2 Kingschapter 16
20 verses · Jeremiah, by tradition · 6th century BC · History
Key verse
But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel.
It stands in A king who made his son to pass through the fire, verses 1 to 4.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Ahaz does not do right in the eyes of Jehovah: he walks in the way of the kings of Israel, and makes his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations Jehovah cast out. Besieged by Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel, he sends silver and gold from the house of Jehovah to Tiglath-pileser with the words, 'I am thy servant and thy son', and Assyria takes Damascus. Going to meet his new overlord there, Ahaz sees an altar he likes, sends the pattern to Urijah the priest, and has a copy installed; the bronze altar is shifted aside, and the temple furniture cut up and rearranged because of the king of Assyria.
Context
History · Jeremiah · 2 Kings overview
The world behind this chapter
2 Kings 16The history
The crisis is straightforward power politics. Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Israel formed an anti-Assyrian alliance and marched on Jerusalem to force Judah into it, or to replace its king with someone who would join. This is the exact moment of Isaiah's meeting with Ahaz at the conduit of the upper pool and of the sign of the child named Immanuel. The two accounts describe the same week.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
Ahaz's message to Tiglath-Pileser is quoted in the language of a vassal treaty: I am your servant and your son, come up and save me. Adopting the formal father-and-son wording of submission and sending the temple and palace silver as a present made Judah a tributary state. The empire came, took Damascus, killed Rezin, and deported its people.
Passing his son through the fire places Ahaz in the worst category the book has. The rite was practised in the valley south of Jerusalem, and the law had named it as the abomination for which the previous inhabitants were driven out.
The altar episode shows how vassalage worked in religion. Summoned to Damascus to pay homage, Ahaz admired an altar there, sent the plans back to the priest, and had a copy built before he returned. He then moved the bronze altar of the LORD aside and used the new one for the daily offerings.
He also stripped the bronze basins off their wheeled stands and took the great Sea off its twelve bronze oxen, and he removed the covered walkway used on the sabbath and the outer royal entrance. The reason the chapter gives is four words, because of the king of Assyria. Whether the metal went for tribute or the privileges were removed from an overlord's sight, the temple was being dismantled piece by piece to pay for protection.
What it meant to them
The first hearers knew how this ended. The empire Ahaz hired came back in his son's reign and shut Jerusalem up like a bird in a cage.
The chapter is the case study for a lesson the prophets pressed hard. A nation that will not trust God finds a protector, and the protector's price keeps rising until there is nothing left to strip off the temple.
Sources cited
- The Annals of Tiglath-Pileser III (Assyrian inscriptions, Calah)
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
Where the chapter sits
2 Kings 16 falls in Northern kingdom's fall (chapters 14–17). Jeroboam II's reign (Jonah contemporary); long catalogue of northern kings; Hoshea; Samaria besieged three years; the 722 BC Assyrian exile.
Before it: Elijah's ascension; Elisha's ministry, chapters 1–13. After it: Hezekiah and the Assyrian crisis, chapters 18–20.
The whole shape of 2 Kings→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. A king who made his son to pass through the fire
1. (vv. 1-2)
2 Kings 16:1
“In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign. Jotham began to reign in the second of Pekah, and he reigned sixteen years, and therefore his last year would fall in the eighteenth of Pekah; but as his first year might be at the beginning of the second of Pekah, his last was towards the end of the seventeenth of Pekah's, as here; see 2Ki 15:32.”
2 Kings 16:2
“Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem,.... The same number of years his father did: and did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord God, like David his father; his more remote progenitor, nor even like his more immediate father, from whom he received such good instructions, and of whom he had so good an example; but grace is neither propagated by blood, nor obtained through the force of education.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 16:2
“Twenty years old was Ahaz - Here is another considerable difficulty in the chronology. Ahaz was but twenty years old when he began to reign, and he died after he had reigned sixteen years; consequently his whole age amounted only to thirty-six years. But Hezekiah his son was twenty-five years old when he began to reign; and if this were so, then Ahaz must have been the father of Hezekiah when he was but eleven years of age!”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
In the seventeenth year of Pekah: The formula that has measured every king of Judah since the split returns here in its bluntest form yet: Ahaz did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord his God, like David his father. He is twenty at his accession and reigns sixteen years, a short reign Kings will call evil rather than merely brief. Earlier kings of Judah are commended with some reservation; no such word softens Ahaz anywhere in this chapter.
2. (vv. 3-4)
2 Kings 16:4
“He forsook God's house, was weary of that place where, in his father's time, he had often been detained before the Lord, and performed his devotions on high hills, where he had a better prospect, and under green trees, where he had a more pleasant shade. It was a religion little worth, which was guided by fancy, not by faith.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
made his son to pass through the fire: Ahaz makes his own son pass through the fire, the Molech rite forbidden at Lev 18:21 and 20:2-5, and the practice now stands on David's own throne. Barnes reads it as the Ammonite and Moabite worship named at 2 Ki 3:27, the same fire the king of Moab used on his son under siege. Verse 4 widens the picture to ordinary high-place worship, on the hills and under every green tree, the standing formula for the local shrines Judah never fully cleared.
B. I am thy servant and thy son: Assyria hired against Syria
1. (vv. 5-6)
2 Kings 16:5
“Then Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to war,.... To fight with Ahaz, moved to it by the Lord, to chastise Ahaz for his idolatry, 2Ki 15:37. but could not overcome him; so as to take Jerusalem, and set up another king there, as their scheme was, Isa 7:5 though they had both at other times got great advantages over him, and slew many of his people, and carried them captive, see 2Ch 28:5.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 16:5
“Rezin and Pekah, who had already begun their attacks upon Judaea in the reign of Jotham 2Ki 15:37, regarded the accession of a boy-king, only 16 years of age, as especially favorable to their projects, and proceeded without loss of time to carry them out. The earlier scenes of the war, omitted by the writer of Kings, are given at some length in 2Ch 28:5-15.”
2 Kings 16:6
“Either during the siege, or on breaking up from before Jeruasalem, Rezin made an expedition to the lied Sea coast, and became master of the city which had belonged to Judaea about 70 years (marginal reference). Most moderns render this verse, “Rezin recovered (or restored) Elath to Edom ... and the Edomites came to Elath.” On the resemblance of the words Aram and Edom in the original, see 2Sa 8:12 note.”
came up to Jerusalem to war: Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel besiege Jerusalem and fail to take it, the crisis Isaiah addresses directly to this king in Isaiah 7, where the sign of Immanuel is given against this very siege. In the same campaign Rezin recovers Elath and drives out the people there, and the verse gives the word Jews its first occurrence anywhere in Scripture, naming the losing side of a border skirmish rather than a moment of triumph. Some commentators, following the Septuagint's reading of a word close to Aram in the Hebrew, take the verse as the Edomites recovering Elath rather than the Syrians, a textual question Barnes and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown both note without settling it.
2. (vv. 7-9)
2 Kings 16:7
“Ahaz was threatened on all sides, on the north by Rezin and Pekah; on the southeast by Edom 2Ch 28:17; and on the southwest by the Philistines 2Ch 28:18. To these external dangers was added the still greater peril of disaffection at home. A large party in Judah was “weary” of the house of David Isa 7:13, ready to join the confederacy Isa 8:6, Isa 8:12, and to accept for king “the son of Tabeal.” Ahaz saw no hope of safety unless he could obtain a powerful protector; and, Egypt being particularly weak at this time, he turned to Assyria.”
2 Kings 16:8
“And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord,.... Which Uzziah and Jotham had put there; for all that was found there in the times of Amaziah was taken away by Jehoash king of Israel, 2Ki 14:14. and in the treasures of the king's house; whatever gold and silver he had of his own: and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria; to obtain his help and assistance.”
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 16:8
“Compare the marginal reference and 1Ki 15:18. Political necessity was always held to justify the devotion of the temple treasure to secular purposes.”
2 Kings 16:8
“I know not what authority he had thus to dispose of the public stock; but it is common for those that have brought themselves into straits by one sin to help themselves out by another; and those that have alienated themselves from God will make no difficulty of alienating any of his rights.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 16:9
“The submission of Judah, which Ahaz proffered, would be of the utmost importance in connection with any projects that might be entertained of Egyptian conquests. Naturally, Damascus was the first object of attack. It was the head of the confederacy, and it lay nearest to an army descending upon Lower Syria, as all Asiatic armies would descend, from the north. It appears from an inscription of Tiglath-pileser’s, that Rezin met him in the field, was defeated, and slain. An attack upon Pekah followed.”
I am thy servant and thy son: Ahaz answers the siege by making himself a vassal in words lifted from covenant language, I am thy servant and thy son, offered to Tiglath-pileser rather than to the Lord who had just proved willing to save Jerusalem without him. He funds the appeal by stripping the silver and gold from the house of the Lord and his own treasury, the same expedient Asa used against Baasha at 1 Ki 15:18. Assyria answers by taking Damascus and killing Rezin, and Judah's short-term rescue becomes the debt that shapes the rest of the chapter.
C. A pattern sent from Damascus, and the temple rearranged
1. (vv. 10-11)
2 Kings 16:10
“Ahaz went to Damascus - He had received so much help on the defeat of Rezin, that he went to Damascus to meet the king of Assyria, and render him thanks. Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest the fashion of the altar - This was some idolatrous altar, the shape and workmanship of which pleased Ahaz so well that he determined to have one like it at Jerusalem. For this he had no Divine authority, and the compliance of Urijah was both mean and sinful.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 16:10
“The pattern God showed to Moses in the mount or to David by the Spirit was not comparable to this pattern sent from Damascus. The hearts of idolaters walked after their eyes, which are therefore said to go a whoring after their idols; but the true worshippers worship the true God by faith.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 16:11
"Let us oblige him in this," thinks Urijah, "and then he will bring all his sacrifices to us; for by this craft we get our living." But, whatever pretence he had, it was a most base wicked thing for him that was a priest, a chief priest, to make this altar, in compliance with an idolatrous prince, for hereby, 1.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
the fashion of the altar, and the pattern of it: At Damascus, paying his respects to the king he now serves, Ahaz admires a pagan altar and sends its exact pattern home, and Urijah the priest builds it before the king even returns, with no recorded word of protest. Henry sets this eagerly copied foreign design against the pattern God himself gave Moses for the tabernacle, a pattern no king before Ahaz thought to improve on. The priesthood meant to guard the house instead executes a layman's design on schedule.
2. (vv. 12-13)
2 Kings 16:12
“His sacrifices were not offered to the God of Israel, but to the gods of Damascus (as we find 2 Chron. xxviii. 23 ), and, when he borrowed the Syrians' altar, no marvel that he borrowed their gods.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 16:13
“And he burnt his burnt offering, and his meat offering,.... Which went together according to the law of God, and was imitated by the Heathens: and poured his drink offering; a libation of wine, as probably it was, like what they used according to the Levitical law: and sprinkled the blood of his peace offerings upon the altar; as used according to the same law; for all sorts of sacrifices were offered by idolaters, as by the people of God, in imitation of them.”
the king approached to the altar: Ahaz does not merely install the altar; he offers on it in person, burnt offering, meat offering, drink offering and the blood of peace offerings, the full round of Levitical sacrifice performed on a Syrian design. Gill notes the irony in the forms themselves, offering and libation and sprinkled blood, patterns the nations had long borrowed from Israel's worship and that the king now borrows back. The king who could not overcome Rezin outside Jerusalem's walls conforms his own worship to Damascus once the war is over.
3. (v. 14)
2 Kings 16:14
“Put it on the north side - He seems to have intended to conform every thing in the Lord’s house as much as possible to the idolatrous temples which he saw at Damascus, and to model the Divine worship in the same way: in a word to honor and worship the gods of Syria, and not the God of heaven. All the alterations specified here were in contempt of the true God. Thus he provoked to anger the Lord God of his fathers, 2Ch 28:25.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Kings 16:14
“He thinks his new altar is much more stately, and much more sightly, and disgraces that; and therefore "let that be laid aside as a vessel in which there is no pleasure." His superstitious invention, at first, jostled with God's sacred institution, but at length jostled it out.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
brought also the brasen altar: The Lord's own brasen altar, standing before the house since Solomon's day, is physically moved off center and set to the north side to make room for the new one. Clarke reads the relocation as deliberate, an attempt to conform the whole pattern of worship at Jerusalem to what Ahaz had seen at Damascus rather than a single act of vandalism. The true altar is not destroyed, only displaced, and the displacement is its own statement about where the king now looks.
4. (vv. 15-16)
2 Kings 16:15
“Having thrust it out from the use for which it was instituted, which was to sanctify the gifts offered upon it, he pretends to advance it above its institution, which it is common for superstitious people to do. The altar was never designed for an oracle, yet Ahaz will have it for that use. The Romish church seemingly magnifies Christ's sacraments, yet wretchedly corrupts them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 16:15
“The words "the bronze altar shall be for me to inquire by," that is, in order to consult [God]: [the king] says these words in a purely formal manner, and not seriously.”
Ishodad of Merv· written before 850· BOOKS OF SESSIONS 2 KINGS 16:15patristic
2 Kings 16:15
The brasen altar shall be for me to inquire by - The bulk of modern commentators translate - “As for the Brasen altar, it will be for me to inquire (or consider) what I shall do with it.”
2 Kings 16:16
“The writer condemns the obsequiousness of Urijah, whose conduct was the more inexcusable after the noble example of his predecessor Azariah 2Ch 26:17-20.”
the brasen altar shall be for me to enquire by: Ahaz assigns the new altar every function the law gave the old one, the morning and evening offerings and the sacrifices of the whole people, and reduces the Lord's own altar to a private use he calls to enquire by. Commentators read that closing phrase two ways, some as Ahaz keeping the old altar for a private oracle of his own, others, following Barnes, as the king simply setting aside the question of what to do with it for later, the Hebrew allowing either sense. Urijah executes every instruction, his compliance stated as plainly as the king's command.
5. (vv. 17-18)
2 Kings 16:17
“These the priests used for washing; against them therefore he seems to have had a particular spite. It is one of the greatest prejudices that can be done to religion to obstruct the purifying of the priests, the Lord's ministers.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 16:18
“And the covert for the Sabbath - There are a great number of conjectures concerning this covert, or, as it is in the Hebrew, the מוסך musach, of the Sabbath.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
cut off the borders of the bases: Ahaz cuts down the bases, removes the laver, and takes the great sea off the twelve brasen oxen Solomon set under it at 1 Ki 7:23-25, the same twelve-tribe signature standing behind Elijah's twelve stones at Carmel. Barnes reads the stripping as conversion to other uses rather than outright destruction, since the bases, oxen and sea are still standing to be inventoried when Jerusalem finally falls at 2 Ki 25:13-16. The covert built for the sabbath and the king's own entry are likewise altered, and the chapter states the reason plainly, for the king of Assyria, the price of a rescue bought partly with the temple's own furnishings.
6. (vv. 19-20)
2 Kings 16:19
“Now the rest of the acts of Ahaz which he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? Some others are written in the canonical book of Chronicles, 2Ch 28:1 and were, it is highly probable, in the annals of the kings of Judah, now lost.”
3 more voices on this verse
2 Kings 16:19
“The rest of the acts of Ahaz - Such as are described in Isa 7:10-13; 2Ch 28:23-25; 2Ch 29:3, 2Ch 29:7.”
2 Kings 16:19
“4 And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree. We have here a general character of the reign of Ahaz. Few and evil were his days--few, for he died at thirty-six--evil, for we are here told, 1.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Kings 16:19
“Inquire by - That shall be reserved for my proper use, to inquire by; at which I may seek God, or inquire of his will, by sacrifices joined with prayer, when I shall see fit. Having thrust it out from the use for which it was instituted, which was to sanctify the gifts offered upon it, he pretends to advance it above its institution, which it is common for superstitious people to do.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Kings 16:20
“And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David,.... But not in the sepulchres of the kings of Israel, as David and Solomon, he being such a wicked prince, 2Ch 28:27. and Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead; of whom much is said in the following part of this history.”
the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?: The chapter closes with the standard formula pointing to the lost chronicles of the kings of Judah, and Ahaz sleeps with his fathers and is buried in the city of David. The parallel account adds what Kings leaves unsaid here, that he was not buried in the sepulchres of the kings, a mark of the disgrace 2 Chr 28:27 states outright. His son Hezekiah succeeds him and spends much of the following chapters undoing what this one records, the bronze Ahaz stripped restored to its proper use at 2 Chr 29.
This page carries no textual note on 2 Kings 16. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Keep studying
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 exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Jamieson Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Kings and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.