2 Kings 8:25, commentary and pictures

Ahaziah the son of Jehoram began to reign as king of Judah in the twelfth year of Joram the son of Ahab as king of Israel. The two similar royal names are distinct persons, Joram the son of Ahab of Israel and Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat of Judah. The accession fell in 789 B.C., after Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat had reigned eight years counted from the start of his joint rule with his father.

He began during the final two years of his father's illness. He is the same Ahaziah mentioned in 2 Chronicles 22:2, and his own age at accession was twenty-two as stated in 2 Kings 8:26, while the forty-two years in 2 Chronicles 22:2 refers to the house of Omri to which he was connected through his mother, not to his age.

In the sequence of the chapter Jehoram of Judah is followed by Ahaziah, who is later killed by Jehu. The verse belongs to the account that follows the house of Ahab to its extinction alongside the noble godly life of Elisha, by whose hand God wrought noted miracles and reproved and instructed backsliding Israel, showing Athaliah the wicked daughter of Ahab carrying the spirit of her mother Jezebel into Judah. It gives the chronological setting for Ahaziah's accession without explaining or applying that date, while the surrounding material in 2 Kings 8 concerns Hazael's rise to the throne of Syria by treachery and murder.