Two chapters, half a century, and a kingdom coming apart. In Judah, Azariah (Uzziah) reigns fifty-two prosperous years and dies a leper in a quarantined house. In the north, the throne changes hands five times in twenty years, mostly by murder — Zachariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah — while Assyria arrives to collect: first Pul, then Tiglath-pileser carrying off Galilee and Gilead. And in Judah, Ahaz takes the throne, makes his son pass through the fire, and when Syria and Israel press him, hires Assyria with the temple silver — then copies a pagan altar from Damascus for the house of God.
A study in 2 Kings 15-16 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 9 min read
The LORD Smote The King, So That He Was A Leper
“And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father Amaziah had done; Save that the high places were not removed: the people sacrificed and burnt incense still on the high places. And the LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper unto the day of his death, and dwelt in a several house. And Jotham the king’s son was over the house, judging the people of the land.”
2 Kings 15:3-5
Kings gives Azariah four verses and a disease. Chronicles supplies the cause: at the height of his power “his heart was lifted up to his destruction,” and he forced his way into the temple to burn incense — a priest’s office, not a king’s. Eighty priests stood in his way; he raged at them, and the leprosy broke out on his forehead while he stood there censer in hand.
Fifty-two years on the throne, and it ends in a “several house” — isolation — with his son running the kingdom. The same pride that undid his father Amaziah, one generation on, and the same lesson: a plain “thus saith the LORD” is not a suggestion a strong man can overrule.
“Unto the day of his death, some years later, Uzziah remained a leper — a living example of the folly of departing from a plain ‘Thus saith the Lord.’”
Ellen G. White · Prophets and Kings, p. 304
Pul The King Of Assyria Came Against The Land
“And Pul the king of Assyria came against the land: and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand. And Menahem exacted the money of Israel, even of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria turned back, and stayed not there in the land.”
2 Kings 15:19-20
The northern king-list in this chapter reads like a police blotter: Zachariah murdered after six months, Shallum murdered after one, Menahem, Pekahiah murdered, Pekah murdered. Not one of them turns from “the sins of Jeroboam,” and every one of them presides over more lost ground. Menahem buys off Assyria by taxing his own nobles — a reprieve rented, not won.
Under Pekah it stops being reprieves. Tiglath-pileser invades and deports the tribes east of the Jordan and in Galilee — Reuben, Gad, half of Manasseh, Naphtali — scattered among the heathen. Only one king, Hoshea, is left after Pekah, and then the northern kingdom is gone. God, the record says, still “remembered mercy” and let the end come slowly; nobody used the time.
“‘In the days of Pekah,’ who reigned twenty years, Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, invaded Israel and carried away with him a multitude of captives from among the tribes living in Galilee and east of the Jordan.”
Ellen G. White · Prophets and Kings, p. 287
He Made His Son To Pass Through The Fire
“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. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and 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.”
2 Kings 16:2-4
This is the sentence the study is named for: a king of Judah, of David’s line, “walked in the way of the kings of Israel.” The border that was supposed to mean something — the south still had the temple, the covenant, the Davidic promise — Ahaz erases. He does what the north does, and worse.
“Made his son to pass through the fire” is child sacrifice, in the valley of Hinnom, at the door of Jerusalem — the very practice for which God drove the Canaanites out of the land. Judah is now doing on the temple mount’s doorstep what the land was cleansed to prevent.
“During the reign of Ahaz this was literally true; for of him it is written: ‘He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and made also molten images for Baalim. Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom;’ ‘yea, and 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.’”
Ellen G. White · Prophets and Kings, p. 324
An Altar That Was At Damascus
“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 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 of the altar, and the pattern of it.”
2 Kings 16:7-10
Isaiah had met Ahaz during this crisis with a promise from God: the plot by Syria and Israel “shall not stand.” All Ahaz had to do was believe it — “if ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.” He refused the sign, and instead sent Assyria a bribe out of the temple treasury and called himself its “servant and son.” Judah traded a promise from heaven for a protection racket.
The relief was temporary and the bill enormous. Ahaz went to Damascus to pay homage, admired the Assyrians’ altar, and had a copy built for the temple — shoving God’s bronze altar aside “to enquire by.” He asked the empire for rescue and then rebuilt worship in its image. His son Hezekiah inherits all of it.
“Well would it have been for the kingdom of Judah had Ahaz received this message as from heaven. But choosing to lean on the arm of flesh, he sought help from the heathen.”
Ellen G. White · Prophets and Kings, p. 329
