Ahaziah


 * This article is about the king of the Kingdom of Judah. For the king of the Kingdom of Israel, see Ahaziah of Israel.

King Ahaziah ("Name means::YHWH holds") (908 BC-vr. 887 BC-r. 886 BC-d. 886 BC according to Ussher, or 863-vr. 842-r. 841-d. 841 BC according to Thiele ) was the sixth king of the Kingdom of Judah. He succeeded his father Jehoram and in fact served a year as pro-rex under Jehoram before his one-year lone reign. He is remembered very little, and mainly on account of King Jehu, who killed him and his uncle Jehoram of Israel in the same engagement, and his mother Athaliah, who counseled him to do evil deeds and ultimately served a bloody reign of her own.

Family
He was the youngest of Jehoram's sons by Athaliah, and also had a sister named Jehosheba. Through his mother, the rulers of the House of Omri were in fact his uncles to three different degrees.

The Chronicler and the author of 1 and 2 Kings give two widely different ages for him: the Chronicler says that he was 42 when he began to reign while the author of the Kings books says that he was 22. Ussher accepted the younger age, and Larry Pierce holds that the greater age is most likely a handwriting mistake by an unnamed scribe&mdash;one of the very few mistakes to be found in Bible manuscripts, and a subject of much controversy. Jones resolves the problem by observing that the Hebrew does not literally say that Ahaziah was forty-two years old, but rather that he was "a son of forty-two years." The forty-two years refers to the length of time that the House of Omri had been ruling in Israel when Ahaziah became pro-rex in Judah.

Ahaziah married Zibia of Beersheba, probably in the year that his father made him viceroy. By her he had a son named Joash in the year of his lone reign.

Viceroyship and Brief Reign
In the last year of his reign, Ahaziah's father Jehoram made him viceroy while suffering from a gastrointestinal disease. A year later, Jehoram died and Ahaziah succeeded him. His brief reign is remarkable only for his remaining under the influence of his mother Athaliah, who had introduced Baalism to the Kingdom of Judah and continued to promote it. The synchronies between the two kingdoms indicate that Ahaziah used non-accession reckoning, and therefore he reigned for less than one year, and died in the very year that he became sole rex.

His last battle was at Ramoth-gilead, where he fought at the side of his uncle Jehoram of Israel. This other Jehoram was wounded in battle against King Hazael of Syria, and the allied kings had no choice but to lift their siege. Jehoram retired to Jezreel to recover, and Ahaziah stayed by his side. 

Soon afterward, Jehu appeared at the head of a company. Jehoram and Ahaziah prepared their chariots and rode out to meet Jehu. Jehu essentially declared war. Jehoram turned and fled, and said to Ahaziah that they had been tricked. Nor did Jehoram live long, because Jehu killed him with an arrow shot to the back.

Here the two accounts of Ahaziah's death differ slightly. The author of Kings states that Ahaziah fled the scene, and Jehu pursued him and wounded him fatally on the way to Gur; Ahaziah fled as far as Megiddo and died there, and his servants then brought him back to Jerusalem for burial. The Chronicler says that Ahaziah tried to hide out in Samaria, but was arrested, brought before Jehu, and executed, whereupon Jehu gave him a decent burial on account of his grandfather Jehoshaphat. The Chronicler also states that Jehu executed several of Ahaziah's cousins who were with him. 

In any event, Ahaziah's mother Athaliah took over the throne and began a six-year reign marred by much bloodshed.