25. in every several city] Compare Jeremiah ii. 28.
26, 27 (= 2 Kings xvi. 19, 20).
The End of Ahaz.
²⁶Now the rest of his acts, and all his ways, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. ²⁷And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city, even in Jerusalem; for they brought him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israel: and Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead.
27. they brought him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israel] An alteration of 2 Kings which says that Ahaz “was buried with his fathers.” Compare xxi. 20, xxiv. 25, xxvi. 23.
Chapter XXIX.
1, 2 (= 2 Kings xviii. 1–3).
The Reign of Hezekiah.
The reign of Hezekiah is related in chapters xxix.–xxxii. Of this section chapters xxix., xxx., and xxxi. furnish new material with the exception of only three verses, xxix. 1, 2; xxx. 1. This new material describes first, the reopening and cleansing of the Temple and the restoration of worship therein (xxix.); secondly, a solemn and magnificent celebration of the Passover (xxx.); and thirdly, a crusade against idolatrous shrines and images, followed by a reorganisation of the arrangements for the support of the priests and Levites—all ecclesiastical topics dear to the heart of the Chronicler. These chapters throughout are in the spirit of the Chronicler, the incidents are generally conceived after the fashion of the ideas of his period, the language bears frequent marks of his characteristic style; and altogether there is no adequate reason to suppose that these incidents are historically true, or even are derived by the Chronicler from old tradition. They are probably his own free composition. Minor considerations point to the same conclusion (see note on xxix. 3 below); and the favourable verdict which in Kings is passed upon Hezekiah may be reckoned a satisfactory motive and a sufficient source for the Chronicler’s narrative. According to Kings (2 Kings xviii. 3–6) Hezekiah “removed the high places ... and cut down the Asherah, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made.... He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among them that were before him”; a eulogy sufficiently glowing to warrant the assumption that Hezekiah must also have done all those other things which seemed to the Chronicler natural for so pious a monarch to do, and which accordingly are here related.
¹Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old; and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem: and his mother’s name was Abijah the daughter of Zechariah. ²And he did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done.
1. Hezekiah] Hebrew “Yehizkiah” (so usually in the Hebrew text of Chronicles). “Hezekiah” (Hebrew “Hizkiah”), the form of the name in Kings, is conveniently used in the English versions of Chronicles in place of the less familiar “Yehizkiah.”