Year 2, Week 3, Day 4 Bible Reading Observations

Year 2, Week 3, Day 4

I have a brief observation for today’s reading of 2 Kings 16; 2 Chronicles 28.

Today’s reading returns to the narration of the Kings in Israel and Judah. 2 Kings 16 and 2 Chronicles 28 record parallel historical events as they each primarily focus on Ahaz, King of Judah. Ahaz was a wicked King: “Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD his God, as his father David had done, but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel” (2 Kings 16:2-3a). But Ahaz was not merely wicked, he was an extremely wicked King: “He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel” (2 Kings 16:3b). Instead of being a light to the nations, as God had called his people to be, Ahaz led Judah in the ways of the nations. Ahaz all out embraced pagan worship. The Chronicler, while covering the same historical period, does add a couple of experiences that Kings does not develop as fully. Both Kings and Chronicles point out that the Northern Kingdom of Israel as well as the Syrians were raised up by the LORD to attack Judah, but the Chronicler records the warnings from a prophet to Northern Kingdom as they began to take captive and carry off people from the Southern Kingdom: “And now you intend to subjugate the people of Judah and Jerusalem, male and female, as your slaves…Now hear me, and send back the captives from your relatives whom you have taken, for the fierce wrath of the LORD is upon you” (2 Chronicles 28:10-11).

One of the things that struck me from today’s reading was Ahaz’s deep-seated refusal to turn to the LORD. As Jerusalem is under siege by the Syrians and Israel, Ahaz cannot hold them off much longer. Ahaz is being brutally attacked from all sides: “… God gave him into the hand of the king of Syria, who defeated him and took captive a great number of his people and brought them to Damascus. He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with great force. For Pekah the son of Remaliah killed 120,000 from Judah…And Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, killed Maaseiah the king’s son and Azrikam the commander of the palace and Elkanah the next in authority to the king. The men of Israel took captive 200,000…They also took much spoil” (2 Chronicles 28:5-8). So Ahaz turns to Assyria for help: “So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, “I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Syria and from the hand of the king of Israel, who are attacking me” (2 Kings 16:7). The Covenant that the LORD made with David declared a special sonship on Davidic Kings: “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” (2 Samuel 7:14a). But Ahaz repudiated that sonship in exchange to be a son of Tiglath-pileser. The cost of Assyrian help was costly: “Ahaz also 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 a present to the king of Assyria” (2 Kings 16:8). Ahaz had to pay his new father for the promise of deliverance. The LORD had freely promised him deliverance (see Isaiah 7).

Ahaz’s refusal to turn to the LORD did not impair his religious fever; it only perverted it: “When King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, he saw the altar that was at Damascus. And King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest a model of the altar, and its pattern, exact in all its details” (2 Kings 16:10). Ahaz took a fancy with the altar at Damascus. The Chronicler offers insight to Ahaz’s logic: “In the time of his distress he became yet more faithless to the LORD—this same King Ahaz. For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus that had defeated him and said, “Because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me” (2 Chronicles 28:22-23a). Ahaz thought the gods of the Assyrians must have something going for them, for they helped him repel his attackers. The LORD made clear we could sort out what we needed to know about Ahaz’s love affair with Assyrian worship: “But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel” (2 Chronicles 28:23a). Ahaz’s worship of false gods would be his demise, not his deliverance. 

But Ahaz embarked on a full remodel of the Temple: “And King Ahaz cut off the frames of the stands and removed the basin from them, and he took down the sea from off the bronze oxen that were under it and put it on a stone pedestal. And the covered way for the Sabbath that had been built inside the house and the outer entrance for the king he caused to go around the house of the LORD, because of the king of Assyria” (2 Kings 16:17-18). The Temple was constructed the way it was and it was furnished the way it was, because it pleased the LORD. But Ahaz is living to please Tiglath-pileser. Ahaz just loves how the new renovations look, and what the king of Assyria thinks about it all. Tragically, It seems that it does not enter Ahaz’s head to inquire of what the LORD thinks about the new look. For Ahaz, worship was not about the LORD, but about himself.

What struck you in today’s reading? What questions were prompted from today’s reading?

Pastor Joe