2 Chronicles 12:16 - Exposition

In the city of David ; i . e on Mount Zion, an eminence on the northern part of Mount Moriah. Here was the bury-lug-place of the kings, chambers with recesses for the successive kings. To this place of royal sepulture some of the kings were not permitted to be brought ( 2 Chronicles 21:20 ; 2 Chronicles 24:25 ; 2 Chronicles 28:27 ; 2 Kings 15:7 ). The chief cemetery of the city was on the slopes of the valley of the Kidron ( 1 Kings 15:13 ; 2 Kings 23:6 ; 2 Chronicles 29:5 , 2 Chronicles 29:16 ); another, probably, was south of the city on the sides of the ravine of Hinnom ( Jeremiah 7:32 ). In the king's sepulchres eleven out of Judah's twenty-two kings were laid—David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Ahaziah, Amaziah, Jotham, Hezekiah, Josiah. For Asa ( 2 Chronicles 16:14 ) and Hezekiah ( 2 Chronicles 32:33 ) places of special honour were found. The good priest Jehoiada also had burial in the king's burial-place ( 2 Chronicles 24:16 ). Kings Jehoram ( 2 Chronicles 21:20 ) and Joash ( 2 Chronicles 24:25 ) were buried in the "city of David," but not in the above sepulchres Uzziah, because a leper, was buried in the "field of the burial of the kings" ( 2 Chronicles 26:23 ). It is all but certain that these royal sepulchres were in the enclosure now called the "Haram area." (For other interesting and important references, see Nehemiah 3:16 ; Ezekiel 43:7 , Ezekiel 43:9 ; 2 Kings 21:18 , 2 Kings 21:26 ; 2 Chronicles 33:20 ; 2 Chronicles 28:27 .) While Rehoboam was laid thus to sleep with his fathers, Jeroboam's reign had yet four years to run.