2 Kings
Chapter 16
Ahaz of Judah (734-727)
In the seventeenth year of the reign of Pekah, son of Remaliah, Ahaz, the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign.
Ahaz was then twenty years old, and he reigned for sixteen years in Jerusalem. He did not do what pleased the Lord, his God, as his father David had done.
He walked in the way of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, according to the hateful practices of those nations, which the Lord had expelled from the land, so the children of Israel could occupy their place.
He offered sacrifices in the Sanctuaries on the hills, slopes, and under every green tree.
Then Rezin, king of Aram, and Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to fight Jerusalem. They surrounded it but could not conquer it.
At that time, Rezin, king of Aram, recovered Elath for the Edomites, expelling the Jews from there. The Edomites then entered Elath and have lived there ever since.
Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser, king of Asshur, to tell him, “I am your servant and your son. Come then and rescue me from the hands of the king of Aram and the king of Israel, who wage war against me.”
Ahaz took the silver and gold in the house of the Lord and the treasures from the king’s house and sent them as a gift to the king of Asshur.
The king of Asshur paid heed to him and went to attack Damascus; he seized that city and exiled its inhabitants to Kir, and then he killed Rezin.
So King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet with Tiglath-pileser, king of Asshur. When he saw the altar in Damascus, he sent Uriah, the priest, the measurement of that altar and the design, which he copied on all its details.
The priest Uriah built the altar according to the king’s design from Damascus. He finished it before King Ahaz arrived from Damascus.
When the king returned from Damascus, he saw the altar, approached it, and went up to it.
He burned his holocausts and sacrifices on that altar. There, he made his libation and shed the blood of his peace offerings.
He removed the altar of bronze that was before the Lord, from the front of the house, from between the new altar and the house of the Lord, and he placed it on the north side of his new altar.
King Ahaz ordered the priest Uriah: 15“Upon this great altar you shall burn the morning holocaust and the evening sacrifice, the king’s holocaust and his sacrifice, the holocausts of the people of the land, their sacrifices and libations. You shall shed upon it all the blood of the holocausts and sacrifices. But the bronze altar shall be mine for consultation.”
The priest Uriah did as the king had commanded him.
The king dismantled the paneling of the stands, removed the washbasins from the top of them, took down the big bronze basin from the top of the oxen that supported it, and placed it on the stone pavement. Now, about the throne which had been built within the house of the Lord and the outer entrance for the king,
he removed them from the house of the Lord because of the king of Asshur.
The rest regarding Ahaz and all he did is written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah.
When Ahaz died, they buried him with his fathers in the city of David, and his son Hezekiah succeeded him.
Commentaries
Ahaz of Judah.
He did everything that the Lord disapproved of; not only did he imitate the behavior of the kings of the North, but he also engaged in the local cults that the Deuteronomist and the prophets condemned. To make matters worse, he revived an ancient custom that the Jewish people regarded as abominable: the sacrifice of their firstborn sons. Domestic and foreign policy were in disarray. Even during the reign of Jotham, the narrator had warned that “the Lord began to send against Judah Rezin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, son of Remaliah” (15:37); yet it was Ahaz who faced these two foes. Historians suggest that Damascus and Israel pressured Judah to form a coalition against Assyria and liberate themselves from its oppressive rule. However, Ahaz chose another path: he sought protection and assistance from Assyria against Damascus and Israel, declaring himself the “son and vassal” of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser and giving him a generous gift. Soon after, Assyria took control of Damascus, the capital of Syria, and executed King Rezin. The fate of Israel is not mentioned further in this chapter, but we must assume that repression increased. In acknowledgment of Tiglath-Pileser, Ahaz ordered the construction of an altar in Jerusalem identical to the one he had seen in Damascus, where the official worship of the king would occur. Interestingly, there is not a single word of criticism regarding Ahaz’s actions, as they undermine traditional values such as the Temple, the altar, and worship. We must understand that the assessment given in verses 3ff says it all.