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For my weekly quiet time this week, I studied I Kings 16. It’s about the reign of King Ahaz of Judah.
According to v 2, Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he ruled sixteen years in Jerusalem. At face value, that means that Ahaz’s reign ended when he was 36. II Kings 18:2 says that Ahaz’s son and successor, Hezekiah, was twenty-five years old when he began to reign. So how old was Ahaz when Hezekiah was born? At the latest, he was 11.
One explanation for this is that there are times when people in the East get married at a very young age. Although Keil-Delitzsch ultimately do not go with this explanation, they give examples of spouses in the age-ten range—in India, Abyssinia, and Tiberias. Another explanation is that we should take into account co-regency: that Ahaz ruled as a co-regent with his father, Jotham. I guess what that is getting at is that Ahaz technically ruled longer than sixteen years (which only refers to the time that he ruled all by himself), so he wasn’t 11 when Hezekiah was born. A third explanation is text-critical. Keil-Delitzsch point out that the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Arabic of II Chronicles 28:1 say that Ahaz was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, meaning that Ahaz was in his late teens at Hezekiah’s birth.
An interesting point: II Kings 16:3 says that Ahaz made his son pass through the fire. Many interpreters have viewed this as the sacrifice of his first-born son (see II Kings 3:27; Micah 6:7). So Ahaz had a son before Hezeziah? How old was Ahaz when his wife had him?
The chapter is about an alliance between Northern Israel and Syria to bring down Judah, presumably to force her into an anti-Assyrian confederation. And Syria gets some licks in, for she conquers Elath, in the South, which Judah had recently taken back for herself (II Kings 14:22). But the Syrian-Ephraimite alliance fails to conquer Jerusalem and depose Ahaz. Still worried, Ahaz buys help from Assyria, using riches from the Jerusalem temple. Assyria responds by conquering Syria. (Northern Israel’s turn is coming soon!) People of Damascus (in Syria) are then exiled to Kir, which (ironically) Amos 9:7 says was the original home of the Syrians—the place from which God had brought them, in a sort of exodus, if you will.
Assyria’s act of nipping the Syrian threat in the bud comes with a price for Judah, however, for II Kings 16:17-18 says that Ahaz got rid of the bronze oxen upholding the “sea” outside the temple (see I Kings 7: At the Library), along with a “covert for the Sabbath” and an entrance to the temple. V 18 states that Ahaz turned from the house of the LORD “for the king of Assyria” (KJV), which may mean that he was using that temple-stuff as tribute for his Assyrian liberator!
II Kings 16 also contains a story about a Syrian-style altar. Ahaz sees a Syrian altar in Damascus when he goes there to meet the king of Assyria, who had just conquered Syria. He likes it so much that he sends plans of it to Urijah, a priest of Judah, so that Urijah can fashion something like it. Urijah does so, and this Syrian-style altar supplants the brass altar as the altar for sacrifices. The brass altar is now to be used for Ahaz’s own personal worship, so he can “enquire” there (KJV of v 15). Many claim that Ahaz wanted to use the brass altar for divination, but, as Mordechai Cogan points out, the word that v 15 uses for enquire, baqar, appears in Psalm 27:4 to refer to the Psalmist’s visit of the temple (cp. Deuteronomy 12:5, where darash, a synomym for baqar in Ezekiel 34:11-12, is used in a similar way: to refer to “seeking” at God’s sanctuary). Ahaz was probably using the brass altar for his own personal worship, not for divination.
There are interesting points to note. First of all, Urijah the priest. Isaiah the prophet considered him to be trustworthy enough to be a witness (Isaiah 8:2). Yet, for some reason, I Chronicles 6:3-15 omits him when it lists the succession of high priests. Josephus has Urijah in his list of high priests in Antiquities 10, yet the names in his list are so different from the list in Chronicles after a certain point, that I wonder if he’s even drawing from Chronicles. Why does I Chronicles omit Urijah? Because Urijah built a Syrian-style altar for Ahaz? What’s funny is that Chronicles doesn’t even mention the Syrian-style altar in its own version of Ahaz’s reign (II Chronicles 28), so the Chronicler couldn’t have been that upset about it (right?).
Second, the brass altar. Rashi (an eleventh century Jewish commentator) says that this couldn’t have been the one built by Moses (see Exodus 38:30) because that one was hidden. Rashi may mean that Solomon replaced it because it wasn’t big enough (I Kings 8:64; II Chronicles 4:1), and so the original brass altar that Moses built is hidden somewhere. (And yet, the brass altar that Solomon built wasn’t big enough either, according to II Chronicles 7:7!) Christian commentators take Ahaz to task because he did not preserve the pattern of the sanctuary that God revealed to Moses (Exodus 25:9, 40), for Ahaz replaced the brass altar with a Syrian-style altar. That may be the perspective of the narrator. And yet, technically-speaking, Solomon didn’t strictly preserve the pattern either, for he replaced the Mosaic altar with a larger one. Was the problem that Ahaz was incorporating foreign elements into Israelite worship? Arguably, Solomon did that, too, when he built the temple (see I Kings 6: At the Library). What made Solomon right and Ahaz wrong?
Third, II Kings 16 differs from II Chronicles 28. In II Chronicles 28, Syria and Northern Israel devastate Judah and take captives, and a prophet instructs Northern Israel to release the captured Judahites. Ahaz appeals to Assyria for help, to no avail, for Assyria torments Judah. And II Chronicles 28 doesn’t mention the Syrian-style altar, but says that Ahaz encouraged the worship of Syrian gods and closed the temple. Josephus and rabbinic literature portrayed Ahaz’s reign as suppressive for Yahwsists, claiming that Ahaz banned worship at the temple. According to certain rabbis, Isaiah had to teach his disciples in secret, for Ahaz had banned Yahwistic instruction!
In terms of their descriptions of Judah’s precarious situation in the realm of geo-politics, II Kings 16 and II Chronicles 28 overlap. Both agree that the Syrio-Ephraimite alliance did not conquer Jerusalem. In terms of their claims about Assyria, maybe they’re describing the same situation in different ways. II Kings 16 says that Assyria heard Ahaz’s plea, accepted his bribe, and destroyed Judah’s enemy, Syria. II Chronicles 28, however, does not believe that Assyria technically helped Judah, for Judah only opened the door for Assyria to afflict her. Was that really a response to Ahaz’s plea—to what Ahaz truly wanted from Assyria?
In their descriptions of Ahaz’s religious life, the accounts differ somewhat, for II Kings 16 portrays Ahaz as someone who engaged in personal piety, and yet did not stay on the straight-and-narrow. II Chronicles 28, however, presents Ahaz as a gross idolater, a portrait that led interpreters to conclude that Ahaz tried to ban Yahwism! Could Ahaz have degenerated, going from a weak Yahwist to an anti-Yahwist? Did his abandonment of the straight-and-narrow in favor of his own aesthetic desires (the beautiful Syrian-style altar) and his trust in Assyria rather than the LORD lead him to hate God? And yet, so many righteous kings of Judah compromised, for they failed to take away the high places. Why didn’t they degenerate into hatred of God? Did Ahaz go a bit too far?
