2 Chronicles21:1–7

i. One man lies down, another rises over — 21:1

The unit opens with a formula the Chronicler did not compose: Ellicott states that this verse stands literally the same as 1 Kings 22:50, and Cambridge and Pulpit record the same parallel. Gill's whole note on the verse is a cross-reference to it. So the pericope begins in borrowed, settled language: וַיִּשְׁכַּב (shâkab, H7901), he lay down; וַיִּקָּבֵר (qâbar, H6912, Nifal), he was buried; with his fathers, twice; in the city of David. Every clause of an honourable royal death is present.

⚙ Then the sentence turns on one preposition. תַּחְתָּֽיו (tachath, H8478) means “underneath,” and in the succession idiom it makes the new king stand exactly where the old one lay. The chronology of that standing is the chapter's first difficulty: Barnes holds that Jehoram's sole reign begins here and dates his eight years from an association in his father's twenty-third year, Pulpit works through 2 Kings 1:17, 3:1 and 8:16 and offers a conjecture of a royal name given in the sixteenth year and royal power added in the twenty-third, while adding that without the support of v. 3 he would rather judge the passages corrupt. We do not resolve what Pulpit declined to resolve.

ii. Six confessions and one sword — 21:2 to 21:4

The list of brothers in v. 2 is a list of confessions. Ellicott reads the names out: “Iah helpeth,” “Iah judgeth,” “God liveth,” “Iah remembereth,” “Who is like God,” all significant of the king's faith, and he notes that Shephatiah inverts Jehoshaphat's own name. The doubled Azariah is disputed: Cambridge judges the text probably corrupt and says the Septuagint gives no help; Ellicott allows an old transcriptional error but holds open the possibility of deliberate piety, two mercies each named with the same word; JFB, Poole, Pulpit and K&D all note that the Hebrew spellings actually differ. Jehoshaphat is called king of Israel, and the commentators divide again: Ellicott takes it as Judah's claim to the legitimate monarchy, K&D takes it of Jehoshaphat's own character as a true king of God's people, Poole lists four explanations and a fifth suspicion of scribal substitution, and Gill points out that the Vulgate, Septuagint, Syriac and Arabic simply read “Judah.”

Verse 3 is the father's provision. K&D notes that Jehoshaphat did as Rehoboam had done (2 Chronicles 11:23), making his sons commandants of fortresses with ample revenues; Barnes thinks he went further than Rehoboam and actually made the fenced cities over to them, and reads that as the provocation. Benson gives the endowment its epitaph, quoting Strigelius quoting Cicero on things excellently designed having often a very ill event. The rare noun מִגְדָּנוֹת (migdânâh, H4030, four verses in the canon) fixes the treasure: Cambridge sends the reader to 2 Chronicles 32:23, Ellicott to Genesis 24:53.

Verse 4 collects the account. Ellicott calls וַיָּקָם עַל a peculiar expression found only here and glosses it as establishing himself on the throne; Cambridge prefers the Revised Version's ordering, that having strengthened himself he then slew. The verb of that strengthening, וַיִּתְחַזַּק (châzaq, H2388, Hitpael), is where the moral reading enters: Poole says he took courage and hardened his heart, Benson says the same, K&D and Cambridge keep it political and compare 2 Chronicles 1:1. On motive, K&D rejects avarice and argues the brothers had not sympathised with Jehoram's political course and disapproved of the idolatry of Jehoram and Athaliah, citing v. 13 where they are called better than he; Gill reasons the same way; Ellicott allows the rapacious motive as well and compares Abimelech at Judges 9:5 and Athaliah at 2 Chronicles 22:10; JFB places the whole episode in the long history of Eastern courts where the heir treats his brothers as his most formidable enemies. Geneva puts it in one sentence: because the wicked always live in fear, they become cruel toward those whom by nature they ought most to cherish. Henry names the older pattern, that Jehoram hated his brethren for the same reason Cain hated Abel, because their piety condemned his impiety.

iii. A daughter of Ahab in the house of David — 21:5 to 21:6

Verse 5 is a regnal notice and a chronological knot. Ellicott notes the parallel section at 2 Kings 8:17 to 22 and the small difference of wording at its head; K&D calls the divergences immaterial; Pulpit dates the eight years from Jehoshaphat's twenty-second or twenty-third year; Gill and Poole simply refer the reader to their own notes on 2 Kings 8. ⚙ The two occurrences of mâlak (H4427) in seven words, an infinitive and then a perfect, are what leave room for a co-regency in the first place.

Verse 6 gives the cause. בְּדֶרֶךְ (derek, H1870) is a road as trodden, and Jehoram walks in one already beaten by the kings of Israel. Ellicott notes this clause repeats 2 Kings 8:18 word for word. JFB names the mechanism: the precepts and examples of an excellent father were soon obliterated by the marriage, and through Athaliah's influence the worship of the LORD was abolished and the corruptions of the sister kingdom introduced. Pulpit identifies the wife as Athaliah, called the daughter of Omri at 2 Chronicles 22:2 and 2 Kings 8:26, the Hebrew בַּת (bath, H1323) being as elastic as ’âch in v. 2. Geneva draws the moral: it cannot be that we should join with the wicked and serve God. ⚙ And the Hebrew makes the daughter of Ahab the grammatical subject of her own marriage, הָיְתָה לּוֹ אִשָּׁה, she became to him as wife, which is precisely the agency JFB and Geneva assign her.

iv. The lamp God would not blow out — 21:7

Everything in vv. 4 to 6 has earned destruction, and v. 7 begins with God refusing it. וְלֹא־אָבָה (’âbâh, H14) is a verb of willingness under a negative: he did not consent. Ellicott calls the Chronicler's “the house of David” an exegetical and not an arbitrary expansion of Kings' “Judah,” and K&D and Cambridge record the same substitution. Poole states the ground exactly: where 2 Kings 8:19 says for David his servant's sake, that is not for David's merits but for God's free promise and covenant, which is how this verse explains it. JFB agrees that divine vengeance would have destroyed Jehoram's house entirely but for a tender regard to the promise made to David, citing 2 Samuel 7:29.

Ellicott presses the preposition: the covenant is cut for David, לְדָוִיד, the construction used of a stronger party imposing terms on a weaker, not the Pentateuch's covenanting with a people. Cambridge notes the special dynastic spelling נִיר (nîr, H5216) against the ordinary word for lamp, and prefers “alway” for the Hebrew “all the days.” K&D notes the Chronicler's inserted waw, so that the lamp is given to David and to his sons rather than to David in respect of his sons. Pulpit gathers the canon for the phrase: 2 Samuel 7:12 to 16 and 23:5, 1 Kings 8:20 to 25, 1 Chronicles 22:10, Psalm 132:11 to 12, Isaiah 55:3, Acts 13:34.