Ahaz

“ Amaziah adopted the gods of Edom, as Ahaz the gods of Syria, but with less excuse, for Amaziah had conquered Edom. Other crimes are recorded among the evil doings of the kings: Asa had recourse to physicians, that is, probably to magic; Jehoram slew his brethren; Joash murdered the son of his benefactor Jehoiada; but the supreme sin was disloyalty to Jehovah and the Temple, and of this sin the chronicler's brief history of Ahaz is the most striking illustration. Ahaz is the typical apostate: he hardens his heart alike against the mercy of Jehovah and against His repeated judgment. ”

“ CHAPTER XXIII ISAIAH AND AHAZ 2 Kings xvi
"Expediency is man's wisdom; doing right is God's."
George Meredith.
Isaiah was one of those men whom God provides for the need of kingdoms. He was not only a prophet, but a statesman, a reformer, a poet, a man of invincible faith and unequalled insight. If Ahaz had accepted his counsels and followed his moral guidance, the whole history of Judah might have been different. ”

“ For, that Ahaz applied only to one king, in the opinion of the chronicler also, we learn from 2Ch 28:20, 2Ch 28:21. By the plural the thought is expressed that Ahaz, instead of seeking the help of Jahve his God, which the prophet had promised him (Isa 7:4.) , turned to the kings of the world-power, so hostile to the kingdom of God, from whom he naturally could obtain no real help. Even here the thought which is expressed only in 2Ch 28:20, 2Ch 28:21, is present to the mind of the author of the Chronicle. ”

“ Hezekiah, the pious son of the godless Ahaz, recognised that it was to be the business of his reign to bring the kingdom out of the utterly ruinous condition into which Ahaz had brought it by his idolatry and his heathen policy, and to elevate the state again, both in respect to religion and morals, and also in political affairs. He consequently endeavoured, in the first place, to do away with the idolatry, and to restore the Jahve-worship according to the law, and then to throw off the yoke of subjection to the Assyrian. ”

“ In the beautiful vale of Hinnom, or Ben Hinnom, at the southern extension of the valley of Kidron, where the spring of Siloah and other brooklets produce a magnificent vegetation, a fire-altar was erected. There, Ahaz, regardless of the heart-rending lamentations of his son, sacrificed the innocent child.
The example of Ahaz was, as a matter of course, not without influence on others. The nobles of Judah, who had a decided preference for all that was foreign, because it allowed full sway to their passions, gladly welcomed this adoption of Assyrian customs. ”

“ It is apparent that not only dead men, but also dead women, may tell tales, if their voices are heeded and the ears of the listener are not stopped with the wax of infidelity and disbelief.
The amazing and scrupulous accuracy which is maintained by the Old Testament in its historical statements is once again demonstrated by the record of Ahaz as it is given in the Old Testament and found on the monuments in Assyria. We read in II Kings and the sixteenth chapter, these words:
In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign. ”

“ We have innumerable instances of this sort in the Jewish prophets; but few, more remarkable than that of Isaiah’s prophecy, addressed to Ahaz, king of Judah, concerning his deliverance from the two kings of Samaria and Damascus. In the primary, but lower sense of this prophecy, the sign given was to assure Ahaz, that the land of Judæa should speedily be delivered from its two Royal invaders. ”

“ Though he had conformed to the idolatry of the heathen nations, his neighbours, they did not value him for that, nor love him the better, nor did his compliance, by which he lost God, gain them, nor could he make any interest in them, but with his money. It is often found that wicked men themselves have no real affection for those that revolt to them, nor do they care to do them a kindness. A degenerate branch is looked upon, on all sides, as an abominable branch, Isa. xiv. 19. But what did Ahaz get by the king of Assyria? ”

“ Religion to Ahaz was only another kind of diplomacy. He was not a fanatic, but a diplomat, who made his son to pass through the fire to Moloch, and burnt incense in the high places and on the hills, and under every green tree. He was more a political than a religious eclectic, who brought back the pattern of the Damascus altar to Jerusalem. The Temple, in which Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, became under Ahaz, and by the help of the priesthood, the shelter of various idols; in every corner of Jerusalem altars were erected to other gods. ”

“ Then Isaiah said:
"Hear now, O House of David! Is it too small a thing for you to weary men, that ye must also weary my God? Therefore the Lord, Himself, will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman will bear a son and call his name Immanuel (God is with us) . Before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good those two kings before whom thou tremblest shall be deserted."
Ahaz was tired of mere words. Advice he had enough; he wanted now to act. In fact, when the knowledge of the political intrigue in Jerusalem became known to him, he immediately made up his mind what to do. ”

“ His Advice to Ahaz in the Crisis of 734 B.C. When, in 735, Northern Israel and Damascus united and endeavored to force Judah to combine with them in a coalition against the invader, Tiglath-pileser IV, Isaiah entered upon his work as a statesman. In person he went to advise Ahaz, as the king was probably investigating the defences of Jerusalem, in view of the possibilities of an impending siege. The place of meeting was evidently south of the city, where the valley of the Tyropœon joined that of the Hinnom near the pool where, in earlier days, Adonijah had rallied his followers. ”

“ He will infect men with his own utter conviction of it, in order that he may strengthen their character and guide them by paths of safety. His speech to Ahaz is an exhibition of the moral and rational effects of believing in Providence. Ahaz is a sample of the character polytheism produced; the state of mind and heart to which Isaiah exhorts him is that induced by belief in one righteous and almighty God. We can make the contrast clear to ourselves by a very definite figure. ”

“ Thus betrayed and plundered by his new ally, he trespassed “yet more against Jehovah, this same king Ahaz.” It is almost incredible that one man could be [pg 209] guilty of so much sin; the chronicler is anxious that his readers should appreciate the extraordinary wickedness of this man, this same king Ahaz. In him the chastening of the Lord yielded no peaceable fruit of righteousness; he would not see that his misfortunes were sent from the offended God of Israel. With perverse ingenuity, he found in them an incentive to yet further wickedness. ”

“ III. But the real reasons why men act thus are because they trust in themselves, and have no real faith in God. The real reason why Ahaz did not ask was because he was bent on forming an alliance with Assyria. Let it be ours gratefully to accept the privilege so graciously offered, seeing that God has given us far more than was given to Ahaz: we have all the great and precious promises contained in the Scriptures, the knowledge of the unspeakable gift of God’s dear Son, the accumulated experience of all generations of His faithfulness as the hearer of prayer. ”

“ There remain seven wicked kings of whom nothing but evil is recorded: Jehoram, Ahaziah, Ahaz, Amon, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. Of these we may take Ahaz as the most typical instance. As in the cases of David and Solomon, we will first see how the chronicler has dealt with the material derived from the book of Kings; then we will give his account of the career of Ahaz; and finally, by a brief comparison of what is told of Ahaz with the history of the other wicked kings, we will try to construct the chronicler's idea of the wicked king and to deduce its lessons. ”

“ Be this an individual, or a generation, or an age,—by the Name bestowed upon it, it was to have been a glorious, God-inhabited age, generation, or individual, and Ahaz has prematurely spoiled everything about it but the Name. The future shall be like a boy cursed by his fathers, brought into the world with glorious rights that are stamped in his title, but only to find his kingdom and estates no longer in existence, and all the circumstances dissipated, in which he might have realized the glorious meaning of his name. ”

“ A leper once he lost, and gained a king— Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew God's altar to disparage and displace For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn His odious offerings, and adore the gods Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared A crew who, under names of old renown— Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train— With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused Fanatic Egypt and her priests to seek Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms Rather than human. ”

“ Ahaz's policy of relying on human help from Assyria instead of divine help from Jehovah was refuted by its outcome. With Syria and Samaria ruined, there lay nothing between Jerusalem and the Assyrian. And it is in Hezekiah's reign—the next after that of Ahaz—that the ruthless conqueror from Nineveh is found overrunning Judah itself. How king, prophet, and people met that crisis will begin the next lesson, for it belongs to the period when the Southern Kingdom is all that remained of the organized Hebrew nation in Palestine.
QUESTIONS ON LESSON X
1. ”

“ Responsible activity might have saved Ahaz. The Church needs to recognise that healthy, vigorous youth craves interesting occupation and even excitement. If a father wishes to send his son to the devil, he cannot do better than make that son's life, both secular and religious, a routine of monotonous drudgery. Then any pinchbeck king of Israel will seem a marvel of wit and good fellowship, and the making of molten images a most pleasing diversion. A molten image is something solid, permanent, and conspicuous, a standing advertisement of the enterprise and artistic taste of the maker ”

“ It is, no doubt, difficult for us to realize that the truth which Isaiah thus enforced on King Ahaz—the government of the world and human history by one supreme God—was ever a truth of which the race stood in ignorance. ”

“ Hezekiah might have been excused if he had thought that the wretched state of political affairs left by Ahaz needed his first attention. Edomites on the east, Philistines on the west and south, Syrians and Assyrians on the north, 'compassed him about like bees,' and worldly prudence would have said, 'Look after these enemies today, and the Temple tomorrow.' He was wiser than that, knowing that these were effects of the religious corruption, and so he went at that first. It is useless trying to mend a nation's fortunes unless you mend its morals and religion. ”

“ Ahaz came to salute his preserver, and to obtain a nearer view of the soldiers to whom he owed continued possession of Jerusalem;* the kings of Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Askalon, the Philistines and the nomads of the Arabian desert, carried away by the general example, followed the lead of Judah, until there was not a single prince or lord of a city from the Euphrates to the river of Egypt who had not acknowledged himself the humble vassal of Nineveh. ”

“ Next in succession was his son Ahaz, who reigned for sixteen years. In his time, in the fifteenth year, Israel was carried away to Babylon. And Salmanasar the king of the Assyrians carried away the people of Samaria into the country of the Medes and to Babylon.
Again Ahaz was succeeded by Osee, [210] who reigned for eight years. Then followed Hezekiah, for twenty-nine years. For his sanctity, when he had approached his end, God, by Isaiah, allowed him to live for other fifteen years, giving as a sign the going back of the sun. Up to his times Esaias, Hosea, and Micah continued prophesying. ”

“ The king of Israel, in whose ways he has walked, turns upon him and plunders him; the experienced man of the world gives his pupil painful proof of his superiority, and calls in his confederates to share the spoil. Now surely the victim's eyes will be opened to the life he is leading and the character of his associates. By no means. Ahaz has been conquered by Syria, and therefore [pg 219] he will worship the gods of Syria, and he will have a confederate of his own in the Assyrian king. The victim tries to master the arts by which he has been robbed and ill-treated ”