AHAZIAH ā’ ə zī’ ə (There is a longer form of the name, אֲחַזְיָ֥הוּ, as in 1 Kings 22:40, 51, and a shorter, אֲחַזְיָ֜ה, as in 2 Kings 1:2, meaning, whom Jehovah sustains. LXX ὀχοζίας). 1. The earlier king of this name, eighth king of the northern kingdom of Israel was a son of Ahab and Jezebel who reigned something less than two years (1 Kings 22:51), 850-849 b.c. He was placed quite unexpectedly on the throne at the death of Ahab his father, who died from a wound inflicted at Ramoth-gilead (1 Kings 22:34-37). So short was his reign that events in the civil conduct of his reign largely go unnoticed. It is stated that Moab rebelled after the death of Ahab, but personal misfortunes overtook Ahaziah before he could attempt to recover Moab. We learn from the story of the longer reign of his successor that the material loss was annual payment by Mesha king of Moab of the surprising amount of 100,000 lambs and wool of 100,000 rams—no mean amount (viz. 2 Kings 3:4, 5). The unhappy Ahaziah suffered a bad fall when a lattice gave way in the second floor of his palace. Whether a lattice door, lattice window or floor grating to let light through to the ground floor is difficult to say (viz. commentators and lexicons on שְׂבָכָה, H8422). In this connection he showed himself to be a true offspring of Jezebel, the able but wicked pagan wife of Ahab. For instead of using the lawful priests and prophets for consultation about the issue of his injuries he sent messengers to a famous pagan shrine at Ekron of the Philistines where Baal-Zebub, god of Ekron, was to be consulted. A more direct insult to the God of Israel by the nation’s most prominent citizen cannot easily be imagined. Among the last acts of the now aged prophet Elijah was to intercept those messengers, at divine direc tion, and to return them to King Ahaziah with announcement of that unhappy man’s imminent death. He had walked in the “way of his father, and in the way of his mother” (1 Kings 22:52) with this result. Since Ramoth-gilead had been lost by Ahab (1 Kings 22) and the Syrians held Trans-Jordan, Ahaziah’s forces had no access to Moab except through Judah. Evidently the time was not ripe to attempt recovery of Moab through the combined effort of Judah and Israel. This came during the following reign. Ahaziah did propose a joint effort with Jehoshaphat king of Judah aimed at restoration of the sea trade through the port of Ezion-Geber near Elath on the Gulf of Aqabah, but “Jehoshaphat was not willing.” After a brief and unsuccessful reign Ahaziah died without issue and his brother Jehoram succeeded to the throne (2 Kings 1:17). (There are problems of synchronization of the reigns of the kings of Judah [Jehoshaphat and Jehoram] with that of Ahaziah too complicated for discussion here. See articles on Chronology of the Old Testament.)

2. The later Ahaziah, nephew of the earlier Ahaziah, was the eighth Davidic king, reigning in Judah for less than a year in 842 b.c. He suffered chiefly from the baleful influence of that same wicked queen mother Jezebel, whose idolatries the older Ahaziah had imitated, and who was also the grandmother of the younger Ahaziah. For Jehoshaphat (king of Judah 873-849 b.c.), good man that he was, made the disastrous mistake of espousing his son Jehoram (father of the younger Ahaziah) to Athaliah, daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. He is called Azariah (2 Chron 22:6, though RSV gratuitously changes this to Ahaziah, for reasons unknown) and Jehoahaz (2 Chron 21:17, cf. 22:1) by simple transposition of the elements in his name. He lived to reign but one year (2 Chron 22:2-5). His age at accession is given in 2 Kings 8:26 as twenty-two years while in 2 Chronicles 22:2 as forty-two years. 2 Chronicles 21:5 and 20 show that his father was only forty years old at Ahaziah’s accession, so the lower figure is undoubtedly correct. Perhaps in early times the Heb. numbers were not spelled out (אַרְבָּעִ֨ים וּשְׁתַּ֤יִם = forty-two) but noted by Heb. alphabetical letters (מב = Forty-two, though the order of letters, as in Arab., may have been בם = two and forty). Twenty-two would have been כב or בך (two and twenty). The mistake of ם for ך by some early copyist would account for the error.

Providence allowed Ahaziah only one major military error, one purely personal error, and one spiritual error. The military error was to join his Uncle Jehoram, king at Samaria, in an expedition to conquer Ramoth-gilead in the Trans-Jordan (2 Kings 8:27, 28; 2 Chron 22:6), a contested city between the house of Omri and the kings of Syria through several generations. Jehoram (=Joram) was badly wounded in the evidently otherwise successful encounter and went to Jezreel (a city S of Lake Chinnereth safely within uncontested Israelite territory) to recover. In this connection Ahaziah made his great personal mistake: he traveled from Jerusalem to Jezreel to visit the ailing Jehoram. The story of the result of their visit as reported in 2 Chronicles 22:7-9 cannot be improved upon and may not wisely be abbreviated: “But it was ordained by God that the downfall of Ahaziah should come about through his going to visit Joram. For when he came there he went out with Jehoram to meet Jehu the son of Nimshi, whom the Lord had anointed to destroy the house of Ahab. And when Jehu was executing judgment upon the house of Ahab, he met the princes of Judah and the sons of Ahaziah’s brothers, who attended Ahaziah, and he killed them. He searched for Ahaziah, and he was captured while hiding in Samaria, and he was brought to Jehu and put to death.” His spiritual mistake was to follow the pernicious religious customs of his ancestors through his mother Athaliah, daughter of Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king of Tyre (viz. Jezebel, Ahab, Athaliah). “His mother’s name was Athaliah; she was a granddaughter of Omri king of Israel. He also walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as the house of Ahab had done, for he was son-in-law to the house of Ahab” (2 Kings 8:26, 27).

The pervasive depravity of mankind which renders evil more easily propagated than good makes the intermarriage of a member of a godly family with an ungodly one almost invariably disastrous. Ahaziah was the miserable fruit of the error of Jehoshaphat, his otherwise righteous grandfather, in securing Athaliah the morally depraved daughter of a morally depraved daughter of the vile Ethbaal, king and priest of the soused-with-sexual-depravity religion of ancient Canaan as bride for Ahaziah’s father. There were strong reasons, indeed, for the Mosaic command to exterminate the Canaanites and the prohibition of intercourse with them on all levels.