Uzziah rules Judah

26 Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah,^[a] who was 16 years old, and made him king after his father Amaziah. ² He rebuilt Eloth, restoring it to Judah after King Amaziah had lain down with his ancestors.

³ Uzziah was 16 years old when he became king, and he ruled for fifty-two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jecoliah; she was from Jerusalem. ⁴ He did what was right in the Lord’s eyes, just as his father Amaziah had done. ⁵ He sought God as long as Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear^[b] of God, was alive. And as long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success. ⁶ He marched against the Philistines and broke down the walls of Gath, Jabneh, and Ashdod. Then he rebuilt towns near Ashdod and elsewhere among the Philistines. ⁷ God helped him against the Philistines, the Arabs who inhabited Gur,^[c] and the Meunites. ⁸ The Meunites^[d] paid taxes to Uzziah, whose fame spread even to Egypt because he had grown so powerful. ⁹ He built towers in Jerusalem, at the Corner Gate, the Valley Gate, and at the Angle, and reinforced them. ¹⁰ He also built towers in the wilderness and dug many wells for his large herds in the lowlands and the plain. He had many workers who tended his farms and vineyards, because he loved the soil. ¹¹ Uzziah had a standing army equipped for combat whose units went to war according to the number determined by the scribe Jeiel and Maaseiah, an officer under the authority of Hananiah, one of the king’s officials. ¹² The grand total of family heads in charge of these courageous warriors was twenty-six hundred. ¹³ They commanded an army of three hundred seven thousand five hundred. They formed a powerful force that could support the king against the enemy. ¹⁴ Uzziah supplied the entire force with shields, spears, helmets, armor, bows, and sling stones. ¹⁵ He set up clever devices in Jerusalem on the towers and corners of the wall designed to shoot arrows and large stones. And so Uzziah’s fame spread far and wide, because he had received wonderful help until he became powerful.

¹⁶ But as soon as he became powerful, he grew so arrogant that he acted corruptly. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God by entering the Lord’s sanctuary to burn incense upon the incense altar. ¹⁷ The priest Azariah, accompanied by eighty other of the Lord’s courageous priests, went in after him ¹⁸ and confronted King Uzziah.

“You have no right, Uzziah,” he said, “to burn incense to the Lord! That privilege belongs to the priests, Aaron’s descendants, who have been ordained to burn incense. Get out of this holy place because you have been unfaithful! The Lord God won’t honor you for this.”

¹⁹ Then Uzziah, who already had a censer in his hand ready to burn the incense, became angry. While he was fuming at the priests, skin disease^[e] erupted on his forehead in the presence of the priests before the incense altar in the Lord’s temple. ²⁰ When Azariah the chief priest and all the other priests turned and saw the skin disease on his forehead, they rushed him out of there. Uzziah also was anxious to leave because the Lord had afflicted him. ²¹ King Uzziah had skin disease until the day he died. He lived in a separate house,^[f] diseased in his skin, because he was barred from the Lord’s temple. His son Jotham supervised the palace administration and governed the people of the land. ²² The rest of Uzziah’s deeds, from beginning to end, were written down by the prophet Isaiah, Amoz’s son. ²³ Uzziah died and was buried with his ancestors in a field belonging to the kings, because people said, “He had skin disease.” His son Jotham succeeded him as king.