2 Chronicles 24:23 - Exposition

At the end of the year ; Hebrew, תְּקוּפַת ; margin, both of the Authorized Version and the Revised Version, revolution. The word is found three other times, Exodus 34:22 ; 1 Samuel 1:20 ; Psalms 19:7 . The versions, of course, express correctly what is meant, but probably the season of spring is also conveyed ( 2 Samuel 11:1 ; 1 Chronicles 20:1 ). The host of Syria . Their king was Hazael ( 2 Kings 12:17 ), whether actually with them is perhaps not certain, but the last clause in the verse just quoted would seem to convey that impression. He was King of Damascus (Aram, or Syria), and having already temporarily mastered Israel ( 2 Kings 13:3 , 2 Kings 13:4 , 2 Kings 13:22 ), the way was paved to Gath ( 2 Chronicles 11:8 ; 2 Chronicles 17:11 ), whence wistful eyes were bent on Jerusalem, nearly thirty miles distant thence. Destroyed all the princes of the people ; i.e. as in the next verse. And sent all the spoil . Whether intended so here or not, probably the strict subject of the verb in this clause is Joash and his counsellors, in their fright—and just fright—helpless after the slaughter chronicled in our following verse, bribing off Hazael and his host, as in parallel. The suggestion is most plausible that tidings of Zechariah's martyrdom and of the occasion of it were the very incentive to Hazael's incursion, and an illustration of the "means" by which God works, and by which he wrought his purpose in this instance. The spoil of them . If this means only the spoil of the defeated army strictly, then our text gives no trace of the contents of verse 18 in parallel just alluded to; but the frequent dislocation incident to copied extracts and matter borrowed from original sources, and so often evidenced in the present history, when we have been comparing the two derived accounts to which we are indebted for it, incline us to the above view, as one quite open at any rate to possibility.