2 Chronicles 15:19

(19) And there was no more war unto the five and thirtieth year of the reign of Asa.—Literally, and war arose not until, etc. This statement appears to refer back to 2 Chronicles 15:15 : “And the Lord gave them rest round about;” and so to assign the limit of that period of peace, which ensued after the defeat of Zeran.

In 1 Kings 15:16 we find a different statement: “And war continued between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all their days,” a statement which is repeated in 1 Kings 15:32 of the same chapter.

The chronicler has evidently modified the older text, in order to assign a precise date to the outbreak of active hostilities between the two monarchs. (Both 1 Kings 15:16 and the present 2 Chronicles 15:19 begin with the same two Hebrew words, meaning “and war was,” but the chronicler inserts a not).

The verse of Kings need not imply more than that no amicable relations were ever established between the two sovereigns. They had inherited a state of war, although neither was in a condition to make an open attack upon the other for some years.

The five and thirtieth year of the reign of Asa.—This limit does not agree with the data of Kings (seo on 2 Chronicles 16:1). Thenius suggests that the letter l, denoting 30, got into the text originally, through some transcriber, who inadvertently wrote the l with which the next Hebrew word begins twice over. Later on, some other copyist naturally corrected 2 Chronicles 16:1, to agree with this. Assuming thus that the right readings here were originally the fifth and sixth years of the reign of Asa, Thenius concludes that in 2 Chronicles 16:1 the letter v (i.e., 6) has been shortened into y (10); and that Baasha’s attempt preceded the invasion of Zerah. The false dates probably existed already in the source which the chronicler followed.