But hast walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and hast made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to go a whoring, like to the whoredoms of the house of Ahab, and also hast slain thy brethren of thy father's house, which were better than thyself:
Hast made ... like to the whoredoms of the house of Ahab - i:e., introduced the superstitions and vices of Phoenician idolatry (see the notes at Deuteronomy 13:6-14). х tazneh (H2181), used here and in Hosea 1:2; Hosea 4:10; Hosea 4:13; Hosea 4:18, refers to Leviticus 19:29, and the consideration of such a reference as establishing the guilt of the king's apostasy is very important. No doubt Gesenius, and several other critics, hold that haznowt (H2181) is used transitively in the Pentateuch, but intransitively by the author of Chronicles, and by Hosea. But, as Hengstenberg pertinently remarked ('Pentateuch,' 1:, p. 109), 'this assertion cannot be maintained on account of the evident reference to Leviticus. Besides, the assumption that Hophal here loses its characteristic meaning is quite arbitrary. In this passage of Chronicles, the transitive meaning is as clear as day: you gave Judah the tone, you made the people go a-whoring against the law.'] On this account, as well as far his unnatural cruelties, divine vengeance was denounced against him, which was soon after executed exactly as the prophet had foretold.
A series of overwhelming calamities befell this wicked king; because, in addition to the revolts already mentioned, two neighbouring tribes (see 2 Chronicles 17:11) made hostile incursions on the southern and western portions of his kingdom; his country was ravaged, his capital taken, his palace plundered, his wives carried off, all his children slain except the youngest, himself was seized with a chronic and incurable dysentery [accompanied by prolapsus ani; but, according to some, yeetsª'uw (H3318) mee`eykaa (H4578), thy intestines come out, denotes rupture, so that the bowels protrude from the abdomen], which, after subjecting him to the most painful suffering for the unusual period of two years, carried him off, a monument of the divine judgment; and, to complete his degradation, his death was unlamented, his burial unhonoured, by his subjects. This usage, similar to what obtained in Egypt, seems to have crept in among the Hebrews, of giving funereal honours to their kings, or withholding them, according to the good or bad characters of their reign.