This verse and the next are parenthetical. Here again, as in 2 Kings 17:13, the writer is led on from his account of the sins and punishment of the Israelites to glance at the similar sins and similar punishment of the Jews.
It was the worst reproach which could be urged against any Jewish king, that he “walked in the way of the kings of Israel” 2Ki 8:18; 2 Kings 16:3; 2 Chronicles 21:6; 2 Chronicles 28:2. The Baal worship is generally the special sin at which the phrase is leveled; but the meaning here seems to be wider. Compare Micah 6:16.