Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/136

 four generations must have followed one another, which is quite impossible. In addition to this, between Hezekiah and Josiah came the reigns of Manasseh and Amon, who reigned 55 years and 2 years respectively; and from the passover of Hezekiah to the finding of the book of the law by the high priest Hilkiah in the eighteenth year of Josiah, about 90 years had elapsed, whence it is clear that on chronological grounds Hilkiah cannot well have been the successor of Azariah in the high-priesthood. The Azariah of v. 11f., therefore, cannot be identified with the Azariah who was high priest under Hezekiah (2Ch 31:10); and no explanation seems possible, other than the supposition that between Ahitub and Zadok the begetting of Azariah has been dropped out. On this assumption the Hilkiah mentioned in v. 13 may be the high priest in the time of Josiah, although between him and the time when Jehozadak was led away into exile three names, including that of Jehozadak, are mentioned, while from the eighteenth year of Josiah till the destruction of the temple by the Chaldaeans only 30 years elapsed. For Hilkiah may have been in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign very old; and at the destruction of Jerusalem, not Jehozadak, but his father Seraiah the grandson of Hilkiah, was high priest, and was executed at Riblah by Nebuchadnezzar (2Ki 25:18, 2Ki 25:21), from which we may conclude that Jehozadak was led away captive in his early years. The order in which the names occur in our register, moreover, is confirmed by Ezr 7:1-5, where, in the statement as to the family of Ezra, the names from Seraiah onwards to Amariah ben-Azariah occur in the same order. The correspondence would seem to exclude any alterations of the order, either by transposition of names or by the insertion of some which had been dropped; but yet it only proves that both these genealogies have been derived from the same authority, and does not at all remove the possibility of this authority itself having had some defects. The probability of such breaks as we suppose in the case of Jehoiada and Azariah, who lived under Hezekiah, is shown, apart altogether from the reasons which have been already brought forward in support of it, by the fact that our register has only eleven generations from Zadok, the contemporary of Solomon, to Seraiah, who was slain at the destruction of Jerusalem; while the royal house of David shows seventeen generations, viz., the twenty kings of Judah, omitting Athaliah, and Jehoahaz and Zedekiah, the last two as being brothers of Jehoiakim ([[Bible_(King_James)/1_Chronicles|1Ch 3: