2 Kings 16

2 KINGS CHAPTER 16

Judah’s King Ahaz

      • In the 17th year of the reign of Remaliah’s son Pekah, Jotham’s son Ahaz became king of Judah. Ahaz was 20 years old when he became king and he ruled for 16 years in Jerusalem. He did not do what was right in the eyes of Yahweh his God, like his ancestor David had. He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire in accordance with the detestable practices of the nations that Yahweh had driven out from before the Israelites. He offered sacrifices and burnt offerings on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.

        • NLT Illustrated Study Bible writes, “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…”

        • NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible notes, “Child sacrifice was a prominent feature of at least some polytheistic Canaanite religions practiced in ancient times in Syria and Palestine…In the aftermath of Jotham’s relatively orthodox reign comes a renewed period of officially sanctioned idolatry in Judah, as King Ahaz ‘followed the ways of the kings of Israel’ and the high places became centers, not of the worship of Yahweh, but of the worship of Baal Hadad.”

        • ESV Archaeology Study Bible adds, “A seal impression bearing Ahaz’s name, made in a lump of moist clay called a bulla, was discovered in a private collection. It reads, ‘Belonging to Ahaz, (son of) Yehotam [Jotham], King of Judah.’ The back of the bulla bears the imprint of the papyrus document it sealed, and a partial fingerprint is visible on the left front edge. Another bulla was discovered years earlier that refers to an unnamed ‘servant of Ahaz,’ accompanied by several royal symbols- three Osiris crowns and a sun disk with a ram’s horns bearing two cobras. Ahaz is also reported as a vassal to Tiglath-pileser III in the latter’s annals, using Ahaz’s full name of Jehoahaz…”

Bulla of Ahaz via Biblical Archaeology Review

      • Then Syria’s King Rezin and Israel’s King Pekah, who was Remaliah’s son, came to wage war against Jerusalem. They besieged Ahaz, but could not conquer him. At that time Syria’s King Rezin recovered Elath for Syria and drove out the people of Judah. Then the Edomites came to Elath and they live there to this day.

        • Guzik remarks, “The prophecy of Isaiah 7 – including the announcement of the Immanuel sign – came from Isaiah to King Ahaz during this joint Israel-Syrian invasion. As the following verses reveal, Ahaz refused to trust in the LORD and instead put his trust in the king of Assyria. Yet for the sake of David, God did not allow this disastrous attack on Judah to prevail. He would not allow this Satanic plot against the Messianic dynasty of David to succeed.”

        • NLT Illustrated Study Bible says, “This alliance between the kings of Aram and Israel was intended to free the area of Assyrian dominance under Tilgath-pileser III (15:29-30; Isa 9:1). The attack against Judah may have occurred to force Judah into the alliance or to replace the Judean king with one of their own choosing (Isa 7:3-6). The result was captivity and widespread death for the people of Judah (2 Chr 28:5-15). Isaiah reports that Rezin and Pekah intended to install a new king on Judah’s throne (Isa 7:3-6). Judah also suffered further attacks by the Edomites and Philistines (2 Chr 28:17-18). All of this was God’s will due to Ahaz’s detestable spiritual practices, which led to great sin among the people of Judah (2 Chr 28:5, 19).”

        • There is a discrepancy over whether or not the Edomites or the Syrians moved into Elath after the Judeans were run out. NET Bible’s text critical notes explain why, “The consonantal text (Kethib), supported by many medieval Hebrew mss, the Syriac version, and some mss of the Targum and Vulgate, read ‘Syrians’ (Heb ‘Arameans’). The marginal reading (Qere), supported by the LXX, Targums, and Vulgate, reads ‘Edomites.’”

      • So Ahaz sent messengers to Assyria’s King Tiglath-Pileser saying, “I am your servant and your vassal. Come up and save me from the hand of Syria’s king and the hand of Israel’s king who are attacking me.” Then Ahaz took the silver and gold from the house of Yahweh and from treasuries of the king’s house and sent them to the king of Assyria as a gift. The king of Assyria listened to him; he attacked Damascus and captured it. He deported its people to Kir and executed Rezin.

        • NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible writes, “Besieged in Jerusalem, King Ahaz’s response was to call on Tiglath-Pileser for help, sending at the same time a large gift to encourage compliance (possibly the same tribute referred to in an Assyrian text from Tiglath-Pileser’s time). The help is represented in 2 Kings as the Assyrian campaigns in Syria and Palestine of 733-732 BC that resulted in the capture of Damascus and the death of Rezin, as well as the annexation of large parts of northern Israel and the death of Pekah (15:29-30).”

Ahaz’s Idolatry

      • King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-Pileser, the king of Assyria. He saw the altar at Damscus and sent Uriah the priest a drawing of it and complete plans for its construction. Uriah the priest built an altar in accordance with the plans that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus, and he finished it before King Ahaz returned. When the king arrived back from Damascus and saw the altar, he approached it. He offered his burnt offering and grain offering, poured out his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of his fellowship offerings on the altar. He removed the bronze altar that stood in Yahweh’s presence from in front of the house- from between the new altar and Yahweh’s house- and put it on the north side of the new altar. Then King Ahaz ordered Uriah the priest: “On the large new altar, offer the morning burnt offering, the evening grain offering, the king’s burnt offering and grain offering, and the burnt offerings, grain offerings, and drink offerings for all the people in the land. Also, sprinkle the blood of the burnt offerings and sacrifices on it. The bronze altar will be for me to inquire by.” Uriah the priest obeyed King Ahaz’s orders.

        • NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible writes:

        • “For the Biblical authors, the direct intervention of Assyria into Judahite affairs in 734-732 BC was fateful for Judah in terms of its religious, not just its political, consequences. A king open to foreign influence in his religious policy from the beginning (cf vv. 2-4), Ahaz is presented here as traveling to Damascus to pay homage to the Assyrian king and being so impressed by an altar there that he recognizes worship in Jerusalem around its facsimile. The origin of the altar- Assyrian or Aramean- is not stated, but it was most likely the latter. The assumption that it was an Assyrian altar has led some to suggest that implicit in the story is the imposition of Assyrian religion on Judah as a vassal state. There is, however, no compelling reason to think that Tiglath-Pileser imposed Assyrian religious architecture on a vassal state, and nothing in Ahaz’s actions upon returning to Jerusalem implies specifically Assyrian religious practice as such. 2 Ch 28:23 explicitly says that in fact it was ‘the gods of Damascus’ that Ahaz introduced into Jerusalem- a particular variant of Baal worship that had so recently plagued northern Israel…If some of the things that Ahaz did were ‘in deference to the king of Assyria’ (16:18), these are less likely to have been impositions than voluntary attempts to please the Assyrian king, in part by incorporating into Judahite religion further elements of the worship of Hadad…”

        • “The new and impressively large Hadad altar displaced the bronze altar that had been used for sacrifice since the days of Solomon (v. 14; 1 Kgs 8:22-23, 62-64; 9:25), the latter now being reserved for Ahaz’s practice of ‘seeking’ oracles. This no doubt refers to the use of the bronze altar for divination (the interpretation of omens). It is probably specifically a reference to extispicy- the examination of the entrails of sacrificial animals in order to divine the will and intentions of the gods, most importantly focusing on the inspection of the liver (hepatoscopy; Lev 13:36; 27:33 use the same verb for ritual examinations…) Although the OT describes legitimate ways of seeking divine guidance that are not dissimilar to some forms of divination elsewhere in the ancient world (e.g., the use of the Urim and Thummim…there is no question that the authors of Kings intend the reader to disapprove of Ahaz’s reassignment of the bronze altar for his divinatory practice. Whereas Ahaz’s own word for the practice is the innocuous ‘seeking,’ 2 Kgs 17:17 appears to be looking back at Ahaz above all others when it speaks of those Israelites who ‘sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire…practiced divination and sought omens,’ recalling the explicit prohibition of Dt 18:10 that ‘no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination…interprets omens’…”

          • “We possess particularly good information about divination, and specifically extispicy, from the city of Mari, where eighteenth century BC letters share this common theme. Here too we find documents that list previous phenomena as a guide to the diviner in the present…Hadad himself was one of the cosponsors of Mesopotamian divination, along with Shamash, the sun-god. It was from these deities (through oil and liver divination) that Enmedurranki, the ancient king of Sippar, was believed to have first received the secrets of heaven and earth, so that he could later pass them on to wise men in the cities of Sippar, Nippur, and Babylon.”

      • King Ahaz cut off the frames of the movable stands and removed the basins from them. He took the reservoir down from the bronze oxen that supported it and placed it on a stone base. He removed the Sabbath canopy that they had built inside the house as well as the king’s outer entrance to the house of Yahweh because of the king of Assyria.

        • ESV Study Bible says, “The architectural details that follow the information about the frames and the sea [the reservoir], and what Ahaz does about these, are unfortunately obscure…”

        • NET Bible remarks, “It is doubtful that Tiglath-Pileser ordered these architectural changes. Ahaz probably made these changes so he could send some of the items and materials to the Assyrian king as tribute.”

The Death of Ahaz

      • The rest of the events of Ahaz’s reign, including his accomplishments, are recorded in the book, “Annals of the Kings of Judah.” Ahaz rested with his ancestors and was buried with them in the city of David. His son Hezekiah succeeded him as king.

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