How old was
Ahaziah when he began to rule over Jerusalem?
2 Kings 8:26 and 2
Chronicles 22:2
- Twenty-two (2 Kings 8:26) - "Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Athaliah the granddaughter of Omri king of Israel," (NASB).
- Forty-two (2 Chron. 22:1) - "Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri," (NASB). Note: the NASB corrects the copyist error and inserts 22 years. It has, however, a note saying the Hebrew states 42 years. For clarity purposes, I quoted the NASB and kept the original Hebrew number of 42.
The correct age of
Ahaziah when he began to rule over Jerusalem is 22.
2 Kings 8:17 tells us that
Ahaziah's father Joram ben Ahab was thirty-two when he became king and he
died eight years later, at the age of forty. Therefore, Ahaziah could
not have been forty-two at the time of his father's death at age forty."
(Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, page. 206-207.)
The discrepency in ages is due to a copyist error.
We can see that the difference in ages is 20 years. The system of
number notation used by the Jews at the time of Ezra consisted of horizontal
hooks that represented decades.
would equal the number 14
where 
would be 24. If
one or both of the hooks were smudged or flaked off of a papyri, then the
dates would be off by ten years or a factor of ten.
The fact that this is a copyist error does not
invalidate the inspiration or authority of Scripture. Remember, God
inspired the originals. They were without error. The copies have
problems, though very very few. The copies are copies of inspired
documents and, unfortunately, some copyist errors did creep into the
manuscripts. However, they do not affect any doctrinal areas and are
very rare.
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