end, but only the expiry, the running out of the end; and finally, that the supposition that ימים here and in 2Ch 21:15 denotes a year is without foundation. Schmidt and Rabm. have already given a better explanation: quumque esset tempus, quo exiit finis s. quum exiret ac compleretur terminus ille, in epistola Eliae 2Ch 21:15 praefixus; but in this case also we should expect היּמים קץ, since שׁנים לימים should point back to ימים על ימים, and contain a more exact definition of the terms employed in 2Ch 21:15, which are not definite enough. We therefore take הקּץ צאת by itself, and translate: At the time of the end, i.e., when the end, sc. of life or of the disease, had come about two days, i.e., about two days before the issue of the end of the disease, then the bowels went out of the body-they flowed out from the body as devoured by the disease. חליו עם, in, during the sickness, consequently before the decease (cf. for עם in this signification, Psa 72:5, Dan. 3:33). Trusen (Sitten, Gebr. und Krankh. der alten Hebräer, S. 212f.) holds this disease to have been a violent dysentery (diarrhoea), “being an inflammation of the nervous tissue (Nervenhaut) of the whole great intestine, which causes the overlying mucous membrane to decay and peel off, which then falls out often in tube-shape, so that the intestines appear to fall from the body.” His people did not make a burning for him like the burning of his fathers, cf. 2Ch 16:14; that is, denied him the honours usual at burial, because of their discontent with his evil reign.
Verse 20
The repetition of his age and the length of his reign (cf. 2Ch 21:6) is accounted for by the fact that the last section of this chapter is derived from a special source, wherein these notes likewise were contained. The peculiarity of the language and the want of the current expressions of our historian also favour the idea that some special authority has been used here. “And he departed, mourned by none.” Luther erroneously translates, “and walked in a way which was not right” (und wandelt das nicht fein war), after the “ambulavit non recte” of the Vulg.; for חמדּה denotes, not a good walk, but desiderium, חמדּה בּלא, sine desiderio, i.e., a nemine desideratus. הלך, to depart, i.e., die, as Gen 15:2. Moreover, though he was buried in the city of David, yet he was not laid in the graves of the kings, by which act also a judgment was pronounced upon his reign; cf. 2Ch 24:25 and 2Ch 26:23.
