⁹And he sought Ahaziah, and they caught him, (now he was hiding in Samaria,) and they brought him to Jehu, and slew him; and they buried him, for they said, He is the son of Jehoshaphat, who sought the Lord with all his heart. And the house of Ahaziah had no power[¹] to hold the kingdom.
[¹] Or, And there was none of the house of Ahaziah that had power &c.
9. now he was hiding in Samaria] If Samaria means the city, then according to Chronicles Ahaziah fled southward from Jezreel; while according to 2 Kings his flight was westward to Megiddo (to be identified with Khan el-Lejjun, Bädeker, Palestine⁵, p. 228). Perhaps however Samaria means the province (as in xxv. 13; Ezekiel iv. 10). Even so this account of Ahaziah’s wounding and death differs markedly from that in Kings, where nothing is said of his hiding, but simply that he went out with Joram when Jehu encountered Joram (so here verse 7), was wounded, fled to Megiddo, and died there, but was carried back by his servants to Jerusalem and there buried. Here it is stated that he was captured, brought to Jehu, and slain (?before him). The place of his burial is unnamed, but it would readily be supposed that he was buried by Jehu’s servants and not at Jerusalem. These divergences in verses 8, 9 are curious and are most naturally explained as originating in a variant form of the tradition.
10–12 (= 2 Kings xi. 1–3).
The Reign of Athaliah.
¹⁰Now when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah.
10. destroyed] This is the reading of Kings and of the LXX. of Chronicles The Hebrew reads spake with, which is perhaps a euphemism; compare the English “deal with.”
¹¹But Jehoshabeath[¹], the daughter of the king, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king’s sons that were slain, and put him and his nurse in the bedchamber[²]. So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of king Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest, (for she was the sister of Ahaziah,) hid him from Athaliah, so that she slew him not.
[¹] In 2 Kings xi. 2, Jehosheba.
[²] Or, chamber for the beds.
11. Jehoshabeath] In Kings “Jehosheba.” The two are forms of the same name; compare “Elisabeth” (Luke i. 7) and “Elisheba” (Exodus vi. 23), a similar pair.