Amon was twenty and two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Meshullemeth, the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah.
Amon was twenty and two years old when he began to reign. Manasseh, having ascended the throne of Judah at 12 years of age and reigned 55 years in Jerusalem (2 Kings 21:1; cf. 2 Chronicles 33:1), was 67 years old at his death; so that, as Amon, when he succeeded his father, was 22 years of age, his birth must have taken place in his father's 45th year. This circumstance, of a king whose accession to regal power was so early as that; of Manasseh continuing until he reached the age of 45 without an heir to his crown being born, is so rare, or rather unprecedented, in Oriental history, that Niebuhr ('Kleine historische und philologische Schriften') maintains that there is an error in the number of years assigned to Manasseh. But the reasoning of Niebuhr evidently proceeds on the gratuitous and false assumption that Amon was the oldest son of Manasseh; whereas it is clear, from the sacred narrative, that in the early part of his reign, before his captivity in Babylon, he had become a father (2 Kings 21:6: cf. 2 Chronicles 33:6). What became of that son and of those children we are not informed. They may have all died, or the inheritance to the crown may, from causes unknown, have fallen to Amon. But the fact adverted to, of Manasseh's having a family previous to the birth of Amon, overturns the objection of Niebuhr to the accuracy of the chronological statement.