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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
2Ch_28:1
Ahaz. The signification of this word is "graspng." Isaiah (Isa_7:1, Isa_38:8), Hosea, and Micah were contemporaries of Ahaz, whoso reign may be set down at B.C. 744-728. His name shows in the Assyrian tablets, Jahukhazi, or Jehoahaz.
2Ch_28:2
Molten images; Hebrew, îÇñÅÌëåÉú . This was a characteristic sin of Israel, but Judah had not been guilty of making molten images during late reigns.
2Ch_28:3
Burnt incense … Hinnom. The sin of Solomon (1Ki_11:7, 1Ki_11:8) is reproduced. For the valley of the son of Hinnom, which curved round the south-west and west of Jerusalem (Ge Ben-Hinnom), see Conder's 'Handbook,' ch. 7. pp. 330-332. Burnt his children (see Le 2Ch_18:21); but there cannot be any doubt that Ahaz's practice here stated was an incident of the Moloch-superstition and horrible cruelty (see the parallel in its 2Ch_28:3, 2Ch_28:4).
2Ch_28:5
The King of Syria. The name of this king (Rezin) does not appear in this chapter, but it does in the parallel, 2Ch_28:5, 2Ch_28:6, 2Ch_28:9. They smote him. A previous unsuccessful attempt of Rezin and Pekah is apparently passed over in our chapter (2Ki_16:5), while the contents of our present yeas must be understood to have its place just before the last clause of 2Ch_28:5 in the parallel, and to be significantly confirmed by the contents of its following verse. They smote … carried away … brought. These plurals strongly indicate the dialocation of sentences in compiled matter. They probably came from original sources, where the conjoined names of Rezin and Pekah had been the antecedents (see on this history, Isa_7:1-25; Isa_8:1-22; Isa_9:1-21.). Brought them to Damascus. The mode of the first introduction of the name of Ahaz in connection with Damascus in the parallel (2Ch_28:10) is a suggestive illustration of how these parallel but very various narratives proffer to piece themselves, and in a wonderful manner clear their, whole subject of any possible taint of the "cunningly devised fable." A great multitude of Judah's people had been carried captives and "brought to Damascus." When the King of Assyria (parallel, 2Ch_28:9) came to the help of Ahaz, he struck a fierce and evidently decisive blow against Damascus and Rezin, and to Damascus," to meat" Assyria's king, Tiglath-Pileser, the very next verso tells us, Ahaz. went—little doubt to pay his bills, over which a decent veil of silence is thrown. He was also delivered into the hand, etc. The form of this sentence, with its "also," and with its evidently tacked-on appearance, coupled with the conjunction "for" with which the following verso is dragged in, seems to give great probability to the idea, first, that the latter half of 2Ch_28:5 and all of 2Ch_28:6 find their real place before (say) the word "Damascus;" and secondly, that they are strictly and conterminously paralleled by the former part of 2Ch_28:5 parallel.
2Ch_28:6
(See foregoing note.) An hundred and twenty thousand. The number is large, but, the uncertainty of very many of these figures notwithstanding, it is impossible absolutely to pronounce it incredible. Because they had forsaken. The now frequent refrain of the writer.
2Ch_28:7
The king's son. This can scarcely mean the child of Ahaz, considering Ahaz's age; some think a brother of the present king, son of Jotham, may be intended. We have also to fall back upon the use of the phrase, "king's son," for some special official of the king or court (see note on 2Ch_18:25; and its parallel, 1Ki_22:26). The governor of the house; Revised Version, ruler. We have probably a sufficient clue to this designation in 1Ki_4:6; and the designation itself, 2Ch_18:3; 2Ki_18:18; 2Ch_19:11. Next to the king; Hebrew, îÄùÀÑðÅä äÇîÆÌìÆêÀ ; literally, therefore, the next of the king, the general meaning of which expression cannot be doubtful, but the exacter scope and functions of the person under the kings of the divided kingdom thus designated is less certain. It is naturally to be supposed his place may have been king's deputy in councils in his absence, or in and over the city itself, when he was at a distance with an army.
2Ch_28:8
To Samaria. While the Syrian king carried his captives to Damascus (2Ch_28:5), the Israel king carried his to Samaria. The numbers in this verse, with the added hundred and twenty thousand whom Pekah slew (2Ch_28:6), may be compared with the military strength of the kingdom in Uzziah's time, as given in 2Ch_26:13.
2Ch_28:9
The very interesting contents of this and the following six verses are not found in the parallel. A prophet of the Lord … Oded. We do not know any particulars of this prophet; for his name and its possible identity with the name Iddo, see notes on 2Ch_9:29; 2Ch_15:1, 2Ch_15:8. The growingly frequent references to the interposition of the prophets is much to be noticed, and their dignity, courage, fidelity, are brought into grand relief. They are very typical of the moral presence of which no national history, a.s centuries solemnly flow on, gives the slightest symptom of a slackening need. The very same may be said alike of the truth and those qualified and commissioned to bear it, of the message and the messenger. Before the host; i.e. in very face of the host, somewhat too mildly rendered "to meet" the host, in 2Ch_15:2, etc. In a rage that reacheth up unto heaven. To the wonderful life of this figure, that must strike every reader, must be added the force that comes of its moral rather than merely material suggestion—a moral suggestion that reminds us of that of the sentence of far greater antiquity, and from the sacred lip of the Inspirer of all prophets, "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground." The rage had not been that on which the sun did not go down; it had been so fierce that upon it the sun ought never to hare been required to look. See for interesting particulars and then more general references, Jer_51:9; Ezr_9:6; Psa_38:4; Gen_18:21; Gen_28:12; Job_20:6. The expression of the text, however, "reacheth," or "toucheth," cannot be understood to reproduce as a perfect equivalent the older above-quoted one of "crieth." In other words, the magnitude of the rage is the first thing set forth, and the particular language in which it is set forth well postulates the inference of its abominableness in God's sight.
2Ch_28:10
For bondmen and bondwomen unto you. The denunciation of Deu_28:68 may be instructively compared with the emphatic prohibition of Le 25:46. The moral thread of ordinance that runs everywhere through the divinely established economy of the Old Testament Judaism should be devoutly observed. The verse, in the position of its words, furnishes an example of almost classical pattern: And now persons who are children of Judah and Jerusalem, ye are resolving within yourselves (literally, saying) to subdue into bondmen and bondwomen for yourselves.
2Ch_28:11
The fierce wrath; i.e. not unannounced, for Oded means to say, "You are doing contrary to the Law and the Prophet Moses," as just quoted.
2Ch_28:12
Oded's appeal, and forcible but most temperate and pertinent argument of the previous verses, was addressed to those who led the returning army, flushed with victory and haughty with their captives led in triumph, and, as 2Ch_28:15 shows, cruelly, and with every deprivation of clothes and of shoes, etc. It now, however, fortunately meets with most welcome practical support from those (certain of the heads of the children of Ephraim) who had not had a hand in what had been done, and now stood by, in some measure like umpires. They, at any rate, are convinced, partly perhaps in that their blood was not hot with the battles that had been. We do not know particulars of these four worthier men, whose names, with their fathers', are here "expressed" (2Ch_28:15). They were evidently conscious of their past sins, had fear toward God, were not of those who, sinning, hastened to sin yet more; but they wished to flee from the wrath to come, the "fierce wrath," already impending. Ephraim (see note on 2Ch_25:7).
2Ch_28:13
Hither. The returning army was, no doubt, on the outskirts of Samaria, though the exact site of this interesting scene is not written. For whereas we have offended against the Lord; Hebrew; ìÀàÇùÀÑîÇú éÀäåÉäÈå òÈìÅéðåÌ . Translate, For to the just cause of offence on the part of Jehovah with us, ye propose to add to our sins, and to the offence existing already with us; for great is that offence, etc. The genius of the word here rendered" offence," seems, from careful comparison of the eighteen times of its occurrence, to point to "guilt, sin," or "trespass," as the causes awakening offence in any one against these who do them. The repentant temper of these "heads of the children of Ephraim" was admirable, and indicated their distance from many, many others of their people and day, and Of Judah, who were either callous or reckless.
2Ch_28:14
Before the princes and all the congregation; i.e. the four and those who were now congregated round them.
2Ch_28:15
The men which were expressed by name; Revised Version, which have been expressed by name. This is the probable, yet hardly certain, meaning of the clause. My name should be "by names." And the meaning may be that "the men who were now specified by names for the work rose up," etc. Under any aspect, it was likely enough these would embrace the four who had already spoken so piously and seasonably (2Ch_31:19; 1Ch_12:31; 1Ch_16:41). The captives; Hebrew, ùÄÑáÀéÈä ; literally, the captivity; i.e. of course, the body of captives (Deu_21:11; Deu_32:42). Clothed … arrayed. These two renderings are both the same verb ( ìÈáÇùÑ ), and even the same (hiph.) conjugation. The undisguised, apparent repetition in the Hebrew text, veiled and disguised in both the Authorized and Revised Versions, may perhaps be owing to the intentness of the narrative on saying, first, that all who were literally naked were clothed from their own captive spoil; and then, secondly, that all whosoever (dusty, dirty, tired, footsore) were clothed, in the sense of being fresh dressed. The eleven particulars of this verso are uncommonly graphic in the Hebrew text brevity of description. The verse may read thus: And the men appointed by their names rose up, and took the captives by the hand, and all of the naked of them they dressed from the very spoil, and dressed them (all), and shod them, and fed them, and gave them drink, and anointed them, and carried upon asses all the feeble ones, and brought them to Jericho, city of palms, to the very side of their brethren, and … returned to Samaria. These made their own so far the blessedness of them of Mat_25:34-36. Jericho; i.e. well within their own land, to a fertile and shaded spot of it, with plenty of water, and whence probably all might most easily wend their ways to their own district and town, Jericho lay on the border of Benjamin. See Stanley's most interesting account.
2Ch_28:16
At that time did King Ahaz … kings of Assyria. The vagueness of this common formula, "at that time," would doubtless not have been apparent in the original sources. In the present instance we may fall back on our 2Ch_28:5, 2Ch_28:6 to give it distinctness; but see 2Ch_28:5, 2Ch_28:6, 2Ch_28:7 of the parallel, which involve their own formula and the present in some little uncertainty. The kings of Assyria. The Septuagint and other versions show the singular number. Our plural may perhaps find an explanation in 2Ch_30:6; 2Ch_32:4.
2Ch_28:17
The Edomites. So the work of Amaziah (2Ch_25:11, 2Ch_25:14; 2Ki_14:7) in reducing Edom was again undone (see also 2Ki_16:7, where "Edom" should be read for "Aram").
2Ch_28:18
The Philistines. These also had been subjugated again and again, and of late by Uzziah (2Ch_26:6, 2Ch_26:7), work that was now undone. The exultant relief to the Philistines, short-lived though it was, is referred to elsewhere, as in the Book of Isaiah (Isa_14:29, 81), the Psalms (Palm Psa_60:8). Beth-shemesh. On the border of Judah (2Ch_25:23, and our note there; 1Ch_6:44). Ajalon, This was also on the border (1Ch_6:54; 2Ch_11:10). Gederoth. This was in the Shefelah (Jos_15:41). Shocho; or, Socho, one of Rehoboam's cities, near the Philistines, and therefore selected for fortification (2Ch_11:7). Timnah. This bordered on Dan (Jos_15:10). Gimzo. Not elsewhere mentioned, but well known in the modern village Jimzu, its site on what would have been the border of Dan. They dwelt there. This expression is, of course, designed to indicate that the Philistines obtained successfully some foothold.
2Ch_28:19
Ahaz King of Israel. So Jehoshaphat was called in 2Ch_21:2 "King of Israel." If these two occasions are not merely cases of the writer's or of a copyist's easily imaginable mistake, they must be regarded as naming the king of the chief divided kingdom by the title of the whole kingdom or people. He made Judah naked; Revised Version, had dealt wantonly in Judah; or margin, Revised Version, had cast away restraint in Judah; Hebrew, äÄôÀøÄéÇò .
2Ch_28:20
Tilgath-Pilneser (see 1Ch_5:6, 1Ch_5:26; 2Ki_15:29; 2Ki_16:10, our parallel. See our notes in full on 1Ch_5:6, 1Ch_5:26). Gesenius dates his reign as King of Assyria as B.C. 753-734; others as about B.C. 747-728. Distressed him, but strengthened him not. This is in our writer's usual deeper moral and religious vein, and was no doubt most true. For all Ahaz paid and bribed out of the sacrilegiously employed treasure of the temple, out of the depreciating and partial dismantling of "the house of the king," and out of the begged contributions or taxes extortionately wrung "of the princes" (see the succinct account of next verse, and compare the parallel in its 2Ch_28:8, 2Ch_28:18), he bought a master for himself, servitude, tributariness, and the humiliation of disgrace itself. The temporary relief he obtained (and which the writer of Chronicles in no way means to deny) from one enemy rivetted round his neck the yoke of another and greater. And worse than this, he secured in his own heart the greatest adversary of all—a restless, implacable foe, which ever goaded him on to worse folly and deeper sin.
2Ch_28:21
Add to references of last verse 2Ch_16:2; 2Ki_12:18; 2Ki_18:15. But he helped him not. See the parallel in its 2Ki_18:9 (2Ki_16:1-20.), and note on our foregoing verse.
2Ch_28:22
This is that King Ahaz. Expunge the words in italic type. Revised Version, this same King Ahaz. But the most literal rendering will be the most forcible: He, the King Ahaz.
2Ch_28:23
He sacrificed unto the gods of Damascus, which smote him. The writer must be understood to speak from the point of view of Ahaz, in putting it, that it was the gods of Damascus who smote." The formula, all Israel, is a clear instance of how the name "Israel" is used as "Judah." The gods of Damascus were, of course, the same with those of Syria, of which Damascus was capital. Their names were Rimmon, Tabrim-men, Hadad, and some others. Perhaps no verse in Chronicles is more typical of the special moral aspects and aims of the writer.
2Ch_28:24
This verse (completed, indeed, by the verse following) heightens to its climax the description of the guilt of Ahaz, which grew to madness. 2Ch_28:17, 2Ch_28:18 of the parallel enlarge our view of what Ahaz did in the way of destruction, relating his mutilation of the bases and laver and sea, after also the displacement of the brazen altar in favour of that the pattern of which he had sent from Damascus to Urijah the priest, who must have been a consenting party to the iniquity. Our 2Ch_30:14 speaks of the time that came when these wicked steps of king and priest began to be retraced, and, with the previous verses of same chapter, are the sad but interesting reverse of the present passage. The modern Jews commemorate, by the observance of a fast, this mournful crisis of Judah's history.
2Ch_28:26
The book of the kings of Judah and Israel. Parallel (2Ch_28:19), "the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah."
2Ch_28:27
Slept with his fathers … buried … in the city,… Jerusalem … not brought into the sepulchres of the kings. Parallel (2Ch_28:20), "slept with his fathers … buried with his fathers in the city of David." See our notes on 2Ch_26:23 (parallel, 2Ki_15:7); 2Ch_24:25 (parallel, 2Ki_12:21); 2Ch_21:20 (parallel, 2Ki_8:24).
I. FORSOOK THE RIGHT MODEL. To be not "like his father David" was at once to want the stamp of a true royalty. To be "like the kings of Israel," the schismatic line, was to be stamped with the stamp of a base and ungenuine royalty. This description (2Ch_28:2) of "the ways" in which Judah's king "walked" was, indeed, on the other hand, a fearful characterization for that same schismatic line of Israel. For Ahaz, however, thus to be, and be described, as at the beginning of his reign, when he was already arrived at the twenty-fifth year of his age, was an evil, anyway, of that worst calamity, viz. hope for an altered future almost hopelessly shut out! The augury proved too true. Ahaz counts for nothing Moses, as well as "his father David." He systematically "framed mischief by" his own "law," and the law of heathendom. He flagrantly breaks, and teaches the breaking of, the first two of the ever-venerable ten commandments—that vital Heaven-graven foundation-code of legislation of his kingdom. Sacrilege, idolatry, and each most heathenish practice and rite of un-"natural religion" he honours and follows. He gets as far as it is possible to get from "fearing" and "loving" and "serving" the Lord God of his fathers "with all the heart, and mind, and soul, and strength." For a young man, for any man to forsake the right model, the one Example, is to leave himself to pick among many, uncertain in every direction, except in the one certainty of all being wrong! One only safe right rule is ours to follow; "If the Lord be God, follow him" (1Ki_18:21). Examples abound, but absolute safety and rightness can be found in one only.
II. NEGLECTED WARNING. The warning which Ahaz neglected, with a long succession, to say nothing of all those who may have gone before, was not merely warning written, preached loudly and earnestly and with prophet's voice proclaimed, but it was that practical warning, the ultimatum of all, the warning of consequences. Defeat, and the captivity of many of his people at the hand of the King of Syria; defeat, and the captivity of many of his people at the hand of the King of Israel; the slaying of his son, of the governor of his house, and of the man that was "the second to him in the kingdom;"—all these judgments, offering to bring closer and closer home to him and to his conscience the facts of the case, of his own sins, and of the consequences of those sins, he is blind to, or, not blind, he nevertheless disregards them to the very point of infatuation. But, again, not only are the practical warnings of "wrath" thus set at nought. Providences of mercy compete with those of "wrath" In one of the most remarkable and pathetic passages of all history, startling us by its lifelike and more than dramatic reality—a very monograph of pathos—seven verses (9-15) here record this providence. They tell us how, by the side of Judah's king, who refuses to give ear, to repent, or to learn, "certain of the heads of the children of Ephraim in Samaria," listen attentively to the remonstrance and teaching of the Prophet Oded, are open to the impression of the justness of what he says, see in a moment the truth of things for themselves, and reason without delay with the people, producing salutary convictions in them; and then, even with the atoning addition of all tenderest ministrations (2Ch_28:15), lead back their captives of Judah to Jericho, to the shade of that "city of palm trees," and to the yet kinder shelter of "their brethren." What a practical message that was for a hardened heart like that of Ahaz! What an appeal and suggestion for the better feelings, if any, of Judah's king! But this too, this species of warning was in vain!
III. IMPROVED ADVERSITY TO THE GREATER INIQUITY, AND TO THE REAPING OF GREATER PUNISHMENT AND DEEPER DEGRADATION FOR HIMSELF AND NATION, The Edomites have successfully "smitten" him; the harrying incursions of the Philistines are ever on him; they take village after village, and also so take them, that they are safe in taking up their abode in them, for they dwelt there (2Ch_28:18), Ahaz does not repent, and does not for a moment "seek to the Lord." The strickennees of sin is on him; the persistence in evil is his disease; the fatal aggravation of folly and infatuation of obstinacy cloud his brain, eclipse his reason, "make gross" his heart. He seeks to the King of Assyria, and bribes him with the sacred things of the house of the Lord, with the precious things of his own palace, with the robbed things of his princes. And that king takes all, but gives no help—"he helped him not" (2Ch_28:21); mocks his defencelessness; makes sport of his supplications to him! To one deeper depth, in his deafened despair, he descends. Ahaz vows for his own the gods of those who "smote him" (2Ch_28:23). His logic is that the house too of "the gods of the kings of Syria" may possibly prove a house divided against itself! It was a last, cruel, hapless resort! The refuge was the refuge of ruin—"the ruin of him, and of all Israel" (2Ch_28:23), He ends all by entreating for his memory loathing unqualified. He hacks to pieces the collected "vessels of the house of God;" but shuts up (by just so much too late) "the doors of the house" itself; rears every wild altar; profanes with "high places every several city of Judah" to burn there the "incense of abomination;" excludes his own bones from the sepulchres of the best of his ancestors; and leaves us one more fearful lesson, that none and nothing make so sure a mock as sin itself makes of the "fool, who makes a mock" at it!
I. AN EVENT WHICH FREQUENTLY OCCURS.
1. Sometimes to the nation. We have a notable instance of this in the reaction from the Puritan strictness of the Commonwealth to the unbounded licence of the Restoration.
2. Sometimes to the Church. A sudden passing from the ardour of some fervent enthusiasm to the rigour of utter indifference and inactivity.
3. Sometimes to the family. When a godly, devoted, and useful parent is succeeded by a dissolute and mischief-working son (as in the text).
4. Sometimes in the individual. A man is led to the appearance (if not the reality) of piety and zeal; he worships regularly in the house of the Lord, and takes a prominent part in the activities of the Church; then with more or less of suddenness he declines; he abandons his religious convictions and his moral principles, and stands before society as a spiritual renegade, living to injure and destroy all he had appeared to love and had busied himself to promote.
II. ITS EXPLANATION.
1. Not in any law of human change. It may be contended that there is in the mind and in the history of man a constant ebb and flow as in the tides of the sea; that when a mental or moral movement has proceeded long and far in one direction, the time has come for a counter-movement in the opposite direction. But there is no reason, in the nature of things, why we should not move steadily on in the direction of wisdom and virtue. Such a tendency as this is not properly a law; it is only a generalization from a comparatively small number of particulars. Hence we also say:
2. Not in any inherent human fickleness. Man is more or less fickle; i.e. many men are very fickle, and some men are seriously so, and others slightly so. But other men are constant, faithful, loyal to the last. Man, as man, is under no necessity to change his course, to reverse his direction, to pursue what he has shunned, to pull down what he has built up. We find the explanation we seek:
3. Partly in the unwisdom of the good. Possibly Jotham may have been an unwise father in some material respects; he may have so acted, so ruled his royal household, as to present to his son an unattractive aspect of godliness; he may have failed to distinguish between the requirements of manhood and of youth. Certainly, if he did not, very many parents do, and this their folly is the account of the departure and defection of their sons. It is clear that the unwise austerity of the Puritans had much to do with the excesses of the following generation. Very often, indeed, the intemperate heats of some body of Christian or philanthropic men account, in a large degree, for the repugnance and retrogression of the community. Unwisdom in the good may be as mischievous in its results as the very transgressions of the wicked.
4. Partly in the shallowness of the piety or morality in question. When this is nothing more than mere habit, especially when that habit is of the body rather than of the mind, is fleshly rather than spiritual, it is not to be expected that loyalty will last; it is to be expected that the first strong wind of inclination, or of worldly interest, or of social pressure, will carry such a one away and bear him whithersoever it wills. The great lesson for parents, teachers, pastors, reformers, patriots, is this—dig deep if you would have your house stand. If you would not see your sons and daughters, your fellow-members or fellow-citizens swept round with the current, facing the wrong goal, exerting their influence for evil instead of for good, then do not be content with scattering seed anyhow and anywhere. Dig the deep furrow, sow the seed well; plant living convictions in the judgment and in the conscience of men. Get the whole nature on the side of truth and righteousness. If the man himself, and not only his external habits, not only his feelings and inclinations ¯ "if he himself, through his whole spiritual nature, gives himself to the service of Christ and of man, you need not fear the coming of an adverse tide; you need not fret about the fickleness of our kind; you will witness no painful and pitiable reaction; the path of those you serve will be one of continuous ascent; it will be "the path of the just, shining brighter and brighter unto the perfect day."—C.
2Ch_28:9-15
I. DIVINE PITY IN THE MIDST OF DIVINE PENALTY. It is clear that the people of Judah owed their defeat entirely to the fact that they had grievously sinned against the Lord (see 2Ch_28:9). But there was a point beyond which justice did not demand that penalty should go. And at that point Divine pity might appear. There it did appear, and it arrested the hand of the cruel smiter. God sends judgment, but in wrath he "remembers mercy" (Hab_3:2). He sends the serious sickness which brings pain and weakness, but at a certain point he sends the remedy and restoration. He brings down upon the guilty the strong indignation of their kind, but he raises up the compassionate and the considerate who visit the prisoner or the lonely with words of friendly sympathy and cheer. He brings the strong but rebellious kingdom to defeat and humiliation, but he causes it to grow up again to competence and power. He bruises, but he does not shatter; he lays low, but he raises up.
II. OFFICIAL FAITHFULNESS. Oded had a difficult and dangerous part to play on this occasion, but he bore himself right nobly (2Ch_28:9-11). He did not flinch from words of energetic condemnation (2Ch_28:9, 2Ch_28:10), or from words of unpalatable advice (2Ch_28:11). If God puts us into any responsible position, whether in the family, or in the Church, or in the city, or in the councils of the nation, we are most sacredly bound to play our part courageously. No man is fitted to occupy a post of trust and honour unless he is prepared, at times, to say and do that which is likely to be resented. Though we may not be called upon to face a triumphant army with words of remonstrance and command, as Oded did now, yet we are sure to be under obligation to say that which is unacceptable and to confront the dislike and disapproval of men. If we are not prepared to do that, we had better stand down at once, and take a lower place. Certainly we are not qualified to speak for God.
III. HUMAN INFLUENCE. We have two instances of human influence being exercised with remarkable success. The outspoken prophet persuades the princes, and they in their turn persuade the soldiers to release the captives and to abandon the spoil which they had taken. This was a truly remarkable success. To induce men who are flushed with victory to forego the advantages they have won with the sword is to accomplish a great feat. It shows what man can do with man; what influence a strong voice can exert upon the human heart.
1. It is always well worth while to interpose between men and the wrong they are meditating; we may save them from great guilt and others from great suffering.
2. We must be in downright earnest, and speak with entire fearlessness and frankness, as both prophet and princes did now, or we shall not succeed. We must speak as those who are perfectly convinced, as those who know what is right, and have no hesitation at all as to the course which should be taken.
IV. HUMAN PITY. Instead of slaughtering their prisoners, which in that age might have been done without pity or remorse, we have these soldiers of Israel showing all possible kindness to them (2Ch_28:15). It is a common thing now for men to show a magnanimous kindness to their fallen enemy even on the battle-field. But the teaching of the Lord of love has done its work to some considerable extent, and has mercifully modified the cruelties of war. The scene of the text was something of an anticipation of the injunction, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink." It is for us to illustrate the spirit then shown, on every opportunity. We should spare those who are in our power; it may be in the domain of business; it may be in the social circle; it may be round the domestic table; it may be in something so simple as a debate, so common as an ordinary argument. But wherever or whatever it be, to spare our opponent when he is down, to save him from the miseries Of defeat, to put him in the way of return to self-respect and honour, to "take back our captives to Jericho," is to do no more than these Israelites did on this particular occasion; it is to do no less than our Master requires of us at all times and under every circumstance (Mat_5:43-48).—C.
2Ch_28:17-19
I. THE ACCUMULATING PENALTY WHICH SIN ALWAYS PAYS.
1. This often comes in the form of obvious and apparent losses. The trangressor who "fears not God, neither regards man," finds himself subjected to a series of adversities, which he regards as misfortunes, but which we recognize as penalties. He loses the confidence and esteem of his worthier neighbours; then he loses custom, trade, support, and then and thus he loses money; then he loses his substance by extravagance and, it may be, by one or more expensive vices—and vice is a very expensive thing; then he loses health and spirit and hope; then he loses the regard of his neighbours generally. So, step by step, he goes down, until "the Lord brings Judah low," until he has "made the land naked."
2. Or penalty may come in the way of inward and spiritual deterioration. We cannot pretend to say in what order this proceeds; it varies with individual souls; but blow upon blow descends; bruise upon bruise is suffered by the soul; one defence after another is taken away from the citadel until the land is "naked." It may be that the fine sense of truthfulness goes first; then, perhaps, the spirit of reverence; then the loss of thorough rectitude; then the loss of purity; then may come an indifference to the judgment of the good and wise; then the decay of self-respect;—and what then is left? Let the man who, like Ahaz, hardens himself against God understand this, that as he goes on his guilty way, even if outward prosperity remains to him, there is descending upon his spiritual nature, upon himself if not upon his circumstances, blow upon blow of righteous penalty—blows which are bruising and slaying him, beneath which he is surely perishing.
II. THE MULTIPLIED SORROWS WHICH RIGHTEOUSNESS SOMETIMES ENDURES. "Many are the afflictions (even) of the righteous" (Psa_34:19). To the patient Job, to the faithful Jeremiah, to the devoted Paul, they come in large number and in great strength. Even to the purest and loveliest of the sons and daughters of God there sometimes falls a sad succession of trials; it may be in the heart and on the lips of the most worthy to say, "All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." Blow upon blow descends upon their head. What does it mean? It simply means that the branch which is bearing fruit the Lord of the vineyard is pruning, "that it may bring forth more fruit;" it means that "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth," in order that he may make them to be "partakers of his holiness;' it means that the Divine Master is refining and cultivating his servant, to prepare him for a far broader and nobler sphere and for higher and heavenlier,work hereafter; it means that affliction is working out an "exceeding weight of glory."—C.
2Ch_28:21-27
I. INFATUATION. He robbed the palace and even plundered the temple in order to bribe the King of Assyria to help him, instead of going to the house of the Lord as a servant and suppliant of Jehovah, to seek and find his help. That is to say, he committed robbery and sacrilege in order to secure the succour of a man who afterwards deceived and defrauded him (2Ch_28:21), when, by simple piety and integrity, he might have secured the aid of Omnipotence, the help of One that never fails his people. His course was one of utter infatuation. He neglected the one way that was quite open to him, and that would certainly have succeeded; he adopted a measure that was full of iniquity, and that was likely to end, as it did, in failure. He put the finishing stroke to his fatuity when he worshipped "the gods which smote him" (2Ch_28:23). Sin does lead down to infatuation, it leads men to seek their joy and their heritage in the poorest and most unsatisfying springs, to pursue wisdom and wealth in directions where emptiness and poverty are alone to be obtained; it leads men to neglect the Fountain of living waters, the Source of all truth and wisdom, of all excellency and joy. It strews the path of the guilty with melancholy failures.
II. DEFIANCE. Ahaz could hardly go further in defying the Lord God of his fathers, the Divine One whom he was taught and trained to worship, than he did by his conduct as here described (2Ch_28:24, 2Ch_28:25). It was an act of unholy hardihood, of almost desperate defiance, that could only be the outcome of a guilty obduracy of spirit. He must have resented the action of Jehovah and determined to go all possible lengths in defying his authority. Well might the spirit of Isaiah be aroused as he witnessed this profanation, this open and daring rebellion against the living God. When men have long given way to their folly and to their sinful inclinations they do sometimes go to this awful length. They defy the God that made them, in whose power they stand. They may deny his existence; they may mock at his judgments, and at his final condemnation of their course; they may speak arrogantly and impiously of his power and of his rule: "How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?" (Psa_73:11).
III. DEATH. Ahaz went down to an early and a dishonoured death (verse 27). We do not wonder that he died before he reached the age of forty. The disasters he brought upon his country, and the mental strain which he must have undergone to proceed to such lengths of impiety, are enough to account for a premature decline and death. And all the better instincts of that instructed people led them to refuse the funereal honour they usually paid to their kings. "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." The issue of all sin is death—physical, spiritual, eternal. This is its wages. Let those who are moving down its sad decline take note of the end to which they move. But let us realize that to all who will turn from its enticements and break from its evil power, to all who will accept the supreme gift of God in Jesus Christ, "eternal life" is open (Rom_6:23).—C.
1. He possessed his father's nature. Of necessity, as his father's son (Gen_5:3). Yet he improved not upon that nature, but rather deteriorated and corrupted it. Heredity in him took a downward direction. Some knowledge of who his mother was might shed important light upon the question of how he came by his peculiarities of character and disposition,
2. He enjoyed his father's example. Jotham "prepared his ways before the Lord his God" (2Ch_27:6), yet his pious conduct seemingly exerted no beneficial influence upon his son. Ahaz followed not his father's footsteps, but carved out a path of his own. Example, especially when good, may be potent, but is not omnipotent.
3. He obtained his father's throne. Yet he rather tarnished it than added to its lustre. New dignities do not give new hearts or new powers. At the age of twenty—five years younger than his father (2Ch_27:1), and only four years older than his grandfather (2Ch_26:1)—he assumed the crown of Judah. If the reading "twenty-five "years (Vatican text of the LXX; Arabic, Syriac) be preferred (Ewald, Thenius, Bertheau, Keil, Bahr), on the ground that otherwise he must have married in his tenth or eleventh year, in order, after sixteen years, to be succeeded by a son as old as Hezekiah, who was twenty-five on ascending the throne (2Ch_29:1), he was still but a youth when crowned, which may suggest that early promotion is not the same thing as early conversion.
4. He lacked, i.e. did not possess, his father's goodness. Grace runs not in the blood (Joh_1:13), though corruption does (Job_14:4; Psa_51:5). A man may communicate to his son wealth, learning, fame, power; be cannot, certainly, impart either grace or goodness.
5. He attained not to his father's grave. When he died his people buried him in Jerusalem, but not in the sepulchres of the kings of Israel. He who in his lifetime had been no true Israelite, though he wore a crown, must not in his death be laid among the sovereigns who were Israelites indeed. Death, which destroys all time's distinctions between man and man, nevertheless effectually distinguishes between the righteous and the wicked (Pro_14:32; Luk_16:22; Rev_14:13).
II. AN APOSTATE KING. Immediately he reached the crown, Ahaz discovered what manner of spirit he was of. With a perfect passion for idolatry—"a mania for foreign religious practices" (Stanley)—he soon outstripped his people, if not the heathen themselves, in his misdevotion, becoming their Coryphaeus in superstitious rites, showing himself to be the idolater par excellence in Judah, and by his regal example leading his subjects down into unknown depths of infamy (2Ch_28:19).
1. He renounced the true religion of Jehovah. Not merely as it had been practised by David (2Ch_28:1), Asa (2Ch_15:17), and Jehoshaphat (2Ch_17:3), but as it had been observed by his immediate predecessors, Jotham, Uzziah, and Amaziah. If not discontinued at once as to outward form, it was kept up for a season merely as a form; it was from the first abandoned in heart. He began his reign by practising the arts of a hypocrite.
2. He adopted the false worship of Baal, which had long held sway in the northern kingdom (2Ch_28:2). Whether he introduced the calf-worship of Jeroboam (Keil), or restricted himself to the manufacture of images of Baal (Bahr), in either case he followed in the way of the Israelitish kings (1Ki_12:28; 1Ki_16:32; 2Ki_3:2). "It is hard not to be infected by a contagious neighbourhood: whoever read that the kingdom of Israel was seasoned with the vicinity of the true religion of Judah?" (Bishop Hall).
3. He utilized all the idol-sanctuaries already existing in the land. "He sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree" (2Ch_28:4). In so doing he copied bad masters, reproducing the slate of matters which had existed in Judah under Rehoboam (1Ki_14:23), and at the moment flourished in Samaria under Hoshea (2Ki_17:10)—a state of matters which from the first had prevailed among the heathen inhabitants of the land (Deu_12:2), but which they had been commanded ruthlessly to destroy. On the nature of this worship consult the Exposition.
4. He introduced the worship of Moloch, "the savage god of the Ammonites'' (Stanley), as Solomon had done before him (1Ki_11:7), in open defiance of Divine Law (Le 2Ch_18:21; Deu_18:10), setting up an image of that idol—a human figure with a bull's head and outstretched arms—in the valley of Hinnom, a "narrow waterless ravine bounding the site of Jerusalem, and commencing on the west as a shallow dell", and even sacrificing to it one (2Ki_16:3) or more (2Ch_28:3) of his own sons, as Manasseh afterwards did (2Ch_33:6). "The image of metal was made hot by a fire kindled within it, and the children, laid in its arms, rolled from thence into the fiery lap below. Voluntary offering on the part of the parents was essential to the success of the sacrifice. Even the firstborn, nay, the only child of the family, was given up. The parents stopped the cries of their children by fondling and kissing them, for the victim ought not to weep, and the sound of complaint was drowned in the din of flutes and kettledrums". That the children were not merely passed through the fire as an act of purgation, but actually burned, seems indisputable; it is not certain that the children were thrown alive into the idol's glowing arms, the opinion that they were first slain (Keil, Bahr, Schurer) appearing to be warranted by certain passages in Scripture (Eze_16:20, Eze_16:21; Eze_23:39; Isa_57:5; Jer_7:31; Jer_19:5; cf. 2Ki_3:27).
5. He sacrificed to the gods of Damascus.
(1) He did this when the Syrians were inflicting on him military reverses, i.e. in the time of his distress (Keil), not after it (Bertheau). Strange that just then, when men most need the help of God, in the hour of affliction and season of calamity, they usually manifest a tendency to run from him, looking for assistance from every quarter blot the right one (Jer_3:23)—exemplified in Ahaziah (2Ki_1:2, 2Ki_1:3).
(2) The reason of his doing this was that he imagined his ill success upon the field of battle had been due, not at all to the hand of God who thereby punished his wickedness, but to the assistance derived by the Syrians from their divinities (verse 23), and conceived that, by paying them respect in sacrificing to them, he would win their favour to himself instead of them (2Ch_25:14). Wicked men seldom ascribe their misfortunes or adversities to the right cause, their own ill deserts and God's hand in punishing the same, but mostly attribute them to the "scientific idols," called "chance," "circumstances," "ill luck," etc; which deities they hope to propitiate in a manner hardly less foolish than that of Ahaz, by sacrificing at their unhallowed shrines.
(3) The specific mode in which he served the Syrian gods is not stated, as the divinities themselves are not named, and indeed in Scripture never are (Jdg_10:6). The incident of the altar seen by Ahaz at Damascus, and reproduced in Jerusalem (2Ki_16:10-16), is not referred to by the Chronicler. The altar incident occurred when Ahaz was attending Tiglath-Pileser's durbar at Damascus; "the sacrifices" were performed while Ahaz was fighting with the Syrians.
(4) The result of his appeal to the gods of Syria was ruin to himself and to all Israel. So all that forsake God shall be ashamed (Jer_17:13), while "their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after other gods" (Psa_16:4), and "they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercies" (Jonah if. 8); for "idolaters shall have their part in the lake," etc. (Rev_21:8).
6. He shut up the doors of the house of the Lord. (Verse 24.) It was high time. The man who could displace the brazen altar made by Solomon after patterns furnished by Jehovah (Exo_25:40; Exo_26:30; Exo_27:1; 1Ch_28:19), to make room for a new shrine, no matter of what costly material, copied from a heathen temple at Damascus, and fashioned by a servile priest in Jerusalem; the monster who could erect an image of Moloch in his capital and sacrifice to it his own child; the devotee who was so mad upon foreign gods, that the very sight of a heathen temple, altar, or idol caused him to fall a-worshipping;—had obviously no excuse for longer affecting to be a worshipper of Jehovah. Accordingly, he smashed up the vessels and closed the doors of the temple. There should be no more worshipping of Jehovah, if he could help it. It was horrible sacrilege, but it was at least honest.
7. He did his utmost to provoke Jehovah to anger. Building altars in every corner of Jerusalem, till, like Athens in the days of Paul, it was wholly given to idolatry, literally stuffed full of idols (Act_17:16), and erecting besides in every city of Judah high places to burn incense unto other gods (verses 24, 25); he did his best to pour contempt upon the God of his fathers; in his outrageous, fanatical, and senseless idolatry eclipsing all his predecessors, leaving behind him in the race to perdition experts in heathen worship like Rehoboam and Jehoram in Judah, like Jeroboam and Ahab in Israel. It was no wonder that Jehovah at length bestirred himself to take vengeance on this nonpareil idolater.
III. AN UNSUCCESSFUL WARNING. For the wickedness of himself and people, he and they were "brought low," diminished in numbers, weakened in power, humbled in spirit, by Jehovah, who raised up against them three foreign foes.
1. The Syrians and Israelites. (Verses 5-7.)
(1) The leaders of the allied forces were—of the Syrians, Rezin, or Rezon—in the inscriptions, Razinu, King of Syria, whose capital was Damascus; of the Israelites, Pekah, the son of Remaliah—in the inscriptions, Pakaha, a usurper; whose metropolis was Samaria ('Records,' etc; 5:48-52).
(2) The time selected for their assault upon Judah was the beginning of the reign of Ahaz, although for some years previous to Jotham's death similar attacks had not been wanting (2Ki_15:37).
(3) The object contemplated by the expedition was to overturn the Davidie dynasty, and place upon the throne of Judah "a vassal king, whose father's name, Tabeel, shows that he must have been a Syrian" (Sayce); the Hauran inscriptions exhibiting several names, like Tab'el, compounded with el, and the Syrian Tab'-rimmon forming an exact parallel (Delitzsch, on Isa_7:6). It is supposed that a party in Jerusalem favoured the contemplated revolution (Isa_8:6).
(4) The plan of campaign appears to have been that Rezin should invade Judah from the south, capturing Eloth on the Red Sea, which Uzziah had restored to Judah (2Ch_26:2), that Pekah should send a force directly from the north across the borders of the southern kingdom, and that both armies should meet in front of Jerusalem, to reduce it, if possible, by a siege.
(5) The result of the invasion, so far as Ahaz and his people were concerned, was disastrous in the extreme. The capital, as Isaiah had predicted, was not taken. It may be questioned if the programme was carried out to the extent of besieging the city. There is ground for thinking this was prevented by the appearance upon the scene of Tiglath-Pileser II. of Assyria (verse 16; 2Ki_16:7). But
(a) Rezin of Damascus, besides recovering Eloth (2Ki_16:6), defeated Ahaz m a pitched battle, and carried away a multitude of his subjects captive to Damascus.
(b) Pekah also routed him with great slaughter in one day's fight, slaying a hundred and twenty thousand of his veteran troops. In particular, Zichri, an Ephraimite hero, struck down three warriors closely related to Ahaz—Maaseiah the king's son, i.e. cousin or uncle, as in 2Ch_18:25 and 2Ch_22:11, since Ahaz could hardly at the commencement of his reign have had a son capable of bearing arms; Azrikam, the ruler of the house, not of the temple (2Ch_31:13; 1Ch_9:11), but of the palace, hence a high official in the royal household; and Elkanah, that was next or second to the king, i.e. his prime minister. In addition, two hundred thousand women, sons and daughters, with much spoil, were carried captive to Samaria. The great number of the slain and of the captives may be accounted for by remembering that it was practically a war for the existence of the southern kingdom, which would require Ahaz to call out all his able- bodied population; that the Israelites were accustomed to act with great cruelty in war (2Ki_15:16), and probably did so on this occasion (2Ch_22:9); and that Jehovah had delivered Ahaz and his people into the hands of their enemies on account of their apostasy, as by the lips of Moses (Le 2Ch_26:17, 37) he had threatened he would in such cases do.
2. The Edomites. These, whom Uzziah had reduced to subjection (2Ch_26:2), were probably emboldened by Rezin's successful attack upon Eloth (2Ki_16:6) to throw off the yoke of Judah, and even attempt reprisals in the shape of an invasion of Judaean territory. This they executed with such military skill, that they carried off, as the Syrians and Israelites had done, a number of prisoners.
3. The Philistines. During the previous reign these also had been conquered, and their country occupied by garrisons of Judaean soldiers (2Ch_26:6); but, embracing the opportunity afforded by the simultaneous attacks directed upon their ancient enemy and present suzerain, they asserted their independence, made an irruption into the low land and south country of Judah, captured and occupied a number of cities, with their dependent villages: Beth-shemesh (see on 2Ch_25:21); Ajalon, the modem Jalo (2Ch_11:10); Gederoth, in the hill country of Judah (Jos_15:36); "the Gedor of the 'Onomasticon,' ten miles from Eleutheropolis, on the road to Diospolis, now the ruin Jedireh"; Shocho (2Ch_11:7), the Shuweike of to-day; Timnah, the present Tibneh, on the frontier of Judah three quarters of an hour from Ain-shems; Gimzo, now Jimsu, a large village between Lydda and Jerusalem.
LESSONS.
1. The degeneracy of human nature—a good Jotham begets a wicked Ahaz.
2. The madness of idolatry, exemplified in the career of Ahaz.
3. The certainty of retribution, illustrated by the "bringing low" of Judah.—W.
2Ch_28:8-15
1. The number of the captives. Two hundred thousand persons.
(1) This, following upon a slaughter of one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers, showed the crushing nature of the blow which had fallen upon Judah.
(2) It exemplified the horrors of war, especially amongst ancient peoples, with whom the deportation of vast hordes of a country's population was a familiar phenomenon. Cf. among the Jews the twenty thousand footmen taken by David from Hadadezer of Zobah (2Sa_8:4; 1Ch_18:4), and the ten thousand Edomites captured by Amaziah (2Ch_25:12); amongst the Assyrians the carrying away of the inhabitants of Samaria to Assyria by Tiglath-Pileser II. (2Ki_15:29; cf. 'Records,' etc; 5.52)—"the population, the goods of its people (and the furniture)to the land of Assyria I sent," and the removal by Sargon II. of 27,280 of the leading inhabitants of Samaria to Gozan and Media ('Records,' etc; 7.28); and amongst the Egyptians the number of foreign peoples transported to the Nile valley as the result of successful campaigns, a number so great as with their descendants to compose in the time of Rameses Sesostris "a third, aud probably still more, of all the families of Egypt" (Brugsch, ' Egypt under the Pharaohs,' 2.104).
(3) It illustrated the ease with which, when God willed it, a nation could be "minished and brought low" (Job_12:23; Psa_107:39).
(4) It attested the certainty and severity of God's judgments on account of sin, whether upon nations or individuals (Le 2Ch_26:17; Deu_32:30; 2Ch_15:6).
2. The persons of the captives.
(1) The brethren of the Israelites, i.e. their kinsmen; hence the wickedness of their conduct in enslaving not merely human beings, which was bad, but their own flesh and blood, which was worse, yea, was unnatural; and
(2) of these, not the men who had fought against them, which might have been in some sort excusable, but, which was wholly indefensible, the women, with their sons and daughters, who were all alike innocent of offence in either causing or sustaining the war, and therefore should have been exempted from experiencing its miseries.
3. The destination of the captives. Samaria, in the Assyrian monuments Sa-mir-i-na, the capital of the northern kingdom, built by Omri (1Ki_16:24).
II. THE WARRIORS OF ISRAEL AND THE PROPHET OF JEHOVAH. (2Ch_28:9-11.)
1. The prophet's name. Oded, "Setting up." The name of the father of Azariah who went out to meet Asa (2Ch_15:2).
2. The prophet's designation. A prophet of Jehovah, not of the false Jehovah worshipped in Samaria under the image of a calf (Hos_8:5, Hos_8:6), but of the true Jehovah, which shows that, apostate as the northern kingdom had become, it was not entirely destitute of true religion-even there Jehovah having at least prophets who witnessed for him, like Hosea (Hos_1:1) and Oded, if not also adherents who worshipped him.
3. The prophet<