II Kings 8:26 "Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign."
vs
II Chronicles 22:2 "Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign."
So how old was he when started ruling?
< The correct age of Ahaziah when he began to rule over Jerusalem is 22. There is no actual contradiction, only a copyist error that was recently fixed.
Take a look at the corrected NASB:
2 Chronicles 22:2 “Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri” (New American Standard Bible).
2 Kings 8:17 tells us that Ahaziah's father Joram ben Ahab was thirty-two when he became king and he died eight years later, at the age of forty. Therefore, Ahaziah could not have been forty-two at the time of his father's death at age forty (Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, page. 206-207). The discrepancy in ages is due to a copyist error. We can see that the difference in ages is 20 years. The system of number notation used by the Jews at the time of Ezra consisted of horizontal hooks that represented decades.
would equal the number 14 where
would be 24. If one or both of the hooks were smudged or flaked off of a papyri, then the dates would be off by ten years or a factor of ten.
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