Matthew Henry on 2 Chronicles 16:1-6
How to reconcile the date of this event with the history of the kings I am quite at a loss. Baasha died in the twenty-sixth year of Asa, Kg1 16:8. How then could this be done in his thirty-sixth year, when Baasha's family was quite cut off, and Omri was upon the throne? It is generally said to be meant of the thirty-sixth year of the kingdom of Asa, namely, that of Judah, beginning from the first of Rehoboam, and so it coincides with the sixteenth of Asa's reign; but then Ch2 15:19 must be so understood; and how could it be spoken of as a great thing that there was no more war till the fifteenth year of Asa, when that passage immediately before was in his fifteenth year? (Ch2 15:10), and aft…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on 2 Chronicles 16:4
Ben-hadad . . . sent the captains of his armies . . . and they smote . . . Abelmaim--"The meadow of waters," supposed to have been situated on the marshy plain near the uppermost lake of the Jordan. The other two towns were also in the northern district of Palestine. These unexpected hostilities of his Syrian ally interrupted Baasha's fortifications at Ramah, and his death, happening soon after, prevented his resuming them.
Adam Clarke on 2 Chronicles 16:3
There is a league - Let there be a treaty, offensive and defensive, between me and thee: see on Kg1 15:22 (note).
John Gill on 2 Chronicles 16:1
In the thirty and sixth year of the reign of Asa Baasha king of Israel came up against Judah,.... How this is to be reconciled with the reign of Baasha, which was but twenty four years, and was begun in the third of Asa, and therefore must have been dead nearly ten years before this year of Asa's reign; see Gill on 1 Kings 15:17 where, and in the following verses, are the same things related as here, to the end of the sixth verse; the explanation of which the reader is referred to.
Keil & Delitzsch
