2 Chronicles 15:19 - Exposition

There was no more war . The Hebrew text should be adhered to, which simply says, there was not war unto , etc The five and thirtieth year. There can be little doubt that the text originally said "twentieth," not "thirtieth" (see also 2 Chronicles 16:1-14 .-1). The parallel, after the identical words Of the previous verse already noted, goes on emphatically to speak of the fact that "there was war between Asa and Baasha all their days;" and the same statement is repeated in the thirty-second verse of the same chapter ( 1 Kings 15:16 , 1 Kings 15:32 ). The following verse (33) says that Baasha's twenty-four-year reign began in Asa's third year. Putting the various and apparently somewhat varying statements together, they must be held to say, first, that a state of war was, indeed, chronic between Asa and Baasha (which way of putting need not disturb the correctness of 2 Chronicles 14:5 , 2 Chronicles 14:6 , and of the fifteenth verse of our chapter), but that in the six and twentieth year of Asa, which would be the last or last but one of Baasha's life, latent war gave place to active hostilities, and Baasha ( 2 Chronicles 16:1 ) came up to Judah to invade it, and to build Ramah—a course of conduct which was the beginning of the end for him.