Chronological

28 Ahaz was 20 years old when he became king, and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. But he did not follow the Eternal as his ancestor David had done. ^2-4 Instead, he acted like the kings of the Northern Kingdom and worshiped their gods. He polluted all the land with his idolatry, cast idols of the Baals, burned incense in the valley of Ben-hinnom (Jerusalem’s refuse pit), and sacrificed his own children. Such evil things had not happened throughout the land, on high places, hills, and under trees, since the Eternal conquered the previous inhabitants and gave the land to the Israelites. ⁵ The Eternal One, his True God, was furious with Ahaz for his apostasy, so He empowered the king of Aram to defeat the Southern Kingdom and take Judean prisoners of war to Damascus, the capital of Aram. But this wasn’t enough to satisfy God’s anger. He also empowered the Northern Kingdom to kill many of the Judeans: ⁶ Pekah (son of Remaliah) in one day killed 120,000 valiant warriors who had abandoned the Eternal One, the True God of their ancestors; ⁷ and Zichri (a Ephraimite warrior) killed Maaseiah (Ahaz’s son), Azrikam (leader of the palace), and Elkanah (vice-regent). ⁸ Then the Northern soldiers took 200,000 Judean women and children and their possessions to Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom.

⁹ As the Northern army approached Samaria, Oded, a prophet of the Eternal ran out to meet them.

¹² Then some Ephraimite chiefs—Azariah (son of Johanan), Berechiah (son of Meshillemoth), Jehizkiah (son of Shallum), and Amasa (son of Hadlai)—stopped the soldiers.

¹⁴ The soldiers obeyed. They left the prisoners and the spoils for the chiefs and the assembly to decide what to do. ¹⁵ The chiefs dressed the naked prisoners with clothes and shoes from the spoils, fed them, anointed their heads with oil to refresh them after the journey, and returned them to the southern city of Jericho (the city of palm trees) with an envoy of Northerners and the feeble riding on donkeys. Then the Northerners returned to Samaria.

^16-19 The Eternal humbled Judah with continued attacks against them because of Ahaz’s wicked rebellion against Him, which had infected the entire nation. The Edomites attacked Judah and took prisoners; the Philistines invaded the lowland and the Negev, capturing and settling in the cities and surrounding villages of Beth-shemesh, Aijalon, Gederoth, Soco, Timnah, and Gimzo.

King Ahaz asked the Assyrians for help, ²⁰ but Tilgath-pilneser, king of Assyria, recognized an opportunity to expand his empire and attacked Judah instead of helping Ahaz. ²¹ To save his kingdom from complete destruction by the Assyrian army, Ahaz gave a tribute from his own palace and from the Eternal’s temple to Tilgath-pilneser. But the tribute did not work.

²² During these disasters, King Ahaz did not return to the Eternal. Instead he persisted in his unfaithfulness ²³ by sacrificing to the Aramean gods of Damascus, the gods of the first people who had defeated him.

But these gods were the downfall of him and all Israel. ²⁴ He destroyed the vessels from the True God’s temple and stopped all worship in the Eternal’s temple. Then he built his own altars throughout Jerusalem ²⁵ and high places throughout Judah to burn incense to false gods. These actions infuriated the Eternal One, the True God of his ancestors.

²⁶ Ahaz’s remaining actions, from his birth until his death, are contained in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. ²⁷ Ahaz slept with his fathers in Jerusalem, but not in the tombs of the kings of Israel. His son, Hezekiah, succeeded him as king.

16 During the 17th year of the reign of Pekah (Remaliah’s son) as king of Israel, Ahaz (Jotham’s son) inherited the throne in Judah. ² Ahaz was 20 years old when he inherited the throne, and his reign in Jerusalem lasted 16 years. He did not do what was good in the eyes of the Eternal, his True God, unlike his ancestor, David. ³ He walked the wicked path of Israel’s kings, and he even made his own son go through the fire as a child sacrifice. He did this, modeling the abhorrent practices of nations whom the Eternal had exiled to make way for the Israelites. ⁴ He also offered sacrifices and burned incense at the high places, on hills, and beneath every green tree.

⁵ Then Rezin, Aram’s king, and Pekah (Remaliah’s son and king of Israel) approached Jerusalem with one thing in mind—war.

They laid siege to Ahaz but were unsuccessful in defeating him. ⁶ Rezin, Aram’s king, brought Elath back into Aram’s possession. He drove out the Judeans who lived there. Arameans moved back to Elath and still live there today.

⁷ Ahaz dispatched messengers to Tiglath-pileser, Assyria’s king.

⁸ Ahaz then gathered up all the silver and gold in the Eternal’s temple and in the palace treasuries, and he gave it to Assyria’s king as a gift. ⁹ Assyria’s king received the gift and listened to the message. He responded by attacking and capturing Damascus, the capital of Aram. He exiled the inhabitants of Damascus to Kir, and he killed Rezin.

¹⁰ King Ahaz traveled to Damascus to meet with Assyria’s king, Tiglath-pileser. There he laid eyes upon the altar in Damascus so he sent renderings of the altar—its patterns and design—to the priest Urijah.

¹¹ Urijah the priest then constructed an altar from the plans King Ahaz had sent from Damascus. Urijah made it an exact likeness, and he completed it before Ahaz returned from Damascus.

¹² After his return from Damascus, Ahaz saw the new altar Urijah had constructed, walked up to it, and offered ¹³ burnt offerings, meal offerings, and drink offerings and anointed the altar with blood from the peace offerings as Solomon had done when he dedicated the first bronze altar. ¹⁴ He carried the bronze altar from the entryway of the temple to the north side of the new altar, so that it remained before the Eternal One.

¹⁶ Urijah the priest followed all of King Ahaz’s instructions.

¹⁷ Then King Ahaz severed the edges of the stands and took out the basins. He removed the basin from the bronze oxen beneath it and set it on a stone platform. ¹⁸ He also took out the Sabbath canopy that was constructed in the Eternal One’s temple and the outer entryway for the king because of Assyria’s king. ¹⁹ Is not the rest of Ahaz’s story—his actions and lasting legacy—documented in the book of the chronicles of Judah’s kings? ²⁰ Ahaz left this world to sleep with his fathers and was buried with them in the city of David, as was tradition. His son, Hezekiah, then inherited the throne.

17 During the 12th year of Ahaz (Judah’s king), Hoshea (Elah’s son) inherited Israel’s throne in Samaria. His reign lasted nine years. ² He committed evil in the Eternal’s eyes, but not in the same way some of Israel’s kings had.

³ Shalmaneser, Assyria’s king, waged war against Hoshea, but Hoshea humbled himself before Shalmaneser by paying tribute. ⁴ But Shalmaneser sensed a secret plot in Hoshea who, instead of paying the expected tribute to Shalmaneser as he had done yearly, had sent messengers to So, the king of Egypt. Because of this, Assyria’s king bound and locked Hoshea in prison.

⁵ Assyria’s king then invaded Israel and besieged Samaria for three years. ⁶ During Hoshea’s ninth year, Assyria’s king captured Samaria and carried off the Israelites to exile in Assyria. The exiles were forced to stay in Halah and Habor on the Gozan River and also in the cities of the Medes.

⁷ This all happened because the Israelites had committed countless wicked deeds against their God, the Eternal One, who brought them out of Egypt and freed them from the oppression fueled by Pharaoh, Egypt’s king. They revered gods other than the Lord ⁸ and lived by the wicked traditions of the people whom the Eternal had forced out of the land before the Israelites arrived. They lived by the religious and cultural practices that Israel’s kings had introduced. ⁹ The Israelites committed unrighteous acts and tried to hide them from the Eternal their God; but of course, the Lord witnessed them all. They constructed high places everywhere, small or large—from lookout towers to fortified cities. ¹⁰ They decorated every hill and the shade of every tree with holy pillars and sacred poles. ¹¹ They burned incense at all the high places just as the people whom the Eternal One had forced out of the land before them had done. They repeated the very same sins. They did many wicked deeds, provoking the anger of the Eternal. ¹² They placed themselves in the service of idols—the same ones He had given them instructions about, commanding, “Do not do this. They are evil!”^[a]

¹³ The Eternal One gave fair warning to Israel and Judah. He gave His warning through the mouths of prophets and seers throughout the land: “Abandon your wickedness, and obey My commands and laws which I gave to your ancestors through the mouths of My servants, the prophets.”

¹⁴ But the Israelites were fools and did not heed the warning. They were stubborn just like their ancestors who did not trust in the Eternal One their God. ¹⁵ They spurned His laws and even the covenant He had entered into with their ancestors. They rejected the fair warnings He gave to them. They were devoted to their own vanity and followed the same wicked path as the neighboring nations—the ones He had instructed them not to imitate. ¹⁶ They abandoned all the laws the Eternal One their God had given to them. They crafted two golden calves, put up a sacred pole, and also praised the sun, the moon, the stars, and Baal as their master. ¹⁷ They made their children pass through the fire, they performed witchcraft and divining, and they committed evil in the eyes of the Eternal and provoked Him to burn with anger. ¹⁸ Therefore, He was furious with Israel, so He banished them from His sight. The only tribe that remained was Judah. ¹⁹ But Judah also abandoned the laws of their God, the Eternal One, and they walked the same wicked path the Israelites had walked. ²⁰ He rejected all the sons and daughters of Israel and banished them from His sight. He made them suffer and handed them over to pillagers until they were finally cast out of His presence.

²¹ After the Eternal had cut Israel out of the house of David, the people made Jeroboam (Nebat’s son) their first king. But he caused the people to turn away from the Eternal One and caused Israel to sin in every way. ²² The Israelites walked the wicked path of Jeroboam ²³ until the Eternal removed Israel from His presence, just as He had said through the mouths of His servants the prophets. The Israelites were forced to leave their own land and go live in Assyria, where they still dwell today.

²⁴ Assyria’s king transported men from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sephar-vaim, and he made them live in the Samaritan towns and cities where the Israelites had lived. Samaria now belonged to these new inhabitants of the towns and cities. ²⁵ When they first began living in Samaria, the foreigners lacked any fear of the Eternal One. So He caused lions to invade their ignorant community and kill some of the people. ²⁶ One of them contacted Assyria’s king.

²⁸ Ironically a priest who was exiled by God for not following His ways was brought back to Samaria and became responsible for teaching the new inhabitants how to revere the Eternal. He stayed at Bethel.

²⁹ Even after all of this, all the nations were still crafting their own gods and placing them in the high places built by the Samaritans, each nation in the cities where it settled. ³⁰ The Babylonian men crafted Succoth-benoth, the Cuth men crafted Nergal, the Hamath men crafted Ashima, ³¹ the Avvites crafted Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites gave their own children as burnt sacrifices to their gods Adrammelech and Anammelech. ³² They also greatly feared the Eternal One and nominated some of their own men to act as priests at the high places, interceding for them at the high places’ temples. ³³ They feared Him while at the same time honoring the gods of the nations from where they had been exiled.

³⁴ Still today, they honor the earlier traditions of the wicked people before them, and they fail to revere the Eternal properly. They do not honor the sacred laws and judgments that He gave to the descendants of Jacob (whom He called Israel). ³⁵ He entered into a sacred covenant with the new Samaritans and gave them the same sacred commands to follow.

⁴⁰ But they did not listen to the Lord’s message. Instead they did just as they had done when they lived in their own nations. ⁴¹ They feared the Eternal One while at the same time serving their own idols. Their descendants have done the same ever since.