Page:02.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.A.vol.2.EarlyProphets.djvu/1431

 seventh years of Joash; and even if he ascended the throne at the commencement of the twenty-third year of the reign of Joash and died at the end of the thirty-seventh, they could only be reckoned as fifteen and not as seventeen years. Moreover, according to 2Ki 12:1, Joash of Judah began to reign in the seventh year of Jehu, and therefore Athaliah, who ascended the throne at the same time as Jehu, reigned fully six years. If, therefore, the first year of Joash of Judah coincides with the seventh year of Jehu, the twenty-eighth year of Jehu must correspond to the twenty-second year of Joash of Judah; and in this year of Joash not only did Jehu die, but his son Jehoahaz ascended the throne. Consequently we must substitute the twenty-second year of Joash, or perhaps, still more correctly, the twenty-first year (Josephus), for the twenty-third. On the other hand, Thenius, who follows des Vignoles and Winer, not only defends the correctness of the account “in the twenty-third year of Joash,” because it agrees with the twenty-eight years’ reign of Jehu (2Ki 10:36), but also holds fast the seventeen years’ duration of the reign of Jehoahaz on account of its agreement with 2Ki 14:1; for 6 years (Athaliah) + 40 years (Joash) = 46 years, and 28 years (Jehu) + 17 years (Jehoahaz) = 45 years; so that, as is there affirmed, Amaziah the son of Joash ascended the throne in the second year of Joash the son of Jehoahaz. But to arrive at this result he assumes that there is an error in 2Ki 13:10, namely, that instead of the thirty-seventh year we ought to read the thirty-ninth year there, according to the edit. Aldina of the lxx. But apart from the fact that, as we have shown above in the text, the datum “in the twenty-third year of Joash” does not harmonize with the twenty-eight years’ reign of Jehu, this solution of the difference is overthrown by the circumstance that, in order to obtain this agreement between 2Ki 13:1 and 2Ki 13:14, Thenius reckons the years of the reigns not only of Athaliah and Joash, but also of Jehu and Jehoahaz, as full years (the former 16 + 40, the latter 28 + 17); whereas, in order to bring the datum in 2Ki 13:1 (in the twenty-third year of Joash) into harmony with the emendation proposed in 2Ki 13:10 (in the thirty-ninth year of Joash), he reckons the length of the reign of Jehoahaz as only sixteen years (instead of seventeen). For example, if Jehoahaz reigned seventeen years, supposing that he ascended the throne in the twenty-third year of Joash of Judah, he died in the fortieth year of Joash (not the thirty-ninth), and his son began to reign the same year. In that case Amaziah would have begun to reign in the first year of Jehoash of Israel, and not in the second, as is stated in 2Ki 14:1. - The reading of the lxx (ed. Ald. v. 10), “in the thirty-ninth year,” is therefore nothing but a mistaken emendation resorted to for the purpose of removing a discrepancy, but of no critical value. If Jehu died in the earliest months of the twenty-eighth year of his reign, so that he only reigned twenty-seven years and one or two months, his death and his son’s ascent of the throne might