Captives Find Mercy in Samaria While Ahaz Closes the Temple

No mother is named for Ahaz, here or in 2 Kings 16:2. The numbers are hard: twenty at accession and sixteen years’ reign, yet Hezekiah is twenty-five when he succeeds (29:1), which would make Ahaz a father at eleven. Co-regencies or a copying error in one figure are the usual explanations.

“Molten images” are masekhot, figures cast in metal, the word used for Aaron’s “molten calf” in Exodus 32:4. “The ways of the kings of Israel” is the phrase used of Jehoram in 21:6, the first king of Judah to import the north’s worship.

The valley of the son of Hinnom, Ge-Hinnom, gave its name to Gehenna, the later word for hell, because of what was done here. 2 Kings 16:3 says he “made his son to pass through the fire”; Chronicles has “children”, plural. The law forbade it outright (Leviticus 18:21, Deuteronomy 18:10).

“Under every green tree” is the phrase of Deuteronomy 12:2, the places the nations served their gods and which Israel was told to destroy. Ahaz does not add a shrine; he makes the whole landscape a place of worship.

Kings and Isaiah 7 say Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel came up together against Jerusalem and could not take it. The Book of 2 Chronicles presents two separate defeats, one by each king, and says nothing of a siege. The captives taken to Damascus are never heard of again.

Isaiah will not use Pekah’s name; he calls him “the son of Remaliah” (Isaiah 7:4–9), a dismissive way of naming a usurper. A hundred and twenty thousand dead “in one day” is the largest single loss Judah suffers in the book.

Zichri kills three men of the inner court. Maaseiah “the king’s son” may be a prince or an official with that title, since Ahaz was young. Azrikam ran the palace. Elkanah was “next to the king”, mishneh, second in rank, the title Mordecai later holds (Esther 10:3).

The captives are women and children; the fighting men had died in verse 6. Two hundred thousand would have emptied whole districts of Judah. They are taken north to Samaria, and the spoil with them.

Oded shares his name with the father of Azariah, who met Asa’s returning army in 15:1–2. Prophets in Chronicles often meet an army on its way home: Azariah, Jehu son of Hanani (19:2), and now Oded, who is the only one to meet the army of the north.

“Keep under” is kavash, to subdue, the word Jeremiah uses for masters who took back their freed slaves and “brought them into subjection” (Jeremiah 34:11). Leviticus 25:46 forbade Israelites to rule over their brothers “with rigour”. Oded’s question turns the charge back on the victors.

“Deliver the captives again” is literally “send back”, the verb shuv. Oded’s demand is short and practical: undo the capture. “Fierce wrath” is haron af, the burning of anger, the strongest phrase for God’s anger that Hebrew has.

Four heads of Ephraim are named, with their fathers. One of them is Jehizkiah, the same name in Hebrew as Hezekiah, the king who will reopen the temple in the next chapter. They stand up against their own army at the city’s edge.

The word ashmah, guilt or trespass, is said three times in this one speech. The leaders count their own nation’s guilt as already great and refuse to add to it. Their words agree with Oded’s almost clause for clause.

“Armed men” is haluts, the word for soldiers stripped for action. The army gives up both prisoners and plunder to the civil leaders and the assembly, a rare moment in Scripture when soldiers surrender their spoil because of a prophet’s word.

“Expressed by name” means designated for the task. Jericho is called “the city of palm trees”, as in Deuteronomy 34:3. Many readers have heard in this scene the source of Jesus’ Samaritan in Luke 10:30–35: oil, a donkey, the road to Jericho, and help from the north.

Isaiah had told Ahaz not to fear the two kings and offered him a sign; Ahaz refused to ask one (Isaiah 7:4–12) and sent to Assyria instead. The plural “kings of Assyria” is unusual; 2 Kings 16:7 has the singular.

“Again” marks the return of an old enemy. 2 Kings 16:6 says that in these years Elath, the port Uzziah had rebuilt (26:2), was lost, and the Edomites settled there “unto this day”. The captives taken by Edom are not rescued.

Six towns fall in the lowland and the Negev. Beth-shemesh, Ajalon and Shocho have all appeared before in the book; Timnah is the town where Samson took a Philistine wife (Judges 14:1), and Gimzo, modern Jimzu near Lod, appears only here. Uzziah’s gains of 26:6 are reversed, and the Philistines settle in.

“Made Judah naked” uses para, to let loose or let run wild, the verb of Exodus 32:25, where the people “were naked; for Aaron had made them naked” at the golden calf. The King James catches the link. Judah is stripped of restraint as well as of defence.

Tilgath-pilneser is Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria, whose annals list “Jehoahaz of Judah”, Ahaz’s full name, among the kings who paid him tribute. 2 Kings 16:9 says he did take Damascus and kill Rezin. The Book of 2 Chronicles omits that benefit and records only the pressure.

“Took away a portion” is halaq, to divide up or strip. 2 Kings 16:8 calls the payment a shohad, a bribe. Even the princes’ houses are emptied, so the nobles pay for the king’s policy as well.

“In the time of his distress” uses the same Hebrew as Manasseh’s turning point in 33:12, “when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD.” Distress drives one king back to God and the other further away. “This is that king Ahaz” is the book pointing a finger.

2 Kings 16:10–16 says Ahaz saw an altar at Damascus while meeting Tiglath-pileser there, copied it and put it in the temple court. The Book of 2 Chronicles goes further and says he sacrificed to Damascus’s gods. “Ruin” is from kashal, to stumble: the gods trip him up.

Kings says Ahaz took the bronze sea off its oxen and cut the panels from the laver stands (2 Kings 16:17), likely to pay tribute. Only Chronicles says he shut the temple doors, which 29:7 explains: the lamps went out and incense ceased. The altars go up “in every corner” instead.

“Provoked to anger” is kaas, the vocabulary of Deuteronomy 32:16 and 21, where Israel provokes God with strange gods. High places are set up in every town, the very reverse of the reforms of Asa and Jehoshaphat.

Other records of Ahaz survive in 2 Kings 16 and Isaiah 7: the Damascus altar, the meeting with Isaiah at the conduit of the upper pool, and the sundial called “the dial of Ahaz” on which the shadow went back for Hezekiah (Isaiah 38:8).

Isaiah 14:28 dates an oracle “in the year that king Ahaz died.” He is buried in Jerusalem but not in the royal tombs, the third king refused them after Jehoram and Joash. The book calls them “the kings of Israel”, and Hezekiah’s reign will bring north and south to one Passover.