The chronicler’s account of the reign of Ahaziah(395) does not differ materially from that given by the book of Kings, though it is considerably abridged, and there are other minor alterations. The chronicler sets forth even more emphatically than the earlier history the evil influence of Athaliah and her Israelite kinsfolk over Ahaziah’s short reign of one year. The story of his visit to Jehoram, king of Israel, and the murder of the two kings by Jehu, is very much abridged. The chronicler carefully omits all reference to Elisha, according to his usual principle of ignoring the religious life of Northern Israel; but he expressly tells us that, like Jehoshaphat, Ahaziah suffered for consorting with the house of Omri: “His destruction or treading down was of God in that he went unto Jehoram.” Our English versions have carefully reproduced an ambiguity in the original; but it seems probable that the chronicler does not mean that visiting Jehoram in his illness was a flagrant offence which God punished with death, but rather that, to punish Ahaziah for his imitation of the evil-doings of the house of Omri,(396) God allowed him to visit Jehoram in order that he might share the fate of the Israelite king. The book of Kings had stated that Jehu slew forty-two brethren of Ahaziah. It is, of course, perfectly allowable to take “brethren” in the general sense of “kinsmen”; but as the chronicler had recently mentioned the massacre of all Ahaziah’s brethren, he avoids even the appearance of a contradiction by substituting “sons of the brethren of Ahaziah” for brethren. This alteration introduces new difficulties, but these difficulties simply illustrate the general confusion of numbers and ages which characterises the narrative at this point. In connection with the burial of Ahaziah, it may be noted that the popular recollection of Jehoshaphat endorsed the favourable judgment contained in the “writing of Elijah”: “They said” of Ahaziah, “He is the son of Jehoshaphat, who sought Jehovah with all his heart.”