Ahaziah

Ahaziah is the name of two kings of the divided monarchy in the books of Kings and Chronicles, borne in the Hebrew form אֲחַזְיָהוּ, meaning roughly “Yahweh has grasped” or “Yahweh holds.” The name appears in variant forms in the same narratives — as Jehoahaz at 2 Chronicles 21:17 and, in the Hebrew text of 2 Chronicles 22:6, as Azariah — forms that carry closely related meanings (“Yahweh has taken hold,” “Yahweh has helped”).

The Ahaziah most prominent in these books is the son of Jehoram king of Judah and of Athaliah. The text says the inhabitants of Jerusalem made him king after a band of Arabians killed his older brothers (2 Chronicles 22:1), and it records that he went down to Jezreel to see Joram son of Ahab, king of Israel, who was recovering from wounds taken in fighting Hazael of Syria (2 Kings 8:29). The narrative of 2 Kings says that when Jehu’s revolt broke out, Ahaziah fled by way of the garden house; Jehu’s men struck him at the ascent of Gur near Ibleam, and he fled to Megiddo and died there (2 Kings 9:27). Chronicles interprets the same end theologically, saying his destruction “was of God” because he went to Joram and joined him against Jehu, whom Yahweh had anointed to cut off Ahab’s house (2 Chronicles 22:7). After his death his mother Athaliah destroyed the royal offspring (2 Kings 11:1), and his sister Jehosheba hid his son Joash (2 Kings 11:2); a generation later Jehoash drew on treasures that he, with Jehoshaphat and Jehoram, had dedicated in order to pay off Hazael (2 Kings 12:18).

The other Ahaziah is the son of Ahab, who reigned over Israel and whose alliance with Jehoshaphat of Judah drew the prophecy that Yahweh had destroyed his works, so that the ships were wrecked and could not go to Tarshish (2 Chronicles 20:37).

On historical and textual questions, the two figures are distinguished by their fathers and realms, though the name alone can leave a reader unsure which king a verse means. The chief divergence among interpreters is not confessional but chronological: 2 Kings 8:26 gives the Judean Ahaziah’s age at accession as twenty-two, while 2 Chronicles 22:2 gives forty-two. One common reading treats the larger number as a copyist’s error; another harmonizes by taking it as his age at some other point in the dynasty’s reckoning. Traditions and translations also differ over whether to print the variant name forms as they stand in Chronicles or to standardize them to Ahaziah for clarity.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.