Chronological

Ahaz King of Judah

28 Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he ruled sixteen years in Jerusalem. Unlike his ancestor David, he did not do what the Lord said was right. ² Ahaz did the same things the kings of Israel had done. He made metal idols to worship Baal. ³ He burned incense in the Valley of Ben Hinnom and made his children pass through the fire. He did the same hateful sins as the nations had done whom the Lord had forced out of the land ahead of the Israelites. ⁴ Ahaz offered sacrifices and burned incense at the places where gods were worshiped, and on the hills, and under every green tree.

⁵ So the Lord his God handed over Ahaz to the king of Aram. The Arameans defeated Ahaz and took many people of Judah as prisoners to Damascus.

He also handed over Ahaz to Pekah king of Israel, and Pekah’s army killed many soldiers of Ahaz. ⁶ The army of Pekah son of Remaliah killed one hundred twenty thousand brave soldiers from Judah in one day. Pekah defeated them because they had left the Lord, the God of their ancestors. ⁷ Zicri, a warrior from Ephraim, killed King Ahaz’s son Maaseiah. He also killed Azrikam, the officer in charge of the palace, and Elkanah, who was second in command to the king. ⁸ The Israelite army captured two hundred thousand of their own relatives. They took women, sons and daughters, and many valuable things from Judah and carried them back to Samaria. ⁹ But a prophet of the Lord named Oded was there. He met the Israelite army when it returned to Samaria and said to them, “The Lord, the God of your ancestors, handed Judah over to you, because he was angry with those people. But God has seen the cruel way you killed them. ¹⁰ Now you plan to make the people of Judah and Jerusalem your slaves, but you also have sinned against the Lord your God. ¹¹ Now listen to me. Send back your brothers and sisters whom you captured, because the Lord is very angry with you.”

¹² Then some of the leaders in Ephraim—Azariah son of Jehohanan, Berekiah son of Meshillemoth, Jehizkiah son of Shallum, and Amasa son of Hadlai—met the Israelite soldiers coming home from war. ¹³ They warned the soldiers, “Don’t bring the prisoners from Judah here. If you do, we will be guilty of sin against the Lord, and that will make our sin and guilt even worse. Our guilt is already so great that he is angry with Israel.”

¹⁴ So the soldiers left the prisoners and valuable things in front of the officers and people there. ¹⁵ The leaders who were named took the prisoners and gave those who were naked the clothes that the Israelite army had taken. They gave the prisoners clothes, sandals, food, drink, and medicine. They put the weak prisoners on donkeys and took them back to their families in Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they returned home to Samaria.

^16-17 At that time the Edomites came again and attacked Judah and carried away prisoners. So King Ahaz sent to the king of Assyria for help. ¹⁸ The Philistines also robbed the towns in the western hills and in southern Judah. They captured the towns of Beth Shemesh, Aijalon, Gederoth, Soco, Timnah, and Gimzo, and the villages around them. Then the Philistines lived in those towns. ¹⁹ The Lord brought trouble on Judah because Ahaz their king led the people of Judah to sin, and he was unfaithful to the Lord. ²⁰ Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria came to Ahaz, but he gave Ahaz trouble instead of help. ²¹ Ahaz took some valuable things from the Temple of the Lord, from the palace, and from the princes, and he gave them to the king of Assyria, but it did not help.

²² During Ahaz’s troubles he was even more unfaithful to the Lord. ²³ He offered sacrifices to the gods of the people of Damascus, who had defeated him. He thought, “The gods of the kings of Aram helped them. If I offer sacrifices to them, they will help me also.” But this brought ruin to Ahaz and all Israel.

²⁴ Ahaz gathered the things from the Temple of God and broke them into pieces. Then he closed the doors of the Temple of the Lord. He made altars and put them on every street corner in Jerusalem. ²⁵ In every town in Judah, Ahaz made places for burning sacrifices to worship other gods. So he made the Lord, the God of his ancestors, very angry.

²⁶ The other things Ahaz did as king, from beginning to end, are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. ²⁷ Ahaz died and was buried in the city of Jerusalem, but not in the graves of the kings of Israel. Ahaz’s son Hezekiah became king in his place.

Ahaz King of Judah

16 Ahaz was the son of Jotham king of Judah. Ahaz became king of Judah in the seventeenth year Pekah son of Remaliah was king of Israel. ² Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he ruled sixteen years in Jerusalem. Unlike his ancestor David, he did not do what the Lord his God said was right. ³ Ahaz did the same things the kings of Israel had done. He even made his son pass through fire. He did the same hateful sins as the nations had done whom the Lord had forced out of the land ahead of the Israelites. ⁴ Ahaz offered sacrifices and burned incense at the places where gods were worshiped, on the hills, and under every green tree.

⁵ Rezin king of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah, the king of Israel, came up to attack Jerusalem. They surrounded Ahaz but could not defeat him. ⁶ At that time Rezin king of Aram took back the city of Elath for Aram, and he forced out all the people of Judah. Then Edomites moved into Elath, and they still live there today.

⁷ Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria, saying, “I am your servant and your friend. Come and save me from the king of Aram and the king of Israel, who are attacking me.” ⁸ Ahaz took the silver and gold that was in the Temple of the Lord and in the treasuries of the palace, and he sent these as a gift to the king of Assyria. ⁹ So the king of Assyria listened to Ahaz. He attacked Damascus and captured it and sent all its people away to Kir. And he killed Rezin.

¹⁰ Then King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria. Ahaz saw an altar at Damascus, and he sent plans and a pattern of this altar to Uriah the priest. ¹¹ So Uriah the priest built an altar, just like the plans King Ahaz had sent him from Damascus. Uriah finished the altar before King Ahaz came back from Damascus. ¹² When the king arrived from Damascus, he saw the altar and went near and offered sacrifices on it. ¹³ He burned his burnt offerings and grain offerings and poured out his drink offering. He also sprinkled the blood of his fellowship offerings on the altar.

¹⁴ Ahaz moved the bronze altar that was before the Lord at the front of the Temple. It was between Ahaz’s altar and the Temple of the Lord, but he put it on the north side of his altar. ¹⁵ King Ahaz commanded Uriah the priest, “On the large altar burn the morning burnt offering, the evening grain offering, the king’s burnt offering and grain offering, and the whole burnt offering, the grain offering, and the drink offering for all the people of the land. Sprinkle on the altar all the blood of the burnt offering and of the sacrifice. But I will use the bronze altar to ask questions of God.” ¹⁶ So Uriah the priest did everything as King Ahaz commanded him.

¹⁷ Then King Ahaz took off the side panels from the bases and removed the washing bowls from the top of the bases. He also took the large bowl, which was called the Sea, off the bronze bulls that held it up, and he put it on a stone base. ¹⁸ Ahaz took away the platform for the royal throne, which had been built at the Temple of the Lord. He also took away the outside entrance for the king. He did these things because of the king of Assyria.

¹⁹ The other things Ahaz did as king are written in the book of the history of the kings of Judah. ²⁰ Ahaz died and was buried with his ancestors in Jerusalem, and Ahaz’s son Hezekiah became king in his place.

Hoshea, Last King of Israel

17 Hoshea son of Elah became king over Israel during Ahaz’s twelfth year as king of Judah. Hoshea ruled in Samaria nine years. ² He did what the Lord said was wrong, but he was not as bad as the kings of Israel who had ruled before him.

³ Shalmaneser king of Assyria came to attack Hoshea. Hoshea had been Shalmaneser’s servant and had made the payments to Shalmaneser that he had demanded. ⁴ But the king of Assyria found out that Hoshea had made plans against him by sending messengers to So, the king of Egypt. Hoshea had also stopped giving Shalmaneser the payments, which he had paid every year in the past. For that, the king put Hoshea in prison. ⁵ Then the king of Assyria came and attacked all the land of Israel. He surrounded Samaria and attacked it for three years. ⁶ He defeated Samaria in the ninth year Hoshea was king, and he took the Israelites away to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River, and in the cities of the Medes.

Israelites Punished for Sin

⁷ All these things happened because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God. He had brought them out of Egypt and had rescued them from the power of the king of Egypt, but the Israelites had honored other gods. ⁸ They lived like the nations the Lord had forced out of the land ahead of them. They lived as their evil kings had shown them, ⁹ secretly sinning against the Lord their God. They built places to worship gods in all their cities, from the watchtower to the strong, walled city. ¹⁰ They put up stone pillars to gods and Asherah idols on every high hill and under every green tree. ¹¹ The Israelites burned incense everywhere gods were worshiped, just as the nations who lived there before them had done, whom the Lord had forced out of the land. The Israelites did wicked things that made the Lord angry. ¹² They served idols when the Lord had said, “You must not do this.” ¹³ The Lord used every prophet and seer to warn Israel and Judah. He said, “Stop your evil ways and obey my commands and laws. Follow all the teachings that I commanded your ancestors, the teachings that I gave you through my servants the prophets.”

¹⁴ But the people would not listen. They were stubborn, just as their ancestors had been who did not believe in the Lord their God. ¹⁵ They rejected the Lord’s laws and the agreement he had made with their ancestors. And they refused to listen to his warnings. They worshiped useless idols and became useless themselves. They did what the nations around them did, which the Lord had warned them not to do.

¹⁶ The people rejected all the commands of the Lord their God. They molded statues of two calves, and they made an Asherah idol. They worshiped all the stars of the sky and served Baal. ¹⁷ They made their sons and daughters pass through fire and tried to find out the future by magic and witchcraft. They always chose to do what the Lord said was wrong, which made him angry. ¹⁸ Because he was very angry with the people of Israel, he removed them from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah was left.

Judah Is Also Guilty

¹⁹ But even Judah did not obey the commands of the Lord their God. They did what the Israelites had done, ²⁰ so the Lord rejected all the people of Israel. He punished them and let others destroy them; he threw them out of his presence. ²¹ When the Lord separated them from the family of David, the Israelites made Jeroboam son of Nebat their king. Jeroboam led the Israelites away from the Lord and led them to sin greatly. ²² So they continued to do all the sins Jeroboam did. They did not stop doing these sins ²³ until the Lord removed the Israelites from his presence, just as he had said through all his servants the prophets. So the Israelites were taken out of their land to Assyria, and they have been there to this day.

The Beginning of the Samaritan People

²⁴ The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and put them in the cities of Samaria to replace the Israelites. These people took over Samaria and lived in the cities. ²⁵ At first they did not worship the Lord, so he sent lions among them which killed some of them. ²⁶ The king of Assyria was told, “You sent foreigners into the cities of Samaria who do not know the law of the god of the land. This is why he has sent lions among them. The lions are killing them because they don’t know what the god wants.”

²⁷ Then the king of Assyria commanded, “Send back one of the priests you took away. Let him live there and teach the people what the god wants.” ²⁸ So one of the priests who had been carried away from Samaria returned to live in Bethel. And he taught the people how to honor the Lord.

²⁹ But each nation made gods of its own and put them in the cities where they lived and in the temples where gods were worshiped. These temples had been built by the Samaritans. ³⁰ The people from Babylon made Succoth Benoth their god. The people from Cuthah worshiped Nergal. The people of Hamath worshiped Ashima. ³¹ The Avvites worshiped Nibhaz and Tartak. The Sepharvites burned their children in the fire, sacrificing them to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. ³² They also honored the Lord, but they chose priests for the places where gods were worshiped. The priests were chosen from among themselves, and they made sacrifices for the people. ³³ The people honored the Lord but also served their own gods, just as the nations did from which they had been brought. ³⁴ Even today they do as they did in the past. They do not worship the Lord nor obey his rules and commands. They do not obey the teachings or the commands of the Lord, which he gave to the children of Jacob, whom he had named Israel. ³⁵ The Lord had made an agreement with them and had commanded them, “Do not honor other gods. Do not bow down to them or worship them or offer sacrifices to them. ³⁶ Worship the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and strength. Bow down to him and offer sacrifices to him. ³⁷ Always obey the rules, orders, teachings, and commands he wrote for you. Do not honor other gods. ³⁸ Do not forget the agreement I made with you, and do not honor other gods. ³⁹ Instead worship the Lord your God, who will save you from all your enemies.”

⁴⁰ But the Israelites did not listen. They kept on doing the same things they had done before. ⁴¹ So these nations honored the Lord but also worshiped their idols, and their children and grandchildren still do as their ancestors did.