2 Kings 8:26 vs 2 Chronicles 22:2, Ahaziah's two ages
Ahaziah was twenty-two according to 2 Kings 8:26 and forty-two according to 2 Chronicles 22:2. Forty-two creates a chronological conflict because his father Jehoram died at forty.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
“The base text reads ארבעים ושתים. The copies also carry עשרים ושתים [hebrew manuscript attestation]; the committee kept the base text. The difficult number is the one copyists would correct, so the committee keeps it as the transmitted wording, though it may itself be an old slip.”
The committee’s APB 4.0 decision keeps forty-two in Chronicles: “The difficult number is the one copyists would correct, so the committee keeps it as the transmitted wording, though it may itself be an old slip.” The two translators were GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI), who read first, and Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic), who read second. The committee’s printed text gives twenty-two in 2 Kings 8:26 and forty-two in 2 Chronicles 22:2.
The argument for each reading
If twenty-two
Twenty-two is the age given in the Masoretic Text of 2 Kings 8:26. That figure fits the family chronology: Ahaziah’s father Jehoram died at forty, so a son succeeding him at twenty-two presents no age conflict. The Septuagint of Chronicles also gives a younger age, but its twenty is distinct from Kings’ twenty-two. It therefore supports questioning forty-two without providing an exact match for Kings. The case for twenty-two rests on Kings’ explicit wording and its coherence with the father’s age. Adopting it in Chronicles would bring the two accounts into agreement.
If forty-two
Forty-two is the received wording of the Masoretic Text in 2 Chronicles 22:2. Retaining it preserves the difference between Chronicles and Kings, including the chronological difficulty: Ahaziah would be older than his father, who died at forty. The committee’s stated reason for keeping this number is that copyists would have reason to correct a difficult figure. That argument supports retaining the transmitted wording even while allowing that the wording may contain an old slip. On this reading, Chronicles continues to report forty-two, and the conflict with Kings remains visible.
The readings do not establish how the difference arose. A scribal slip remains possible, and the committee explicitly allows that the retained number may be an old slip. The Septuagint’s twenty adds another figure without settling the choice between twenty-two and forty-two. The uncertainty concerns Ahaziah’s age at accession. Both APB accounts still give him a reign of one year in Jerusalem and identify his mother as Athaliah.
Related entries
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited from the sources linked above.