has already shown that such an opinion is perfectly “groundless,” since it is nowhere stated that David and Solomon performed with their own hands the functions assigned in the law to the priests in connection with the offering of sacrifice, as the co-operation of the priests is not precluded in connection with the sacrifices presented by these kings (2Sa 6:17, and 1Ki 3:4, etc.). - Uzziah being afflicted with leprosy, was obliged to live in a separate house, and appoint his son Jotham as president of the royal house to judge the people, i.e., to conduct the administration of the kingdom. - The time when this event occurred is not stated either in our account or in the Chronicles. But this punishment from God cannot have fallen upon him before the last ten years of his fifty-two years’ reign, because his son, who was only twenty-five years old when his father died (2Ki 15:33, and 2Ch 27:1), undertook the administration of the affairs of the kingdom at once, and therefore must have been at least fifteen years old. החפשׁית בּית is taken by Winer, Gesenius, and others, after the example of Iken, to signify nosocomium, an infirmary or lazar-house, in accordance with the verb Arab. xfs̆, fecit, II debilis, imbecillis fuit. But this meaning cannot be traced in Hebrew, where חפשׁי is used in no other sense than free, set at liberty, manumissus. Consequently the rendering adopted by Aquila is correct, οἶκος ἐλευθερίας; and the explanation given by Kimchi of this epithet is, that the persons who lived there were those who were sent away from human society, or perhaps more correctly, those who were released from the world and its privileges and duties, or cut off from intercourse with God and man.
Verse 7
When Uzziah died, he was buried with his fathers in the city of David, but because he died of leprosy, not in the royal family tomb, but, as the Chronicles (2Ki 15:23) add to complete the account, “in the burial-field of the kings;” so that he was probably buried in the earth according to our mode. His son Jotham did not become king till after Uzziah’s death, as he had not been regent, but only the administrator of the affairs of the kingdom during his father’s leprosy.
Verse 8
Reign of Zachariah of Israel. - 2Ki 15:8. “In the thirty-eighth year of Uzziah, Zachariah the son of Jeroboam became king over Israel six months.” As Jeroboam died in the twenty-seventh year of Uzziah, according to our remarks on 2Ki 14:29,
