Old/New Testament

15 ^1-2 New king of Judah: Azariah

³ Azariah was a good king, and he pleased the Lord just as his father Amaziah had. ⁴ But like his predecessors, he didn’t destroy the shrines on the hills where the people sacrificed and burned incense. ⁵ Because of this^[a] the Lord struck him with leprosy, which lasted until the day of his death; so he lived in a house by himself. And his son Jotham was the acting king. ⁶ The rest of the history of Azariah is recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. ⁷ When Azariah died, he was buried with his ancestors in the City of David, and his son Jotham became king.

⁹ But Zechariah was an evil king in the Lord’s sight, just like his ancestors. Like Jeroboam I (the son of Nebat), he encouraged Israel in the sin of worshiping idols. ¹⁰ Then Shallum (the son of Jabesh) conspired against him and assassinated him at Ibleam and took the crown himself. ¹¹ The rest of the history of Zechariah’s reign is found in The Annals of the Kings of Israel. ¹² (So the Lord’s statement to Jehu came true, that Jehu’s son, grandson, and great-grandson would be kings of Israel.^[b])

¹⁴ One month after Shallum became king, Menahem (the son of Gadi) came to Samaria from Tirzah and assassinated him and took the throne. ¹⁵ Additional details about King Shallum and his conspiracy^[c] are recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Israel.

¹⁶ Menahem destroyed the city of Tappuah and the surrounding countryside, for its citizens refused to accept him as their king; he killed the entire population and ripped open the pregnant women.

¹⁸ But Menahem was an evil king. He worshiped idols, as King Jeroboam I had done so long before, and he led the people of Israel into grievous sin. ^19-20 Then King Pul of Assyria invaded the land; but King Menahem bought him off with a gift of $2,000,000, so he turned around and returned home. Menahem extorted the money from the rich, assessing each one $2,000 in the form of a special tax. ²¹ The rest of the history of King Menahem is written in The Annals of the Kings of Israel. ²² When he died, his son Pekahiah became the new king.

²⁴ But Pekahiah was an evil king, and he continued the idol worship begun by Jeroboam I (son of Nebat) who led Israel down that evil trail.

²⁵ Then Pekah (son of Remaliah), the commanding general of his army, conspired against him with fifty men from Gilead and assassinated him in the palace at Samaria (Argob and Arieh were also slain in the revolt). So Pekah became the new king. ²⁶ The rest of the history of King Pekahiah is recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Israel.

²⁸ Pekah, too, was an evil king, and he continued in the example of Jeroboam I (son of Nebat), who led all of Israel into the sin of worshiping idols. ²⁹ It was during his reign that King Tiglath-pileser^[d] led an attack against Israel. He captured the cities of Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, Galilee, and all the land of Naphtali; and he took the people away to Assyria as captives. ³⁰ Then Hoshea (the son of Elah) plotted against Pekah and assassinated him; and he took the throne for himself.

³¹ The rest of the history of Pekah’s reign is recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Israel.

^34-35 Generally speaking, Jotham was a good king. Like his father Uzziah, he followed the Lord. But he didn’t destroy the shrines on the hills where the people sacrificed and burned incense. It was during King Jotham’s reign that the upper gate of the Temple of the Lord was built. ³⁶ The rest of Jotham’s history is written in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. ³⁷ In those days the Lord caused King Rezin of Syria and King Pekah of Israel to attack Judah. ³⁸ When Jotham died he was buried with the other kings of Judah in the royal cemetery, in the City of David section of Jerusalem. Then his son Ahaz became the new king.

16 New king of Judah: Ahaz

² But he did not follow the Lord as his ancestor David had; ³ he was as wicked as the kings of Israel. He even killed his own son by offering him as a burnt sacrifice to the gods, following the heathen customs of the nations around Judah—nations that the Lord destroyed when the people of Israel entered the land. ⁴ He also sacrificed and burned incense at the shrines on the hills and at the numerous altars in the groves of trees.

⁵ Then King Rezin of Syria and King Pekah (son of Remaliah) of Israel declared war on Ahaz and besieged Jerusalem; but they did not conquer it. ⁶ However, at that time King Rezin of Syria recovered the city of Elath for Syria; he drove out the Jews and sent Syrians to live there, as they do to this day. ⁷ King Ahaz sent a messenger to King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria, begging him to help him fight the attacking armies of Syria and Israel.^{[e] 8} Ahaz took the silver and gold from the Temple and from the royal vaults and sent it as a payment to the Assyrian king. ⁹ So the Assyrians attacked Damascus, the capital of Syria. They took away the population of the city as captives, resettling them in Kir, and King Rezin of Syria was killed.

¹⁰ King Ahaz now went to Damascus to meet with King Tiglath-pileser, and while he was there he noticed an unusual altar in a heathen temple.^[f] He jotted down its dimensions and made a sketch and sent it back to Uriah the priest with a detailed description. ^11-12 Uriah built one just like it by following these directions and had it ready for the king, who, upon his return from Damascus, inaugurated it with an offering. ¹³ The king presented a burnt offering and a grain offering, poured a drink offering over it, and sprinkled the blood of peace offerings upon it. ¹⁴ Then he removed the old bronze altar from the front of the Temple (it had stood between the Temple entrance and the new altar), and placed it on the north side of the new altar. ¹⁵ He instructed Uriah the priest to use the new altar for the sacrifices of burnt offering, the evening grain offering, the king’s burnt offering and grain offering, and the offerings of the people, including their drink offerings. The blood from the burnt offerings and sacrifices was also to be sprinkled over the new altar. So the old altar was used only for purposes of divination.

“The old bronze altar,” he said, “will be only for my personal use.”

¹⁶ Uriah the priest did as King Ahaz instructed him. ¹⁷ Then the king dismantled the wheeled stands in the Temple, removed their crosspieces and the water vats they supported, and removed the great tank from the backs of the bronze oxen and placed it upon the stone pavement. ¹⁸ In deference to the king of Assyria he also removed the festive passageway he had constructed between the palace and the Temple.^[g]

¹⁹ The rest of the history of the reign of King Ahaz is recorded in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. ²⁰ When Ahaz died he was buried in the royal cemetery, in the City of David sector of Jerusalem, and his son Hezekiah became the new king.

3 ^1-2 After dark one night a Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus, a member of the sect of the Pharisees, came for an interview with Jesus. “Sir,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miracles are proof enough of this.”

³ Jesus replied, “With all the earnestness I possess I tell you this: Unless you are born again, you can never get into the Kingdom of God.”

⁴ “Born again!” exclaimed Nicodemus. “What do you mean? How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

⁵ Jesus replied, “What I am telling you so earnestly is this: Unless one is born of water and the Spirit,^[a] he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. ⁶ Men can only reproduce human life, but the Holy Spirit gives new life from heaven; ⁷ so don’t be surprised at my statement that you must be born again! ⁸ Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it will go next, so it is with the Spirit. We do not know on whom he will next bestow this life from heaven.”

⁹ “What do you mean?” Nicodemus asked.

^10-11 Jesus replied, “You, a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? I am telling you what I know and have seen—and yet you won’t believe me. ¹² But if you don’t even believe me when I tell you about such things as these that happen here among men, how can you possibly believe if I tell you what is going on in heaven? ¹³ For only I, the Messiah,^[b] have come to earth and will return to heaven again. ¹⁴ And as Moses in the wilderness lifted up the bronze image of a serpent on a pole, even so I must be lifted up upon a pole, ¹⁵ so that anyone who believes in me will have eternal life. ¹⁶ For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son^[c] so that anyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.

¹⁸ “There is no eternal doom awaiting those who trust him to save them. But those who don’t trust him have already been tried and condemned for not believing in the only Son of God.