2 Chronicleschapter 28
27 verses · Ezra, by tradition · 450 to 400 BC · History
Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. And unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD.
Introduction
Ezra, by tradition, History, 2 Chronicles Overview.
This chapter was written for a people who had watched the northern kingdom fall and wanted to know how far back Judah's own trouble reached. It tells of the worst king of Judah the book had yet recorded. Enemies press in on every side, and each loss is given the same cause. In the middle of the chapter the scene moves north to Samaria for a surprising act of mercy. Listen for who obeys a prophet and who does not. Notice where the king turns for help, and what the help costs him.
Context
- Who
- A people who had watched the northern kingdom fall and needed to know how far back the trouble reached
- What
- The reign of Ahaz: idolatry and child sacrifice, defeats by Aram, Israel, Edom and Philistia, the release of Judah's captives by Israel, and the closing of the temple.
- Where
- Jerusalem and the borders of Judah, with one scene at Samaria in the northern kingdom.
- When
- About 732 to 716 BC, in the years when Assyria took control of the region.
- Why
- To show that Judah's losses in these years came from forsaking the LORD, and that the kingdom of David had been outdone in mercy by the north.
Historical context
The chapter is Ahaz's, and in it he is king of Judah in the years when Assyria took control of the whole region. He is named in verse 20 opposite Tiglath-pileser, the Assyrian king he paid and gained nothing from.
Show the rest of the historical context, 4 more paragraphs
The time is the last third of the eighth century BC, and Thiele's synchronisms put the reign at roughly 732 to 716 BC. The years are held with reasonable confidence, since the Assyrian records of the period give the region a fixed chronology.
The place is Jerusalem and the country around it. Aram strikes from the north east and carries captives to Damascus, Israel strikes from the north, Edom raids from the south east, and the Philistines take six named towns in the foothills and the Negev. One scene stands outside Judah altogether, on the road into Samaria.
The occasion is a two front war that Judah lost. Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel are the same pair Isaiah 7:1 names marching on Jerusalem in these years, and Ahaz answers by buying an alliance with the empire behind them both.
A first hearer knew what a reader today has to be told. Sacrificing a child in the Valley of Hinnom was a practice of the nations around Judah and was forbidden by name in the law. Shutting the doors of the temple stopped the whole calendar of national worship at once, since no other house was lawful. And a king buried in Jerusalem but outside the tombs of the kings had been refused an honour every hearer would have expected him to receive.
Significance
For Judah this chapter said that the losses of these years had one cause and that the cause was in the palace. Every defeat is given the same reason in the same words, that they had forsaken the LORD.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
It also said something harder about the north. Four named men of Ephraim heard a prophet and gave back what their army had taken, in the same chapter where the son of David burned his own children. A hearer in Jerusalem was being told that the covenant kingdom had been outdone by the kingdom it had written off.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
Chronicles stands among the Writings in the Hebrew canon, and the annual cycle of Torah portions and their Haftarot draws on other books. A Jewish reader meets this chapter in study rather than in a reading appointed for a Sabbath or a feast, and the site's own reading data records the same for every chapter.
This is the chapter in which the service stops. Rashi says the king shut the doors so that the priests would not come to serve in the house (Rashi on II Chronicles 28:24:1). Worship was moved out to the altars the king had set up on every corner of the city. Rashi reads the opening of the doors in the next chapter as the undoing of exactly that act.
How it is read
The word the text uses for what the king did to Judah is read as exposure. Rashi glosses it from the making bare of the people at the golden calf and from the breaches in the song of Deborah (Rashi on II Chronicles 28:19:1). The Assyrian alliance is read as a request that failed. Rashi says the Assyrian king came because Ahaz had sent for him, and that his taking of Damascus was no real help to Judah (Rashi on II Chronicles 28:20:1, and 28:21:1). The cities the Philistines had taken were never restored.
Rashi also keeps the named men of the north in view. The men who clothed and carried the captives are the heads of the sons of Ephraim named earlier in the chapter (Rashi on II Chronicles 28:15:1). The Philistine raid he places on the country opposite them, the lowland and the south (Rashi on II Chronicles 28:18:1).
Metzudat David is heavier on this chapter than anywhere else in the range, at 28:3:1, 28:6:1, 28:8:1, 28:9:1, 28:10:1, 28:11:1, 28:12:1, 28:13:1, 28:14:1, 28:16:1, 28:22:1 and 28:23:1. Malbim comments at 28:1:1, 28:5:1, 28:6:1 and 28:17:1, and Radak at 28:27:1. The corpus holds no English text for any of them, so all three stand cited and unquoted.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries twenty-seven locators on this chapter and holds the locator alone for each. The Babylonian Talmud carries it at Sanhedrin 94a:12 and 103a:7, Sotah 42a:9, Megillah 11a:17 and Berakhot 10b:7. The Jerusalem Talmud carries it at Sotah 8:2:1, Pesachim 5:6:2 and 9:1:6, and Nedarim 6:8:8. Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition) carries it at Sotah 8:1, Megillah 1:15 and Sanhedrin 11:79. The Rabbah collections carry it at Esther Rabbah 1:2 and Petichta 10, Eikhah Rabbah Petichta 14, Vayikra Rabbah 36:3 and Bereshit Rabbah 37:3. The halakhic midrashim carry it at Sifrei Devarim 192:2 and Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 5:15:6 and 20:3:1. Midrash Lekach Tov carries it at Genesis 10:9:2, the Tanchuma at Shmini 9:1 and Midrash Tehillim at 105:2. The rest are Sifrei Aggadah on Esther Midrash Panim Acherim Version II 1:2, Seder Olam Rabbah 20:2 and 22:2, and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 62:1.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on II Chronicles, the Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg (Sefaria, CC-BY); Malbim, Malbim on II Chronicles 28, cited by ref from the Sefaria corpus, which holds no English version of it; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on II Chronicles 28, cited by ref from the Sefaria corpus, which holds no English version of it; Radak, Radak on II Chronicles 28, cited by ref from the Sefaria corpus, which holds no English version of it; The Sefaria corpus on disk, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/2-chronicles/28.json, fetched 2026-09-19; The reading data of this site, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed in this lane: 2-chronicles parashot 0, haftarah uses 0, hasSynagogueReading true for 0 of 36 chapters.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Ahaz burns his own children, and Judah is slaughtered
2 Chronicles 28:1-3
unlike David his father: Verse 2 adds “cast images of the Baals”. Verse 3 has him sacrifice “his sons in the fire”, plural, in the Valley of Hinnom, where 2 Kings 16:3 names one son. Chronicles builds its catalogue past the Kings account, naming the valley Josiah will later defile in 2 Kings 23:10.
2 Chronicles 28:1
“Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign,.... These verses are much the same with 2Ki 16:2, only in 2Ch 28:2 it is said, he made also molten images for Baalim; the several Baals or idols of the nations round about, as well as served Jeroboam's calves; see Jdg 2:11, and he is said in 2Ch 28:3, to burn incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom; to Molech, the god of the Ammonites, who was worshipped there. See Gill on 2Ki 16:2, 2Ki 16:3, 2Ki 16:4.”
2 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
2 Chronicles 28:1
“This chapter is supplemental in character, The writer seems to assume that the narrative of Kings (marginal reference) is known, and is mainly anxious to add points which the author of that narrative has omitted.”
2 Chronicles 28:1
“This prince, discarding the principles and example of his excellent father, early betrayed a strong bias to idolatry. He ruled with an arbitrary and absolute authority, and not as a theocratic sovereign: he not only forsook the temple of God, but embraced first the symbolic worship established in the sister kingdom, and afterwards the gross idolatry practised by the Canaanites.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
made cast images of the Baals: To walk in the ways of the kings of Israel is to follow the worship Jeroboam set up. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown see Ahaz moving from that pattern to the idolatry of Canaan. Barnes takes the plural Baals as images of the forms under which the Phoenician god was worshiped.
2 Chronicles 28:2
“Images for Baalim - Or, to serve as Baalim, i. e as representatives of the different forms or characters of the chief Phoenician deity.”
burned incense in the Valley of Hinnom: The Valley of Hinnom lies south of Jerusalem. The law forbids the practice at Leviticus 18:21 and Deuteronomy 18:10 as one of the abominations of the nations. Clarke reports a Targum tradition that the Word of the LORD rescued the young Hezekiah from among his father's victims.
2 Chronicles 28:3
“Burnt his children in the fire - There is a most remarkable addition here in the Chaldee which I shall give at length: “Ahaz burnt his children in the fire; but the Word of the Lord snatched Hezekiah from among them; for it was manifest before the Lord that the three righteous men, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, were to proceed from him; who should deliver up their bodies that they might be cast into a burning fiery furnace, on account of the great and glorious Name, (יהוה) and from which they should escape.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Chronicles 28:4-6
under every green tree: Chronicles gives a count Kings never gives, 120,000 valiant men killed by Pekah in one day. The narrator states the cause, “because they had forsaken the LORD, the God of their fathers”. 2 Kings 16 sums up the war in one clause about a failed siege.
2 Chronicles 28:4
“He sacrificed also etc - Compare 2Ki 16:4.”
who struck him with great force: Barnes notes that these two defeats appear only in Chronicles, and that the war with the two kings probably ran over several years. Matthew Henry points to the fit of the punishment. Ahaz copied the kings of Israel, and a king of Israel became the rod that struck him.
2 Chronicles 28:5
“Never was such bloody work made among them since they were a kingdom, and by Israelites too. Ahaz walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and the king of Israel was the instrument God made use of for his punishment. It is just with God to make those our plagues whom we make our patterns or make ourselves partners with in sin.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 28:5
“The two battles here mentioned, one with Rezin (king of Syria), and the other with Pekah (king of Israel) are additions to the narrative of the writer of Kings (marginal reference “g”). The events of the Syro-Israelite war were probably spread over several years.”
killed 120,000 valiant men in Judah: Gill sets the loss beside the five hundred thousand of Israel who fell before Abijah at 13:17, when Judah relied on the LORD. So this battle reverses that earlier one. Barnes suggests a complete defeat followed by panic to account for so many dead in one day.
2 Chronicles 28:6
“For Pekah son of Remaliah,.... Who was at this time king of Israel: slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day, which were all valiant men; a great slaughter to be made at one time, and of valiant men, but not so great as that in 2Ch 13:17, because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers; this was not a reason with Pekah for slaying them, he himself being an idolater, but why the Lord suffered them to be slain by him.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 28:6
“A hundred and twenty thousand - It is very probable that there is a mistake in this number. It is hardly possible that a hundred and twenty thousand men could have been slain in one day; yet all the versions and MSS. agree in this number. The whole people seem to have been given up into the hands of their enemies.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Chronicles 28:7-8
Elkanah the second to the king: Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, kills three men close to the throne, officials Kings never names. Verse 8 adds 200,000 captives, women, sons and daughters, taken to Samaria with the plunder. Chronicles alone preserves this second catastrophe of the war, which sets up the confrontation of verse 9.
2 Chronicles 28:7
“And Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, slew Maaseiah the king's son,.... Who therefore must have escaped being burnt in the valley of Hinnom, or only was caused to pass through the fire there, 2Ch 28:3, and Azrikam the governor of the house; steward or treasurer in the king's house, in the same office as Sheban was, Isa 22:15. and Elkanah that was next to the king: prime minister of state.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 28:7
“Maaseiah was either an officer called “the king’s son” (compare 1Ki 22:26), or perhaps a son of Jotham, since Ahaz could hardly have had a son old enough to take part in the battle (compare 2Ch 28:1). Elkanah, as “second to the king,” was probably the chief of the royal counselors.”
brought it to Samaria: The captives are kinsmen, and the law forbade an Israelite to rule a brother Israelite harshly as a slave in Leviticus 25:39-46. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown cite that law and Micah 2:8-9 against the army's plan. Matthew Henry faults the fury and hatred toward brothers with which this army fought.
2 Chronicles 28:8
“They had indeed shed the blood of war in war; we suppose that to be lawful, but it turned into sin to them, because they did it from a bad principle of enmity to their brethren and after a bad manner, with a barbarous fury, a rage reaching up to heaven, that is, that cried to God for vengeance against such bloody men, that delighted in military execution.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Oded stops the captors: the prisoners clothed, fed, and sent home
2 Chronicles 28:9-11
a prophet of the LORD named Oded: A prophet named Oded meets the army before it reaches Samaria, one of the prophets Chronicles alone records, as with Shemaiah in chapter 11. He names the slaughter as sin, done “in a rage that reaches up to heaven”. Spurgeon preached on this passage in his sermon A Home Question.
2 Chronicles 28:9
“Nothing more is known of this Oded. Compare 2Ch 15:1. He went out before the host - Rather, “He went out to meet the host,” as the same phrase is translated in 2Ch 15:2. A rage that reacheth up to heaven - i. e. not merely an exceedingly great and violent rage, but one that has displeased God.”
are you not also guilty before the LORD your God?: Barnes observes that the northern tribes had left the faith more completely than Judah, which left them no ground to press harder on their brothers. Henry draws out the prophet's reasoning: if judgment has fallen on Judah, the worshipers of the calves at Bethel and Dan have more to fear.
2 Chronicles 28:10
“And now ye purpose to keep under the children of Judah and Jerusalem for bondmen and bondwomen unto you,.... As seemed by taking and bringing captive such a number of them, contrary to the law, Lev 25:39. but are there not with you, even with you, sins against the Lord your God? for which they deserved to be chastised as well as their brethren the men of Judah, and might expect it, and especially if they used them in a barbarous manner, and contrary to the will of God.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Chronicles 28:10
“THIS WAS A HOME STROKE. When the children of Israel had bloodthirsty thoughts towards their brethren of Judah, the prophet very earnestly dissuaded them. “Why deal ye so sternly with your brethren who are in your power, simply because they have sinned. Smite them not too furiously, for are there not with you, even with you, sins against the Lord your God?” How remarkably pertinent is such a question to different nations, to different sects, to different classes among men. We are too apt to look upon the sins of other nations and forget our own.”
2 Chronicles 28:10
"You are sinners, and it ill becomes sinners to be proud; you have carried the day now, but be not secure, the wheel may ere long return upon yourselves, for, if judgment begin thus with those that have the house of God among them, what shall be the end of such as worship the calves?" [2.] To their severity towards their brethren.
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
return the captives you took from your kinsmen: Oded closes with a command and a warning. Gill takes the order to cover all two hundred thousand of verse 8, women and children included. Matthew Henry reads the warning as a door left open, since mercy to the captives was the one way Israel had to escape that anger.
2 Chronicles 28:11
“Now hear me therefore,.... And not only hear, but be obedient: and deliver the captives again, which ye have taken of your brethren; their women, sons and daughters, even all of them, the whole 200,000: for the fierce wrath of God is upon you; hangs over your heads, and will fall upon you, unless you do this.”
2 Chronicles 28:12-14
Four named leaders of Ephraim, Azariah, Berechiah, Jehizkiah and Amasa, stand against the returning army and take up Oded's charge as their own confession. The armed men yield without a further word and leave the captives and the plunder “before the leaders and all the assembly”.
2 Chronicles 28:12
“In this they discovered an obedient regard to the word of God by his prophet and a tender compassion towards their brethren, which was wrought in them by the tender mercy of God; for he regarded the affliction of this poor people, and hears their cry, and made them to be pitied of all those that carried them captive, Ps. cvi.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The leaders of Ephraim refuse to let the captives into Samaria. Matthew Henry sees in their decision a real regard for the prophet's word and a pity God Himself worked in them. He cites Psalm 106:46, where the LORD makes His people pitied by their captors.
So the armed men left the captives and the plunder: Gill notes that the plunder went with the captives for the leaders to dispose of. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown credit the prophet's rebuke for the outcome. Matthew Henry counts the army's yielding braver than the victory that took the captives, since it gave up gain at the word of God.
2 Chronicles 28:14
“So the armed men left the captives and the spoil before the princes and the congregation. Which were come out of Samaria to meet them; such an effect had the word's of the prophet, and the princes, upon them, that they not only left the captives with them, but the spoil, to dispose of, as they thought fit.”
provided from the plunder clothing for the naked: The named men carry out Oded's word in full. They bring them to “Jericho, the City of Palms, to their brothers” and then return to Samaria. Commentators have set this scene beside the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10, where mercy is shown on the road to Jericho.
2 Chronicles 28:15
“Jericho, which lies much farther from Samaria than many points of the territory of Judah, was perhaps selected because the captives had been carried off principally from this point; or because there may have been less danger of falling in with portions of Pekah’s army on this than on the direct route.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 28:15
“It is strange that these princes, who in this instance discovered such a deference to the word of God, and such an influence upon the people, had not so much grace as, in obedience to the calls of God by so many prophets, to root idolatry out of their kingdom, which, soon after this, was the ruin of it.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Assyria's help that distressed instead of strengthened
2 Chronicles 28:16-18
King Ahaz sent for help from the king of Assyria: Ahaz answers his losses by sending to the king of Assyria, the appeal 2 Kings 16:7 records with his pledge. Chronicles leaves out that pledge and widens the picture of the collapse. The Philistines take cities of the foothills and the Negev, a raid list Kings does not carry.
2 Chronicles 28:16
“The kings of Assyria to help him - Instead of מלכי malchey; Kings; the Vulgate, Syriac, Arabic, and Chaldee, one MS., and the parallel place, 2Ki 16:7, have מלך melek, King, in the singular number. This king was Tiglath-pileser, as we learn from the second book of Kings.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The Edomites had again come and attacked Judah: Gill links this raid to the weakness of Ahaz's position and sees it as one reason he sent to Assyria. Barnes suggests Edom may have acted in league with Rezin. He adds that the prophets rebuke Edom for turning on Judah, as at Amos 1:11 and Obadiah 10-14.
2 Chronicles 28:17
“For again the Edomites had come,.... As in the days of Jehoshaphat, 2Ch 20:10, and smitten Judah, and carried away captives; taking the advantage of the weak and low condition Ahaz was in, and which was the reason of his sending to the king of Assyria.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 28:17
“The Edomites took advantage of the reverses of Ahaz, and were perhaps in league with Rezin (see 2Ki 16:6 note). The pitilessness of Edom, and her readiness to turn against Judah in any severe distress, is noticed and sternly rebuked by the prophets (Amo 1:11; Eze 35:5; Oba 1:10-14, etc.).”
capturing and occupying Beth-shemesh, Aijalon, and Gederoth: Barnes reads the raid as Philistia's revenge for Uzziah's campaign against it at 26:6. Several of the towns carry Judah's history: Aijalon and Soco were among the cities Rehoboam fortified at 11:7-10. Matthew Henry notes that in the year Ahaz died Isaiah 14:28-31 foretold Philistia's ruin.
2 Chronicles 28:18
“Philistia also, eager to retaliate the blows she had received from Uzziah 2Ch 26:6, seized her opportunity. Ajalon and Shocho were among the cities fortified by Rehoboam 2Ch 11:7, 2Ch 11:10; Beth-shemesh Jos 15:10 was famous as the scene of Amaziah’s defeat 2Ch 25:21. Gimzo, which is not elsewhere mentioned in Scripture has been probably identified with the modern Jimzu, a large village about 2 12 miles from Ludd (the ancient Lydda).”
the LORD humbled Judah: Verse 19 gives the verdict: “the LORD humbled Judah because Ahaz king of Israel had thrown off restraint in Judah”. The King James renders that phrase he made Judah naked. Albert Barnes reads it as the language of a broken marriage bond, the figure the prophets use for idolatry.
2 Chronicles 28:19
“Ahaz king of Israel - An instance of the lax use of the word “Israel” 2Ch 12:6; 2Ch 21:2. It is simply equivalent to “king of Judah.” He made Judah naked - literally, “he had caused licentiousness in Judah” - i. e. he had allowed Judah to break loose from all restraints of true religion, and to turn to any idolatry that they preferred 2Ch 28:2-4. In this and in the following expression there is implied an apostasy resembling the unfaithfulness of a wife.”
2 Chronicles 28:20-21
afflicted him rather than strengthening him: Tiglath-pileser comes to Ahaz, but he “afflicted him rather than strengthening him”. Ahaz had taken a portion from the house of the LORD, from the royal palace and from the princes to pay for that help. Chronicles tells what the alliance cost and what it failed to buy.
2 Chronicles 28:20
“And Tilgathpilneser king of Assyria came unto him,.... Not to Jerusalem, but to Damascus, where he made a diversion in his favour, and took that city, and where Ahaz met him, 2Ki 16:9. and distressed him, but strengthened him not; exhausted his treasures, and laid a tribute upon him, but did not help him against the Edomites and Philistines, or recover for him the cities they had taken from him; and, in taking Damascus, he served himself more than Ahaz, and paved the way for seizing upon the ten tribes.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 28:20
Tilgath-pilneser - This form of the name is doubly corrupt. See the properly Hebraized form in 2Ki 15:29. Distressed him, but strengthened him not - This statement, and that at the end of 2Ch 28:21, is supplemental to, and not contradictory of, 2Ki 16:9. Here it is the writer’s object to note that the material assistance rendered by Tiglath-pileser to Ahab, was no real “help” or “strength,” but rather a cause of “distress.”
it did not help him: 2 Kings 16:9 records that the Assyrian king took Damascus and killed Rezin. Clarke squares this with the verdict here by saying the help did Ahaz no lasting good. Matthew Henry remarks that a power bought in this way holds no real loyalty toward the king who turned to it.
2 Chronicles 28:21
“But he helped him not - He did him no ultimate service. See the note on 2Ki 16:9. After 2Ki 16:15, the 23d, 24th, and 25th verses are introduced before the 16th, in the Syriac and Arabic, and the 22d verse is wholly wanting in both, though some of the expressions may be found in the twenty-first verse.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 28:21
“It is often found that wicked men themselves have no real affection for those that revolt to them, nor do they care to do them a kindness. A degenerate branch is looked upon, on all sides, as an abominable branch, Isa. xiv.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
In his distress he trespassed yet more, and shut the doors
In the time of his distress: Verse 22 is the narrator's own sentence in the middle of the account. The Hebrew closes with a pointing phrase, which the King James renders this is that king Ahaz, singling him out by name a second time. Chronicles uses this construction for no other king.
2 Chronicles 28:22
“And in the time of his distress did he trespass yet more against the Lord,.... By increasing his idolatries, as appears by what he did, in imitation of what he saw at Damascus, where he had an interview with the king of Assyria, 2Ki 16:10 this is that King Ahaz; that monster of iniquity, than whom there was none worse, nor any so bad, of all the kings of Judah.”
Since Damascus had defeated him: Ahaz sacrifices to the gods of Damascus because Damascus had defeated him. His reasoning is that a rival's victory proves the power of a rival's gods. The chapter answers him in one line, “But these gods were the downfall of Ahaz and of all Israel”.
2 Chronicles 28:23
“His adoption of the Syrian gods, Hadad, Rimmon, and others, as objects of worship, no doubt preceded the destruction of Damascus by the Assyrians 2Ki 16:9. Israel - i. e. “Judah;” so in 2Ch 28:27. Compare 2Ch 28:19.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Chronicles 28:23
“This sin provoked God to bring judgments upon them, to cut him off in the midst of his days, when he was but thirty-six years old; and it debauched the people so that the reformation of the next reign could not prevail to cure them of their inclination to idolatry, but they retained that root of bitterness till the captivity in Babylon plucked it up.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Chronicles 28:23
“I HAVE a little to say about the condition of Judah under Ahaz before I come to personal dealing with souls from this text. God had given to His people a very simple mode of worship. He was the invisible and only living God and they were to worship Him in spirit and in truth. There was to be one altar and that was to be at Jerusalem. But all the rest of the world was given up to idolatry and the Israelites were not a very spiritual people, so, by-and-by, they wanted something to see, some image, some symbol.”
Charles Spurgeon · written before 1892 · The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2565: “Ruins” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)Particular Baptist
2 Chronicles 28:24-25
Ahaz gathered up the articles of the house of God: Ahaz “shut the doors of the house of the LORD”, and worship stops by royal order. He sets up altars “on every street corner in Jerusalem”, moving worship out of the one house the law names. Clarke notes that the doors stayed shut through the rest of Ahaz's reign.
2 Chronicles 28:24
“And gathered together the vessels of the house of God, and cut in pieces the vessels of the house of God,.... And converted them to his own use, sold them, or melted the gold and silver, of which they were, and made money of them, his treasures being exhausted: and shut up the doors of the house of the Lord: that the people might not come and worship there, but on the high places he made: and he made him altars in every corner of Jerusalem; that the priests might sacrifice there, and not in the temple.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Chronicles 28:24
“Shut up the doors - He caused the Divine worship to be totally suspended; and they continued shut till the beginning of the reign of Hezekiah, one of whose first acts was to reopen them, and thus to restore the Divine worship, 2Ch 29:3.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Chronicles 28:24
“This was worse than the worst of the kings before him had done. (2.) He confronted the altar of God, for he made himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem; so that, as the prophet speaks, they were like heaps in the furrows of the fields, Hos. xii.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
In every city of Judah he built high places: Gill identifies the other gods as the gods of Damascus along with other idols. He reads the high places in every city as a way to keep the people from going up to Jerusalem to worship. Hezekiah reverses this in his first month, when he calls the Levites at 29:5.
2 Chronicles 28:25
“And in every city of Judah he made high places to burn incense unto the gods,.... The gods of Damascus, and other idols; this he did to prevent their coming to Jerusalem to worship.”
2 Chronicles 28:26-27
the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel: The regnal formula points to “the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel” and closes the reign with burial, as Chronicles closes every reign. Ahaz is buried, but “he was not placed in the tombs of the kings of Israel”, a refusal Chronicles reserves for its worst kings.
2 Chronicles 28:26
“Never surely had a man greater opportunity of doing well than Ahaz had, finding things in a good posture, the kingdom rich and strong and religion established; and yet here we have him in these few verses, 1. Wretchedly corrupted and debauched. He had had a good education given him and a good example set him: but parents cannot give grace to their children.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
he was not placed in the tombs of the kings of Israel: Clarke notes that the writer calls the royal tombs those of the kings of Israel because he counts Judah and Israel as one people. A king who used his power against the worship of God, in Henry's reading, was fitly kept from the graves of the kings before him.
2 Chronicles 28:27
“For aught that appears, he died impenitent, and therefore died inglorious; for he was not buried in the sepulchres of the kings. Justly was he thought unworthy to be laid among them who was so unlike them--to be buried with kings who had used his kingly power for the destruction of the church and not for its protection or edification.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
How this psalm is built
The form: A regnal notice of one reign, built as a catalogue of defeats around a prophet's confrontation and a work of mercy at its centre, as John Gill, with Jamieson, Fausset and Brown classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| This is that king Ahaz | The narrator steps out of the account at verse 22 and names the king a second time inside one verse. The site's exposition note on 28:22 records that Chronicles uses the construction for no other king, so Ahaz is marked as the measure the worst can be taken against. John Gill calls him that monster of iniquity, than whom there was none worse of all the kings of Judah.John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, cited by the site's exposition note on 2 Chronicles 28:22. | 2 Chronicles 28:22 |
| Aram, Israel, Edom, Philistia, Assyria | Five powers strike Judah inside one chapter and the account lists them in order without pausing between them. The site's exposition note on 28:16 to 18 observes that the raid list of Beth-shemesh, Aijalon, Gederoth, Soco, Timnah and Gimzo has no counterpart in 2 Kings 16. The losses are told as an inventory, so a reader meets the whole collapse at once rather than reign by reign.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, cited by the site's exposition note on 2 Chronicles 28:16 to 18. | 2 Chronicles 28:5, 2 Chronicles 28:17, 2 Chronicles 28:18, 2 Chronicles 28:20 |
| Because they had forsaken the LORD | Every defeat in the chapter is given one cause in one vocabulary. Verse 6 says the slaughter came because they had forsaken the LORD, and verse 19 says the LORD humbled Judah because Ahaz had been most unfaithful. The verb behind forsake is azab, which the book page's keynotes name as the negative pole of the single axis every reign in this book is measured on.the site's 2 Chronicles guide, the KEYNOTES table of `Book2ChroniclesGuide.tsx`, azab at Strong's h5800, glossed to forsake, abandon. | 2 Chronicles 28:6, 2 Chronicles 28:19, 2 Chronicles 28:25 |
| Jerusalem refuses and Samaria obeys | The chapter sets two answers to one prophetic word side by side. Four named leaders of Ephraim hear Oded and give the captives back, and the king in Jerusalem hears no one and gives the temple away. The site's exposition note on 28:12 to 14 reads the naming of the four as the book's own test passed in the north in the same chapter where Ahaz fails it in the south.Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, cited by the site's exposition note on 2 Chronicles 28:12 to 14. | 2 Chronicles 28:9, 2 Chronicles 28:12, 2 Chronicles 28:15, 2 Chronicles 28:24 |
The historical value
14 more paragraphs on the patterns
The chapter names an Assyrian king at verse 20, Tiglath-pileser, and sets Judah inside the tribute system of the Neo-Assyrian empire. The book's own dossier carries five archaeological finds, and none of them bears on this reign. The Bubastite Portal stands behind chapter 12, Esarhaddon's prisms behind chapter 33, and the Siloam tunnel, the Lachish reliefs and the Ketef Hinnom amulets behind chapters 32 and 34. A reader who wants the outside record of this reign is sent to the 2 Kings account of the same king rather than to a find named here.
One manuscript witness bears on this chapter and on no other in the book. The dossier's manuscripts section records 4Q118, the only manuscript of Chronicles recovered from the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is a single small fragment, and its text corresponds to the end of 2 Chronicles 28 and the beginning of 29. The same entry records that Chronicles is the least attested of the large historical books at Qumran, which the dossier calls a fact worth knowing about how the book was used there.
The debated concept
The casualty figures of verses 6 and 8 are the sharpest case in the book of a question the dossier already carries, whether the army numbers can be taken at face value. A hundred and twenty thousand men of Judah fall in one day and two hundred thousand are carried captive, from one kingdom in one campaign. The dossier sets out three positions and settles none.
The first is the traditional reading, which holds the figures as reported and makes no adjustment to them. The second reads the Hebrew elep as a military unit or a clan contingent rather than the number one thousand. George Mendenhall argued it in The Census Lists of Numbers 1 and 26, Journal of Biblical Literature, 1958. It lowers the totals sharply and leaves the consonants of the text untouched. The third holds that numerals were among the most fragile things a scribe handled, and that figures of this size were enlarged in copying. The dossier says the manuscripts themselves make that visible at 36:9. The page states no verdict between the three.
The chapter is also a plain instance of the book's second contested point, whether the Chronicler's tight cause and effect is pedagogy or an overreading of his sources. The pedagogical reading holds that arranging true material so the moral order is visible is compositional method, and that a community trying to understand the exile needed exactly that. The critical reading, which the guide associates with Sara Japhet, holds that the Chronicler at points supplies sins that Kings does not carry in order to account for judgments Kings leaves unexplained. The guide's own flag states where the two meet. Selecting and arranging true material for teaching is compositional method, and the observation about that method stands apart from the skepticism about the events.
The divine connection
The chapter states its theology in its own sentences rather than leaving it to be drawn out. Verse 6 gives the cause of the slaughter, verse 19 gives the cause of the whole decline, and verse 23 gives the reasoning that ruined the king in his own words. Ahaz sacrifices to the gods of Aram because those gods helped the men who beat him, and the narrator answers in the same breath that they were the downfall of Ahaz and of all Israel. The site's exposition note on 28:23 records that the error he makes, reading a rival's victory as proof of a rival god's power, is the one the prophets of this period spend their careers correcting.
Oded's speech sets a limit on victory that the rest of Scripture keeps. He grants the premise, that the LORD gave Judah into their hand. He then charges them with a slaughter in a rage that reaches up to heaven, and with an intention to enslave their own kin. An instrument of judgment is answerable for how it strikes. The four leaders who answer him put the matter in the first person, that bringing the captives in would add to their own guilt.
What the chapter withholds is worth naming beside what it states. It gives no reason why the mercy at Samaria falls to men of the northern kingdom in the generation before that kingdom ends. It records the act, names the men, and moves on.
How the rest of Scripture reads this chapter
The parallel account is 2 Kings 16, which tells the same reign in twenty verses and gives its detail to the altar pattern Ahaz sent home from Damascus. The site's exposition note on 28:16 to 18 records one place the two accounts can be compared word for word. At 2 Kings 16:7 Ahaz sends his own message to Assyria, I am your servant and your son. Chronicles drops that sentence and widens the picture of the collapse instead.
The war of verses 5 and 6 is the war Isaiah 7:1 to 2 opens with, where Rezin of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah march on Jerusalem in the days of Ahaz. A reader who wants the prophetic side of these same months reads Isaiah 7 beside this chapter.
The Valley of Hinnom at verse 3 is the place Josiah defiles at 2 Kings 23:10, and the site's exposition note on 28:1 to 3 makes that link on the site's behalf. The mercy at verse 15 has long been set beside the parable at Luke 10:30 to 35. Readers draw the likeness from the wounds anointed, the beast the wounded are set on, and the road to Jericho they travel. The site's exposition note on 28:15 records the comparison and records that Chronicles itself draws none.
Keep studying
Studies2
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
John Gill, with Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Exposition of the Old Testament and Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, cited together by the site's exposition note on 2 Chronicles 28:1 to 3 and the site's 2 Chronicles guide, the LEDGER table of `src/components/book/guides/2-chronicles/Book2ChroniclesGuide.tsx`, the Ahaz row at 28:1 to 27.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Charles Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, Sermon No. 294: A Home Question; Jamieson Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.