And there was no more war unto the five and thirtieth year of the reign of Asa. — Literally, and war arose not until, etc. This statement appears to refer back to 2 Chronicles 15:15 : “And the Lord gave them rest round about;” and so to assign the limit of that period of peace, which ensued after the defeat of Zeran.
In 1 Kings 15:16 we find a different statement: “And war continued between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all their days,” a statement which is repeated in 1 Kings 15:32 of the same chapter.
The chronicler has evidently modified the older text, in order to assign a precise date to the outbreak of active hostilities between the two monarchs. (Both 1 Kings 15:16 and the present 2 Chronicles 15:19 begin with the same two Hebrew words, meaning “and war was,” but the chronicler inserts a not).
The verse of Kings need not imply more than that no amicable relations were ever established between the two sovereigns. They had inherited a state of war, although neither was in a condition to make an open attack upon the other for some years.
The five and thirtieth year of the reign of Asa. — This limit does not agree with the data of Kings (seo on 2 Chronicles 16:1). Thenius suggests that the letter l, denoting 30, got into the text originally, through some transcriber, who inadvertently wrote the l with which the next Hebrew word begins twice over. Later on, some other copyist naturally corrected 2 Chronicles 16:1, to agree with this. Assuming thus that the right readings here were originally the fifth and sixth years of the reign of Asa, Thenius concludes that in 2 Chronicles 16:1 the letter v (i.e., 6) has been shortened into y (10); and that Baasha’s attempt preceded the invasion of Zerah. The false dates probably existed already in the source which the chronicler followed.