Strong Enough to Build Towers, Not Entitled to Burn Incense

Kings mostly calls him Azariah, “the LORD has helped” (2 Kings 15:1–7); Chronicles uses Uzziah, “the LORD is my strength”. The chapter seems to play on both names, with “help” and “strength” recurring through verses 7–16. “All the people of Judah” make him king, as the people of Jerusalem had made Ahaziah king in 22:1.

Eloth, Elath on the Gulf of Aqaba, was Judah’s window on the Red Sea beside Solomon’s port at Ezion-geber (8:17), lost when Edom broke away (21:8). “After that the king slept with his fathers” means after Amaziah’s death: the son finishes what the father’s Edomite war began.

Fifty-two years is the second longest reign in Judah, behind Manasseh’s fifty-five (33:1). The figure likely includes years as co-ruler beside his father. His mother Jecoliah’s name means “the LORD is able”; like Amaziah’s mother she was a native of Jerusalem.

Being compared to Amaziah is double-edged, since Amaziah began well and turned. The comparison, taken from 2 Kings 15:3, fits Uzziah’s own course exactly: good in the first part of the reign, and then a turn in the second.

“Understanding in the visions of God” is the reading of most Hebrew manuscripts; some manuscripts and the Greek read “in the fear of God”, the two words differing by a letter. “As long as” sets a limit in time, and “prosper” is the verb tsalah that Zechariah son of Jehoiada used in 24:20.

Gath, Jabneh and Ashdod were Philistine cities of the coastal plain. Jabneh became Jamnia, where Jewish scholars gathered after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70. “Built cities about Ashdod” means Judah planted its own settlements inside Philistine land.

“God helped him” is azar, the root of Uzziah’s other name, Azariah. Gur-baal is otherwise unknown, somewhere on the desert fringe. The Mehunims are the Meunites of the southern desert, probably the same people the Greek finds behind the obscure phrase of 20:1.

Ammon lay north-east, well away from the peoples just named; the Greek reads “Meunites” here too, which would keep the verse in the south. “The entering in of Egypt” means the border at the Brook of Egypt. “Strengthened himself exceedingly” is hazaq with a superlative, “to the very top”.

The corner gate is where Joash of Israel’s breach ended in 25:23: Uzziah rebuilds exactly where his father’s wall came down. The valley gate is the one Nehemiah rode out of by night to inspect the ruins (Nehemiah 2:13). “The turning” is an angle in the wall.

“He loved husbandry” is literally “he was a lover of the soil”, ohev adamah; Noah is the first “man of the soil” (Genesis 9:20). Carmel here probably means the garden country near Hebron, Nabal’s Carmel (1 Samuel 25:2), not the mountain in the north. The low country is the Shephelah; the plains are the tablelands.

“By bands” means in raiding companies or regular units. The muster is kept on paper by a scribe, Jeiel, and an officer, Maaseiah, under a named captain: the army exists as a written roll, not merely a levy called out in a crisis.

The officers are counted apart from the ranks, and drawn from the heads of clans, so command followed family standing. Two thousand six hundred leaders for the army of the next verse is about one to every hundred and eighteen men, which suggests units far smaller than the “thousands” of the officers’ titles.

Three hundred and seven thousand five hundred, a little above Amaziah’s three hundred thousand of 25:5. The purpose clause is “to help the king”, azar again: the whole army is described as help, the thing the chapter keeps attributing to God.

“Habergeons” are coats of mail, shiryon, scale armour. Uzziah “prepared for them”, which means the state supplied helmets and mail for the whole army rather than each man bringing his own. “Slings to cast stones” is literally sling stones, the smooth pebbles of a slinger’s pouch.

“Engines” are hishbonot, “inventions”, and the Hebrew piles up the root: devices devised by a deviser. “Marvellously helped” uses hifli, to do wonders, with azar, help: the Azariah name again. The phrase “till he was strong” marks the moment when help and strength part ways.

“Destruction” is from the root shahat, to ruin, as in the counsel of Ahab’s house that led Ahaziah “to his destruction” (22:4). 2 Kings 15:5 says only that the LORD struck the king with leprosy, and gives no cause. Josephus adds that an earthquake struck as he entered, linking it to the earthquake of Amos 1:1.

The chief priest is called Azariah, the same name Kings gives the king. One Azariah goes in after the other. “Valiant men” is bene hayil, the phrase for warriors: eighty priests go into the sanctuary to face down the king who had just built an army of three hundred thousand.

Aaron was charged to burn incense morning and evening (Exodus 30:7–8). After Korah’s followers died offering incense, their censers were hammered into a covering for the altar as a memorial “that no stranger, which is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to offer incense” (Numbers 16:40).

The mark appears on his forehead, the place where the high priest wore the gold plate engraved “HOLINESS TO THE LORD” (Exodus 28:36–38). Miriam was struck the same way when she challenged Moses’ standing (Numbers 12:10). The anger and the affliction arrive together.

Leviticus 13:3 makes the priest the one who looks at a skin disease and pronounces on it. Here the priests do their ordinary duty on the king: they look, and they declare him unclean. “Hasted” is the verb for a hurried, frightened exit.

“A several house” is beit hahofshit, literally “house of freedom”, perhaps meaning a house of release from duties. The law required the leper to “dwell alone” outside the camp (Leviticus 13:46). Jotham governs as regent, “judging the people of the land”, while his father still lives.

No such writing of Isaiah on Uzziah survives. Isaiah’s own book dates his call vision “in the year that king Uzziah died” (Isaiah 6:1), a vision in the temple, with smoke filling the house, that stands in pointed contrast to the king who entered to burn incense.

The king is buried in the field beside the royal tombs, not inside them. In 1931 a stone plaque from the late Second Temple period was found in Jerusalem, inscribed in Aramaic: “Hither were brought the bones of Uzziah, king of Judah. Do not open.” His remains had been moved, but the separation was still remembered.