Ahaz was the son of Jotham, a good king, and the father of Hezekiah, a very good king, but he himself was not a godly man or even a good man. Instead of discovering and doing the will of God, Ahaz imitated the wicked kings of Israel and even the pagan practices of Assyria. He even adopted the horrible worship practices of the pagans and sacrificed his son (2 Chron. 28: says “children,” plural) to a pagan god, Baal or Molech, a practice that was clearly prohibited in the law of Moses (Lev. 18:21; Deut. 18:10). Each Jewish son was to be redeemed by a sacrifice and therefore belonged to the Lord (Ex. 13; Num. 18:14–16). How could a son who belonged to God be sacrificed to an idol? But Ahaz was a compromiser both in his religious practices and his political leadership.
Political compromise (vv. 5–9; 2 Chron. 28:5–21). Pekah, the king of Israel, and Rezin, king of Syria, wanted Ahaz to join with them in opposing Assyria, but Ahaz refused because he was pro-Assyrian. In fact, he trusted Assyria instead of trusting the Lord. In retaliation, Syria and Israel planned to remove Ahaz from the throne and put their own puppet king in his place, but the Lord protected David’s throne, even though Ahaz didn’t deserve it. (For the complete story, read Isa. 7—9.)
According to 2 Chronicles 28:5–8, it was the Lord who brought these two kings against Judah, to punish Ahaz for his sins. Pehak and Rezin did a great deal of damage to Judah but they weren’t able to take Jerusalem. One of the sons of Ahaz was killed, along with two key officers of state. The invading armies killed thousands of soldiers and took thousands of prisoners of war to Samaria. It looked like Israel was going to swallow up Judah!
The Lord raised up a prophet in Israel who warned the Samaritan army that by taking these people of Judah as prisoners, Israel was breaking God’s law and inviting God’s judgment. After all, the people of Judah and the people of Samaria were part of one family, the family of Abraham. The prophet Obed (not the same man as in 15:8) pointed out three sins the army of Israel committed. First, they were in a rage against the people of Judah and captured and killed them indiscriminately. Second, they planned to make slaves out of their own brothers and sisters, and this was contrary to God’s law (Lev. 25:39ff.). In doing these things, they showed no fear of the Lord and therefore were asking for Him to judge them (2 Chron. 28:9–11). Yes, God was angry with Judah (28:9, 25), but there was danger He would become angry at Israel for the way they treated Judah (28:11–13). After Obed’s message, some of the leaders in Israel stood and affirmed what he had said and urged the army not to sin against the Lord and their brothers and sisters.
A remarkable thing happened: the people accepted God’s message, repented, and changed their treatment of the prisoners. The Israelites not only fed and clothed them, and gave special help to the injured and feeble, but the soldiers even returned the loot they had taken from Judah. This was an instance of being “good Samaritans” on a national level (Luke 10:25–37), and it reminds us of Elisha’s kindness to the Syrian soldiers who came to capture him (2 Kings 6:15–23). When the prisoners (with the spoils of battle) arrived back in Judah, they were living witnesses of the grace and goodness of the Lord, but there’s no record that Ahaz led the nation in a great praise service.
This remarkable event carried another message to Judah: the time would come when the Babylonians would invade the land and take thousands of captives away to Babylon. This experience with the kingdom of Israel was somewhat of a “dress rehearsal” for the people of Judah, but Babylon wouldn’t treat them as the Israelites did. Most of the Jewish captives would die in Babylon, and after seventy years, only a feeble remnant would return to rebuild the temple and try to establish the nation again.
Does the Lord still chasten nations today as He did in ancient days? The Jewish people, of course, belonged to a covenant nation, even though it was now divided into two kingdoms, and they were responsible to obey the covenant of the Lord. But what about the Gentile nations that have no covenant relationship with God? The prophet Amos makes it clear that God knows the sins of the Gentile nations and holds them accountable (Amos 1—2). God never gave His law to the Gentiles (Ps. 147:19–20), but the demands of that law are written in the hearts of all people (Rom. 2:12–16), so the disobedient Gentiles are guilty before the Lord. As you read the Old Testament, you find God judging Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18—19), Egypt (Ex. 1—14), the Gentile nations in and around Canaan (Num. 31–32; Joshua 1—12), and even Babylon (Jer. 50—51). However, because the Jews knew the true and living God and had the witness of His law, they were even more accountable. How tragic that apostate Israel and not enlightened Judah showed concern about obeying the message of God. Judah had the temple, the law, and the priesthood, but they didn’t have the Lord. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Ps. 33:12).
Religious compromise (16:10–18; 2 Chron. 28:22–25). Not only did Israel and Syria attack Judah but God also brought the Edomites and the Philistines against Jerusalem. Ahaz sent word to the king of Assyria to come and help him. His message was that of a flattering flunky, what we today would call a “bootlicker.” He called himself Tiglath-pileser’s “servant” and “son,” a strange posture for a descendant of David to take before a pagan ruler. To encourage the Assyrian king even more, Ahaz took wealth from the temple, the palace, and the princes and sent him a gift. Actually, Ahaz made Judah a vassal nation under the control and protection of Assyria. Ahaz had no living faith in the Lord and put his trust in the army of Assyria instead, and this cost him dearly. Indeed, Assyria did defeat Syria, but then Tiglath-pileser summoned his “son” and “servant” to Damascus to give an account of himself and to receive orders. Gone were the days when the kings of Judah and their armies were feared by the nations!
King Uzziah had tried to meddle with the ministry in the temple and the Lord gave him leprosy, but Urijah the high priest did anything the king commanded, even if it meant disobeying the law of Moses. We aren’t sure whether copying the pagan altar was wholly the idea of Ahaz or whether the king of Assyria commanded it. Perhaps Tiglath-pileser wanted this altar in the Jewish temple to remind the king and people of Judah that they were now under the authority of Assyria. Ahaz was not devoted to the faithful worship of Jehovah, so it’s likely that this altar was copied simply to satisfy his pride. He would have a royal altar like the one in Damascus! Consequently, the God-designed altar of the Lord was shoved to one side.
All of this is a picture of what often happens in Christian ministries today: somebody sees something out in the world that would “fit” into the Lord’s work, and the church starts to imitate the world. Moses was commanded to make the tabernacle according to what God showed him on the mount (Ex. 25:40; 26:30; Heb. 8:5), and likewise the temple was constructed according to the plans God gave to David (1 Chron. 28:11, 12, 19). The Jews didn’t appoint a building committee and vote on the design. But today, the church is becoming so like the world that it’s getting difficult to tell them apart. A. W. Tozer wrote, Aside from a few of the grosser sins, the sins of the unregenerated world are now approved by a shocking number of professedly “born-again” Christians, and copied eagerly. Young Christians take as their models the rankest kind of worldlings and try to be as much like them as possible. Religious leaders have adopted the techniques of the advertisers: boasting, baiting, and shameless exaggeration are now carried on as a normal procedure in church work. The moral climate is not that of the New Testament but that of Hollywood and Broadway.
Ahaz thought that the Lord would be pleased with sacrifices offered on this magnificent new altar, but he was wrong. The Lord doesn’t want sacrifice; He wants obedience (1 Sam. 15:22–23); and Ahaz worshipped the gods of the heathen nations (2 Chron. 28:23). No fire from heaven ignited the sacrifices placed on that pagan altar (Lev. 9:24), because the Lord had rejected it. The religious novelties in churches today may excite and entertain the people, but they don’t edify the church or exalt the Lord. The sanctuary becomes a theater, worship becomes entertainment, ministry becomes performance, and a congregation becomes an audience. The measure of all this is not the glory of God but the applause of the people.
But replacing God’s altar with a pagan altar was just the beginning. King Ahaz also “remodeled” the laver and the ten movable stands that held the ten basins for preparing sacrifices (1 Chron. 28:17; 1 Kings 7:23–40). Apparently he needed the precious metal for his own purposes, so he took it from the Lord. But to please the king of Assyria, Ahaz had to remove his own royal entryway to the temple as well as the royal canopy (or dais for his throne) that he had placed in the temple. Tiglath-pileser was now in charge, not King Ahaz, However, the king could never have made all these changes without the cooperation of Urijah, the high priest (16:10, 11, 15, 16). When King Uzziah tried to rebel against the Word of the Lord and enter the temple, the high priest Azariah with eighty other priests successfully withstood him (2 Chron. 26:16ff.); but Urijah and his priests compromised, disobeyed the law of Moses and gave in to their king. Once compromise begins, it continues to grow; and all that it takes for evil to triumph is for weak people like Urijah to let leaders have their way. Ahaz not only replaced the altar and removed metal from the furnishings, but he finally took all the vessels for himself, closed the doors of the temple, and set up altars in the streets of Jerusalem (2 Chron. 28:24–25). “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?” (1 Cor. 5: nasb; see Gal. 5:9). Once we allow worldliness to get into the church fellowship, it will quietly grow, pollute the fellowship, and eventually take over. It was not until the reign of his son Hezekiah that the temple Ahaz defiled was reopened and sanctified for ministry (2 Chron. 29:1–29).
When Ahaz died, he was buried in Jerusalem but not in the royal tombs (16:19–20; 28:26–27). In this, he joined Jehoram (2 Chron. 21:20), Joash (24:25), and Uzziah (26:23), and Manasseh would join them (33:20). The unbelief and unfaithfulness of Ahaz did great damage to the kingdom of Judah, some of which his son Hezekiah would be able to repair.