2 Chronicles 28
28
King Ahaz of Judah
(2 Kings 16.1-4)
1Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king of Judah, and he ruled from Jerusalem for sixteen years.
Ahaz was nothing like his ancestor David. Ahaz disobeyed the LORD 2and was as sinful as the kings of Israel. He made idols of the god Baal, 3and he offered sacrifices in Hinnom Valley. Worst of all, Ahaz sacrificed his own sons, which was a disgusting custom of the nations that the LORD had forced out of Israel. 4Ahaz offered sacrifices at the local shrines,#28.4 local shrines: See the note at 11.15. as well as on every hill and in the shade of large trees.
Syria and Israel attack Judah
(2 Kings 16.5,6)
5-6Ahaz and the people of Judah sinned and turned away from the LORD, the God their ancestors had worshipped. So the LORD punished them by letting their enemies defeat them.#2 K 16.5; Is 7.1.
The king of Syria attacked Judah and took many of its people to Damascus as prisoners. King Pekah#28.5,6 Pekah: Hebrew “Pekah son of Remaliah”. of Israel later defeated Judah and killed one hundred and twenty thousand of its bravest soldiers in one day. 7During that battle, an Israelite soldier named Zichri killed three men from Judah: Maaseiah the king's son; Azrikam, the official in charge of the palace; and Elkanah, the king's second in command. 8The Israelite troops captured two hundred thousand women and children and took them back to their capital city of Samaria, along with a large amount of their possessions. They did these things even though the people of Judah were their own relatives.
Oded the prophet condemns Israel
9Oded lived in Samaria and was one of the LORD's prophets. He met Israel's army on their way back from Judah and said to them:
The LORD God of your ancestors let you defeat Judah's army only because he was angry with them. But you should not have been so cruel! 10If you make slaves of the people of Judah and Jerusalem, you will be as guilty as they are of sinning against the LORD.
11Send these prisoners back home—they are your own relatives. If you don't, the LORD will punish you in his anger.
12About the same time, four of Israel's leaders arrived. They were Azariah son of Johanan, Berechiah son of Meshillemoth, Jehizkiah son of Shallum, and Amasa son of Hadlai. They agreed with Oded that the Israelite troops were wrong, 13and they said:
If you bring these prisoners into Samaria, that will be one more thing we've done to sin against the LORD. And he is already angry enough with us.
14So in front of the leaders and the crowd, the troops handed over their prisoners and the property they had taken from Judah. 15The four leaders took some of the stolen clothes and gave them to the prisoners who needed something to wear. They later gave them all a new change of clothes and shoes, then provided something for them to eat and drink, and cleaned their wounds with olive oil. They gave donkeys to those who were too weak to walk, and led all of them back to Jericho, the city known for its palm trees. The leaders then returned to Samaria.
Ahaz asks the king of Assyria for help
(2 Kings 16.7-9)
16-18Some time later, the Edomites attacked the eastern part of Judah again and carried away prisoners. And at the same time, the Philistines raided towns in the western foothills and in the Southern Desert. They conquered the towns of Beth-Shemesh, Aijalon, Gederoth, Soco, Timnah, and Gimzo, including the villages around them. Then some of the Philistines went to live in these places.
Ahaz sent a message to King Tiglath Pileser of Assyria and begged for help. 19But God was punishing Judah with these disasters, because Ahaz had disobeyed him and refused to stop Judah from sinning. 20So Tiglath Pileser came to Judah, but instead of helping, he made things worse. 21Ahaz gave him gifts from the LORD's temple and the king's palace, as well as from the homes of Israel's other leaders. The Assyrian king still refused to help Ahaz.
The final sin of Ahaz and his death
22Even after all these terrible things happened to Ahaz, he sinned against the LORD even worse than before. 23He said to himself, “The Syrian gods must have helped their kings defeat me. Perhaps if I offer sacrifices to those gods, they will help me.” That was the sin that finally led to the downfall of Ahaz, as well as to the destruction of Judah.
24Ahaz collected all the furnishings of the temple and smashed them to pieces. Then he locked the doors to the temple and set up altars to foreign gods on every street corner in Jerusalem. 25In every city and town in Judah he built local shrines#28.25 local shrines: See the note at 11.15. to worship foreign gods. All this made the LORD God of his ancestors very angry.
26Everything else Ahaz did while he was king is written in The History of the Kings of Judah and Israel. 27Ahaz died and was buried in Jerusalem, but not in the royal tombs. His son Hezekiah then became king.#Is 14.28.
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© British and Foreign Bible Society 2012
2 Chronicles 28
28
King Ahaz
1-4Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. He didn’t live right in the eyes of God; he wasn’t at all like his ancestor David. Instead he followed in the track of Israel in the north, even casting metal figurines for worshiping the pagan Baal gods. He participated in the outlawed burning of incense in the Valley of Ben Hinnom and—incredibly!—indulged in the outrageous practice of “passing his sons through the fire,” a truly abominable thing he picked up from the pagans God had earlier thrown out of the country. He also joined in the activities of the neighborhood sex-and-religion shrines that flourished all over the place.
5-8 God, fed up, handed him over to the king of Aram, who beat him badly and took many prisoners to Damascus. God also let the king of Israel loose on him and that resulted in a terrible slaughter: Pekah son of Remaliah killed 120,000 in one day, all of them first-class soldiers, and all because they had deserted God, the God of their ancestors. Furthermore, Zicri, an Ephraimite hero, killed the king’s son Maaseiah, Azrikam the palace steward, and Elkanah, second in command to the king. And that wasn’t the end of it—the Israelites captured 200,000 men, women, and children, besides huge cartloads of plunder that they took to Samaria.
9-11 God’s prophet Oded was in the neighborhood. He met the army when it entered Samaria and said, “Stop right where you are and listen! God, the God of your ancestors, was angry with Judah and used you to punish them; but you took things into your own hands and used your anger, uncalled for and irrational, to turn your brothers and sisters from Judah and Jerusalem into slaves. Don’t you see that this is a terrible sin against your God? Careful now; do exactly what I say—return these captives, every last one of them. If you don’t, you’ll find out how real anger, God’s anger, works.”
12-13Some of their Ephraimite leaders—Azariah son of Jehohanan, Berekiah son of Meshillemoth, Jehizkiah son of Shallum, and Amasa son of Hadlai—stood up against the returning army and said, “Don’t bring the captives here! We’ve already sinned against God; and now you are about to compound our sin and guilt. We’re guilty enough as it is, enough to set off an explosion of divine anger.”
14-15So the soldiers turned over both the captives and the plunder to the leaders and the people. Personally designated men gathered the captives together, dressed the ones who were naked using clothing from the stores of plunder, put shoes on their feet, gave them all a square meal, provided first aid to the injured, put the weak ones on donkeys, and then escorted them to Jericho, the City of Palms, restoring them to their families. Then they went back to Samaria.
16-21At about that time King Ahaz sent to the king of Assyria asking for personal help. The Edomites had come back and given Judah a bad beating, taking off a bunch of captives. Adding insult to injury the Philistines raided the cities in the foothills to the west and the southern desert and captured Beth Shemesh, Aijalon, and Gederoth, along with Soco, Timnah, and Gimzo, with their surrounding villages, and moved in, making themselves at home. Arrogant King Ahaz, acting as if he could do without God’s help, had unleashed an epidemic of depravity. Judah, brought to its knees by God, was now reduced to begging for a handout. But the king of Assyria, Tiglath-Pileser, wouldn’t help—he came instead and humiliated Ahaz even more by attacking and bullying him. Desperate, Ahaz ransacked The Temple of God, the royal palace, and every other place he could think of, scraping together everything he could, and gave it to the king of Assyria—and got nothing in return, not a bit of help.
22-25But King Ahaz didn’t learn his lesson—at the very time that everyone was turning against him, he continued to be against God! He offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus. He had just been defeated by Damascus; he thought, “If I worship the gods who helped Damascus, those gods just might help me, too.” But things only went from bad to worse: first Ahaz in ruins and then the country. He cleaned out The Temple of God of everything useful and valuable, boarded up the doors of The Temple, and then went out and set up pagan shrines for his own use all over Jerusalem. And not only in Jerusalem, but all over Judah—neighborhood shrines for worshiping any and every god on sale. And was God ever angry!
26-27The rest of Ahaz’s infamous life, all that he did from start to finish, is written in the Royal Annals of the Kings of Judah and Israel. When Ahaz died, they buried him in Jerusalem, but he was not honored with a burial in the cemetery of the kings. His son Hezekiah was the next king.
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.