Ochozias was forty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem, and the name of his mother was Athalia the daughter of Amri.

Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Athaliah, daughter of Omri.

A son of twenty and two years is Ahaziah in his reigning, and one year he hath reigned in Jerusalem, and the name of his mother is Athaliah daughter of Omri;

Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he was ruling in Jerusalem for one year. His mother's name was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri.

Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Athalih, the daughter of Omri.

Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he had begun to reign, and he reigned for one year in Jerusalem. And the name of his mother was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri.

For "42" read "22" (see the marginal reference). Ahaziah's father, Jehoram, was but 40 when be died 2-Chronicles 21:20.

Forty and two years old was Ahaziah - See the note on 2-Kings 8:26. Ahaziah might have been twenty-two years old, according to 2-Kings 8:26 (note), but he could not have been forty-two, as stated here, without being two years older than his own father! See the note there. The Syriac and Arabic have twenty-two, and the Septuagint, in some copies, twenty. And it is very probable that the Hebrew text read so originally; for when numbers were expressed by single letters, it was easy to mistake מ mem, Forty, for כ caph, Twenty. And if this book was written by a scribe who used the ancient Hebrew letters, now called the Samaritan, the mistake was still more easy and probable, as the difference between caph and mem is very small, and can in many instances be discerned only by an accustomed eye.
The reading in 2-Kings 8:26 is right, and any attempt to reconcile this in Chronicles with that is equally futile and absurd. Both readings cannot be true; is that therefore likely to be genuine that makes the son two years older than the father who begat him? Apage hae nugae!

(b) Forty and two years old [was] Ahaziah when he began to reign, and he reigned (c) one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also [was] Athaliah the daughter (d) of Omri.
(b) Read (2-Chronicles 21:20).
(c) That is, after the death of his father.
(d) She was Ahab's daughter, who was the son of Omri.

Forty two and years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign,.... In 2-Kings 8:26, he is said to be but twenty two years old at his accession to the throne, which is undoubtedly most correct; for this makes him to be two years older than his father when he died, who was thirty two when he began to reign, and reigned eight years, 2-Chronicles 21:20, different ways are taken to solve this difficulty; some refer this to Jehoram, that he was forty two when Ahaziah began to reign, but he was but forty when he died; others to the age of Athaliah his mother, as if he was the son of one that was forty two, when he himself was but twenty two; but no instance is given of any such way of writing, nor any just reason for it; others make these forty two years reach to the twentieth of his son Joash, his age twenty two, his reign one, Athaliah six, and Joash thirteen; but the two principal solutions which seem most to satisfy learned men are, the one, that he was twenty two when he began to reign in his father's lifetime, and forty two when he began to reign in his own right; but then he must reign twenty years with his father, whereas his father reigned but eight years: to make this clear they observe (b), as Kimchi and Abarbinel, from whom this solution is taken, that he reigned eight years very happily when his son was twenty two, and taken on the throne with him, after which he reigned twenty more ingloriously, and died, when his son was forty two; this has been greedily received by many, but without any proof: the other is, that these forty two years are not the date of the age of Ahaziah, but of the reign of the family of Omri king of Israel; so the Jewish chronology (c); but how impertinent must the use of such a date be in the account of the reign of a king of Judah? all that can be said is, his mother was of that family, which is a trifling reason for such an unusual method of reckoning: it seems best to acknowledge a mistake of the copier, which might easily be made through a similarity of the numeral letters, forty two, for twenty two (d); and the rather since some copies of the Septuagint, and the Syriac and Arabic versions, read twenty two, as in Kings; particularly the Syriac version, used in the church of Antioch from the most early times; a copy of which Bishop Usher obtained at a very great price, and in which the number is twenty two, as he assures us; and that the difficulty here is owing to the carelessness of the transcribers is owned by Glassius (e), a warm advocate for the integrity of the Hebrew text, and so by Vitringa (f): and indeed it is more to the honour of the sacred Scriptures to acknowledge here and there a mistake in the copiers, especially in the historical books, where there is sometimes a strange difference of names and numbers, than to give in to wild and distorted interpretations of them, in order to reconcile them, where there is no danger with respect to any article of faith or manners; and, as a learned man (g) has observed of the New Testament,"it is an invincible reason for the Scripture's part, that other escapes should be so purposely and infinitely let pass, and yet no saving and substantial part at all scarce moved out of its place; to say the truth, these varieties of readings, in a few by-places, do the same office to the main Scriptures, as the variation of the compass to the whole magnet of the earth, the mariner knows so much the better for these how to steer his course;''and, with respect to some various readings in the Old Testament, Dr. Owen (h) observes, God has suffered this lesser variety to fall out, in or among the copies we have, for the quickening and exercising of our diligence in our search of his word:
he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri, see 2-Kings 8:26.
(b) In Hieron. Trad. Hebrews. in Paralip. fol. 85. E. (c) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 17. So Ben Gersom. (d) See Kennicott's Dissert. 1. p. 98. (e) Philolog. Sacr. p. 114. (f) Hypotypol Hist. Sacr. p. 67. (g) J. Gregory's Preface to his Works. (h) Divine Original of the Scripture, p. 14.

Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign--(Compare 2-Kings 8:26). According to that passage, the commencement of his reign is dated in the twenty-second year of his age, and, according to this, in the forty-second year of the kingdom of his mother's family [LIGHTFOOT]. "If Ahaziah ascended the throne in the twenty-second year of his life, he must have been born in his father's nineteenth year. Hence, it may seem strange that he had older brothers; but in the East they marry early, and royal princes had, besides the wife of the first rank, usually concubines, as Jehoram had (2-Chronicles 21:17); he might, therefore, in the nineteenth year of his age, very well have several sons" [KEIL] (compare 2-Chronicles 21:20; 2-Kings 8:17).
Athaliah the daughter of Omri--more properly, "granddaughter." The expression is used loosely, as the statement was made simply for the purpose of intimating that she belonged to that idolatrous race.

The number 42 is an orthographical error for 22 (ב having been changed into )מ, 2-Kings 8:26. As Joram was thirty-two years of age at his accession, and reigned eight years (2-Chronicles 21:20 and 2-Chronicles 21:5), at his death his youngest son could not be older than twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, and even then Joram must have begotten him in his eighteenth or nineteenth year. It is quite consistent with this that Joram had yet older sons; for in the East marriages are entered upon at a very early age, and the royal princes were wont to have several wives, or, besides their proper wives, concubines also. Certainly, had Ahaziah had forty-two older brothers, as Berth. and other critics conclude from 2-Kings 10:13., then he could not possibly have been begotten, or been born, in his father's eighteenth year. But that idea rests merely upon an erroneous interpretation of the passage quoted; see on 2-Chronicles 22:8. Ahaziah's mother Athaliah is called the daughter, i.e., granddaughter, of Omri, as in 2-Kings 8:26, because he was the founder of the idolatrous dynasty of the kingdom of the ten tribes.

Forty two years - Some acknowledge an error in the transcribers of the present Hebrew copies, in which language the numeral letters for 22 and 42 are so like, that they might easily be mistaken. For that it was read 22 here, as it is in the book of Kings, in other Hebrew copies, they gather from hence, that it is at this day so read in divers ancient Greek copies, as also in those two ancient translations, the Syriack and the Arabick, and particularly in that most ancient copy of the Syriack which was used by the church of Antioch in the primitive times, and to this day is kept in the church of Antioch. The daughter - Of Ahab, Omri's Son. Grand - children are often called sons and daughters.