THE REIGN OF JEROBOAM II. IN SAMARIA (23) Reigned forty and one years.--According to the statement of this verse, Jeroboam reigned fourteen years concurrently with Amaziah, who reigned altogether twenty-nine years (2Kings 14:2); and thirty-seven years concurrently with Azariah (2Kings 15:8), so that he reigned altogether not forty-one but fifty-one years. (The discrepancy originated in a confusion of the Hebrew letters ??, fifty-one, with ??, forty-one.) Verses 23-29. - REIGN OF JEROBOAM THE SON OF JOASH OVER ISRAEL. This reign, the most important of those belonging to the kingdom of Israel since that of Ahab, is treated with great brevity by the writer, whose interest is far more in Judah than in Israel. Seven verses only are devoted to him. The result of his wars is given without any account of the wars themselves. And the great fact of his ruling over Damascus only comes in by a sort of afterthought (ver. 28). The usual formulas are followed in introducing his reign and missing it. Verse 23. - In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash King of Judah - this note of time agrees with those in 2 Kings 13:10 and 2 Kings 45:1, 17, but not with that in 2 Kings 15:1 (see the comment on that passage) - Jeroboam the son of Joash King of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years. Josephus says "forty years., Many moderns (Thenius, Bahr, and others) extend the term to fifty-one years. Some suppose that Jeroboam was joint-king with his father in Amaziah's third year, solo king from his fifteenth. But it is better to acknowledge the general confusion of the chronology, and to regard it as uncertain, unless where a synchronism is distinctly made out. Such assured synchronisms are the following:(1) The synchronism of Ahab with Jehoshaphat: (2) the synchronism of Jehoram, Ahab's son, with the same; (3) the synchronism of Jehu's first year with the first year of Athaliah; (4) the synchronism of Amaziah with Joash of Israel; (5) the synchronism of Pekah with Ahaz; (6) the synchronism of Hoshea's last year with Hezekiah's sixth; (7) the synchronism of Amaziah's fourteenth year with Jeroboam II.'s first, being twice asserted in two distinct forms (vers. 17 and 23), is, at any rate, highly probable. Numbers which occur once only in ancient writers can seldom be implicitly trusted, since the liability of numbers to corruption is excessive. 14:23-29 God raised up the prophet Jonah, and by him declared the purposes of his favour to Israel. It is a sign that God has not cast off his people, if he continues faithful ministers among them. Two reasons are given why God blessed them with those victories: 1. Because the distress was very great, which made them objects of his compassion. 2. Because the decree was not yet gone forth for their destruction. Many prophets there had been in Israel, but none left prophecies in writing till this age, and their prophecies are part of the Bible. Hosea began to prophesy in the reign of this Jeroboam. At the same time Amos prophesied; soon after Micah, then Isaiah, in the days of Ahaz and Hezekiah. Thus God, in the darkest and most degenerate ages of the church, raised up some to be burning and shining lights in it; to their own age, by their preaching and living, and a few by their writings, to reflect light upon us in the last times.In the fifteenth year of Amaziah, the son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria,.... So that he reigned fourteen or fifteen years contemporary with him; for Amaziah reigned twenty nine years: and reigned forty and one years; Josephus says (i) forty, giving only the round number. (i) Ut supra, (Antiqu. l. 9.) c. 10. sect. 1. |
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