John Gill Commentary 2 Kings 15

In the twenty amd seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel began
Azariah the son on Amaziah king of Judah to reign .
] Now Amaziah lived only to the fifteenth year of Jeroboam, (2 Kings 14:2 2 Kings 14:17 2 Kings 14:23) in which year, and not in his twenty seventh, it might be thought Azariah his son began to reign.

There are various ways taken to remove this difficulty, not to take notice of a corruption of numbers, "twenty seven for seventeen", which some insist on. Ben Gersom and Abarbinel are of opinion, that those twenty seven years of Jeroboam's reign are not to be understood of what were past, but of what were to come before the family of Jehu was extinct; and that he reigned twenty six years, and his son six months, which made twenty seven imperfect years.

Others suppose that Jeroboam reigned with his father eleven or twelve years before his death; and, reckoning from the different periods of his reign, this was either the twenty seventh year, or the fifteenth or sixteenth: and others, that the reign of Azariah may be differently reckoned, either from the time his father fled to Lachish, where he might remain eleven or twelve years, or from his death, and so may be said to begin to reign either in the fifteenth or twenty seventh of Jeroboam; or there was an interregnum of eleven or twelve years after the death of his father, he being a minor of about four years of age, which was the fifteenth of Jeroboam, during which time the government was in the hands of the princes and great men of the nation; and it was not till Azariah was sixteen years of age, and when it was the twenty seventh of Jeroboam's reign, that the people agreed to make him king, see (2 Kings 14:21).

And which seems to be the best way of accounting for it.

Sixteen years old was he when he began to reign
By the consent of the people and princes of Judah, (2 Kings 14:21)

and he reigned fifty and two years in Jerusalem :
exclusive of the eleven or twelve years of his minority, from his father's death:

and his mother's name was Jecholiah of Jerusalem ;
of whom there is no further account any where.

And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord
At the beginning of his reign, and in an external way:

according to all that his father Amaziah had done ;
who did not do what he did as David, sincerely and cordially, (2 Kings 14:3) (2 Chronicles 25:2) .

Save that the high places were not removed
That is, he did right, excepting in that instance, and which was the case of his father and other kings before him, and others afterwards, till Hezekiah came:

the people sacrificed and burnt incense still on the high places ;
see (2 Kings 12:3) .

And the Lord smote the king
With leprosy; the reason of it was, because he intruded into the priest's office, and went into the temple to burn incense on the altar of incense, (2 Chronicles 26:19 2 Chronicles 26:20) ,

so that he was a leper unto the day of his death ;
but how long it was to it from his being smitten cannot be said with certainty; Dr. Lightfoot ^F12 thinks he died the same year he was smitten:

and dwelt in a several house :
without Jerusalem, as the Targum; for lepers, according to the law, were to dwell separate without the camp or city, (Leviticus 13:46) the word for "several" signifies "free" ^F13 ; here he lived alone, free from the company and conversation of men, free from the business of government, his son doing that for him, and in the country, where he might freely walk about, as lepers did, and take the air; the Jews say ^F14 , his house was among the graves, where he was free among the dead, as the phrase is, (Psalms 88:5) , but not likely; much better is what Abendana observes from R. Jonah, that the word, in the Arabic ^F15 language, signifies a little house, and so this might be in which he dwelt out of the city, in comparison of his palace:

and Jotham the king's son was over the house ;
had the direction of the palace, and the management of all affairs in it:

judging the people of the land ;
Administering justice in all cases, for which they came to him, and so filled up his father's place; he did not depose his father, nor take upon him to be king, only did the business of one.

FOOTNOTES:

• F12: Works, vol. 1. p. 99.
• F13: (tyvpxh tybb) "in domo libero", V. L. Tigurine version
• F14: T. Hieros. apud Jarchium in loc.
• F15: "in exiqua domo resedit assidue", Castel. Lexic. col. 1345.