Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Chronicles 12:2

"And it came to pass in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, because they had trespassed against Jehovah," — 2 Chronicles 12:2 (ASV)

And it came to pass. —See 1 Kings 14:25, with which this verse literally coincides, except that the last clause, because they had transgressed, is added by the chronicler.

In the fifth year of king Rehoboam. —The order of events is thus given: For three years Rehoboam and his people continued faithful to the Lord (2 Chronicles 11:17); in the fourth year they fell away, and in the fifth their apostasy was punished.

Shishak. —The Sesonchis of Manetho, and the sh-sh-nk of the hieroglyphs, was the first king of the 22nd dynasty.

Ebers states, “His name, and those of his successors, Osorkon (Zerah) and Takelot, are Semitic. This fact explains the Biblical notice that Solomon took a princess of this dynasty as his consort and maintained close commercial relations with Egypt, and also that Hadad the Edomite received the sister of Tahpenes the queen as his wife (1 Kings 11:19). In the year 949 B.C., Shishak, at Jeroboam’s instigation, took the field against Rehoboam, besieged Jerusalem, captured it, and carried off rich booty to Thebes. On a southern wall of the Temple of Karnak, all Palestinian towns that the Egyptians took in this expedition are enumerated” (Riehm’s Handwort. Bibl. Alterth., p. 333).

Because they had transgressed. — For they had been faithless to Jehovah. This is the chronicler’s own parenthetic explanation of the event and expresses in one phrase his whole philosophy of Israelite history. Of course, it is not meant that Shishak had any consciousness of the providential reason for his invasion of Judah.