2 Chronicles26chapter 26

2 Chronicles 26:1-3

Judah crowns a king of sixteen and Chronicles calls him Uzziah throughout, the form the prophets use, where Kings prefers Azariah at 2 Ki 14:21. The parallel account at 2 Ki 15:1-7 gives this reign seven verses; Chronicles gives it twenty-three, adding the military buildup, the husbandry, and the full scene at the incense altar that Kings only reports as a stroke. Jecoliah of Jerusalem names his mother, one of the small notices Chronicles keeps and Kings drops.

2 Chronicles 26:4-5

Verse 4 repeats the verdict Kings already gives at 2 Ki 15:3, but verse 5 is Chronicles' own addition: he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God, and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. This is the seeking refrain's clearest single statement in the book, the same verb by which the Chronicler measures Asa, Jehoshaphat and every king before him. Nothing else is known of this Zechariah; Henry reads him as a man well versed in prophecy who had great influence with Uzziah.

2 Chronicles 26:6-8

The Philistine campaign, the Arabian war at Gur-baal, and the Ammonite tribute are unique to Chronicles; Kings names none of them. Uzziah breaks down the walls of Gath, Jabneh and Ashdod and plants cities among the Philistines, pressing further than his father Amaziah had against Edom. His name spread abroad even to the entering in of Egypt states in one line what the following verses spell out in towers, wells and an army.

2 Chronicles 26:9-10

The building notice is Chronicles' own: towers at the corner gate, the valley gate and the turning of the wall, matched by towers in the desert and wells dug for cattle in the low country and the plains. For he loved husbandry closes the verse, a personal note about a king that no other book of the Bible preserves. Vine dressers in the mountains and in Carmel round out a reign given to building and farming as much as to war.

2 Chronicles 26:11-15

Chronicles alone gives the army's organization: Jeiel the scribe and Maaseiah the ruler keep the muster under Hananiah, two thousand six hundred chief officers over three hundred seven thousand five hundred men, more than his father Amaziah's army by seven thousand five hundred, per 2 Chr 25:5. Uzziah arms them with shields, spears, helmets, habergeons, bows and slings, then adds engines invented by cunning men on the towers and bulwarks to shoot arrows and great stones, an early notice of siege technology the commentators compare to the later Roman ballista and catapult. His name spread far abroad, for he was marvellously helped, till he was strong closes the buildup and sets up the turn the next verse makes.

2 Chronicles 26:16

But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction states the Chronicler's own verdict on a fall 2 Ki 15:5 never explains, reporting only that the Lord smote the king so that he was a leper. Uzziah went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense, an act the law reserved to the sons of Aaron, and Chronicles supplies the reason Kings leaves as a bare stroke from an unnamed cause.

2 Chronicles 26:17-18

Azariah the priest and fourscore priests of the Lord follow the king into the sanctuary and stand against him, a confrontation Chronicles alone records. Their charge names the law plainly: it appertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but to the priests the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense. Wesley notes that withstood renders a Hebrew phrase meaning they stood up against him by admonition and reproof rather than by force, since the censer stays in the king's hand through the next verse.

2 Chronicles 26:19-20

The leprosy rises in Uzziah's forehead while the censer is still in his hand and while he is wroth with the priests, a place Wesley reads as deliberate: the part of the body that marks those who serve at the altar now marks the man who forced his way to it. Azariah and the priests look, see the disease, and thrust him out, though Uzziah himself hasted also to go out once he understood what had struck him. The judgment lands at the altar itself, inside the house he had no right to enter.

2 Chronicles 26:21

Uzziah lives out his reign a leper, cut off from the house of the Lord and confined to a several house under the law of Leviticus 13, while Jotham his son governs as regent, judging the people of the land. This matches 2 Ki 15:5 almost word for word; Chronicles adds nothing new to the fact here but has already supplied the reason Kings never states. Henry calls it a punishment that answered the sin as face answers face in a glass.

2 Chronicles 26:22

Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, is named as the writer of Uzziah's acts, a record Chronicles cites as a source that does not survive inside the book of Isaiah as it stands; only Isa 1:1 and Isa 6:1 mention this king by name. Isaiah 6 dates the prophet's throne room vision in the year that king Uzziah died, so the reign this chapter closes is the same reign the next great prophetic call opens against. Gill records the Jewish tradition that Uzziah died the same year the leprosy struck him.

2 Chronicles 26:23

Uzziah is buried in the field of the burial which belonged to the kings but not in the sepulchres of the kings themselves, because they said, He is a leper, so the disgrace outlives him even into the ground. Barnes notes that the law separated the leper from his fellows in life, and Jewish practice kept him separate in death as well. Jotham his son reigned in his stead, closing a reign the Chronicler has measured, like every reign in the book, by whether the king sought the Lord.