Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Chronicles 15:19

"And there was no more war unto the five and thirtieth year of the reign of Asa." — 2 Chronicles 15:19 (ASV)

And there was no more war until the thirty-fifth year of the reign of Asa. —Literally, and war arose not until, etc. This statement appears to refer back to 2 Chronicles 15:15: And the Lord gave them rest round about; and so to assign the limit of that period of peace, which followed after the defeat of Zerah.

In 1 Kings 15:16 we find a different statement: And war continued between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all their days, a statement which is repeated in 1 Kings 15:32 of the same chapter.

The chronicler has evidently modified the older text, in order to assign a precise date to the outbreak of active hostilities between the two monarchs. (Both 1 Kings 15:16 and the present 2 Chronicles 15:19 begin with the same two Hebrew words, meaning “and war was,” but the chronicler inserts a not.)

The verse from Kings need not imply more than that no amicable relations were ever established between the two sovereigns. They had inherited a state of war, although neither was in a condition to make an open attack upon the other for some years.

The thirty-fifth year of the reign of Asa. —This limit does not agree with the data from Kings (see on 2 Chronicles 16:1).

Thenius suggests that the letter l, denoting 30, originally got into the text through a transcriber who inadvertently wrote the l, with which the next Hebrew word begins, twice over. Later on, another copyist naturally corrected 2 Chronicles 16:1 to agree with this.

Assuming, therefore, that the correct readings here were originally the fifth and sixth years of the reign of Asa, Thenius concludes that in 2 Chronicles 16:1 the letter v (i.e., 6) has been shortened into y (10), and that Baasha’s attempt preceded the invasion of Zerah.

The false dates probably already existed in the source which the chronicler followed.