Was Ahaz buried with his fathers, or outside the tombs of the kings?

Both books say that Ahaz was buried in Jerusalem, the city of David. Chronicles adds a detail that Kings does not give: he was not laid in the royal tombs themselves. Kings does not say that he was. ‘Slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David’ is the regular formula Kings uses for a king of Judah who died and was buried in the royal city. The Hebrew preposition ‘im (‘with’) can mean ‘beside’ or ‘near’, and the BSB translates the same formula in 2 Kings 15:7 as “buried near them in the City of David”.

Chronicles itself shows that ‘with his fathers’ can describe a burial near the kings rather than in their tombs. Of Uzziah, who died a leper, it says that “they buried him with his fathers in the field of the burial which belonged to the kings” (2 Chronicles 26:23): with his fathers, but in the burial field, not the tomb, “for they said, He is a leper”. Kings says of the same man only that “they buried him with his fathers in the city of David” (2 Kings 15:7). The same pair of statements is made about Joash (2 Kings 12:21; 2 Chronicles 24:25) and Jehoram (2 Kings 8:24; 2 Chronicles 21:20).

Chronicles records such details because they show how the nation judged a king. Ahaz had shut the doors of the temple and set up altars to other gods all over Jerusalem and Judah (2 Chronicles 28:24–25), and he was refused a place among the kings. Gill and Clarke both read the two passages in this way.