downward by his walking; the other absorbs it. Romans 5:19 makes the structure explicit, one man's disobedience constituting many sinners and one man's obedience constituting many righteous. No lexical claim is made across the languages: the Hebrew Hiphil and Paul's Greek share no Strong's number, and the connection offered here is the shared logic of federal headship, not a verbal echo. The doctrine is ancient; framing it specifically against Jeroboam's causative epitaph is our own.

2 Corinthians 5:21 · Romans 5:19

The beautiful city and the throne that does not burn novel

⚙ Tirzah is the loveliest name in the northern kingdom, and Song of Solomon 6:4 makes it a standard of beauty. It is also where a child dies at a threshold, where a king is murdered drunk, and where a usurper burns the palace over his own head after seven days. Setting is not salvation; a beautiful capital cannot make a reign right. The canon's answer is another city, one whose beauty is not architectural but derived from the presence of the Lamb in the midst of it, and whose throne is not seized and cannot be burned (Revelation 21:2 and 22:3). This is our own figural reading, offered as such and not claimed as the reading of any commentator in this unit's brief.

Revelation 21:2 · Revelation 22:3

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Joseph Benson, Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1810s)
  • Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1860s)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Text: BSB (CC0) with the Berean interlinear and Strong's numbers, as supplied in the brief. Two points of honesty about the data. First, the interlinear for 15:33 lists šālōš (H7969) at index 0 before bišnaṯ (H8141) at index 1, following the English gloss order rather than the Hebrew, which reads בִּשְׁנַת שָׁלֹשׁ. Second, and more visibly, the interlinear for 15:34 lists indices 9, 10 and 11 as Israel, then the Hiphil verb, then the object marker, whereas the Hebrew runs אֲשֶׁר הֶחֱטִיא אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵל (relative, verb, object marker, Israel). Our notes are keyed to the brief's indices as required, but the literal line above reconstructs the Hebrew order. No word or parse has been altered.

Sources: Poole has no entry on either verse. Henry's note is a single comment on the whole span 15:25 to 34 and is quoted as such. Barnes and JFB are carried identically on both verses in the brief; JFB's comment in fact belongs to verse 29, the massacre, and the editorial_note on that voice says so. K&D's entry states the duration of Baasha's reign as two years, which contradicts the twenty four years of the text before us and of Gill; the discrepancy is in the source as printed and we have not quoted that clause. K&D's remark that Baasha rose "out of the dust" is their own conjecture drawn from 1 Kings 16:2, and is labelled a conjecture in their words and ours.

Uncertain: the identity of Baasha's father Ahijah is not the prophet Ahijah of 1 Kings 14; the lexicon records the name as borne by nine different Israelites, and the narrator makes no connection. The etymological resonance we note at Tirzah (the root sense of favour or pleasure) is a lexical observation, not an interpretation supplied by any source in this brief. The 'way of Balaam' thread and all three Christ readings are ⚙ machine synthesis: fallible, marked, and offered to be tested.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)