In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign.
Parallel Translations
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In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign.
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In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign.
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In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign.
Cross-references (8)
Passages linked to 2 Kings 16:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Isaiah 1:1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
- 2 Kings 15:27-30 In the fifty-second year of Azariah king of Judah, Pekah the son of Remaliah began to reign over Israel in Samaria for twenty years. He did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight. He didn’t depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, with which he made Israel to sin. In the days of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath Pileser king of Assyria came and took Ijon, Abel Beth Maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali; and he carried them captive to Assyria. Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, attacked him, killed him, and reigned in his place, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah.
- 2 Kings 15:32-33 In the second year of Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel, Jotham the son of Uzziah king of Judah began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jerusha the daughter of Zadok.
- 2 Kings 15:38 Jotham slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in his father David’s city, and Ahaz his son reigned in his place.
- 2 Chronicles 28:1-4 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. He didn’t do that which was right in Yahweh’s eyes, like David his father, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and also made molten images for the Baals. Moreover he burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burned his children in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh cast out before the children of Israel. He sacrificed and burned incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree.
- Isaiah 7:1 In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it.
- Hosea 1:1 Yahweh’s word that came to Hosea the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
- Micah 1:1 Yahweh’s word that came to Micah the Morashtite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain This was a wicked son of a godly father,…
This was a wicked son of a godly father, as of him again came godly Hezekiah, and of him wicked Manasseh, save that God in the end showed him mercy. Thus we see how uncertain it is to depend on the dignity of our fathers.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 2Ki 16:1 In the seventeenth year of Pekah the…
2Ki 16:1 In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign.
Ver. 1. Ahaz the son of Jotham.] Under this most wicked prince prophesied Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, and Nahum, but with little good success, so incorrigibly flagitious were now all sorts grown.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain In the seventeenth year of Pekah; of which See…
In the seventeenth year of Pekah; of which See Poole "2Ki 15:30".
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain We have here a general character of the reign…
We have here a general character of the reign of Ahaz. Few and evil were his days - few, for he died at thirty-six - evil, for we are here told, 1. That he did not that which was right like David (Kg2 16:2), that is, he had none of that concern and affection for the instituted service and worship of God for which David was celebrated. He had no love for the temple, made no conscience of his duty to God, nor had any regard to his law. Herein he was unlike David; it was his honour that he was of the house and lineage of David, and it was owing to God's ancient covenant with David that he was now upon the throne, which aggravated his wickedness; for he was a reproach to that honourable name and family, which therefore was really a reproach to him (Degeneranti genus opprobrium - A good extraction is a disgrace to him who degenerates from it), and though he enjoyed the benefit of David's piety he did not tread in the steps of it. 2. That he walked in the way of the kings of Israel (Kg2 16:3), who all worshipped the calves. He was not joined in any affinity with them, as Jehoram and Ahaziah were with the house of Ahab, but, ex mero motu - without any instigation, walked in their way. The kings of Israel pleaded policy and reasons of state for their idolatry, but Ahaz had no such pretence: in him it was the most unreasonable impolitic thing that could be. They were his enemies, and had proved enemies to themselves too by their idolatry; yet he walked in their way. 3. That he made his sons to pass through the fire, to the honour of his dunghill-deities. He burnt them, so it is expressly said of him (Ch2 28:3), burnt some of them, and perhaps made others of them (Hezekiah himself not excepted, though afterwards he was never the worse for it) to pass between two fires, or to be drawn through a flame, in token of their dedication to the idol. 4. That he did according to the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out. it was an instance of his great folly that he would be guided in his religion by those whom he saw fallen into the ditch before his eyes, and follow them; and it was an instance of his great impiety that he would conform to those usages which God had declared to be abominable to him, and set himself to write after the copy of those whom God had cast out, thus walking directly contrary to God. 5. That he sacrificed in the high places, Kg2 16:4. If his father had but had zeal enough to take them away, the debauching of his sons might have been prevented; but those that connive at sin know not what dangerous snares they lay for those that come after them. He forsook God's house, was weary of that place where, in his father's time, he had often been detained before the Lord, and performed his devotions on high hills, where he had a better prospect, and under green trees, where he had a more pleasant shade. It was a religion little worth, which was guided by fancy, not by faith.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of…
In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign. Jotham began to reign in the second of Pekah, and he reigned sixteen years, and therefore his last year would fall in the eighteenth of Pekah; but as his first year might be at the beginning of the second of Pekah, his last was towards the end of the seventeenth of Pekah's, as here; see Kg2 15:32.
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2 Kings 16:2
kg2 16:2
kg2 16:2
kg2 16:2Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem,.... The same number of years his father did:
and did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord God, like David his father; his more remote progenitor, nor even like his more immediate father, from whom he received such good instructions, and of whom he had so good an example; but grace is neither propagated by blood, nor obtained through the force of education.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain The idolatry of Ahaz, ver. 1-4. He hires the…
The idolatry of Ahaz, ver. 1-4. He hires the king of Assyria to invade Syria and Israel, ver. 5-9. He erects a new altar in the temple, ver. 10-16. Spoils the temple, ver. 17-18. Dies, ver. 19, 20.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Ahaz begins to reign, acts wickedly, and restores idolatry…
CHAPTER XVI
Ahaz begins to reign, acts wickedly, and restores idolatry in
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Judea, 1-4.
Rezin, king of Syria, besieges Jerusalem, but cannot take it;
he takes Elath, and drives the Jews thence, 5, 6.
Ahaz hires Tiglath-pileser against the king of Syria and the
king of Israel, and gives him the silver and gold that were
found in the treasures of the house of the Lord, 7, 8.
Tiglath-pileser takes Damascus and slays Rezin, 9.
Ahaz goes to meet him at Damascus: sees an altar there, a
pattern of which he sends to Urijah, the priest; and orders
him to make one like it, which he does, 10-15.
He makes several alterations in the temple; dies; and Hezekiah
his son reigns in his stead, 16-20.
NOTES ON CHAP. XVI
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain B.—The Reign of Ahaz in Judah
B.—The Reign of Ahaz in Judah
2Ki_16:1-20. (2 Chronicles 28)
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1In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign [became king]. 2Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord his God, like David his father. 3But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations 1of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel. 4And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree.
5Then Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to war: and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him 6[prevail]. 2 At that time Rezin king of Syria recovered [won] Elath to [for] Syria, and drave the Jews from Elath: and the Syrians 3 came to Elath, and dwelt [dwell] there unto this day. 7So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me. 8And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king’s house, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria. 9And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him: for [and] the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin.
10And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and saw an altar that was at Damascus: and king Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest the fashion [pattern] of the altar, and the pattern [plan] of it, according to all the workmanship thereof. 4 11And Urijah the priest built an altar according to all that king Ahaz had sent from Damascus: so Urijah the priest made it against king Ahaz came from Damascus. 12And when the king was come from Damascus, the king saw the altar: and the king approached to the altar, and offered thereon [went up upon it]. 13And he burnt his burnt offering and his meat offering, and poured his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of his peace offerings, upon the altar. 14And he brought also the brazen altar, which was before the Lord, from the forefront of the honse, from between the [new] altar and the house of the Lord, and put it on the north side of the altar. 15And king Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, Upon the great altar burn the morning burnt offering, and the evening meat offering, and the king’s burnt sacrifice, and his meat offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their meat offering, and their drink offerings; and sprinkle upon it all the blood of the burnt offering, and all the blood of the sacrifice: and [as for] the brazen altar shall be for me to inquire by [I will consider further]. 5 16Thus did Urijah the priest, according to all that king Ahaz commanded.
17And king Ahaz cut off the borders of the bases, and removed the laver from off them; and took down the sea from off the brazen oxen that were under it, 18and put it upon a pavement [structure] of stones. And [he altered] the covert [covered way] 6 for the sabbath that they had built in the house, and the king’s entry without, turned he from [omit turned he from.—Insert in] the house of the Lord [,] for [fear of] the king of Assyria.
19Now the rest of the acts of Ahaz which he did, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah? 20And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David: and Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
2Ki_16:1. Ahaz became king, &c. On the year of Ahaz’s accession see the chronological discussion after chap. 17
2Ki_16:2. If Ahaz was 20 years old at his accession and reigned 16 years, so that he was 36 years old when he died, then he must have begotten his son Hezekiah in the tenth year of his age, for Hezekiah, according to 2Ki_18:2, ascended the throne in his 25th year. This would not be an impossibility, for even yet marriages occur in the East between boys of 10 and girls of 8 years (see the instances quoted by Keil in his Comment. on the verse). It is, however, very improbable, and there is no similar instance in Scripture. It is very likely, therefore, that the reading “twenty-five” instead of twenty, which is presented by some MSS., by the Vatican MS. of the Sept., as well as by the Syriac and Arabic translations on 2Ch_28:1, is the original and correct one (Ewald, Thenius, and Keil).
2Ki_16:3. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. This cannot mean that he transplanted the Israelitish worship of the calves into Judah, for the relation between Judah and Israel had become hostile even in the last years of his father Jotham (2Ki_15:37). Moreover, there is not a hint of that form of worship in the history of Judah. The words only mean, generally, that Ahaz forsook the covenant of Israel as the Israelitish kings had done. The parallel passage 2Ch_28:2-3 adds directly the words: “And made also molten images for Baalim. Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom.” This sentence “is evidently taken from the original authority” (Thenius). Probably it was omitted by the author of the Book of Kings because it seemed to him to be implied in the statement already made that he “walked in the way of the kings of Israel,” for these had had images of Baal (1Ki_16:32; 2Ki_3:2; 2Ki_10:26 sq.). He desired to go on at once to the things which this king had done other than what had been done by the kings of Israel. We have not, therefore, to understand, by the images of Baalim, calf-images like those of Jeroboam (Keil), but idol-images. On the valley of Hinnom see notes on 2Ki_23:10.—Yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, viz., לְמֹלֶךְ. This must be supplied, as we see, from 2Ki_23:10; Lev_18:21; Jer_19:5. The meaning of the phrase הֶעֱבִיר בָּאֵשׁ is distinctly stated in Num_31:23. It has accordingly been supposed by some that, where בֵּן or בָּנִים is the object, and not gold or silver, it refers to a literal passage through fire, and that it was an act of lustration or purification (Theodoret, Grotius, Spencer, and others). It is clear, however, from 2Ch_28:3, where וַיַּבְעֵר stands for it, that it is not a simple passage through, but a burning up. The same is clear from 2Ki_17:31 : Deu_12:31; Jer_19:5; Eze_16:20 sq.; 2Ki_23:37. Josephus declares plainly of Ahaz: καὶ ἴδιον ὡλοκαύτωσε παῖδα (Cf. Gesen. Thesaurus, II, p. 985). Another question arises, however, viz., whether we must understand that the children were burned alive, or that they were killed and then burned. The rabbis assert the former (see the passages quoted from Jarchi in Winer’s R.-W.-B. II., s. 101), but their authority is overturned by other and better testimony. In Eze_16:20 it is said: “Thou tookest thy sons and thy daughters, which thou hadst borne to me, and slewest them (וַתִּזְבָּחִים) [as a sacrifice] to them [i.e., to the false gods] לֶאֱכוֹל [i.e., to consume them]. Was thy whoredom too slight a thing that thou slowest (וַתִּשְׁחֲטִי) my sons, and gavest them away בְּהַעֲבִיר אוֹתָם”—[i.e., in that thou causedst them to go through, or, to be burned up in, the fire]? Psa_106:37 sq. speaks only of the slaughter of children in sacrifice to idols, not of burning them: “And they slew their sons and daughters in sacrifice (וַיִּזְבְּחוּ) to false gods, and shed innocent blood—blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed (זִבְּחוּ) to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by the shedding of blood (בַּדָּמִים).” Diodorus Siculus (2Ki_20:12) describes the brazen statue of Kronos (Moloch) with its outstretched arms, glowing hot from an internal fire, but he does not say that the children were laid living upon them. Eusebius (Præp. Evang. 2Ki_4:16) states in regard to the human sacrifices which were offered at Salamis that they were first killed by the priest with a spear and then burned upon the pile. Slaying, and cutting in pieces, and shedding blood, are essentials in sacrifice, so that זבח, i.e., to slaughter, means, to sacrifice. We have certainly to understand, therefore, in the case of the child-sacrifices, that they were killed before they were burned (Hävernick, Comm. über Ezech. s. 237 sq.). Such seems to have been the case also in the incident mentioned in 2Ki_3:27. The only remaining question is this: if the procedure was the same in the case of the child-sacrifices as in the ordinary burnt offerings, why do we find the expression העביר באשׁ used only of the former? The probable explanation is that the expression only referred originally to a passage through the fire without consumption, a sort of fire-baptism, as purifications by fire were practised by various peoples, and that it was not connected with human sacrifice. Not until a later time did this become corrupted into a real sacrifice and burning, but the original expression was retained and became general (see Keil on Lev_18:21). It may be, too, as Witsius (Miscell. p. 616) suggests, that the practice was not always and everywhere the same, but both living and dead children were burned, and this expression was used in both cases.
[This is the point in the history of the Israelites at which they became acquainted with the Assyrio-Chaldean idolatry. The gods Baal and Ashtaroth became known to them from the Phœnicians by the marriage of Jezebel with Ahab. That that was the point of contact between the Jehovah-worship and the Baal-worship s proved by the fact that this pair (Baal and Ashtaroth) are the ones whom the Israelites worshipped, and that that was the couplet which was worshipped at Sidon (see note on 2Ki_17:17). Now, however, Pekah and Ahaz came into close intimacy with the Assyrians, and learned from them the astral conception of the same heathen religion. Ashtaroth always had sidereal character, but her worship, so far as it was introduced into Israel, seems to have been confined rather to its voluptuous rites. Ahaz introduced the astral worship into Judah. In order to understand the influence of these heathen religious conceptions on Judah, and the origin of the rite of passing through the fire, it is necessary to take a somewhat comprehensive view of these heathen religious conceptions. Here follows a description of the cultus. On the astral ideas see note on 2Ki_17:17. The religious conceptions of the nations of Western Asia were all closely related to each other. The deity was conceived of as one, simple, formless, and universal, but in a pantheistic sense. It has often been observed that behind the polytheism of these nations (and of Egypt also) there was an idea of one sole and original deity, and it has been inferred that there was a pure and true monotheistic idea at the root, and that the polytheism was only popular. In fact, however, the corruption of these heathen religions was rooted in the pantheistic conception of this original divine essence. Then his attributes were deified (hence the plural Baalim), and not only his good attributes but also his destructive and profane and base attributes. Hence, by a legitimate deduction, all the cruel and licentious rites of pretended religion. In different countries the chief and original God took different names according to the especial point of view from which he was regarded. The Assyrians called him Asshur, or, in a still more pantheistic conception, Ilu; and among the Canaanites he was called El as the “Mighty One,” the first and simplest conception of God as strength. He was also very widely named Baal (Babylonian Bel [Merodach]), as the “Lord;” also Yaoh (Hebr. Yahvah [Jehovah]), as the “Eternal,” the pure conception of being or existence. The Aramæans named him Hadad or Hadar, “The Only One;” the Ammonites, Moloch, the “King;” the Moabites, Chemosh, the “Governor.” Then he received different names according to his attributes, and was worshipped by each nation under the name of the attribute which they kept most in mind. As the deity which presided over generation he was Thammuz or Adon (Hebr. Adonay; Greek, Adonis); as protector and preserver he was Chon; as destroyer he was Moloch; as “presiding over the decomposition of those destroyed beings whence new life was again to spring,” he was Zebub (Beelzebub). Hence, probably, Baal-zebub was the god of restoration to health from dangerous sickness. See 2Ki_1:2. In this last sense probably the main idea was that of resurrection or life from death. The flies on carrion seemed to spring to life out of it. The Egyptian beetle probably embodies the same idea. Moloch was therefore the supreme deity in his attribute of destroyer. Fire, lightning, war, pestilence, and so on, represented him. He was worshipped under this form when his appetite for devouring and destroying was being satiated. Hence his rites consisted in sacrifices of things cast into the fire. Those who robbed themselves of something which they cast into the fire appeased the god and averted the assaults which, were to be apprehended from him if his appetite for destruction was not satisfied. The parents who thus sacrificed their children might hope that this frightful sacrifice would save them from further or other losses. When the king of Moab found the fight going against him he offered his son to Chemosh, that the god, appeased by this, might not push on the destruction of war. No doubt he considered that this sacrifice was successful when the horrified Israelites desisted from the war (2 Kings 3). So far as we can judge, the children were cast alive into the flames.—The religion of Israel differed from these heathen religions in that its supreme deity was personal, spiritual, and holy, and that the Israelites refrained from deifying his attributes as emanations or hypostases of himself.—W. G. S.]
Instead of בְּנוֹ in 2Ki_16:3 and 2Ki_21:6, the Chronicler (2Ch_28:3 and 2Ch_33:6) has the plural בָּנָיו. Thenius regards this as a contradiction, or, at least, as an exaggeration of the passage before us, but the plural stands here, as it often does (Mat_9:8; Mat_2:20; Gesen. Lehrgeb. s. 664 sq.), rhetorically, in order to say, in general, that Ahaz and Manasseh had incurred the guilt of child-sacrifice. “The pure, abstract idea of child-sacrifice, apart from any idea of number, is expressed by the plural” (Bertheau, Keil). In like manner, Cicero (De Prov. Cons. xiv. 35): jucundissimi liberi, although Cæsar had only a single daughter (cf. also Pro Lege Manil. 12). On 2Ki_16:4 cf. 1Ki_14:23. The sense is: The centralization of the worship of God, such as the law prescribed, came to an end; the very contrary came to pass. Thenius seizes upon the fact that we have בְּ before בָּמוֹת, instead of עִל, which we find before הַגְּבָעוֹת, as a support for his interpretation of the former word as “grove” or “sacred enclosure” (see Exeg. on 1Ki_2:2-3). It stands here, as it often does, for בֵּית הַבָּמָה, Ahaz offered incense in the sacred places on the tops of the mountains and on the hills, i.e., on heights where there was no בּית but only an altar.
2Ki_16:5. Then Rezin, king of Syria. See on this and the following verse: Caspari, Ueber den Syrisch-ephraimitischen Krieg unter Jotham und Ahaz. Christiania, 1849. After the author has described the reign of Ahaz in its broad and general features (2Ki_16:1-4), the detailed account of the particular incidents begins in 2Ki_16:5. אז only means, therefore, after Ahaz had succeeded to the throne. The attacks began under Jotham (2Ki_15:31), but there had not yet been any formal and united expedition. [The first attempt was frustrated by the attack of Tiglath Pileser on Damascus and Samaria. See Supp. Note, p. 161.] No real attack was made until Ahaz was on the throne. The object was, according to Isa_7:6, to conquer Judah and to set upon the throne a person called “the son of Tabeel,” of whom we know nothing further. [Mention of this confederation occurs in the Assyrian inscriptions. We learn there that the name of this “son of Tabeel” was Ashariah.] Whether “they hoped thereby to be able to oppose larger means and stronger force to the aggressions of the Assyrian empire” (Thenius), is a matter for mere supposition. [This supposition is now very strongly confirmed.] They came as far as Jerusalem, which they besieged (וַיָּצֻרוּ means besiege, as it does in 2Sa_20:15; Jer_21:4; Jer_39:1; Eze_4:3, and not merely: “they pressed forward towards it”), but were not able to take it, for the city had been strongly fortified on all sides by Uzziah and Jotham (2Ch_26:9; 2Ch_27:3), and, in the providence of God, it was otherwise decreed (Isa_7:7).
2Ki_16:6. At that time Rezin won Elath for Syria, &c. בָּעֵת הַהִיא does not mean “thereupon” or “afterwards,” but designates in general the time of the Syriac-ephraimitic war against Judah. 2Ki_16:6 is a sort of parenthesis, so that 2Ki_16:7 is the real continuation of 2Ki_16:5. The author desires to record the danger which threatened Jerusalem, for this was the chief event in this war, and, besides this, to record the fact that Judah, during this reign, lost the city which was its most important seat of commerce, and one of the chief sources of the prosperity of the country (cf. on Elath, notes on 1Ki_9:26 and 2Ki_14:22). 2Ki_16:7 then joins on to 2Ki_16:5, for Ahaz sent to Tiglath Pileser, not on account of the loss of Elath, but on account of his endangered capital, with which the whole kingdom must stand or fall. Many expositors, both ancient and recent, have desired to change לַאֲרָם to לֶאֱדוֹם, because Elath never belonged to Syria, and therefore could not be “restored” to it. But this conjecture is not supported by a single manuscript or ancient version, and, as Winer and Keil observe, הֵשִׁיב does not necessarily imply the idea of “back again.” It means, in general, to turn away from something to something else (Isa_1:25, and Knobel’s note thereon; Psa_81:14; Amo_1:8; Dan_11:18). It means, therefore, that Rezin took away Elath from Judah, to which it had previously belonged, and joined it to Syria. The case is similar with the word וַאֲרוֹמִים, for which the keri offers ואדומים, the Sept., ’Ιδουμαῖοι, and the Vulg., Idumœi, but evidently incorrectly. The Edomites did not need to come to Elath and to settle there; they had always lived in this city, which lay in their own country, and had remained there even when it was in the hands of the Jews. What is asserted, however, is, that Rezin expelled the Jews and brought thither Syrians, who settled there for purposes of trade, and remained there “until this day,” i. e., at the time that these books were written the Syrian commercial colony was yet in Elath. Yet one question further suggests itself here, viz., whether Rezin took Elath before or after the attack which he and Pekah made upon Jerusalem. The answer to this question depends upon another one: What is the relation between the record before us and that in the parallel passage in Chronicles? In the latter there is no mention of the expedition against Elath, nor of the siege of Jerusalem. On the other hand, it is recorded that Jehovah gave Ahaz into the hand of the king of Syria, who defeated him, and took away many captives to Damascus; likewise into the hand of the king of Israel, who, in a great battle, won a great victory over him (2Ki_16:5-6). This narrative the rationalistic school formerly regarded as an invention and unworthy of belief (Gesenius, De Wette, Gramberg), but that view has been abandoned even by this school. Thenius, amongst others, regards the narrative as unquestionably historical, and as a supplement to the record before us. Nevertheless there is some disagreement as to whether the campaign described in Chronicles is the same one which is described here. Caspari has examined this question very carefully in the work mentioned above; we, therefore, refer in general to that work and here add only what follows. Those, like Vitringa, Movers, Hävernick, and others, who adopt the hypothesis of two sucessive expeditions, appeal for their proof especially to Isa_7:1-9. At the commencement of the war against Judah, when it is made known to the house of David that the Syrians are already in Ephraim, the prophet announces to Ahaz the complete failure of the enterprise of the two kings. As, however, according to the account in Chronicles, Ahaz was defeated by each of these kings, it is inferred that that must have taken place in a different expedition from the one here referred to, and that it took place before the latter; furthermore, that the capture of Elath took place during the second expedition and after the siege of Jerusalem, since it is narrated in the history after that event (2Ki_16:6). It is certain that the two battles mentioned in 2Ch_28:5-6, must have taken place before the siege of Jerusalem, but it does not follow that they occurred in an earlier expedition. As it was the intention of Rezin and Pekah to put an end to the kingdom of Judah and to put “the son of Tabeel” (probably a Syrian general) upon the throne, it is not by any means to be supposed that they would have abandoned the attempt after gaining two victories over Ahaz, and then would have undertaken a new expedition in order to besiege Jerusalem. On the contrary, it is plain that they would try, after winning two victories, to complete their enterprise by taking Jerusalem. The words in Isa_7:2, עַל־אֶפְרַיִם נָחָה אֲרָם do not mean, as they are often translated: “The Aramæans are encamped in Ephraim” (Bunsen), nor: “The Syrians stand [are under arms] in Ephraim” (De Wette), so that it would follow, that Rezin first advanced into Ephraim at the outbreak of the war, in order to advance, in conjunction with Pekah, against Jerusalem. The phrase must be explained as it is in the Chaldee paraphrase: “The king of Syria has joined himself (אתחבר, societatem iniit) with (עם) the king Israel.” So the Sept. translate: συνεφώνησεν ’Αρὰμ πρὸς τὸν ’Εφραίμ. “The verb נוה with על is never used of an army encamping, and it does not seem fitting to take אפרים as referring to the country, and ארם as referring to the people” (Hengstenberg). נוח means, to lie down to rest, and it expresses, when it is used as it is here of a person who rests upon or over (על) another, a being with or by, a being in connection with him (cf. Num_11:25-26; Isa_11:2; Psa_125:3). [An examination of these passages will show that they do not justify any such rendering of נוח על as, to be in alliance with. They contain “the spirit rests upon” or some similar sense of נוח על, which is a different sense of “rest” and a different sense of “upon” from the one here to be proved. Hengstenberg’s objection, that Aram is used of the people and Ephraim of the territory, has force, but the most fair rendering of the words is: “Aram is encamped in Ephraim” (Bunsen, Ewald). נוח is not indeed the technical word for the encamping of an army, but it is used for special force. They have settled down, are stationed, are resting and recruiting, but when an army does this it encamps.—W. G. S.] What made Ahaz and his people tremble, as the trees of the forest tremble before the wind, was, not the fact that Syria was in camp in Ephraim, but the fact that the kings of Syria and Israel had joined forces against Judah. The prophet promised that this enterprise should not succeed, and his promise was fulfilled. The supposition that Rezin began the war by taking up a position in the land of Ephraim is, therefore, totally unfounded. Moreover, it was not necessary for him, in order to make war upon Jerusalem, to go through Ephraim. He could just as well advance on the other side of the Jordan, and this he no doubt did. As for the capture of Elath, 2Ki_16:6 of the chapter before us does not force us to the assumption that it took place before the siege of Jerusalem, for, as we have said above, 2Ki_16:6 is a parenthesis and 2Ki_16:7 follows 2Ki_16:5. It is also difficult to believe that Rezin gave up the siege, because Jerusalem could not be taken (2Ki_16:5). and then, because he “was unwilling that the expedition should have been made entirely in vain” (Thenius), that he made a long march around the southern end of the Dead Sea in order to return home. After Ahaz had called upon Tiglath Pileser for aid, and the latter was actually advancing against Syria, it is impossible that Rezin can have undertaken this long march; he must have hastened home by the most direct route. In view of all this we come to the following conception of the course of the events. Rezin made an alliance with Pekah and advanced on the east side of the Jordan and won a great victory over Ahaz (2Ch_28:5). At the same time, on this side the Jordan, Pekah invaded Judah, and also inflicted a severe defeat on Ahaz (2Ch_28:6). As a consequence of his victory Rezin marched on southward to Edom, where he put an end to the hated supremacy of Judah over Edom, and captured Elath, an important source of commercial prosperity to Judah (2Ki_16:6). From thence he moved northwards on this side of the Dead Sea and made a junction with Pekah, who had in the mean time been devastating the country, in order, with him, to make a united attack upon Jerusalem, and so to come to the end of his entire undertaking, namely, to the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah and of the dynasty of David. [It may hardly be worth while to balance conjectures where the basis of testimony on which to build them is so slight. The above construction is open to considerable objection. If a king set out, in alliance with another, against Judah, would it not be strange that he should march through Edom to Elath and then up to Jerusalem before joining his ally? What is more, it is very remarkable that Isaiah, when he prophesies deliverance to Ahaz, makes no reference to two defeats which the king is supposed to have suffered already. We expect a sentence in this form: although thou hast been defeated, yet, &c. The king looks for aid to Assyria. The prophet rebukes this. He evidently expects that the physical form of the deliverance will be something else than Tiglath Pileser’s advance. It is more consistent to suppose that the city was found too strong, that the two kings commenced to devastate the country, that Ahaz was twice defeated when he sallied out to try to restrain them, or before he was shut up in the city, and that Rezin pushed forward as far as Elath. Probably it was not until they had made some progress in plundering the country that they heard that Tiglath Pileser was advancing. The information derived from the Assyrian inscriptions strongly sustains this view. Rezin and Pekah revolted in 734–3. Haste was necessary above all things. It was deemed necessary to conquer Judah and force it into the confederated revolt. Hence the news comes suddenly to Ahaz in this startling form: The Syrians are in Ephraim. Before the end of 731 the war was all over and Tiglath Pileser held his court in Damascus. (See Supp. Note at the end of this section.) The whole campaign in Judah was therefore very brief. There was no time for a siege. The two “battles” were fought in the open country, and the “captives” were taken thence, and the long expedition to Elath was undertaken in order to bring the strongest possible pressure to bear on Ahaz to force him to join the revolt, next to the capture of his capital.—W. G. S.] As the Edomites and Philistines had also invaded Judah (2Ch_28:17 sq.), Ahaz, pressed on every side, turned to Assyria for help in spite of the warnings and promises of Isaiah (2Ki_7:1 sq.). This induced Rezin to desist from his advance and to hurry home. There he was defeated and slain by Tiglath Pileser.—It is scarcely possible to combine the two narratives in any other than this simple and direct way. Keil also places the capture of Elath before the siege of Jerusalem, but leaves it undecided whether Rezin advanced northwards from Elath, against Jerusalem, or whether, after his victory over Ahaz (2Ch_28:5), “he sent a portion of his army into Idumea to detach that country from Judah, while he, in conjunction with Pekah, led the rest of the army against Jerusalem.” Against this view arises the objection that 2Ki_16:6 makes no mention of a detachment sent into Idumea, but says that Rezin himself marched thither and drove the Jews out of Elath.
2Ki_16:7. Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath Pileser. He did not take this step as soon as hostilities commenced, but, as has already been said, when he saw himself hard pressed. He did not heed the prophet’s warning and counsel Isa_7:4); on the contrary, by the words: thy servant and thy son, he placed himself in servitude to the king of Assyria as well as under his protection. He sent the presents of gold and silver (2Ki_16:8) after the allied armies had withdrawn from Jerusalem, and Damascus had been taken (2Ki_16:9). Tiglath Pileser took the captured inhabitants of Damascus to Kir. By this we have not to understand, as the ancient Expositors did, the Median city Κουρήνα or Καρίνη, but the country around the river Kur (Κῦρος, Κύῤῥος), which flows through the northern part of Iberia, the modern Georgia, into the Caspian sea (Isa_22:6 [cf. also Amo_1:3-5]). “Tiglath Pileser transferred the inhabitants of Damascus to the most remote portion—in the extreme north—of his dominions, and yet to the place from which their ancestors had originally migrated (Amo_9:7).” (Thenius). After the subjugation of Syria, Tiglath Pileser advanced against Israel, and accomplished what is recorded in 2Ki_15:29. It may be that Pekah submitted at once to the approaching enemy and thereby averted from himself the fate of Rezin. [See Supp. Note, p. 161.]—The statement 2Ch_28:20 sq., according to which Tiglath Pileser marched against Ahaz, and besieged him but did not overcome him, is discussed in detail by Caspari (work above cited, ss. 56–60). He strives to reconcile it to the statements of the passage before us, but does not in all respects succeed. So much is certain; Ahaz, in spite of all his gifts to Tiglath Pileser, did not find in him a true helper and friend; on the contrary, he was harshly treated by him: “It did him no good.” [The meaning of 2Ch_28:20 seems to be more correctly given in the English translation: “He came unto him (not against him), and distressed him (not necessarily besieged him), and strengthened him not.”]
2Ki_16:10. And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath Pileser, i.e., in order to testify to his gratitude towards him for his deliverance, and at the same time to secure the continued favor of the king of Assyria. The latter must, therefore, have remained at Damascus for some time. Perhaps Ahaz himself brought the presents which are mentioned in 2Ki_16:8. While he was at Damascus he saw an altar which pleased him so much that he sent orders to Urijah the priest to make one like it. This Urijah can hardly be the same one who is mentioned in Isa_8:2. [We should unhesitatingly infer that these two were the same individual, if it were not for the improbability that a man, who would build and introduce into the temple a new altar built on a heathen model, should be called by a prophet a “faithful” witness. The solution may be that the prophet took the priest as a faithful witness on account of his official position solely. The priest seemed the most fit and proper witness, however much the prophet may have had to find fault with (as to which he tells us nothing one way or the other) in his administration of his office.—W. G. S.] It was undoubtedly an altar consecrated to an Assyrian deity which Ahaz saw, but he desired to have one like it for the service of Jehovah (2Ki_16:15). דְּמוּת has a general signification: shape, image; תַּבְנִית designated more particularly the model; and מַעֲשֶׂה the sort of workmanship, decoration, &c.—In 2Ki_16:12, וַיַּעַל עָלָיו is not to be translated: “and he sacrificed upon it” (Luther, De Wette, and others), but: “and he ascended upon it.” See 1Ki_12:32-33. It does not follow from this, however, that “Ahaz was not willing to give up the royal prerogative of exercising the high-priestly office upon occasion” (Thenius). The words mean simply that this was his sacrifice, namely, the one which he offered for his fortunate return from Damascus. He led the way by his own example. We have not to understand that he usurped any priestly functions. It is no more intended to assert in 2Ki_16:13 that he himself sprinkled the sacrificial blood, than it is in 2Ki_16:14, that he, with his own hand, removed the altar. [The translation: “He went up upon it,” is justly preferred by Bähr, but it does not remove the difficulty about the king’s share in the sacrifice. Why did he go up upon the altar, if not to perform the rites himself? There is no other evidence at all that any one but the person officiating at the sacrifice went up upon the altar. Furthermore, 2Ki_16:13 is not a case of the ultimate agent being said to do what others do by his command. The fact that the king could sacrifice unrebuked by the priest is not any more astonishing than that the priest should make an altar on a heathen pattern, and put it in the place of the one built by Solomon. Both incidents belong to the picture of this reign.—W. G. S.] The thank-offering was the chief thing (2Ki_16:13), but it was preceded by a burnt-offering as usual (Symbol, d. Mos. Kult. II. s. 362, 423, 435). 2Ch_28:23 does not contradict the passage before us. It does not refer to the new altar and the sacrifice which was offered upon it, but to the sacrifices which Ahaz offered elsewhere (cf. 2Ki_16:4).
2Ki_16:14-15. And he brought also the brazen altar, &c. וַיַּקְרֵּב cannot mean: “he removed,” “Er that weg” (Luther), nor: he moved away; “Er rückte hinweg,” but: he brought nearer, he moved closer up to. [The sense of “away from” is, of course, in מֵאֵת. The first meaning of וַיַּקְרֵב is certainly: “he brought nearer,” but as it is not clear what it was brought nearer to, the word seems to have lost this force and to mean simply, he moved. Bähr translates: “But the brazen altar (i.e., the altar of burnt-offering), which was before Jehovah (i.e., which was immediately before the house of Jehovah), he moved nearer, away from (the place) before the house (i.e., away from the point) between the (new) altar and the house of Jehovah, and he put it by the side of the new altar towards the north.” It is not clear what it was nearer to.—W. G. S.] The altar of burnt-offering was called the “brazen” altar, in contradistinction from the golden altar of incense in the interior of the temple. It stood in the middle of the court of the priests in front of the temple-building. Urijah had placed the new altar in front of this, but Ahaz ordered the brazen altar to be moved away from its former position to the north side of the new one. This he did evidently because the position which was nearer to the dwelling-place of the divinity seemed to be more holy, and he did not wish that the old altar should be regarded as superior in honor or sacredness to the new one. As they were now upon the same line, they were, in so far, equal; while the new one, being in the middle, was, if anything, superior. In 2Ki_16:15 the new altar is called הַגָּרוֹל; hardly because “it was somewhat larger than Solomon’s altar” (Keil), for the latter was very large, twenty cubits long and wide and ten cubits high (2Ch_4:1). It seems better, with Thenius, “to understand it as in כֹּהֵן הַגָּדוֹל and to translate: ‘the chief altar.’ ” According to Ahaz’s orders, all the offerings were now to be made upon the new altar; the regular morning and evening sacrifices, and the special ones of particular individuals, whether the king or others. He did not, therefore, forbid the worship of Jehovah—he did not dare to do that—but nevertheless this worship was to be celebrated only upon an altar imitated from one which belonged to the heathen.—The morning burnt-offering and the evening meat-offering. “It might seem from this that there was no meat offering in the morning and no burnt-offering in the evening, which would be contradictory to Exo_29:38-42 and Num_28:3-8. But, as no burnt-offering was brought without a meat-offering (Num_7:87; Num_15:2-12), the latter is assumed as a matter of course in the morning offering; and, as the burnt-offering was to burn throughout the whole night (Lev_6:9), the meat-offering was the only part of the evening sacrifice at which the people could assist” (Thenius). The final words: And as for the brazen altar יִהְיֶה־לִּי לְבַקֵּר, are translated by the Vulg.: erit paratum ad voluntatem meam; similarly Philippson: “But to inquire at the brazen altar is my prerogative.” This rendering is evidently incorrect, for בִּקֵּר means to investigate but not to seek out or inquire, much less to be at one’s disposition (Lev_27:33). It has here the same meaning as in Pro_20:25, to consider, so that the phrase is to be translated: “I will consider [farther]” (Fürst). Thenius, very unnecessarily, desires to read לְבַקֵּשׁ for לְבַקֵּר, because הָיָה לְ, as he maintains, always means to serve a certain purpose. The meaning would then be “shall be mine for prayer;” i.e., that the old altar should be retained as a “prayer-altar.” הָיָה לְ is used here, however, as it is in Gen_15:12; 1Sa_4:9; Jos_2:5. No distinction between prayer-altars and altars of sacrifice was recognized in ancient times. Ahaz did not desire that the altar of Solomon, which had hitherto been held very sacred, should be removed at once, but he desired to wait and see how the people would regard the innovation. He therefore reserved his further commands for a time.
2Ki_16:17. And king Ahaz cut off, &c. Thenius maintains that this and the following verse are a continuation of the first half of verse 10, and that a more precise statement is here added to the re-report of Ahaz’ journey to Damascus which is there spoken of, viz., that it was impossible for him, after he had obtained the needed assistance, to appear before Tiglath Pileser with empty hands; that the treasury was empty (2Ki_16:8); that he was, therefore, compelled to take for this gift anything which could be made available; and that this is what is meant by the closing words of 2Ki_16:18 : “for the king of Assyria.” But 2Ki_16:17-18 clearly carry on the narrative of what occurred after the return of the king from Damascus (2Ki_16:12). They are therefore a direct continuation of 2Ki_16:10-16. Besides the removal of the brazen altar, Ahaz undertook still further changes in the sanctuary, namely those which are mentioned in 2Ki_16:17-18. As the brazen oxen are among the things which he removed, and as they were not carried away from Jerusalem until the Babylonians carried them off (Jer_52:20), it is not to be understood that they were carried as a gift to Damascus by Ahaz. As it was with the oxen, so it must have been also with the other decorations mentioned in 2Ki_16:17. Finally the words: “for (מִפְּנֵי) the king of Assyria,” cannot be understood in the sense of: “In the service of the king of Assyria” (Luther), or, “In order to obtain (by abstracting the decorations mentioned) the necessary gifts for the king” (Thenius); for מִפְּנֵי means for in the sense of from fear of anybody (cf. Jdg_9:21; Gen_7:7; Isa_20:6; 2Ki_22:19; Hos_11:2, &c), but never for the sake of any one, or out of love to him. Ahaz removed all these valuable objects “before the king of Assyria” not in order to make him a present of them, but either because he thought that they would give him offence or because he feared that he might want them and demand them of him. [This last is the true explanation. He wanted to escape the cupidity of the Assyrians by hiding evidences of wealth.—W. G. S.]—On the מִזְגְּרוֹת of the bases and on כִּיֹּר and the brazen sea, see notes on 1Ki_7:27 sq. Ahaz did not set the last “upon the stone pavement” (Luther), but upon a foundation built of stone.—The מֵיסָךְ was “unquestionably a covered place, a platform or hall, in the forecourt of the temple, set apart for the king when he visited the temple with his retinue on the Sabbaths or feast-days” (Keil). This addition was built later than the rest of the temple. Its form cannot be definitely discovered, for it is only mentioned here. The Sept. have for it: τὸν θεμέλιον τῆς καυέδρας τῶν δαββάτων, which does not throw any light upon it, as they evidently read מוּסָר, foundation, for מוּסָךְ. The king’s entry without is perhaps the “ascent” mentioned in 1Ki_10:5. According to Thenius it was “the entrance at the eastern gate of the inner court, which lay towards the outer fore-court through which the king alone entered (Eze_46:1-2), and it is mentioned in contrast to the platform of the king in the inner forecourt, which has just been mentioned.” Keil translates הֵסֵב, which applies to both the localities, “he transferred into the house of Jehovah,” but the platform (מוּסָךְ), which was in the inner court, cannot possibly have been transferred into the temple itself, still less the outer entrance. Moreover, why should this transfer have taken place “before” or “for fear of” the king of Assyria? הֵסֵב means strictly: to make something turn about, to change a thing so that it is not what it was. Hence it often means to change one’s name (2Ki_23:34; 2Ki_24:17), and it can only be understood here in the same sense. Thenius: “He ‘changed’ in the same way as he had changed or altered the bases, &c.” This no doubt took place in this way, that he took off from them what was valuable. בֵּית יְהוָֹה is the ordinary accusative of place, “in the sanctuary.”—We see from 2Ki_23:12 that Ahaz was not contented with the arrangements for worship here made, but also erected altars on the roof of his “upper chamber.”—In regard to the sepulture of king Ahaz (2Ki_16:20), 2Ch_28:27, says: “They buried him in the city, in Jerusalem, but they brought him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israel.” It is not evident why this is an “error,” as Thenius asserts. It does not contradict the record before us, and the same thing occurred in regard to Uzziah, although not for the same reason (cf. 2Ki_15:7 and 2Ch_26:3).
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[Supplementary Note on the references to contemporaneous history in chap. 16, incorporating the results of Assyrian investigations.—As we saw above (p. 161), chap. 15 gives an account of the intervention of Assyria in the history of Israel. Chap. 16 gives the history of the intervention of Assyria in Judah. The first revolt of Pekah and Rezin against Assyria, and their conspiracy to attack Judah and force it to join in the attempt, in the last year of Jotham (742), was crushed before it gained any strength. In 734 they once more united in revolt, and renewed their policy of attacking Judah. Ahaz, hard pressed by them (see Exeg. on 2Ki_16:7), called to Tiglath Pileser for aid, and paid him tribute. The aid was promptly given, as Tiglath Pileser regarded Rezin and Pekah as rebels. Ahaz was thus relieved from this danger (732). Tiglath Pileser, after dealing with the rebels as described on p. 162, marched into Philistia and took Gaza and Ashdod, and also Dumah in Arabia, and came back to Damascus. It was probably on this march that he “came to” Ahaz, and distressed him; and it was probably at this time that Ahaz removed the furniture of the temple and took away its decorations, lest they might present an appearance of wealth to Tiglath Pileser, and excite his cupidity (see Exeg. on 2Ki_16:18). In 731, before leaving Damascus to return to Assyria, Tiglath Pileser “held a court” of his vassals at that city. Twenty-three such vassals came. Among them are mentioned Pekah of Israel and Ahaz of Judah (Lenormant I. 389 and 390). Continued in the Supp. Note after the Exeg. section on chap. 17—W. G. S.]
HISTORICAL AND ETHICAL
1. The reign of king Ahaz was the most disastrous through which Judah had yet passed. The kingdom sank so low, both internally and externally, religiously and politically, that it was on the verge of ruin. Such an incapable ruler had never before ascended the throne. The predominant feature in his character was weakness, weakness of spirit and weakness of intellect. History records nothing about him which is worthy of respect. Although Judah and Israel had had many perverse, wicked, and godless rulers, yet these had been at least brave and energetic soldiers; but of Ahaz even this much cannot be said. When the enemy approached “his heart was moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind” (Isa_7:2). No word of prophetic promise or encouragement could deliver him from his despair. He was defeated; he did not win a single victory׃ all the conquests of his two predecessors were lost; the land was devastated and robbed of all its sources of revenue. Finally he turns in his distress, in spite of every warning, to the threatening Assyrian power and purchases its help, not only by the treasures of the temple and the palace, but also with the independence and honor of his kingdom. As is usually the case with weak rulers, he cringes before the mighty, but is arrogant and domineering towards his subjects (cf. 2Ki_16:7-16). As for the main point, the attitude towards Jehovah, his apostasy was deeper than that of any other king of Judah or even of Israel. He not only tolerated idolatry, but practised it zealously himself, and even went so far in his error as the abomination of sacrificing his own son. The historical books, which only state the facts, do not tell how it came about that a king of Judah, a descendant and successor of David, fell so low, but the prophetical books give us an insight into the religious and moral status of the kingdom. The kingdom of Judah had attained to power and glory under Uzziah and Jotham, as Israel did under Jeroboam II. Flourishing trade and lively intercourse with foreign countries produced wealth, and with it also foreign manners and customs. Finally foreign divinities were introduced. The result was great luxury, effeminacy, debauchery, and excess which soon, especially in the upper classes, led to immorality and vice of every kind. The foreign forms of worship, which were, for the most part, brilliant and’ attractive, and connected with vice, pleased this degenerate generation better than the simple, severe, and earnest Jehovah worship, which indeed continued, but had degenerated into a mere external ceremonial. Uzziah and Jotham had indeed, as we have said above, done their utmost for the external prosperity of the kingdom. They also remained true to the worship of Jehovah, but they were not filled with warm zeal for it, and they did not oppose effective resistance to the invading corruption. Isaiah, who commenced his prophetical labor in the year in which Uzziah died (Isa_6:1), says, in the passage in which, according to the generally received opinion, he is speaking of the time of Jotham: “Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people, the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the East [filled with Eastern rites and acts] and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers. Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots; their land is also full of idols, they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made” (Isa_2:6-8). In another passage, which, though it does not belong to the time of Jotham, yet fails in the beginning of the reign of Ahaz, the prophet describes the degeneracy of morals, the debauchery, licentiousness, pride, deceit, alienation from God, injustice, oppression, &c., of the time (Isa_5:8-25). In such circumstances the youthful Ahaz had grown up. Such was the atmosphere which he had breathed from his childhood up. He was emphatically a child of his time, a faithful representative of the majority of the nation, corrupted by foreign modes of thought and morals. By nature he was weak and vacillating. He allowed himself to be swept away by the stream, and sank deeper into a depraved character and career, so that even the heavy judgments which befell him did not avail to bring him into other courses.
2. The idolatry which was practised in Judah, in the time of Ahaz, by the side of the worship of Jehovah, was not of the form peculiar to any particular people, but was like that which Solomon allowed his wives to practise (see Exeg. on 1Ki_11:5 and Hist. §§ 3 and 4 on 1Ki_11:1-13), a mixture of the different kinds of worship which predominated in western Asia. Since, as we saw from Isa_2:6-8, such a cultus had been established in Judah even in the time of Jotham, and Ahaz found it in existence when he ascended the throne, it follows that it cannot have been Assyrian in origin, for, in Jotham’s time, Judah had not come in contact with Assyria at all. In the book of Chronicles, as well as in the book of Kings, the sacrifice of children is presented as the extreme of apostasy. In its nature this form of sacrifice is the most utter contrast to the worship of Jehovah (see Pt. II., p. 36). As it is not mentioned as having been committed at all before the time of Ahaz, but, on the contrary, he was the first who went so far astray, it has been supposed that he was led to it by becoming acquainted with the Assyrian fire-gods, Adrammelech and Anammelech (2Ki_17:31) (cf. Movers, Phöniz. I. s. 65; Winer, R.-W.-B. II. s. 101). The record, however, distinctly contradicts this notion by the words: “According to the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel.” The Assyrians did not belong to this category and the words apply here, as they do wherever they occur (2Ki_17:8; 2Ki_17:11; cf. Num_33:51-55; Deu_4:38), to the Canaanitish nations, that is, the nations of western, not of upper, Asia. It is an unquestioned fact that among the former, especially among the Phœnicians, child-sacrifices were common, and that Moloch, to whom they were offered, was worshipped in western Asia (cf. Lev_18:21; Lev_18:27 sq.; 2Ki_20:1-5). Moreover, it cannot be proved that Ahaz did not perform such sacrifices until after he became acquainted with the Assyrian cultus. It is mentioned in the most general terms as a sign of his apostasy. His sacrificing and offering incense “under every green tree” does not point to Assyrian star-worship, but to the Astarte and Aschere-worship of western Asia. Duncker’s notion that Ahaz first offered child-sacrifice when Rezin and Pekah were before Jerusalem, and he was most hardly pressed on all sides (“In vain the king offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus in order to turn the fortunes of war; in vain he sacrificed his own son as a burnt-offering”), is nothing but a pure construction on the basis of 2Ki_3:27. The biblical text does not offer the slightest hint of it. It is in fact very questionable whether child-sacrifices were common among the nations of Upper Asia, and especially among the Assyrians. It cannot, at any rate, be proved from 2Ki_17:31. It cannot, indeed, be denied that Ahaz, after he had met Tiglath Pileser in Damascus, became acquainted with the Assyrian cultus and transplanted at least some parts of it to Jerusalem. This is proved, not so much by the fact that he caused an altar to be built after the pattern of the one which he had seen in Damascus, as rather from 2Ki_23:12, where “altars upon the upper-chamber of Ahaz” are mentioned, evidently referring to Assyrio-Chaldean star-worship (see note below on the place mentioned). The chariots and horses of the sun which are there mentioned most probably belonged to the time of Manasseh. For the rest, Ahaz tolerated the Jehovah-worship after his return from Damascus; for the sacrifices which he commanded the high-priest Urijah to make (2Ki_16:15) upon the new altar were not offerings to idols but to Jehovah. The weak man had not the courage formally to abolish the Jehovah-worship, for a party which could not be despised still clung to it. He worshipped all possible gods according to his own tastes and notions. In his time there was in Judah complete religious anarchy and license. [See the bracketed note on 2Ki_16:3 under Exegetical. That note presents the facts in regard to the point discussed in this section according to the latest and best knowledge. It will be seen that it modifies and corrects some of the above statements.]
3. The war which the confederated kings of Israel and Syria undertook against Judah is “one of the most notable and most important events in the Israelitish history” (Caspari). It was the first time that one of the two sister-kingdoms formed an alliance, with the hereditary enemy against the other, in order to destroy it. This was a most unnatural alliance and was a sign of the process of dissolution which was commencing; for it showed that the consciousness of forming with Judah a common nationality based upon common blood and faith had been lost by Israel. The importance and the external prosperity, which had been won by Judah under Uzziah and Jotham (see above, § 1), had perhaps reawakened Ephraim’s ancient, deep-rooted hate and envy of Judah (see 1 Kings 12; Hist. § 1), and incited the faithless and ambitious Pekah to the alliance with Rezin. In addition to this was the fact that Israel had, under Menahem, fallen into a certain position of dependence upon, and subjection to, the growing and threatening Assyrian power, and that Syria had also, in this power, a dangerous neighbor. In order to recuperate Israel at the expense of Judah, and to find a protection on the side of Assyria in the intervening nation of Syria, Pekah formed an alliance with Rezin, who was also eager for conquest, and these two “fire-brands” (Isa_7:4) formed the plan of putting an end to the nation of Judah and the house of David. They made their first efforts in this direction in the last years of Jotham, but without success (2Ki_15:37). “When, however, the weak and incapable Ahaz came to the throne, the right time for carrying out their plan seemed to them to have come. But the Lord said: “Take counsel together and it shall come to naught; speak the word and it shall not stand” (Isa_8:10). At the moment when they were close to their object they were obliged to give up their plan, and they ran to their own destruction. Rezin lost his kingdom and his life; Pekah was made subject to Tiglath Pileser, and a part of his people were led away into exile (2Ki_15:29). Ahaz also lost his kingdom and his people, and had to bow beneath the supremacy of Assyria. The whole war was a heavy judgment upon the three kingdoms. The kingdom of Syria-Damascus, which had, up to this time, been the instrument of the divine judgments against Israel, disappeared forever from the scene. Israel went on with hasty steps to its destruction, for Pekah was murdered by Hoshea in consequence of his subjection to the Assyrians, and Hoshea, as he refused to pay the tribute to Assyria, was taken captive by Shalmaneser. Thus the kingdom of Israel came to an end (2Ki_17:3 sq.). [See Supp. Note, p. 161.] “As the hostility to Judah had given it its origin, so the same hostility brought about its destruction: born from this, it also perished by it” (Caspari). Judah itself, finally, as a punishment for its apostasy from Jehovah, came into that contact with Assyria, from this time on, which had such a deep influence upon its history. From this time the conflicts with the small nationalities ceased and those with the great world-monarchies began. In so far this war was, for Judah also, the beginning of the end. It was a turning-point for both nations which had not heeded the chastisements nor the proofs of the goodness and long-suffering of God, but had hardened themselves more and more in their apostasy. “It was in the highest degree providential that the great world-monarchies began to interfere in Israel just at the time when this hardening took place”(Caspari). But this “war between Judah and the allied kingdoms of Ephraim and Syria is still further especially remarkable for this fact, that the grandest prophecies were spoken in it, and that it forms the historical basis of a product of the Old-Testament prophecy which is of the very highest, or, in fact, of unique significance. This fact stands in connection with the position of this war at the turning-point of the Old-Testament history; in the middle of the Israelitish history, at the end of the first and beginning of the second period, in which latter the fortunes of the people of God under the world-monarchy, its period of suffering, falls. It stood, therefore, at the point where a prospect offered itself to the eye of the prophet which reached out over the whole future development of the kingdom of God” (Caspari).
4. After his visit to Damascus, Ahaz caused certain changes to be made in the arrangements of the temple at Jerusalem which were of greater or less significance. The record mentions some of these very briefly, but speaks more at length of those which affected the altar of burnt-offering. because these were by far the most important, Since the entire cultus was concentrated in the sacrifice, and all sacrifices, those of the individual as well as those of the entire people, were to be offered on this one altar (Lev_17:8-9; Deu_12:13-14), it formed the centre of the sanctuary, which, without it, would have lost its significance. Its form and shape, its position in the sacred edifice, its entire construction, were, therefore, by no means indifferent matters, but they were strictly prescribed in accordance with its character and purpose, so that any alteration of it seemed to be a sort of denial or contradiction of the religious idea which it was constructed to serve. Merely to take away the four horns from its four corners was to desecrate and destroy it (Amo_3:14; Jdt_9:8. Symbol. d. Mosaisch. Cult. I. s. 473). Now when Ahaz caused this altar to be removed and another made on a pattern obtained from Damascus, this was nothing less than an indirect setting aside of the lawful Jehovah-worship, and it bore witness not only to an entire want of comprehension of that worship, but also to an unheard-of self-will. He ordained, indeed, that the priest should offer all the sacrifices which had hitherto been offered—that is to say, all the sacrifices to Jehovah—upon the new altar. He did not diminish the amount of worship to be paid to Jehovah; the crime and folly were that an- idol-altar was used for the worship of Jehovah. It appears that Ahaz intended to gradually transform the Jehovah-worship in this way. Certainly the ground for it was not merely that the form of the altar which he saw “in a city where, according to all the indications which we possess, the fine arts were highly developed, pleased him better than that of the large brazen altar in the forecourt of the temple at Jerusalem” (Ewald), so that “he had rather an æsthetic than a religious reason for the change” (Thenius). For, aside from the fact that there is not an indication of any especial fondness for art in Ahaz, as, for instance, there was in Solomon, and that he was a weak and incapable man, we must notice that he removed even the works of art which were in the temple; he took away the brazen oxen and he destroyed the artistic “bases” upon which the laver rested. He desired that the new altar should be made exactly like the one he had seen at Damascus, and to this end he sent a model of it to Jerusalem. This shows that his object was not so much to have a beautiful work of art as it was to have an altar made on a pattern borrowed from Damascus; his interest in it was not artistic but political. “When he perceived the zeal of the Assyrian rulers for the propagation of their national cultus, he commanded his priests to change the arrangements of the temple so as to conform to this desire” (Duncker). His ordinance in this respect was simply a contemptible captatio benevolentiœ for the Assyrian king. The removal of the twelve oxen of the brazen sea, which he then placed upon a mere foundation of stone, was, if we consider the significance of this piece of the temple furniture as it is stated above (1 Kings 7, Hist. § 6), a degradation of the Israelitish priesthood and a contradiction of the destiny of Israel as the chosen priest-people, as well as an assault upon the character of the Israelitish religion. The same is true in regard to the removal of the Misgeroth from the bases, for upon them were the characteristic emblems of the inner sanctuary, cherubim and palms (see above, 1 Kings 7, Hist. § 7). Movers’ opinion (Relig. der Phön.), that Ahaz removed the oxen, &c., because the symbolism of animals was especially abominable to the Assyrians, who were addicted to star-worship, seems to us to be entirely erroneous. The changes, finally, which Ahaz made in the gallery and standing-place of the king are not more definitely specified. Possibly there were emblems upon them also which were peculiar to the Jehovah-worship. “We hear nothing of any changes in the interior of the sanctuary. Those which were made affected only the objects which stood in the fore-court, so that they were prominently before the eye and might offend the Assyrians. The additional statement in Chronicles (2Ch_28:24), that Ahaz closed the doors of the temple, is often brought in question, and asserted to be an exaggeration (Thenius, Bertheau, and others). As it does not stand alone, however, but is supported by the assertion in 2Ch_29:3, that Hezekiah opened the doors again, which again is assumed in 2Ki_16:7; 2Ki_16:17, we have as little reason to reject this as any of the other additions to these books which are supplied by the Chronicles. The “upper chambers” with their altars, which, according to 2Ki_23:12, Ahaz caused to be made, are not mentioned in this place, although they were in existence. We must not forget that Ahaz did not do all at once, but went on from step to step in his apostasy. As it is certain that he did not begin with the sacrifice of his son in the valley of Hinnom, so it is certain also that he did not commence by closing the doors of the temple; on the contrary, these were the extremes to which he allowed himself to be driven under the influence of the heathen party. Fortunately, his reign was not a long one.
5. The conduct of the high-priest, Urijah, under the commands of the king, stands in glaring contrast with that of the high-priest Azariah and the eighty other priests when Uzziah attempted to usurp priestly functions (2Ch_26:17 sq.). Instead of resisting the commands of the weak and capricious Ahaz, he keeps silence, bows in acquiescence under his will, “and does all that king Ahaz commanded him” (2Ki_16:16). Neither did the other priests stir; they allowed everything to go on without opposition. “We cannot believe that this was the same Urijah whom Isaiah designates as a faithful witness of Jehovah (Isa_8:2; Isa_8:16). [Cf. Exeget. note on 2Ki_16:10] We should have to suppose that he fell so low after a long interval. Nothing similar had ever been done before by any priest in Judah. It seems that he, like his companions in office, was only anxious for his revenues. At any rate, his conduct is a sign of the character and standing of the priests of that time. They were dumb dogs who could not bark; they all followed their own ways, every one his own gain (Isa_56:10 sq.). Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah stand over against them, grand and noble, speaking without fear, rebuking the sins both of high and low, and announcing the threatening judgments of God.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
2Ki_16:1-9. King Ahaz. a) The way in which he walked, 2Ki_16:1-4. (An apostate from the God of Israel even to the point of offering sacrifices to Moloch.) b) The distress into which he came, 2Ki_16:5-6 (2Ch_28:5. The land was devastated; Elath, the fountain of the national prosperity, was cut off; the throne was in danger. He trembled like the trees of the forest in the wind. Isa_7:2) c) The help which he sought, 2Ki_16:7-9. (Instead of seeking help from the living God, to whom the prophet pointed him, he seeks it from the king of Assyria. Psa_124:8; Jer_17:5; Jer_17:7. Instead of seeking it with prayer and supplication, he seeks it with silver and gold. Psa_1:1-5.)
2Ki_16:1-3. Würt. Summ.: Not all pious parents are blessed with pious children. It is, indeed, a great trial for parents when children do not turn out well, but when the parents have not failed in their discipline, then they can leave the rest to God, and have a good conscience that they have done their best.
2Ki_16:3-4 Starke: Men are so blind that they think they serve God most truly by those very actions by which they sin most grossly against him.—The Moloch-sacrifice, or child-sacrifice, is a proof of the extravagance of error into which men can fall when they have not the knowledge of the living God and His revealed word, or when they have rejected the same (Rom_1:21-22). This abomination, which still continues among heathen nations, is the strongest and most direct call to all, who know the living God and who possess his word, to take part in the work of missions, and to help to bring it about that light may come to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, and that they may come to a knowledge of salvation (Luk_1:79; Luk_2:32).—God commands us to give our dearest and best to Him, but not to Moloch. There are no longer any sacrifices to Moloch in Christendom, but it happens often enough, even now, that parents sacrifice their children to the idols of the world, which consume them so that they are lost eternally.—Pfaff. Bib.: He who trains up his children to evil, sacrifices them to the Moloch of hell, that is, to the devil.—Starke: As a corrupt atmosphere can taint a healthy body far more easily than a pure atmosphere can purify a tainted one, so also bad companions can lead good people astray more easily than good men can convert bad ones. Evil is more easily propagated than good.—For two hundred years the people in Judah had kept themselves free from idolatry and heathen abominations, and yet Ahaz succeeded in a short time in filling the land with these (Isa_1:5-6). The higher a people stands, the lower it may fall. Judah sank even lower than Israel. There have been, and there are even yet, Christian nations which have sunk lower than the heathen. The fall of one who has been most highly blessed is often the heaviest and deepest. Therefore, Be sober! &c, 1Pe_5:8.
2Ki_16:4. Happy is he who, under every green tree and on every height, has learned, not to serve the world and its gods, but to praise the one holy, living, and gracious God.—Wherever God has a Church, the devil builds a temple by the side of it.
2Ki_16:5-6. The War of Rezin and Pekah against Judah (see Histor. and Ethical, § 3). The object, the result, and the significance of it (Isa_8:10; Isa_7:6-7).—The unnatural alliance of the two enemies against Judah. Compare the alliance of Herod and Pilate. Psa_33:10 applies.—The allies could not succeed in their enterprise, not on account of a vigorous resistance, but because it was otherwise ordained in the counsels of God. He who says to the turbulent sea: “Hitherto shalt thou come and no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed” (Job_38:11)—He fixes limits and restraints for all human powers, however great and mighty, however victorious and proud they may be.
2Ki_16:7. Cramer: He who will not be God’s servant must be the servant of men, and must lose all his independence, his honor, and his dignity.—“I am thy servant and thy son, come and help me!”—Address this promise and this prayer in all your need and distress, not, as Ahaz did, to an earthly, human king, however great and mighty he may be, but to the King of all kings, in whom alone is our help (Hos_13:9), for “It is better,” &c. (Psa_118:9; Psa_146:3; Psa_146:5).—The friendship and help which is bought with silver and gold has no duration and no value. So it is said of Ahaz here: “He helped him not” (2Ch_28:21). The great and mighty, when they listen to the prayer of the humble and the weak for aid, generally have no other object in view than their own advantage, and the increase of their own power.
2Ki_16:10-18. The Sacrilege upon the House of God. a) The king’s self-willed assault upon the established institutions; b) the high-priest’s concession. Berleb. Bib.: See in this a clear picture of the lack of Christian spirit in the two highest ranks. The State desires to see everything arranged according to its whims: the Church yields for the sake of the temporal advantage.—It is the fashion of depraved rulers that they think they can command in religious as well as in secular matters, and can control everything according to their own good pleasure.—Those who tremble themselves and cringe before the great are almost always imperious and haughty to those who are below them.—Ahaz’ sinful and insane arrangement of sacrificing and offering incense to the Lord upon an idol-altar, is one which may still be observed where the heart is addicted to sin and to love of the world, and is alienated from the living and true God, while yet homage is paid to him.—“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1Co_3:16 sq.; 2Ki_6:19 sq.) Whosoever destroyeth the temple of God, him will God destroy. In this temple also there may be only one altar; he who sets up another by the side of it destroys it.
2Ki_16:16. Neue Würt. Summ.: There would not be so much harm done by wicked rulers if they did not find so many people who allow themselves to be used as instruments of their evil designs, and who approve of their undertakings in order to win their favor. Osiander: Ecclesiastics have always been found who esteemed the favor of great men more than the honor of Almighty God. Would that such men were no longer to be found in the Christendom of to-day!—Würt. Summ.: We have in this high-priest a specimen of those hypocrites and belly-servants who say: “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing;” who veer about with the wind and seek to be pleasant to all men; “dumb dogs who cannot bark;” who wish to hurt no one’s feelings, but teach and say just what any one wants to hear. But God’s word alone, and not the favor of men, nor the goods and honors of the world, ought to be the rule and norm, from which we ought not to turn aside out of favor to any man, although it may involve risk of life or limb to speak the truth. For if any talk and teach according to the desires of their hearers, for the sake of their own comfort, their honor will come to shame and their end is condemnation (Php_3:19; Act_4:19).
2Ki_16:18. “For fear of the king of Assyria.” It is shameful to introduce changes in religious matters for political reasons.
Footnotes:
[1]2Ki_16:3.—[Abominable rites or usages.
[2]2Ki_16:5.—[Cf. Isa_7:1, where we find עָלֶיהָ after לְהִלָּחֵם, Was not able to make war against it,” i. e. successfully.
[3]2Ki_16:6.—[The chetib is to be retained. Cf. Exeg. Ewald, Thenius, Böttcher (Lehrb. § 976), and others, who follow the keri, also change לַאֲרָם above, to לֶאֱדוֹם. The entire conception of the incident is then changed. Resin does not conquer Elath for himself, but restores it to Edom, in order to strengthen the hereditary enemy of Judah and gain his alliance. Keil very justly objects that אדום is written defectively אדם only once in the O. T. (Ezek. 15:14). His explanation of the form אֲרוֹמִים is also simpler than the above change. He considers it a Syriac (Aramaic) form (u for a), and points to other similar forms in the same chapter, הַקּוֹמִים for הַקָּמִים (2Ki_16:7); אֵילוֹת for אֵילַת (2Ki_16:6); דוּמֶּשֶׂק for דַמֶּשֶׂק (2Ki_16:10). Böttcher gives the euphonic and other grounds for these exceptional forms in §§ 1132, 9, 1; 351, a.
[4]2Ki_16:10.—[I. e. with full details how it was made.
[5]2Ki_16:15.—[“I will consider further what shall be done with that.” Thenius defends the rendering given in the E. V. He denies that יִהְיֶה־לִּי can have the sense which we give it, but he finds it necessary to change לבקר into לְבַקֵּשׁ.
[6]2Ki_16:18.—[The keri is supported by the Vulg.: Musach. However, we find other instances of י—instead of וּ in the first syllable of a word before ש or ם. See וַיִּישֶׂם for וַיּוּשֶׂם Gen_24:33; יִיסָךְ for יוּסָךְ, Exo_30:32. See also Eze_12:8. (Böttcher, § 460, b).—The massorah requires that החיצונה shall be accented milel, because it will not recognize a feminine in this adjective which agrees with מָבוֹא. Cf. הגלילה, 2Ki_15:29, Gramm. note.—W. G. S.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain Ch. 16. Reign of Ahaz, king of Judah. He…
Ch. 16. Reign of Ahaz, king of Judah. He reigns wickedly. Israel and Syria make war upon Jerusalem. Ahaz obtains assistance from Tiglath-pileser (2Ch_28:1-21)
1. In the seventeenth year of Pekah] It is clear that some error has crept into the chronological statements of this period. In the previous chapter (2Ki_15:30) we read that Pekah was murdered by Hoshea in the twentieth year of Jotham. From the present verse it seems that Ahaz began to reign, and so Jotham died, before Pekah’s death. In reference to Ahaz too the figures are not without some difficulty. He begins his reign at 20 years old and reigns 16 years. But his son Hezekiah (2Ki_18:2) was twenty-five years old at his accession, and so must have been born when Ahaz was not more than eleven.
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With reference, however, to the death of Pekah in the reign of Jotham, we see from Isa_7:1, that Pekah was still alive and conducting operations against Judah in the reign of Ahaz. This agrees entirely with verse 5 of the present chapter. Therefore in any chronological calculation the words of 2Ki_15:30 ought to be neglected. It is not easy to explain how the error arose, but it is manifest that there is an error.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Vers. 1-20. REIGN OF AHAZ OVER JUDAH. WAR OF…
Vers. 1-20. REIGN OF AHAZ OVER JUDAH. WAR OF AHAZ WITH PEKAH AND REZIN. EXPEDITION OF TIGLATH-PILESER AGAINST THEM. RELIGIOUS CHANGES MADE BY AHAZ. HIS DEATH.
Vers. 1-4. General character of the reign of Ahaz. Ahaz was the most wicked king that had as yet reigned in Judah. The author, therefore, prefaces his account of the reign by a brief summary of some of the king"s chief iniquities.
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(1) He departed from the way of David (ver. 2);
(2) he made his son pass through the fire to Moloch (ver. 3); and
(3) he took an active part in the worship at the high places and in the groves, at which most previous kings had winked, but which they had not countenanced.
In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son of Jotham King of Judah began to reign. (For the chronological difficulties connected with this statement, see the comment on 2Ki_15:27)
Vers. 1-4. The godliness of parents does not secure the perseverance of their children in well doing, but increases the children"s guilt if they take to evil courses.
Ahaz, the worst of all the kings of Judah, is the son of one of whom it is said that "he did right in the sight of the Lord". (2Ki_15:34) Manasseh, perhaps the next worst, is the child of the one king for whom the sacred writers have no word of blame. Wicked Abimelech is the son of the pious Gideon. (Jud_1:9:1) We naturally expect the contrary of this to happen. We suppose that education does everything, and we look to see the children of godly parents grow up godly, and are apt, without any inquiry into the circumstances, to suppose that every ill-conducted young man must have been badly brought up. The dictum of the wise man, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it", (Pro_22:6) may be quoted in justification of such views, and is often so quoted, as if it were a rule without any exception. But no proverb is of this character. All are general rules, which admit of exceptions; and the exceptional character of this particular proverb is continually allowed in the Scriptures (Pro_17:21, 25 19:13; Eze_18:10, etc.) The points to be urged practically are
I THAT PARENTS SHOULD MAKE EVERY POSSIBLE EFFORT, JUST AS IF THEIR CHILDREN"S CHARACTERS DEPENDED ENTIRELY UPON THEM. "Instruction," education, training, though sometimes of no avail, have, in the majority of cases, very great weight. Even when they seem to have failed, it often happens that their results remain deep buried in the soul, and in the end show themselves, and are of sufficient force to snatch many a brand from the burning. The parent must not despair because he does not see much fruit of his labors at once. He has to do his best, to "liberate his own soul," to see that, if his child be lost, it is not owing to his neglect. He has to "hope against hope," to persevere with his efforts, to be unwearied in his prayers, to do the utmost that lies in his power to lead his children into the right path. A parent ought never to despair. While there is life there is hope. The way of repentance is open to all; and, historically, there have been repentances from such a depth of depravity that no case should seem quite hopeless. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound". (Rom_5:20) The mercy of God is unsearchable, unfathomable. There is no saying what sinner may not turn from his sin, put away the iniquity of his doings, and become a true servant of the Most High.
II THAT PARENTS SHOULD NOT BE OVER-SORROWFUL, OR DEPRESSED BEYOND MEASURE, BECAUSE THEIR EFFORTS TO KEEP THEIR CHILDREN IN THE RIGHT PATH HAVE IN SOME CASES FAILED. If, indeed, they have had many children, and their efforts have failed with all, they may reasonably suspect some defect in themselves or in their system. But if the results are varied, if a portion of their children have been all that they could wish, while others despite all that they could do have preferred to "walk in the way of sinners," and even to "sit in the seat of the scornful," then they have no need to sorrow overmuch, or to regard themselves as culpable. The influences which go to form each man"s character are countless, and with hundreds of them a parent has nothing to do. Again, there is "the personal equation," There do seem to be some who, "as soon as they are born, go astray and speak lies." It is among the mysteries of man"s existence here on earth that natural dispositions should so greatly vary. No parent of many children but knows, by certain experience, that this is so. One child gives no trouble, and scarcely requires any guidance. Another is willful, perverse, headstrong, almost devoid of good impulses, and full of inclination to evil. Parents are answerable for neglect, for unwisdom, above all for bad example; but they need not fear, if they earnestly endeavor to do their duty by their children, that in God"s just judgment the iniquity of their children will be imputed to them. "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son"; (Eze_18:20) "The soul that sinneth, it shall die". (Eze_18:4)
III THAT CHILDREN WHO HAVE BEEN RELIGIOUSLY BROUGHT UP, IF THEY TURN TO EVIL COURSES, INCUR A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. "It had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them". (2Pe_2:21) If children, notwithstanding a godly training, take to an evil life, what must we suppose that they would have done had they been born, as so many are, amidst adverse influences, and from infancy exposed to contact with indecency, drunkenness, blasphemy? Alas! every blessing abused becomes a curse; and to have a pattern of goodness before our eyes, to have virtue instilled into us, and then to reject it to choose the evil and refuse the good is to provoke God"s heavy displeasure, and bring down his severe judgments upon us. What excuse can such persons offer for their misconduct? They know that by sin they displease God, grieve their parents, injure themselves, ruin their worldly prospects, imperil their salvation; yet for a little present pleasure they shut their eyes to all future consequences, and rush to their destruction. Their conduct is folly, madness, idiocy; but not the sort of madness which shuts out responsibility. They are answerable for it, and will have to answer at God"s judgment-seat. Oh! that they would pause ere it is too late, recognize the folly of their evil courses, and "put away their iniquity!" God is still willing to pardon all whom he suffers to live. Let them "arise, and go to their Father," and say unto him, "We have sinned;" and he will go out to meet them, and receive them, and "there will be joy in the presence of the angels of God over each such sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance". (Luk_15:7, Luk_15:10)
HOMILIES BY C.H IRWIN. Vers. 1-20. Steps in a downward path: the reign of Ahaz.
In the opening chapters of Isaiah we have an account of the condition of the kingdom of Judah at the time that Ahaz succeeded to the throne. The prosperity which the country had enjoyed under Uzziah had been continued and increased under the righteous reign of his son Jotham. And now the grandson, Ahaz, a young man of twenty, finds the country abounding in wealth, full of silver and gold. Isaiah says there was no end of their treasure; their land also was full of horses, neither was there any end of their chariots. Their commerce, too, was in a thriving condition. "The ships of Tarshish, sailing from Elath, could boast their gilded prows and stems, and purple sails, and brought home rich cargoes from the distant East" (Geikie, "Hours with the Bible: Rehoboam to Hezekiah," p. 292). But before Ahaz died, all this was changed. Enemy after enemy invaded his country. The land became desolate. The king was reduced to great extremities to obtain money. Instead of the sunshine of prosperity, there was on every side the dark shadow of desolation and decay. We have the explanation of it all in the third and fourth verses. Ahaz began badly, and every fresh movement in his life was a step from bad to worse. His history is a further illustration of how one sin leads to another. It was a continuously downward path.
I THE FIRST STEP IN THE DOWNWARD CAREER OF AHAZ WAS HIS IDOLATRY. (Vers. 3, 4.) He forsook the worship of the true and living God, and worshipped the gods of the heathen. Even that step he would seem to have taken gradually. At first he began with the high places, which bad never been taken away. Then graven images and other heathen customs were used in the worship of God; and finally the idols of the false gods themselves were set up. The policy of compromise had now reached its fitting conclusion. When the right makes compromise with the wrong, the wrong is sure to gain the victory. So it was in this case. The people had got accustomed to the high places. They saw no harm in them. And now they see no harm in the idols. Isaiah describes the universal corruption when he says, "Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made." And what a worship it was to substitute for the worship of the only true and living and almighty God! A useless worship, as Isaiah indicates, to worship the work of their own hands. It brought them no help in their hour of distress. But it was worse than useless. It was a foul and degrading worship. It is best described in the words of the third verse, "the abominations of the heathen." We can have but a faint conception of the loathsome practices associated with the worship of the pagan deities. The passage before us speaks of one act of worship by no means the worst, though sufficiently cruel and revolting. This was the worship of Moloch Kings In the valley of Hinnom, afterwards called Gehenna or Tophet, an image of Moloch was erected. Dr. Thomson, in "The Land and the Book," refers to the passage in Jeremiah (19) where the valley of Hinnom is spoken of, and thinks, because it is said there that the image of Baal was there, that Moloch and Baal were one and the same. At any rate, part of the worship of Moloch consisted in making children pass through the fire before his image, or in actually burning them in it. The cries of the children were drowned by the sound of musical instruments and the shouts of the frenzied worshippers. It is to this that Milton refers when he says
First, Moloch, horrid king, besmear"d with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents" tears; Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud Their children"s cries unheard, that passed through fire To his grim idol.
Such was the worship which Ahaz, in his infatuation and desire to be like the nations round about him, substituted for the spiritual, elevating worship of the great Father of us all. After all, was he much worse than many in modern times who profess to be so enlightened that they regard the Christian religion as a superstition? And what do they give us in place of it? A worship of dead matter, of blind force; of a mere supposition of their own minds. If Christianity be a superstition, what are some of the fancies of our philosophers? Before we give up our Christian religion, let us know, what we are to have in place of it. Let us compare the results of Christianity with the results of any rival system, and how immeasurably superior to them all it stands, in the purity of its teaching, in the power it exercises to elevate and ennoble human life, and in the blessings it has brought to the nations! How it alone lights up the darkness of the grave, and breathes into the bereaved heart the inspiration and comfort of the heavenly hope! This was the first downward step in the career of Ahaz forsaking the worship of God. So many a man has begun the downward path. The empty seat in the house of God indicates often the beginning of a useless and wasted life. Or if he comes to the house of God, he worships God in form only. His thoughts are far away. Self and the world, money and pleasure, how often are these the idols men worship with the thoughts of their hearts and with all the efforts of their lives!
II THE NEXT STEP IN THE DOWNWARD PATH OF AHAZ WAS THE ALLIANCE HE ENTERED INTO. (Vers. 5-7.) The Syrians made war on him along with the King of Israel. Ahaz, in his difficulty, sought the help of the King of Assyria. How humiliating is his entreaty! "I am thy servant and thy son," was the message he sent: "come up and save me out of the hand of the King of Syria, and out of the hand of the King of Israel, which rise up against me." There was nothing wrong in itself in seeking the help of friendly kings. On this occasion, however, God absolutely warned Ahaz against seeking their help. But, to begin with, there was something wanting. Ahaz did not seek God"s guidance in the matter. He did not seek God"s help. He who had rejected the service of the living God, makes himself the cringing slave of the King of Assyria, and humbles himself to a heathen for help. What a mistake when a nation trusts to its resources or its strong alliances, and forgets to look to that Divine power from whom all blessings flow! There may be nothing wrong in all our efforts to improve our worldly position, but there may be something wanting. There may be nothing wrong in your life, but there may be something wanting. You may be anxious to be useful in the world; but are you setting about it in the light way? One thing is needful, one thing is essential to all true happiness, to all true usefulness. That is the presence and help of God. Is the Lord Jesus dwelling in your heart? Whatever else may disappoint you, he will never fail.
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me:
III THE NEXT DOWNWARD STEP WHICH AHAZ TOOK WAS HIS PLUNDERING- THE HOUSE OF GOD. (Vers. 8, 9, 17, 18.) Ahaz paid dear for his alliance with the King of Assyria. He had already disobeyed and dishonored God by his idolatry. He had already dishonored God by refusing to heed the warnings which Isaiah gave him. But now he commits a still more flagrant act of defiance and desecration. In order to reward the Assyrian king for his help, and to retain his friendship, he actually takes the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord, and sends it for a present to the King of Assyria. The world"s friendships are often dearly bought. We pay for them, in peace of mind, in peace of conscience, in loss of money, in loss of time, a greater price than they are worth. Sooner or later the crisis must come in every man"s life when he must choose between the friendship of God and the friendship of the world. What choice are you making? What choice would you make if you were put to the test now? Perhaps you are being put to the test in your daily life. Perhaps you are being tempted, for the sake of worldly friendship, for the sake of your business, for the sake of popularity, to sacrifice some principle, to trample on some command of God, to neglect some plain duty which conscience and the Word of God alike point out. Business! The great business of your life, of every man"s life, is to fear God and keep his commandments. "Man"s chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever." Oh what a fearful thing it is to take from God that which rightfully belongs to him! It is a crime against law, against morality, to take from our fellow-creatures, without their permission, that which belongs to them. But how much more guilty is he who would take from God that which is his! We condemn Ahaz for his impiety and sacrilege in taking from the temple those things which had been consecrated to God. But let us look into our own hearts and lives. Are we giving God that which is his due? Are we keeping back nothing from him? Has he no greater claim on our daily thoughts than a hurried prayer at morning or evening, or none at all? Has he no greater claim on our money than the few shillings, or, it may be, few pounds we give to him every year? Let us measure our service of God much less by what others do and give, and much more by our own responsibilities, by our own overflowing cup of mercies, by the relation of our own soul to God.
IV THE NEXT DOWNWARD STEP OF AHAZ WAS TO SET UP A HEATHEN ALTAR IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD. (Vers. 10-17.) Ahaz had gone to Damascus to meet the King of Assyria. While there he saw an altar used in the worship of the heathen gods. Its workmanship may perhaps have pleased him. He sent to Urijah the priest a description, perhaps a drawing of it, and Urijah, influenced more by the fear of the king than by the fear of God, caused a similar altar to be erected in the temple at Jerusalem. When Ahaz returned, he substituted this altar for the altar of the Lord, although God himself had given the pattern of that altar to Moses and to David. But all the idols and sacrifices of Ahaz did not benefit him much. He thought the gods of the heathen would help him; but, says the writer in 2 Chronicles, "They were the ruin of him and of Israel" So in everyday experience many a man finds, when he forsakes the gospel of Christ, and turns his back upon the Law of God, to follow worldly gain or pleasure, or society, or dissipation, that these things are the ruin of him. "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. C.H.I.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS Vers. 1-20. A people"s king and priest; or, kinghood and priesthood.
the seventeenth year of Pekah," etc. Throughout all lands, almost throughout all times, two functionaries have been at the head of the peoples, too often treading them down by oppression, and fattening on them by their greed. One of these functionaries was not, among the Jews, of Divine ordinations; for the Almighty is represented as saying, "They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not." Let us notice each functionary as presented in this chapter the king and the priest the one named Ahaz, the other Urijah.
I THE KINGHOOD. It is said, "In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son of Jotham King of Judah began to reign. Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord his God, like David his father." Here we learn that Ahaz, who was the son of Jotham, began to reign over Judah in his twentieth year, and that his reign continued for sixteen years. Elsewhere we are told that Hezekiah, his son, succeeded him at the age of twenty-five. (see 2Ki_18:17) According to this he became a father when he was only eleven years of age. This is not, necessarily, a mistake of the historian, since among the Jews in Tiberias there are mothers of eleven years of age and fathers of thirteen. And in Abyssinia boys of ten years and twelve years enter into the marriage relationship (see Keil). The account given of Ahaz in this chapter furnishes us with an illustration of several enormous evils.
1. The dehumanizing force of false religion. Ahaz was an idolater. He walked in the way of the kings of Israel," we are told. Instead of worshipping the one true and living God, he bowed down before the idols of the heathen. This false religion of his made him so inhuman that he "made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel; and he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree." Moloch was this idol-god of fire, and the rabbins tell us "that it was made of brass, and placed on a brazen throne, and that the head was that of a calf, with a crown upon it. The throne and image were made hollow, and a furious fife was kindled within it. The flames penetrated into the body and limbs of the idol, and, when the arms were red hot, the victim was thrown into them, and was almost immediately burnt to death." The revolting cruelty of Moloch-worship is thus described by Milton
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighborhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His temple right against the temple of God On that opprobrious hill; and made his grove The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna call"d, the type of hell.
Thus the idolatrous religion of this Ahaz dehumanized him, by destroying within him all parental affection and transforming him into a fiend. This is true, more or less, of all false religions. Idolatry is not the only religion that makes men cruel. A corrupt Judaism and a corrupt Christianity generate in their votaries the same dehumanizing results. False religion kindled in Paul the savage ferocity of a wild beast. "He breathed out slaughter." Ecclesiastical history abounds with illustrations.
2. The national curse of a corrupt kinghood. Then "Rezin King of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah King of Israel came up to Jerusalem to war: and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him. At that time Rezin King of Syria recovered Elath to Syria, and drave the Jews from Elath: and the Syrians came to Elath, and dwelt there unto this day." These two kings, Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel, had their eyes upon this Ahaz, saw, perhaps, how his wickedness had injured his people, had taken away their heart and exhausted their resources, until they felt that this was the time for striking at Jerusalem, taking possession of the metropolis, and subjugating the country. And they made the attempt. Although they could not "overcome" Ahaz, and failed to strike him down personally, yet they "recovered Elath to Syria or, "Edom", and drave the Jews from Elath." So it has ever been; corrupt kings expose their country to danger, they invite the invader and make way for him.
Proudly up the regal heights they sit in pampered power, While fires smoulder underground that strengthen every hour.
3. The mischievous issues of a temporary expediency. Ahaz, in order to extricate himself from the difficulties and trials which Rezin and Pekah had brought on his country, applies to the King of Assyria. "So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser King of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the King of Syria, and out of the hand of the King of Israel, which rise up against me. And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king"s house, and sent it for a present to the King of Assyria. And the King of Assyria hearkened unto him: for the King of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin." What else could he do? To whom could he have looked for help in his emergency? The right thing to have done would have been the utter renunciation of his idolatry, submission to the Divine will, and invocation of the Almighty"s help; but he followed what appeared to him the expedient, not the right, and hence two evils ensued.
(1) He degraded himself. He sold himself as a slave to the king whose help he invoked. "I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the King of Syria." What more dishonorable thing can a man do than to renounce his independence and become the slave of another? He loses his self-respect, which is the very essence of true manhood.
(2) He impoverished his people. "And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king"s house, and sent it for a present to the King of Assyria." This silver and gold belonged to the nation. It was public property. What right had he to dispose of a fraction? No right whatever. Alas! it is not uncommon for kings to rob their people, consume what they have never produced, live on the property of others, and thus impoverish their subjects! What happened with Ahaz must happen with all, in the long run, who pursue the expedient rather than the right. The right alone is truly expedient.
II HIS PRIESTHOOD. Urijah is the priest. There seems to have been more priests than one of this name, and little is known of this Urijah more than what is recorded in the present chapter. He was the priest, who at this time presided in the temple of Jerusalem. He seems to have been influential in the state, and, although a professed monotheist, was in far too close connection with Ahaz the idolatrous king. Two things are worthy of note concerning him, which too frequently characterize wicked priests in all times.
1. An obsequious obedience to the royal will. The Assyrian king, having taken Damascus, is visited by Ahaz in the city, the object of his visit being, no doubt, to congratulate him on his triumphs. While at Damascus, Ahaz is struck with the beauty of an altar. He seems to have been so charmed with it that he commands Urijah, the priest, to make one exactly like it. "And King Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest the fashion of the altar, and the pattern of it, according to all the workmanship thereof." Knowing the king"s wishes, with shameful obsequiousness he sets to the work. "And Urijah the priest built an altar according to all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus: so Urijah the priest made it against King Ahaz came from Damascus. And when the king was come from Damascus, the king saw the altar: and the king approached to the altar, and offered thereon." This obsequious priest not only did this, but, without one word of protest or reproof, he witnessed the sacrifices of the king at the altar, and allowed the position of the brazen altar in the temple to be altered; further, he actually engaged, according to the king"s command, in the services. "And King Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, Upon the great altar burn the morning burnt offering, and the evening meat offering, and the king"s burnt sacrifice, and his meat offering, with the burnt offerings of all the people of the land, and their meat offering, and their drink offerings; and sprinkle upon it all the blood of the burnt offering, and all the blood of the sacrifice; and the brazen altar shall be for me to inquire by. Thus did Urijah the priest, according to all that King Ahaz commanded." Thus wicked priests have too often acted.
2. An obsequious silence to the royal profanation. See what the king did, no doubt in the presence of the priest. "And King Ahaz cut off the borders of the bases, and removed the laver from off them; and took down the sea from off the brazen oxen that were under it, and put it upon a pavement of stones. And the covert for the sabbath that they had built in the house, and the king"s entry without, turned he from the house of the Lord for the King of Assyria." This fawning, sacerdotal traitor not only "did according to all King Ahaz commanded," but he stood by silently and witnessed without a word of protest this spoliation of the holy temple. Had he acted according to his profession as a minister of the most high God, he would have risen up in all the sternness of honesty and manhood against the first intimation of Ahaz concerning the construction of an unauthorized altar. He would have said, "We have a divinely sanctioned altar already; we do not need another." And when the command came to him to make such an altar, he would have felt it an insult to his conscience, an outrage on his loyalty to Heaven, and have broken into thunders of reproof. When he saw the king"s hand employed in disturbing and altering the furniture of the temple, he would have resisted him, as Azariah resisted Uzziah when he wished to offer incense. But instead of this, he, like some of his class in almost every age, seems to have been transported with the honor of seeing the royal presence, hearing the royal voice, and doing the royal bidding. A true priest should, by inflexible loyalty to Heaven, mould kings to be lords paramount in all mundane affairs, and in none other; and should lead them to be very kings of men, governing, not by craft and force, fraud and violence, but by royal thoughts, actions, and aims. D.T.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR
Vers. 1-4. The wickedness of Ahaz.
The history has passed rapidly over the later kings of Israel. That kingdom was lost beyond recovery. "The victim having once got his stroke-of-grace, the catastrophe can be considered as almost come. There is small interest now in watching his long low moans; notable only are his sharper agonies, what convulsive struggles he may make to cast the torture off from him; and then, finally, the last departure of life itself" (Carlyle). In Judah the crisis too is approaching, but it is not yet reached. Prophets and good kings are yet to do their utmost for the nation. But a reign like that of Ahaz is a sensible step in the advance to the catastrophe.
I THE CHARACTER OF THE KING. Though the son of the vigorous Jotham, and already twenty or twenty-five years old when he ascended the throne, Ahaz proved one of the weakest and most incapable of rulers. One sees in him the reflection of the luxurious and effeminate age described by Isa_3:12-26. Feeble, petulant, arbitrary, in his ways of acting; without strength of mind or strength of will; busying interests of his kingdom were at stake; craven in war; above all, full of religiosity and himself in dilettante fashion with novelties, with altars and sun-dials, while the greatest superstition without the faintest spark of true religion is that King Ahaz". (2Ch_28:22) Possibly his father Jotham was too much occupied with state and public affairs to give the necessary attention to his softs education a fatal mistake not unfrequently committed by parents.
II HIS ABOUNDING IDOLATRIES. Ahaz displays great zeal of his own kind in religion, but it is zeal of the most perverse and suicidal description. We observe:
1. His imitation of the kings of Israel. He took for his pattern, not his ancestor David, the type of the true theocratic king, but the wicked kings of the northern kingdom, whose idolatries were bringing their own realm to ruin. He made, like them, molten images to Baal, and sacrificed to them. (2Ch_28:2) Wicked men seem absolutely impervious to warning. The northern kingdom was an object-lesson, to those who had eyes to see, of the folly and fatal effects of this very course on which Ahaz was now entering. Yet he would not be deterred.
2. His reversion to Canaanitish practices. Not content with importing the licentious Baal-worship patronized in Israel, Ahaz revived the worst abominations of the old Canaanitish religions. He even went so far as to sacrifice his own son to Moloch in the valley of Hinnom a deed indicating a degree of fanaticism, a blunting of the moral sense, and a depth of superstition which could hardly have been believed possible in a King of Judah. It was, moreover, a daring defiance of the direct letter of God"s. (Deu_12:31) Well might such a deed bring down wrath on Judah!
3. His extravagance in worship. It is further narrated that Ahaz sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree. Worship in this reign seemed to have run riot; yet there was no true religion in it. All this depraved religiosity was but a manifestation of self-will, of subjective caprice; it had its origin in superstition and an impure craving for excitement, not in the fear of God. Yet Ahaz, in his dilettante way of looking at things, may have thought that he was introducing improvements into Jewish religion. He may have flattered himself that he was robbing it of its narrowness, and giving it the philosophic breadth suitable to persons of taste and culture. He might argue that there was something good in all religions; that all were but diverse expressions, equally acceptable to God, of the fundamental instinct of worship; and that none, therefore, ought to be despised. We hear such arguments nowadays, and they may very well have been used then. Ahaz was but going in for a species of Jewish Broad-Churchism. But the Bible brands this so-called breadth of view as treason against the God who has definitely revealed his will to men, and taught them how they are, and how they are not, to worship him. The true lessons to be learned from this conduct of Ahaz is that religiosity delight in sensuous and impure religious services is far different from religion; that altars may be multiplied, yet multiplied only to sin; (Hos_8:11) that the religious instinct, itself the noblest part of man, is capable of the most perverted developments; that only worship according to his own commandment is acceptable to God.
III NOT ALONE IN SINNING. The lengths to which Ahaz could go, apparently without awakening any public opposition, show that the heart of the nation also had widely departed from God. This is borne out by the descriptions in Isaiah. (cf. Isa_2:6-8 Isa_3:16-26 Isa_5:8-25) The king"s innovations were acceptable to a people wearied of the severer worship of Jehovah. They were glad to have the services adapted to their corrupt and dissolute tastes. "The carnal mind is enmity against God". (Rom_8:7) J.O.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain In the seventeenth year of Pekah.
2Ki_16:1-20
In the seventeenth year of Pekah.
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A peoples king and priest, or kinghood and priesthood
I. The kinghood.
1. The de-humanising force of false religion. Ahaz was an idolator.
2. The national curse of a corrupt king-hood.
3. The mischievous issues of a temporary expediency. Ahaz, in order to extricate himself from the difficulties and trials which Rezin and Pekah had brought on his country, applies to the King of Assyria.
(1) He degraded himself. He sold himself as a slave to the king whose help he revoked. He loses his self-respect, which is the very essence of true manhood. Another mischief of his temporary expediency was--
(2) He impoverished his people. This silver and gold belonged to the nation. It was public property. What right had he to dispose of a fraction?
II. The priesthood. Urijah is the priest. There seems to have been more than one of this name, and nothing is known of him more than what is recorded in this chapter. He was a priest, who at this time presided in the temple of Jerusalem. He seems to have been influential in the State, and, although a professed monotheist, was in somewhat close connection with Ahaz the idolatrous king. Two things are worthy of note concerning him.
1. An obsequious obedence to the royal will. The Assyrian king having taken Damascus, is followed by Ahaz to the city; in order, no doubt, to congratulate him on his triumphs. While at Damascus, Ahaz is struck with the beauty of an altar. He seems to have been so charmed with it that he commands Urijah, his priest, to make one exactly like it.
2. An obsequious silence to the royal profanation. See what the king did, no doubt, in the presence of the priest. This fawning, sacerdotal sycophant not only did according to all King Ahaz commanded, but he stood by silently and witnessed without a word of protest this spoliation of the holy temple. (David Thomas, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain
THE REIGN OF AHAZ
B.C. 735-715
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2Ki_16:1-20
"Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
He also against the House was bold:
A leper once he lost, and gained a king-
Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he draw
Gods altar to disparage arid displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn
His odious offerings, and adore the gods
Whom he had vanquished."
- "Paradise Lost, " 1:467-476
ACCORDING to our authorities, Ahaz ("Possessor") began his reign of sixteen years at the age of twenty. Of the exactitude of these references we cannot be certain, because they also state {2Ki_18:2} that Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and this reduces us to the absurdity of supposing that Hezekiah was born when his father was only eleven years old. We might infer from Isa_3:4 that Ahaz was not so old as twenty when he succeeded Jotham; for there-in a terrible prophecy which can only refer to the beginning of this reign-we read, "And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them"; or, as it should be perhaps rendered, "And with childishness, or willfulness, shall they rule over them."
Whatever may have been the kings age, surely never king succeeded to a more distracted kingdom, or reigned over a more terrified people! If he could have had any choice in the matter, he might well have declined the fearful burden. Describing the state of things, the great prophet Isaiah, who now began his career, exclaims, -
"For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah stay and staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water; the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the diviner, and the elder; the captain of fifty, and the honorable man, and the counselor, and the cunning charmer, and the skilful enchanter. And the people shall be oppressed every one by another, and every one by his neighbor: the child shall behave himself proudly against the elder, and the base against the honorable. Then a man shall take hold of his brother in the house of his father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our judge, and let this ruin be under thy hand in that day shall he lift his voice, saying, I will not be a builder-up; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: ye shall not make me a ruler of the people. For Jerusalem is ruined and Judah is fallen. The show of their countenance is against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, and hide it not. As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them." {Isa_3:1-12}
This is a frightful picture of famine-the dearth of intellect, the dearth of statesmen, of all genius, of all insight. It describes the prevalence of oppression and of ghastly destitution, accompanied by such utter despair that no one cared to exert himself for the arrest of the ruin which seemed imminent over that which was already no better than itself a ruin.
The Book of Isaiah is arranged in a most confused and unchronological manner, and it is probable that the first five chapters should be placed after the sixth, which describes the prophets call in the year that King Uzziah died. They paint a picture of moral collapse. His first chapter is called by Ewald "the great arraignment," and by its references describes the awful period of alarm during the war of Syria and Ephraim against Judah. It might seem as if the combined host was even then in the country, or had only just retired from it; for we read, -
"Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a wilderness, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city."
But even in the midst of this afflictive dispensation there were no signs of repentance. The children of Israel were rebels who despised the Holy One of Israel, -"Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that deal corruptly!" {Isa_1:7-9} They had all the externals of religion: they offered vain sacrifices, and kept a multitude of idle feasts, and offered many formal prayers; but all this was but a cumbrance to Him who desired clean hands and a pure heart as conditions of forgiveness (Isa_1:10-20). What hope could there be for a city of murderers, who loved bribes and perverted judgment (Isa_1:21-24)? The land was full of pride, full of idols, full of the luxury of the rich amid the starvation of the Isa_2:1-22. Women partook of the general corruption. They walked mincingly with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, thinking of nothing but their anklets, and crescents, and bracelets, and mufflers, ear-drops, head-tires, perfumes, mirrors, armlets, and nose jewels: therefore they should have sackcloth for stomachers, ropes for girdles, and burning instead of beauty, and only a remnant should escape. {Isa_3:16-26; Isa_4:1} Judah was like a vineyard.-rich in advantages, blessed with fondest care; but when God looked for grapes, it only brought forth wild grapes-a semblance, but only a poisoned semblance, of the true vintage: therefore it should be left neglected and rainless. Woe to the greedy land-grabbing, and drunkenness, and revelry of the rich! Woe to their mockery of God and their devotion to vanity! Woe to their insane pride and wanton injustice! Could they escape vengeance? No! Jehovah had looked for judgment (mishpat), but behold oppression (mishpach); for righteousness (tse dakah), but behold a cry (tse akah) {Isa_5:1} They might escape-they would escape-the Syrian and the Ephraimite; but behind these lay a more terrible and a more portentous foe, even the Assyrian, the scourge of Gods wrath (Isa_1:25-30). "It was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim." Is it strange that in such a condition of things the heart of Ahaz and of his people "was moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind?" Such was the terrible crisis at which Isaiah began his ministry. He was the son of Amoz, who has been (much too precariously) identified with a brother of Amaziah. It is probable that he was a man of distinguished, if not of princely birth, and he exercised a more powerful influence over the politics of his country than any other prophet-not even excepting Jeremiah.
ISAIAH AND AHAZ
.-2 Kings 16
"Expediency is mans wisdom; doing right is Gods."
- GEORGE MEREDITH
ISAIAH was one of those men whom God provides for the need of kingdoms. He was not only a prophet, but a statesman, a reformer, a poet, a man of invincible faith and unequalled: insight. If Ahaz had accepted his counsels and followed his moral guidance, the whole history of Judah might have been different.
But the position of things was indeed disastrous. Judah was attacked from every side. On the southeast the Edomites renewed their devastating raids, and swept off multitudes of captives, who were sold as slaves in the Western slave-markets. On the southwest the Philistines once more rose in revolt, and acquired permanent repossession of many parts of the Shephelah mastering Beth-Shemesh Ajalon, Gederoth, Shocho, Timnath, Gimzo, and all the adjacent districts. But this was nothing compared with the humiliation and destruction inflicted by Rezin and Pekah. They shut up Ahaz in Jerusalem; and though they could not storm its almost impregnable defenses, which had recently been fortified by Uzziah and Jotham, they were undisputed masters of the rest of the land, so that Judah was "brought low and made naked." {2Ch_28:19} Rezin, indeed, weary of a tedious siege, swept southwards to Elath, on the gulf of Akabah, seized it, and peopled it with an Edomite garrison, thereby destroying the commerce in which Solomon and Jehoshaphat had taken pride, and which Uzziah had recently re-established. Having thus left an effectual annoyance to Judah in his rear, he gave up the design of dethroning Ahaz and substituting in his place "the son of Tabeal, " who would have been a tool in the hands of the confederate kings. He seized, however, a multitude of captives, and with them and with much booty he returned to Damascus. "The son of Tabeal"-a name which occurs nowhere else-has been found very puzzling. I believe it to be simply an instance of the Rabbinic process of transposition, called Themourah. Some identify it with Itibialu of an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser. Others suppose that he was a Syrian, and that Tabeal stands for Tabrimmon. But by the application of Themourah (called the Albam) Tabeal simply gives us "Remaliah," and is either a scornful variation of the name of Pekahs father, or has arisen from the watchword of a secret conspiracy. Since in the text of Jeremiah {Jeremiah 41} (by Atbash, another form of the secret transposition of letters of which the generic name was Gematria) we read Sheshach for Babel, the name Tabeal may have been dealt with in a similar method. Pekah, according to the Chronicler, inflicted far deadlier injuries than Rezin. In one day he slew one hundred and twenty thousand "sons of valor," because they had forsaken Jehovah, God of their fathers. His general Zichri, a mighty Ephraimite, slew Maaseiah, the kings son; {2Ch_28:7} and Azrikam, the chancellor; and Elkanah, the second to the king. The army carried away two hundred thousand captives and much spoil to Samaria. But on their arrival, a prophet named Oded reproved the Israelites for having massacred the Judaeans "in a rage that reacheth to heaven." Aided by various princes, he succeeded in inducing the people to refuse to harbor the captives, and clothed, fed, and sent them back unharmed to Jericho, mounting the feeble on horses and asses. The story bears on the face of it the signs of enormous exaggeration.
In the crisis of their miseries, but just before the siege, Ahaz had gone outside the city walls "at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the causeway of the fullers field," probably to look after the water supply, which had always been a difficulty for Jerusalem, and on which depended her capacity to withstand a siege. Here he was met by the prophet Isaiah, who was leading by the hand the little son to whom he had given the name of "Shear-jashub" ("A renmant shall return"), as a witness to the truth of the prophecy which he had heard on the occasion of his call, -
"And if there should yet be a tenth in it, this shall be again consumed; yet as the terebinth and the oak, though cut down, have their stock remaining, even so a sacred seed shall be the stock thereof." {Isa_6:13}
The object of the prophet was to cheer up the fainting heart of the king, and to say to him first, -
"Take heed, and be quiet."
This mandate probably refers to rumors-which Isaiah must have heard-of the kings intention to follow the counsels of the party which urged him to seek foreign assistance. One of these parties advised him to throw himself into the arms of Egypt, and rely on her protection; the other gave the more perilous counsel of invoking the aid of Assyria. Isaiahs mandate to the king and to the nation was to take neither step, but to trust in the Lord, and to repent of individual and national misdoing. He summed up his message in the rule, -
"In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength."
The advice was emphasized by a promise of the most decisive and encouraging kind. When all looked so helpless, the prophet was bidden to say, -
"Fear not, neither be faint-hearted, for these two stumps of smoking torches, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of Remaliahs son. They have taken evil counsel against thee. But thus saith the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is only Rezin, and the head of Samaria is a mere Remaliahs son."
And then, to confirm the lesson of confidence in God, the brief assurance, -
"If ye will not confide, Surely ye shall not abide."
Convinced of the certainty of this immediate deliverance, Isaiah bade the king to ask for a sign from Jehovah, either in the height above, or in the depth beneath.
But the timid and hypocritical king was not so to be influenced. He had on his side "the scornful men, who ruled Judah"; the mocking priests, who sneered and jeered at Isaiahs teaching as repetitive and commonplace, and only fit for children; and the princes and nobles, who formed the Court party, headed by Shebna the scribe. He probably looked on Isaiah as a mere unpractical faddist, an excited fanatic-all very well as a prophet, but not a man who ought to thrust himself into the plans of politicians. Ahaz had his own plans, and he had not the smallest intention of altering them in consequence of anything which Isaiah might say. He was far too timid and unfaithful to rely on anything so vague as Divine assurance. He was convinced that his only chance lay in the horses of Egypt or the fierce infantry of Assyria. So he said with sham piety, merely intended to put the prophet off, "I will not ask, neither will I tempt Jehovah."
That moment marks what may be called the birth-throe of Messianic prophecy in its most specific character. For then the prophet, after reproving the king for wearying Jehovah as well as His servants, adds, in words of far wider arid deeper significance than their immediate bearing, that Jehovah Himself should give a sign; for the maiden should conceive and bear a Son, and call His name Immanuel ("God with us"). The child should grow up in a time of scarcity; for owing to the devastation of the land, he would only be able to be nurtured on curdled milk and honey. But before he had reached years of discretion-before he had arrived at the power of moral choice-the land whose two kings Ahaz abhorred should be a desert. Yet let not Ahaz exult too much in the immediate deliverance! Days of unexampled misery were at hand. Jehovah should hiss for the fly from the farthest canals of Egypt, and for the bee of Assyria, and they should settle in swarms in the valleys and pastures. Ahaz-he had not alluded to the design, but Isaiah knew it well-was about to hire a razor from beyond the Euphrates, but that razor should sweep away the hair and beard of Judah. Agriculture should languish, and the people should only be able to live in privation on whey and honey; and the vineyards should be full of briers and thorns, and should be mere places for hunting. {Isa_7:1-25}
This event, therefore, as Caspari says, stands at the turning-point of Old Testament History. It marks the beginning of that second period of the History of the Chosen People in which their hopes were granted as a counterpoise to their anguish and their humiliation. "It stood, therefore, at the point where a prospect offered itself to the eye of the prophet which reached out over the whole development of the people of God."
To all such prophecies Ahaz was utterly deaf: they did not for a moment induce him to swerve from his purpose. But to call still further attention to his promise as the Syrian Ephraimitish host pressed forward, Isaiah took a great piece of vellum, and inscribed on it, in the ordinary characters, -
"SPEED-PLUNDER-HASTE-SPOIL."
He put it up in some conspicuous place, before his own house or in the Temple, and took the priest Urijah and Zechariah, the son of Jeberechiah, into his confidence as faithful witnesses. He told them the explanation of his sign, and they would satisfy the curiosity of the people on the subject. It meant that in nine months time his wife should bear a son, and that he and his wife, the prophetess, would call the boys name "Speed-plunder-haste-spoil," as a sign that before the child was able to say "Father" or "Mother" Rezin and Pekah should be extinguished. For the Assyrian should speed to the plunder and haste to the spoil, and the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria should be carried away by the King of Assyria. Since Judah despised "the soft flowing waters of Shi-loah," and preferred Rezin and Pekah, they should be deluged by the Euphrates of Assyria, and Assyrias outspread wings should overshadow thy land, O Immanuel (Isa_8:1-8). How vain, then, of the people to try and meet the confederacy of Syria and Ephraim by a new confederacy of Judah with Assyria! This, after all, is Immanuels land. God is with us. We have but to fear God, we have but to be faithful to duty, and Jehovah shall be our sanctuary, though He be a stumbling-block to many in Israel, and a snare to many in Jerusalem. This is Gods teaching and Gods testimony, and Isaiah and his children are signs of it. For does not Isaiah mean "Salvation of Jehovah"; and Shearjashub, "A remnant shall return"; and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, "Swift-spoil-speedy-prey"; and Immanuel, "God is with us"? What need, then, to seek wizards and necromancers? Seek God; confide, abide! Trouble and darkness there should be; but all was not utterly hopeless. Northern Israel had been bedimmed and afflicted; but soon they should be exalted, and see light, and their yoke be broken as in the day of Midian, and the trampling boot and blood-stained mantle of the war-nor shall be burned in the fire: for a Child is born, a Son is given unto us of Davids line, who shall be a Mighty Deliverer, a Prince of Peace and Israel shall perish.
THE APOSTASIES OF AHAZ
2Ki_16:1-18
"For when we in our wickedness grow hard,
Oh the misery ont! the wise gods seal our eyes;
In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us
Adore our errors; laugh at us while we strut
To our confusion."
AHAZ was indifferent to these prophecies because his heart was otherwhere. It is clear from our authorities that this king had excited an unusually deep antipathy in the hearts of those later writers who judged religion not only from the earlier standpoint, but from the stern and inexorable requirements of the Deuteronomic and the Priestly Codes. The historian, adopting an unusual phrase, says that "he did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel." He not only continued the high places, as the best of his predecessors had done, but he increased their popularity and importance by personally offering sacrifices and burning incense "on the hills and under every green tree." It is probable, too, that he introduced into Judah horses and chariots dedicated to the sun. "He made molten images for the Baalim," says the Chronicler, "and burnt incense in the valley of the son of Himmon."
This last was his crowning atrocity: he actually sanctioned the revolting worship of the abomination of the children of Ammon, which Solomon had tolerated on the mount of offense." He made his son to pass through the fire." The Chronicler expresses it still more dreadfully by saying that "he burnt his children in the fire."
In the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, or of the Beni-Hinnom, of which the name is perpetuated in Gehenna, the place of torture for lost souls, there stood a frightful image of the king-Moloch, Melek, Malcham. It represented the sun-god, worshipped, not only as Baal under the emblems of prolific nature, but, like the Egyptian Typhon, as the emblem of the suns scorching and blighting force. It was perhaps a human figure with the head of an ox. The arms of the brazen image sloped downwards over a cistern, which was filled with fuel; and when a human sacrifice was to be offered to him, the child was probably first killed, and then placed on these brazen arms as a gift to the idol. It rolled down into the flaming tank, and was consumed amid the strains of music. Recourse was only had to the most frightful form of human sacrifice-the burning of grown-up victims-in extremities of disaster, as when Mesha of Moab offered up his eldest son to Chemosh. on the wall of Kirhareseth in the sight of his people and of the three invading armies. But the sacrifice of children was public, and perhaps annual. Hence Milton, following the learned researches of Selden in his Syntagma "De Dis Syriis," writes:-
"First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents tears;
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,
Their childrens cries unheard that passd through fire
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite
Worshippd in Rabba and her watery plain,
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neighborhood, the wisest heart
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His temple right against the Temple of God
On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove
The pleasant Valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence
And black Gehenna calld, the type of hell."
But it may be doubted whether Ahaz, in spite of his frightful position, or, in later days, the less excusable Manasseh, really destroyed the lives of their young sons. The ancients had a notion that they could easily cheat their devil-deities. If a white ox of Clitumnus became unfitted for a victim to Jupiter of the Capitol by having on its body a few black spots, it was quite sufficient to make it pass with the Di faciles by chalking the black spots over it. If human victims had to be thrown into the Tiber to Hercules, Numa taught the people that little wickerwork images (scirpea) would suit the purpose just as well. Figures of dough were sometimes offered instead of human beings on the altar of Artemis of Tauris. Thus it became the custom, it is believed, merely to throw or to pass children through or over the flames, and conventionally to regard them as having been sacrificed, though they might escape the ordeal with little or no hurt. This was called februatio, or "lustration by fire." We may hope that this device was adopted by the two Judaean kings, and, if so, they did not add to their horrible apostasy the crime of infanticide. If, however, Ahaz was even to the smallest extent implicated in such foul idolatries, it is not surprising that he was in no mood to listen to Isaiah. What is profoundly surprising, and is indeed a circumstance for which we cannot account, is that no word of fierce indignation was addressed to him on this account by Urijah, the high priest, whom Isaiah seems to describe as faithful, or by Zechariah, the son of Jeberechiah, or by Micah, or by Isaiah, who feared man so little and God so much.
The Assyrian party at the Court of Ahaz prevailed over the Egyptian. Until the accession of the Ethiopian Sabaco in 725, Egypt was indeed in so weak, harassed, and divided a condition under feeble native Pharaohs, that her help was obviously unavailable. The King of Judah, seeing no extrication from his calamities except in the way of worldly expediency, appealed to Tiglah-Pileser. In this he followed the precedent of his ancestor Asa, who had diverted the attack of Baasha by invoking the assistance of Syria. Ahaz sent to the Assyrian potentate the humble message, "I am thy servant and thy son: come up and save me from the Kings of Syria and Israel." If he had not faith to accept Isaiahs promises, what else could he do, when Syria, Israel, the Philistines, Edom, and Moab were all arrayed against him? The ambassadors probably made their way, not without peril, along the east of Jordan, or else by sea from Joppa, and so inland. Whether they took with them the enormous bribe without which the appeal of the helpless king might have been in vain, or whether this was sent subsequently under Assyrian escort we do not know. It was euphemistically described as "a present" or "a blessing," but must be regarded either as a tribute or a bribe.
Tiglath-Pileser II saw his opportunity, and at once invaded Damascus. In B.C. 733 he failed, but the next year he entirely subjugated the kingdom, and put an end to the dynasty. Rezin was probably put to death with the horrible barbarites which were normal among the brutal Ninevites; and as the Assyrians had no conception of colonization or the wise government of dependencies, the Syrian population was deported en masse to Elam and an unknown Kir. For a time Damascus was made "a ruinous heap," and the cities of Aroer were the desolated lairs of pasturing flocks. Israel, as we have seen, was next overwhelmed by the same irremediable catastrophe, none of her people being left except such as might be compared to the mere gleanings of a vintage, and the few berries on the topmost boughs of the olive tree. {Isa_16:1-11}
Tiglath-Pileser meant to make Ahaz feel his yoke. He summoned him to do homage at Damascus, and there Ahaz once more displayed his cosmopolitan: estheticism at the expense of every pure tradition of the religion of his fathers.
His visit to Damascus was no doubt compulsory. His worldly policy, which looked so expedient, and which-apart from the defiance which it involved to the voice of God by His prophets-seemed to be so pardonable, had for the time succeeded. Isaiahs promises had been fulfilled to the letter. There was nothing more to fear either from Rezin or from Remaliahs son. Their kingdoms were a desolation. In his own annals Tiglath-Pileser does not exaggerate his achievements. He wrote as follows:-
"Rezins warriors I captured, and with the sword I destroyed.
Of his charioteers and [his horsemen] the arms I broke:
Their bow-bearing warriors, [their footmen] armed with spear and shield,
With my hand I captured them, and those that fought in their battle-line.
He to save his life fled away alone;
Like a deer [he ran], and entered into the great gate of his city."
"His generals, whom I had taken alive, on crosses hung;
His country I subdued;
Damascus, his city, I subdued, and like a caged bird I shut him in.
I cut down the unnumbered trees of his forest; I left not one.
Hadara, the palace of the father of Rezin of Syria, [I burnt].
The city of Samaria I besieged, I captured; eight hundred of its people and children I took;
Their oxen and their sheep I carried away.
I took five hundred and ninety-one cities;
Over sixteen districts of Syria like a flood I swept."
But the more complete destruction of Israel was due to Shalmaneser IV, who says, -
"The city of Samaria I besieged, I took,
I carried away twenty-seven thousand two hundred of its inhabitants;
I seized fifty of their chariots.
I gave up to plunder the rest of their possessions.
I appointed officers over them;
I laid on them the tribute of the former king.
In their place I settled the men of conquered countries."
The immediate service to Judah looked immense. The Assyrian might safely claim, and Ahaz might truthfully confess, that the intervention of Tiglath-Pileser had rescued him from the apparent imminence of destruction. But the Assyrian kings served no one for nothing. The price which had to be paid for Tiglath-Pilesers intervention was vassalage and tribute. Ahaz, or, as the Assyrians call him, Jehoahaz, had styled himself Tiglath-Pilesers "servant and his son," and the Assyrian chose to have substantial proof of this parental suzerainty. The great king therefore summoned the poor subject-potentate to Damascus, where he was holding his victorious court.
So far Ahaz had no reason to complain of his "dreadful patron"; and if he had returned when he paid his homage, no immediate harm would have happened. But during his visit he saw "the altar" (Heb.) at the conquered city. Was it the altar of the defeated Syrian god Rimmon? or did the Assyrian persuade his willing vassal to sacrifice at the portable altar of his god Assur? We may, perhaps, infer the former from 2Ch_28:23, where Ahaz says: "Because the gods of the kings of Syria help them, therefore will I sacrifice to them, that they may help me." There is room to suspect some error here, because Rezin had fallen, and Damascus was in ruins, and Rimmon had conspicuously failed to help or to avenge his votaries. Ahaz admired the altar, to whatever god it had been erected; and unmindful, or perhaps unconscious, that the altar of the Temple of Jerusalem was declared in the Pentateuch to have been divinely ordained-a fact to which the historian does not himself refer-he sent to the head priest Urijah a pattern of the altar which had struck his fancy at Damascus. The subservient priest, without a murmur or a remonstrance, undertook to have a similar altar ready for Ahaz in the Temple by the time of his return-a crime, if crime it were, which the Chronicler conceals. "Never any prince was so foully idolatrous," says Bishop Hall, "as that he wanted a priest to second him. An Urijah is fit to humour an Ahaz. Greatness could never command anything which some servile wits were not ready both to applaud and justify." Certainly we should have hoped for more fidelity to ancient tradition from a man who earned the approving word of Isaiah; but it is only fair and just to admit that Urijah, in the universal ignorance which prevailed about the codes which were afterwards collected and published as the total legislation of the wilderness, may have viewed his obedience to the kings commands with very different eyes from those by which it was regarded in the sixth and fifth centuries before Christ. He may have been frankly unaware that he was guilty of an act which would afterwards be denounced as an apostatising enormity.
When Ahaz returned, he was so much pleased with his new plaything that he at once acted as priest at his own new altar. Without the least opposition from the priests-who had so sternly resisted Uzziah-he offered burnt-offerings, and meat-offerings, and drink-offerings, and sprinkled the blood of peace-offerings on his altar. Not content with this, he did not hesitate to order the removal of the huge brazen altar from the position, in front of the Temple porch, which it had held since the days of Solomon. He did this in order that his own favorite altar might be in the line of vision from the court, and not be overshadowed by the old one, which he shifted from the place of honor to the north side. He proceeded to call his own altar "the great altar," and ordered that the morning burnt-offering, and the evening minchah, and all the principal sacrifices should henceforth be offered upon it. He did not wholly supersede the old brazen altar, which, he said, "shall be for me to inquire by," or, as the Hebrew may perhaps mean, "it should await"-i.e., "I will hereafter consider what to do with it."
Ahaz is charged with the additional crime of removing the ornamental festoons of bronze pomegranates from the layers, and the brazen oxen from under the molten sea, which henceforth lay dishonored, without its proper and splendid supports, on the pavement of the court. {1Ki_7:23-39} He also took away the balustrade of the royal "ascent" from the palace to the Temple, and made a new entrance of a less gorgeous character than that which, in the days of Solomon, the Queen of Sheba had admired.
No doubt these proceedings helped to heighten the unpopularity of Ahaz. But what could he do? He could, indeed, if he had had sufficient faith, have "trusted in Jehovah," as Isaiah bade him do. But he was under the terrific pressure of hostile circumstances, and, being a weak and timid man, felt himself unable to resist the influence of the haughty politicians and worldly priests by whom he was surrounded-men who openly made Isaiah their scoff. When he invited the interposition of Tiglath-Pileser, all the other consequences of humiliation would naturally follow. He probably disliked as much as any one to see the great molten laver taken off the backs of the oxen which showed the skill of the ancient Hiram, and did not admire the despoiled aspect of the shrine of his capital. But if the King of Assyria or his emissaries had (as the historian implies) cast greedy eyes on these splendid objects of antiquity, the poor vassal could not refuse them. Better, he may have thought, that these material ornaments should go to Nineveh than that he should be forced to exact yet heavier burdens from an impoverished people. His expedient is mentioned among his crimes, yet no one blamed the pious Hezekiah when, under similar circumstances, he acted in precisely the same manner. {2Ki_18:15-16}
The Chronicler gives a darker aspect to his misdoings by saying that he cut to pieces the vessels of the house of God, and made him altars in every corner of Jerusalem, and bamoth to burn incense unto other gods in every several city of Judah. He says, further, that he closed the great gates of the Temple; put an end to the kindling of the lamps, the burning of incense, and the daily offerings; and left the whole Temple to fall into rum and neglect. We know no more of him. He lived through an epoch marked by the final crisis in the existence of the kingdom of Israel. Dark omens of every kind were around him, and he seems to have been too frivolous to see them. If he plumed himself on the removal of the two relentless invaders Rezin and Pekah, he must have lived to feel that the terror of Assyria had come appreciably nearer. Tiglath-Pileser had only helped Judah in furtherance of his own designs, and his exactions came like a chronic distress after the acuter crisis. Nor was there any improvement when he died in 727. He was succeeded by Shalmaneser IV, and Shalmaneser IV by Sargon in 722, the year of the fall of Samaria. We know no more of Ahaz. The historian says that he was buried with his fathers, and the Chronicler adds, as in the case of Uzziah and other kings, that he was not permitted to rest in the sepulchers of the kings. He had sown the wind; his son Hezekiah had to reap the whirlwind.
PROBABLE DATES
B.C.
745 Accession of Tiglath-Pileser.
746 Death of Uzziah. Accession of Jotham. First vision of Isaiah. {Isaiah 6}
735 Accession of Ahaz. Syro-Ephraimitish war.
734-732 Siege and capture of Damascus, and ravage of Northern Israel by Tiglath-Pileser. Visit of Ahaz to Damascus.
727 Accession of Shalmaneser IV
722 Accession of Sargon. Capture of Samaria, and captivity of the Ten Tribes.
720 Defeat of Sabaco by Sargon at Raphia.
715(?) Accession of Hezekiah.
711 Sargon captures Ashdod.
707 Sargon defeats Merodach-Baladan, and captures Babylon.
705 Murder of Sargon, Accession of Sennacherib.
701 Sennacherib besieges Ekron. Defeats Egypt at Altaqu. Invades Judah, and spares Hezekiah. Invades Egypt, and sends the Rabshakeh to Jerusalem. Disaster of Assyrians at Pelusinm, and disappearance from before Jerusalem.
697 Death of Hezekiah. Accession of Manasseh.
681 Death of Sennacherib.
608 Battle of Megiddo. Death of Josiah.
607 Fall of Nineveh and Assyria. Triumph of Babylon.
605 Battle of Carchemish. Defeat of Pharaoh Necho by Nebuchadrezzar.
509 First deportation of Jews to Babylon by Nebuchadrezzar.
588 Destruction of Jerusalem. Second deportation.
538 Cyrus captures Babylon.
536 Decree of Cyrus. Return of Zerubbabel and the first Jewish exiles.
458 Return of Ezra.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain 2Ki_16:2. Twenty years old was Ahab when, &c.—The Sept.…
THE REIGN OF AHAZ IN JUDAH
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
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2Ki_16:2. Twenty years old was Ahab when, &c.—The Sept. MS. of the Vatican, and other MSS., give “twenty-five” in the corresponding account of 2Ch_28:1. Adopting this alteration, he died at the age of forty-one, having reigned sixteen years. He could only have reached the age of fifteen when his son Hesekiah was born, for the son was twenty five at his father’s death (chap. 2Ki_18:2). Yet a youth of fifteen is not unduly young for such a relationship in the East.
2Ki_16:3. Made his son to pass through the fire—This is the first record of human sacrifice among the Israelites. The force of evidence is against the lighter interpretation of the king’s act, viz., that this was a mere fire-baptism, an act of lustration and purification—passing his son through the heat or flames. The phrase “go through the fire” is shown in Num_31:23 to mean a testing in the fire, as metal, &c. (2Ki_16:20), so that what could be consumed by the fire was consumed; and 2Ch_28:3 records that Ahab “burnt his children in the fire.” It was the immolation of his children to Moloch, in the Valley of Hinnom. Comp. chap. 2Ki_17:31; Jer_19:5. Josephus delares it to have been a holocaust: καὶ ἴδιον ὡλοκαύτωσε παὶδα. There remains, however, the probability that the children were “slain” before being committed to the fires of Moloch (cf. Eze_16:20, and Psa_106:37).
2Ki_16:7. Ahab sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser—Israel had asked Assyrian help (chap. 2Ki_16:9); now Judah throws herself upon the protection of a heathen power. Already Jehovah had become discarded in the nation’s worship; how could any trust in his guardianship continue? Yet he sinned against most emphatic expostulations from Isaiah, and assurances sealed by supernatural signs (Isa_7:14; Isa_8:4).
2Ki_16:9. King of Assyria took Damascus, and carried the people captive to Kir—The aid Ahaz sought was purchased with the treasures of the palace and the Temple (2Ki_16:8). Tiglath vanquished the confederate kings—Rezin of Syria, and Pekah of Israel—and seized Damascus. This occurred B.C. 732. A year later he held a court of his vassals there, and twenty-three abject kings there did him obeisance, among them being mentioned Pekah, king of Israel, and Ahaz, king of Judah. “Kir” is thought to have been Karine, now Karend, in Media.
2Ki_16:10. Ahaz saw an altar that was at Damascus—Charmed with its elegance and novelty, he transmitted a sketch of it to Urijah the priest at Jerusalem, and ordered that one be made forthwith to supplant the altar of Jehovah in the Temp’e. Yet that old altar was designed under express direction and authority of the Lord God! It is called “the great altar” (2Ki_16:15), doubtless more because of its gorgeous splendour. The priest of Jehovah raised no remonstrance, so perfidious had become the sacerdotal spirit (2Ki_16:16).
2Ki_16:15. The brazen altar shall be for me to enquire by—Jehovah’s sacrifices were transferred to a heathenish altar. There were as yet no idolatrous offerings sacrificed in the Temple; no discontinuance of outward worship to the God of Israel. But the Divine altar was removed from its position in the Sanctuary, and left neglected; its destination was not yet clear to Ahaz, he would consider about it. For the words, “for me to enquire by,” is the simple significance of the phrase יִהְיָה לִּי לְבַקֵּר
2Ki_16:17. Ahaz out off the borders of the bases, &c.—Spoiling the adornments to gratify his capricious fancies in, probably, decorating his own palace. Thus men debase what is sacred to suit their own purposes, but God watches the sacrilege, and He will requite the dishonour done to Him.
2Ki_16:18. The covert for the Sabbath—A portico used by the priests. Dr. Abraham Geiger renders these words “molten images of the Shame” (i.e., Baal), following 2Ch_28:2; but מֵיסָךְ was, says Keil, “unquestionably a covered place, a platform or hall, in the forecourt of the temple, set apart for the king when he visited the temple with his retinue on the Sabbath or feast days.” So went forward the abasement of Jadah; the Church yielding every trust for the sake of retaining State favour and glory. Jehovah deposed from supremacy in His own Temple, that a corrupt Court might be gratified, and the smile of a depraved king be retained. “If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy” (1Co_3:17).—W. H. J.
HOMILETICS OF 2Ki_16:1-20
AN IDOLATROUS RULER A NATIONAL SCOURGE
AHAZ inherited the wealth and magnificence that had accumulated under the masterly government of his father, Jotham, and his grandfather, Azariah, but he had also inherited the pernicious effects of luxury and indulgence that ever follow in the train of prosperity. From his earliest years he seems to have fallen into the hands of a court party who championed idolatry, and he never acquired strength of character sufficient to shake off the baleful influence of their teaching and example. He was fundamentally weak. He cringed before the great Assyrian power (2Ki_16:7), but, like all other cowards, he was imperious and exacting towards those who were subject to him (2Ki_16:10-16). Under his feeble and idolatrous administration, Judah sank lower and lower, till it was brought to the verge of ruin. There was nothing to mitigate the successive series of national disasters: his influence upon the nation constantly operated as a blighting, withering curse. Observe—
I. That idolatry becomes a dangerous power in a nation when patronised and encouraged by royalty (2Ki_16:2-4).
1. The religious leanings of a youthful prince are anxiously seanned. “Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord” (2Ki_16:2). The heathen party and the worshippers of Jehovah were on the outlook as to what stand the young king would make. Would he set his face against the idolatrous innovations which had already gone too far: and would he show more zeal and fidelity than his immediate predecessors had done towards the ancient faith? Neither party were kept long in suspense. The old court party triumphed; they had intrigued and flattered to some purpose. The idolatrous tendencies of Ahaz were soon detected; and the emphatic condemnation of the sacred writer was richly merited—he “did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord his God.” It is a sincere grief to the good to witness a reign begun in defiance of the great religious principles which had given life and prestige to the nation. The fate of such a reign it is not difficult to predict.
2. Idolatrous practices rapidly degenerate to the level of the most atrocious examples (2Ki_16:3-4). Ahaz excelled his idolatrous predecessors not only in imbecility, but also in cruelty. He descended to the most inhuman practices of the heathen: he “made his children to pass through the fire”—an abomination against which the Israelites were solemnly warned (comp. Lev_18:21; Lev_20:24; Deu_18:10). The Jewish rabbis have mildly interpreted this passing through the fire as merely passing between two burning pyres as a purificatory rite; but the truth is, the victims were first slain and then burned (vide 2Ch_28:3, compared with Psa_106:37; Psa_106:8; Jer_7:31; Jer_19:4-5; Eze_16:20-21; Eze_23:37). The brazen image of the idol was made red-hot, and the victim passed within its glowing arms. Other kings of Judah had allowed their people to sacrifice and burn incense in the high places; but Ahaz was the first, so far as we know, to countenance the practice by his own example (2Ki_16:4). Idolatry debauches the moral sense, and prepares its votaries for the worst abominations.
II. That an idolatrous ruler wantonly sacrifices the national prestige and independence (2Ki_16:5-9). I. His weakness exposes the nation to invasion and loss (2Ki_16:5-6). The kings of Syria and Israel, who had been held in check by the strong hand of Azariah and Jotham, despised the feebleness of Ahaz, and harassed his kingdom with war and siege. They aimed at dethroning Ahaz and substituting a nominee of their own, whom they could compel to unite with them in resisting the encroachments of the Assyrian power. Had Ahaz been decided and open in his attachment to Jehovah, they would not have insulted him and his people with a proposal to form a league with Judah, nor would they have dared to use force. But the idolatry of Ahaz was a sufficient plea for them to take liberties: he was now so much like themselves that they might readily conclude he would be willing to unite with them in any enterprise. When the ruler sinks in moral reputation and force, the stringency of a wholesome government is relaxed, and the nation suffers.
2. He tamely subjects his people to the oppression of a foreign power (2Ki_16:7). Judah had injured and oppressed Israel, and could not therefore hope to wean her from her compact with Syria. Israel and Syria had already won two battles against Judah, in which the flower of her troops had been destroyed. Egypt was at this time too weak to afford any assistance, and Ahaz was conscious of serious disaffection spreading among his own people (Isa_7:13). In this emergency he abjectly throws himself at the feet of the Assyrian monarch, and piteously implores his help. It might be that this was Judah’s only alternative from a point of view; but what a fall was this compared with the days of Azariah and Jotham! There was one resource yet open to Ahaz: he might have fallen back on Jehovah. But his apostacy was too complete and his idolatry too flagrant to allow such a thought to take deep root. Blind with infatuation he runs for refuge into the embrace of a power that erelong uses its advantage in oppressing his people.
3. He does not scruple to strip the temple of God of its sacred treasures to purchase an idolatrous alliance “And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria” (2Ki_16:8). Here begins the work of spoliation. It does not appear that he took anything from the shrines of the idols he loved so much—that would be sacrilege in his eyes—and yet without compunction or misgiving he desecrates and robs the temple of Jehovah. In this we have another proof of the debasing influence of his heathenism, and how completely he had severed himself from Jehovah and His worship. The man who turns his back on God is ready for any deed of infamy.
III. That an idolatrous ruler is reckless in the introduction of innovations in worship which are an insult to the only true God (2Ki_16:10-18).
1. He substitutes a heathen altar in the place of the one used in the worship of Jehovah (2Ki_16:10). Carried away with the idolatrous ritual of the Assyrians, Ahaz, captivated with the pattern of a certain altar, has one made after the same model and placed in the inner court of the temple. Human fancies and predelictions are indulged in defiance of Divine authority and commandment. The temple altar was made after a Divine pattern (Exo_25:40; Exo_26:30; Exo_27:1); and the introduction of the Assyrian specimen was an insulting and sinful intrusion.
2. He finds co-workers in those whose duty is to resist all heathenish innovations (2Ki_16:11-16). The supine conduct of Urijah is in marked contrast with the stout, heroic opposition of Azariah and his priests to the proud assumptions of Uzziah (2Ch_26:16-18). Ahaz was too weak a character to have succeeded in winning over Urijah to idolatry, either by threats or cajolery, unless there had been a predisposition on Urijah’s part. He was infected with the theological laxity of the period, and instead of boldly maintaining the absolute supremacy of Jehovah, he was beginning to recognize Him as but one among the many deities to be worshipped. With confused ideas and impaired convictions, Urijah was not prepared to risk the loss of his place and income by opposing the wishes of the capricious monarch. 3. He adopts methods calculated to disparage and pour contempt on the worship of Jehovah (2Ki_16:17-18). We are prepared now for any act of impiety Ahaz may commit. His reverence for God is gone, and with it his reverence for the sanctuary. The sacred vessels are mutilated, the treasures and costly ornaments appropriated to political exigencies, and the royal entrance to the Temple closed. There was no distinction now between Judah and the most idolatrous nations. The safeguard of Judah—the love and worship of Jehovah—was broken down, and the nation soon became a prey to the invader and involved in ruin.
LESSONS:—
1. Idolatry debauches the moral sense of king and poople.
2. A wicked king will always find those who will imitate him in his most extravagant follies and vices.
3. The ruler who systematically ignores the claims of God inevitably drags his people into degradation and suffering.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2Ki_16:1. Under this most wicked prince prophesied Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, and Nahum, but with little good success, so incorrigibly flagitious were now all sorts grown.—Trapp.
2Ki_16:2-4. An idolatrous enthusiast—
1. Eagerly embraces the advantage gained by his accession to power and authority in propagating his favourite theories. “Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and did not that which was right” (2Ki_16:2).
2. Is ever ready to quote and imitate the examples of those whose policy favoured his own views. “He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel” (2Ki_16:3).
3. Soon outstrips the most notorious examples, and sinks to the abominations of the rudest heathenism. “Yea, and made his son to pass through the fire” (2Ki_16:3).
4. Spreads the blight of his pernicious system in every available place. “He sacrificed in the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree” (2Ki_16:4).
2Ki_16:2. The character of this king’s reign, the voluptuousness and religious degeneracy of all classes of the people, are graphically portrayed in the writings of Isaiah. The great increase of worldly wealth and luxury in the reigns of Azariah and Jotham had introduced a host of corruptions which, during the reign and by the influence of Ahaz, bore fruit in the idolatrous practices of every kind which prevailed in all parts of the kingdom (see 2Ch_28:24).—Jamieson.
2Ki_16:3. A man that is once fallen from truth knows not where he shall stay. From the calves of Jeroboam is Ahaz drawn to the gods of the heathen; yea, now bulls and goats are too little for those new deities; his own flesh and blood is but dear enough. Where do we find any religious Israelite thus zealous for God! Neither is our dull and niggardly heart ready to gratify Him with more easy obediences. O God, how gladly should we offer unto thee our souls and bodies, which we may enjoy so much the more when they are thine, since zealous Pagans stick not to lose their own flesh and blood in an idol’s fire!—Bp. Hall.
2Ki_16:3-4. Men are so blind that they think they serve God most truly by those very actions by which they sin most grossly against Him. The Moloch-sacrifice, or child-sacrifice, is a proof of the extravagance of error into which men can fall when they have not the knowledge of the living God and His revealed blood, or when they have rejected the same (Rom_1:21-22). This abomination, which still continues among heathen nations, is the strongest and most direct call to all who know the living God and who possess His Word, to take part in the work of missions, and to help to bring it about that light may come to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death. God commands us to give our dearest and best to Him, but not to Moloch. There are no longer any sacrifices to Moloch in Christendom; but it happens often enough, even now, that parents sacrifice their children to the idols of the world which consume them, so that they are lost eternally.—Lange.
2Ki_16:4. Wherever God has a Church, the devil builds a temple by the side of it.
2Ki_16:5-9. The disastrous results of national apostasy.—
1. The enemy is emboldened to make combined attacks upon the nation (2Ki_16:5).
2. Involves loss of prestige and of territory (2Ki_16:5).
3. The national spirit is demoralised (2Ki_16:7).
4. The nation is put in the power of those who, while professing to help and protect it, drain its resources and ultimately hasten its ruin (2Ki_16:7-9).
2Ki_16:7. The more plausible, really the more insane, desire of Ahaz to secure the favour of an empire which was the common enemy of all nations, that he might get rid of the two that were tormenting him, showed that faith had departed from Judah also. The idols of silver and gold had driven God out of its heart, and made the worship of Him a mockery.—Maurice.
2Ki_16:10-18. Innovations in Divine worship.—
1. Are not to be confounded with an improved fervour and spirituality of service.
2. Are evidences of religious decline.
3. Are an insult to the Divine Being.
4. Should be firmly resisted by the faithful minister of God.
5. May lead to the most reprehensible acts of contempt and sacrilege.
—See in this a clear picture of the lack of Christian spirit in the two highest ranks. The State desires to see everything arranged according to its whims; the Church yields for the sake of the temporal advantage. It is the fashion of depraved rulers that they think they can command in religions as well as in similar matters, and can control everything according to their own good pleasure.—Lange.
—A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.—Burke.
—It is a dangerous presumption to make innovations if but in the circumstances of God’s worship. Those human additions, which would seem to grace the institution of God, deprave it. That infinite Wisdom knows best what pleases itself, and prescribes accordingly. The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men. Idolatry and falsehood are commonly more gaudy and plausible than truth. That heart which can, for the outward homeliness, despise the ordinances of God, is already alienated from true religion, and lies open to the grossest superstition.—Bp. Hall.
2Ki_16:10. A fit helve for such a hatchet. Urijah had been a maintainer of God’s true worship in the temple, and by the prophet Isaiah counted and called a faithful witness (Isa_8:1-2); but now he becometh an apostate, as Damascen turned Mahommedan, after he had written against that execrable impiety; and Ahaz knew him, belike, to be a temporiser.—Trapp.
2Ki_16:13. Uzziah, for so doing, was smitten with leprosy; but Ahaz of a far worse disease, an incurable hardness of heart.—Trapp.
—For the heathens, and Ahaz’s imitation of them, offered the same sorts of offerings to their false gods which the Israelites did to the true, the devil being noted to be God’s ape in his worship.—Pool.
2Ki_16:16. We have in this high priest a specimen of those hypocrites and belly-servants who say, “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing;” who veer about with the wind, and seek to be pleasant to all men; dumb dogs who cannot bark; who wish to hurt no one’s feelings, but teach and say just what any one wants to hear. But God’s word alone, and not the favour of men, nor the goods and honours of the world, ought to be the rule from which we ought not to turn aside, although it may involve risk of life or limb to speak the truth.—Lange.
2Ki_16:19-20. The reign of Ahaz was the most disastrous of any through which Judah had yet passed. The kingdom sank so low, both internally and externally, religiously and politically, that it was on the verge of ruin. Such an incapable ruler had never before ascended the throne. The predominant feature in his character was weakness—weakness of spirit and weakness of intellect. History records nothing about him worthy of respect.—Bahr.
—Of all the kings of Judah hitherto, there is none so dreadful an example, either of sin or judgment, as this son of good Jotham. I abhor to think that such a monster should descend from the loins of David. Where should be the period of this wickedness? He began with the high places; thence he descended to the calves of Dan and Bethel; from thence he falls to a Syrian altar, to the Syrian god; then he falls to an utter exclusion of the true God and blocking up His temple; then to the sacrifice of his own son; and at last, as if hell were broken loose on God’s inheritance, every several city, every high place of Judah, has a new God. No marvel if he be branded by the Spirit of God—This is that “king Ahaz!”—Bp. Hall.
2Ki_16:20. His subjects complain that he died so late; and, as repenting that he ever was, denying him a room in the sepulchres of kings, as if they had said—“The common earth of Jerusalem is too good for him that degenerated from his progenitors, spoiled his kingdom, depraved his people, forsook his God.—Ibid.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain Ahaz and Assyria
Ahaz and Assyria
This chapter describes the reign of Ahaz of Judah, his appeal to Assyria when attacked by Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Syria, and the overthrow of Damascus by the king of Assyria.
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3. He walked, etc.] see 2Ch_28:2 where he is described as making images for Baalim. Made his son.. fire] Children were sometimes actually sacrificed and burnt (see 2Ki_17:31; 2Ki_3:27), and the same thing may be meant here, but some think that the rite here described was a kind of ceremonial purification by fire, the child being merely passed across, or over, the flame in the course of idolatrous worship. Ahaz is the first Judæan king who is said to have adopted this practice; but he was followed in it by Manasseh (2Ki_21:6), and frequent protests against it occur in the writings of successive prophets (Jer_7:31; Jer_19:5; Eze_20:26, etc.).
5. Came up to Jerusalem] Pekah's policy was to oppose the Assyrians, and in conjunction with Rezin he sought to induce Ahaz to join a coalition against them. Failing to persuade him, they took up arms for the purpose of dethroning him, and replacing him by 'the son of Tabeal' (Isa_7:6), who was either a creature of the two confederates, or Pekah himself ('Tabeal' being a cypher for Remaliah, the name of Pekah's father). The successes of the invaders are described in 2Ch_28:5-15, but though they inflicted much loss on Judah, they failed to take Jerusalem.
6. To Syria.. the Syrians] The context requires 'to Edom.. the Edomites' (the latter correction being found in the LXX), since Elath had belonged to Edom and had been taken from it by Azariah (Uzziah, 2Ki_14:22). According to 2Ch_28:17 the Edomites took part in the war.
7. Sent.. Tiglath-pileser] This step was opposed by the prophet Isaiah, who counselled Ahaz to put his trust in the Lord, and asserted that the combination against him was not really formidable and would soon be overthrown (i.e. by Assyria, whom they had provoked). As a sign to reassure the king the prophet predicted the birth of a child whom his mother would call Immanuel ('God with us'); and declared that before he ceased to be an infant, both Israel and Syria would be deprived of their kings. Ahaz, however, disregarded Isaiah's counsel; and the prophet accordingly predicted that the intervention of Assyria which he was inviting would be attended by calamities for Judah as well as for her enemies. See Isaiah 7.
8. Sent it for a present] Tiglath-pileser, in his inscriptions, records that he received tribute from 'Jehoahaz of Judah,' Jehoahaz being probably the full name of Ahaz.
9. Hearkened unto him] The adhesion of Judah would facilitate Assyria's operations against Egypt. Damascus] Damascus was taken and its people deported in 732 b.c., the event having been predicted by Amos (Amo_1:5).
Kir] near the lower Euphrates, the original home of the Syrian people (Amo_9:7).
10. Went to Damascus] perhaps to do homage to the Assyrian king there. Saw an altar] probably of Assyrian pattern, since Ahaz would be more likely to introduce into his own land the religion of the victors than of the vanquished.
11. Urijah] perhaps the Urijah of Isa_8:2.
13. Meat offering] RV 'meal offering': and so in 2Ki_16:15.
14. The brasen altar] i.e. the altar constructed by Solomon (1Ki_8:64). This had hitherto occupied a central position in the court in front of the Temple; but now, in order to make room for the new altar (the 'great altar' of 2Ki_16:15), was placed between the latter and the N. side of the court.
15. To enquire by] i.e. to obtain indications of the divine will, possibly by the inspection of the victims that were offered upon it. But some render, 'shall be left for further consideration.' If this is correct, Ahaz was too busy with his new altar to decide what was to become of the other that was consecrated to the service of the Lord.
17. The borders] RV 'the panels': i.e. of the stands of the ten lavers made for Solomon: see 1Ki_7:27-39.
The sea] i.e. the molten sea (1Ki_7:23-26). Ahaz probably removed these various works of art to conceal them from the cupidity of the Assyrians.
18. The covert] RV 'the covered way': not mentioned in the description of Solomon's Temple. Turned he from] RV 'he turned unto.' What is meant is obscure. For] RV 'because of': probably the alterations described were intended to make the Temple appear less attractive, lest the Assyrian king should wish to dismantle it and appropriate its decorations.
19. The rest of the acts of Ahaz], see 2Ch_28:24, 2Ch_28:25. In Isaiah 7 is an account of the interview between Ahaz and the prophet Isaiah alluded to in the note on 2Ki_16:7.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain 7. King Ahaz and Assyria
7. King Ahaz and Assyria
CHAPTER 16
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1. King Ahaz and his reign (2Ki 16:1-4; 2 Chron. 28)
2. The invasion by the two kings (2Ki 16:5-6)
3. Ahaz appeals to Assyria (2Ki 16:7-8)
4. Ahaz in Damascus and the idolatrous altar (2Ki 16:9-18)
5. Death of Ahaz (2Ki 16:19-20; 2Ch 28:26-27)
Righteous Jotham had for his successor a wicked son. Ahaz “walked in the way of the Kings of Israel, yea, and made his son pass through the fire according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel.” (This refers to the horrible rite of child-sacrifice. Ahaz was the first among the kings who did this. As the apostasy increased this awful ceremony became more frequent. 2Ki 17:17; 2Ki 21:6; 2Ki 23:10; See Mic 6:7; Jer 7:31; Jer 19:5.) For additional wickedness he committed see 2Ch 28:2; 2Ch 28:21-25. He burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom and burnt his children in the fire.
“But this was to revive the old Canaanitish and Phoenician worship, with all its abominations and all its defilements. The valley of Gihon, which bounds Jerusalem on the west, descends at its southern extremity into that of Hinnom, which in turn joins at the ancient royal gardens the valley of Kidron, that runs along the eastern declivity of the Holy City. There, at the junction of the valleys of Hinnom and Kidron, in these gardens, was Topheth--’the spitting out,’ or place of abomination--where an Ahaz, a Manasseh, and an Amon, sacrificed their sons and daughters to Baal-Moloch, and burnt incense to foul idols. Truly was Hinnom, ‘moaning,’ and rightly was its name Gehinnom (valley of Hinnom--Geheena), adopted as that for the place of final suffering. And it is one of those strange coincidences that the hill which rises on the south side of this spot was that ‘potter’s field,’ the ‘field of blood,’ which Judas bought with the wages of his betrayal, and where with his own hands he executed judgment on himself. History is full of such coincidences, as men call them; nor can we forget in this connection that it was on the boundary-line between the reigns of Jotham and Ahaz that Rome was founded (in 752 B.C.), which was destined to execute final judgment on apostate Israel” (A. Edersheim).
Isaiah, Micah, Hosea and Oded then exercised their prophetic offices. When Rezin, King of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, King of Israel, came against Jerusalem and besieged Ahaz, he appealed to Tiglath-pileser to save him out of their hands, instead of crying to Jehovah for the deliverance He had promised to His people. The king also took the silver and gold from the LORD’s house and presented it to Tiglath-pileser. Then after Ahaz had declared himself the vassal of Assyria (“I am thy servant”), Tiglath-pileser conquered Damascus. The inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser mention this fact. We refer again to Isaiah 7. The alliance with the Assyrian was opposed by Isaiah. He told Ahaz “at the end of the conduit of the upper pool” to ask a sign of any kind of the LORD God, to allay the fears of the king and give an evidence that the LORD would preserve the house of David. And furthermore Isaiah had taken with him his son Shear-jashub, which means “the remnant shall return,” prophetic also of the preservation of a remnant. When wicked Ahaz refused, the prophet uttered that great sign which was to take place over seven hundred years after, that the virgin should conceive and bring forth a son, even Immanuel. The house of David might be punished and chastised, but there could be no full end of the royal family, for the promised One had to come from David and receive in due time the promised kingdom. And Isaiah also predicted that the Assyrian, in whom Ahaz had put his trust, should come upon them (Isa 7:17). What Pekah did to Judah and Oded’s testimony against Pekah we shall learn from the Chronicles.
The erection of a new altar in the Temple by Ahaz according to the pattern of the idol-altar, opened the door wide for the unlawful worship in the Temple of God. He found a willing helper in Urijah (the LORD is light), who conducted the worship “according to all that King Ahaz commanded.” And greater profanation followed. He even shut up the doors of the house of the Lord (2Ch 28:24), which probably meant a complete cessation of the services in the Holy Place. The gods of Damascus were worshipped by him in connection with this altar (2Ch 28:23). And in Christendom an even greater profanation of worship has come to pass. True Christian worship is in spirit and in truth. Roman Catholicism has erected altars patterned more or less after the ancient Babylonish worship.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain Ahaz Calls upon Assyria for Help
Ahaz Calls upon Assyria for Help
v. 1. In the seventeenth year of Pekah, the son of Remaliah, the second-last king of Israel, Ahaz, the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign.
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v. 2. Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord, his God, like David, his father; he forsook the traditional piety of the kings of Judah.
v. 3. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, following their idolatrous customs, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, in a form of the terrible human sacrifices in use among the Moabites and the Assyrians, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, Deu 12:31.
v. 4. And he sacrificed and burned incense, with all the rites observed in true worship, in the high places and on the hills, where there was no house of the Lord, but only idolatrous altars, and under every green tree.
v. 5. Then Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, who had formed an alliance at the time of Jotham, 2Ki 15:37, came up to Jerusalem to war; and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him; they were unable to take the city, which had been strongly fortified by Uzziah and Jotham. Thus a prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled, Isa 7:1-9. But while the allies did not accomplish their purpose of taking Jerusalem and embodying Judah in their mighty confederacy, they had success elsewhere.
v. 6. At that time Rezin, king of Syria, recovered Elath, the important harbor and commercial city at the head of the Elanitic Gulf, to Syria, and drave the Jews from Elath, thus cutting off one of the chief sources of prosperity of Judah. And the Syrians came to Elath, settling there a commercial colony, and dwelt there unto this day, until the time this account was written.
v. 7. So Ahaz, in his great extremity, sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son, thereby offering to become a tributary vassal; come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me. It seems, then, that Ahaz placed no faith in the promises of Isaiah.
v. 8. And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasures of the king’s house, all that had accumulated since Jehoash of Israel had plundered these treasures, 2Ki 14:13, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria, thus buying his assistance and entering into a federation against which Isaiah had warned.
v. 9. And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him; for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, the capital of Syria, and took it, and carried the people of It captive to Kir, leading them into exile to the modern Georgia, south of the Caspian Sea, and slew Rezin. Thus the word of the prophet, Amo 1:3-5, was fulfilled. Subsequent events show that this move did Ahaz no good, for the Assyrian ruler did not regard or treat him as a friend and equal, but as a vassal. He who places his trust in men has, at best, a poor prop for his weakness.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 In the seventeenth year of Pekah son of Remaliah
In the seventeenth year of Pekah son of Remaliah
It can be stated clearly that this is the seventeenth year of his reign. AT: "In year 17 of the reign of Pekah son of Remaliah" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information and Numbers)
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Pekah ... Remaliah
These are men's names. Pekah was the king of Israel. See how you translated them in 2 Kings 15:25. (See: How to Translate Names)
what was right in the eyes of Yahweh his God
The eyes represent seeing, and seeing represents thoughts or judgment. AT: "what was right in Yahweh's judgment" or "what Yahweh his God considers to be right" (See: Metaphor)
as David his ancestor had done
David had done what is right.
translationWords
Ahaz
Jotham
king
kingdom of Judah
reign
Jerusalem
Yahweh
God
David
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 16:1-2 The seventeenth year of King Pekah’s reign was…
16:1-2 The seventeenth year of King Pekah’s reign was 735 BC. At that time Ahaz . . . began to rule: He had already been co-regent for eleven years, but now he officially acceded to the throne. This marks the transition from subordination to his father, Jotham (743–735 BC), to a position of reigning in his stead (735–732 BC). Ahaz presumably had his official accession ceremony following his father’s death in 732 BC, so the author of Kings reckons Ahaz’s reign of sixteen years from 731 BC, the year after his father died, to 715 BC. See also study note on 17:1.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.