Bible Commentaries
2 Kings 16

Verses 1-20

XV

THE REIGNS OF UZZIAH, JOTHAM, AND THAZ (OF JUDAH) AND ZECHARIAH, SHALLUM, PEKAHIAH, AND PEKA (OF ISRAEL)

2 Kings 15:1-16:20; 2 Chronicles 26:16-28:17

In this chapter we begin with the brief reign of Zechariah who was the last king of the dynasty of Jehu. He was a weakling preceded by four strong men, but himself very inferior to his predecessors. Zechariah reigned only six months, and during that six months we have the same story of sin and corruption repeated as we have had in all the reigns previous to him. He was murdered by a usurper named Shallum, and thus ends the dynasty of Jehu as had been prophesied: that his children to the fourth generation only should sit upon the throne.

Then follows the brief reign of Shallum. The usurper succeeds in removing Zechariah and seizes the throne. His reign is short lived, but during that time we have an even more terrible picture of the condition of the people as described in the book of Hosea, Hosea 4-14. It is during this period and after, that Hosea gives us the bulk of his prophecy. In Hosea 10:3, referring to one of these revolutions when the dynasty was changed, we find this statement: "Surely now shall they say, We have no king; for we fear not the Lord; and the king, what can he do for us?" which indicates that the people felt themselves without a king. They cared not for God nor for the king. The kingdom was without a head) without a central government, the result of such condition of affairs is the anarchy which he describes. In Hosea 4:1-2 we have a catalogue of the sins of the people: "Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel; for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land; nought but swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery; they break out, and blood toucheth blood." So frequent were the murders that the blood of one is not dried up before another one takes place and there is a continuous stream of blood.

Next comes the brief reign of Menahem, who seized the throne through murder, destroyed all the dynasty preceding him, and the brief statement made in regard to his character would indicate that he was a man, barbarous in his ferocity, a murderer and a relentless freebooter.

The record tells us that when Uzziah was exalted, his heart was lifted up with pride, and he assumed to perform the functions of the priesthood. He thrust himself into the Temple to offer the incense which the law placed in other hands. There the priest met him, bravely stood in the way of that offering, and while the spirit of persistence was upon him, God smote him with leprosy, and from the day that leprosy struck him he had to be isolated from the throne and the people and though he lived years afterward a regency was established by his son, Jotham. It is called Uzziah’s reign, but Jotham acted as king until his leprosy killed him.

In 2 Kings 15:19-20 and 1 Chronicles 5:26 we find that Pul, king of Assyria, or the great Tiglath-Pileser, approaches the Northern Kingdom, and Menahem had to pay a large tribute in order to maintain his kingdom, a thousand talents of silver: "And Menahem exacted the money of Israel, even of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the king of Assyria, so the king of Assyria turned back, and stayed not there in the land." Thus he was able to maintain his throne and kingdom by paying Tiglath-Pileser a heavy tribute. Then follows the reign of Pekahiah, the son of Menahem. He was a little improvement upon his father. In a short time he was himself butchered by Pekah who seized the throne and established another dynasty. His character was in line with the other kings of Israel in general: "He departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat."

About this time Uzziah died. It is notable that he was buried "in the field of burial with his fathers, for they said, He was a leper." Just at this time, Isaiah, the greatest of Old Testament prophets, had his vision, and also the prophetic work of Amos and Hosea of Israel and Micah of Judah falls in this period. From these prophets we get a fine description of the customs and practices of this time.

Upon the death of Uzziah, his son Jotham, reigned in his stead. His mother’s name was Jerusha, the daughter of Zadok. His character was ahead of any other king in the period except Hezekiah. He didn’t put down the high places, but he didn’t commit particular sins to aggravate the condition of the people. He carried forward some important building enterprises. He built the upper gate of the Temple, the wall of Ophel, cities in the hill country of Judah and castles and towers in the forest. He was also successful in war with the Ammonites who paid him large tribute.

During the reign of Pekah several things happened. The kingdom was now nearing its end and we read that Pul, the great Assyrian king approached eastern Palestine, conquered it, deported the entire population "and brought them unto Halah, and Habor and Hara, and to the river of Gozan," and there they remained. Tiglath-Pileser was the first of the great Assyrians that inaugurated the system of deporting a rebellious people, thus rendering them powerless to oppose him. He picked them up, and transported them to other countries, and brought in others to take their places, simply transferred whole nations. Thus all eastern Palestine had gone into exile.

We now come to Ahaz and the whole picture is black. He reigned sixteen years and he crowded into that time as much meanness, vileness, as a man can put into sixteen years. Let us glance at the record itself to see some of the things that he did. In the sketch of his character it is said, "He did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord his God, like David his father. 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. And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree." There was a confederacy formed against him to which the prophets give particular notice. The king of Israel and the king of Syria entered into an alliance to destroy Judah. Here the prophet Oded comes in and the record says, "Behold, because the Lord, the God of your fathers, was wroth with Judah, he hath delivered them into your hand, and ye have slain them in a rage which hath reached up unto heaven. And now ye purpose to keep the children of Judah and Jerusalem for bondmen and bondwomen unto you: but are there not even with you trespasses of your own against the Lord your God?" You acted as the sword of God against Judah. Ought it not to put you to thinking that God would make some other nation the sword against you? ’Spurgeon has a great sermon on that text: "Are there not even with you trespasses of your own against the Lord your God?" Spurgeon preached his sermon to those harsh censorious people who with an eye of a buzzard can detect anything fowl, or dead, or decaying in the character of other people, and he made this charge in the sermon: "You that condemn others, you who are so ready to pass a harsh and inexorable judgment upon them, are there not even with you some trespasses against the Lord your God?" Our Lord carried out the thought thus: "What judgment ye mete unto others shall be measured unto you." Not only was Ahaz smitten by this confederacy from the north, but the Edomites on the south revolted against him; on every side the enemies came in and smote him.

Now we come to his next sin. Instead of turning to God with repentance and asking the Lord to help him he seeks an alliance with Tiglath-pileser, the king of Assyria, and invites him to smite Syria for a consideration: "Now I will foot the bills." In order to foot the bills he strips the house of God of all of its precious ornaments and with that gold he buys the service of the Assyrian king to smite the Syrians and the Assyrian was ready enough to do the smiting. He had an eye in that direction already and he did smite, but he demanded that Ahaz should come up to Damascus and pay tribute to him.

So we come to the third great sin of Ahaz. When in Damascus he studied the form of the altar of burnt offerings that the idolaters had up there and was very much pleased with it; so before he leaves he sends a plan of it to a certain priest and instructs him to make one just like it, and when he gets home he moves God’s altar off to one side, and puts up this heathen altar that he had copied. He didn’t stop at that; he shut up the holy place, and closed up all the services of the worship of the true God. That gives some idea of his sins.

In 2 Kings 15:29 we have the account of another terrible deportation by Tiglath-Pileser. He came "and took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maacah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all of the land of Naphtali, and he carried them captive to Assyria." Thus we see that northern Israel was stripped of all of its land east of the Jordan and of all its land north of the plain of Esdraelon, and only the hill country of Ephraim was left, about one-tenth perhaps of the entire dominion. So the kingdom is going, falling, being stripped of its possessions gradually.

In 2 Kings 15:30-31, we have an account of the death of Pekah, which was the result of a conspiracy of Hoshea, the son of Remaliah. But between Pekah and Hoshea we find, according to good authority," another interregnum of nine years which is determined by comparing 2 Kings 15:27; 2 Kings 15:30 and 2 Kings 17:1.

QUESTIONS

1. Who succeeded Jeroboam II, and what was his character?

2. How long did he reign, what was the manner of his death, and what promise of Jehovah was fulfilled in him?

3. Who succeeded Zechariah and what was the story of his reign and death?

4. Who succeeded Shallum and what was his character?

5. What was Uzziah’s sin, what was its punishment and what is meant by "several house"?

6. Who became king regent and what was his special work as such?

7. What invasion of Israel just here and what results?

8. Who succeeded Menahem, what was his character and what the manner of his death?

9. Who succeeded Pekahiah and what was his character?

10. What is notable in the death and burial of Uzziah, what great prophet had his vision in the year of Uzziah’s death, and what other prophets came in this period?

11. Who succeeded Uzziah, who his mother and what his character?

12. What was the spiritual condition of his people, what of his building enterprises and what of his conquest and result?

13. What deportation of Israel here, who took them and where, and what the market condition of Judah at this time?

14. Who succeeded Jotham, what was his character, and what horrible thing did he practice?

15. Recite the account of the war between Ahaz and Rezin and Pekah including the account of Isaiah and the work of Oded the prophet.

16. What invasion here of Judah, what was the result and what reason assigned?

17. What distressed condition of Ahaz at this time, to what source did he turn for relief and what result?

18. What second deportation of Israel, who took them and where?

19. Recite the story of Ahaz’s sacrilege and its lessons.

20. What of the interregnum between Pekah and Hoshea and how determined by the author?

Verses 20-41

XVI

THE REIGNS OF HOSHEA (OF ISRAEL) AND HEZEKIAH (OF JUDAH)

2 Kings 16:20-17:41; 2 Chronicles 28:27-31:21

The reign of Hoshea is another new dynasty since Pekah was murdered; his dynasty has ended and Hoshea comes to the throne. Tiglath-Pileser says in his inscriptions that it was at his instigation that Hoshea rose up against Pekah and murdered him, and that it was upon his word that Hoshea was placed upon the throne and established there. So say the monumental inscriptions. This is the last dynasty and the last king in this awful history of the downfall of Israel. We come now to look at the first six years of the reign of Hezekiah. From this part of his reign we gather the following points:

First of all, let us look at his character as described thus: "He did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that David his father had done. He removed the high places and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him. For he clave to the Lord, and departed not from following him, but kept his commandments which the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him and he prospered whithersoever he went forth." On Sunday night when I was a young pastor in Waco, I announced that as my text, "Nehushtan," meaning, "It is only a piece of brass." Moses made the serpent and it served admirably for -the healing of the people, and it was right to wish to keep a memorial of such a marvelous thing as the deliverance from the snakes in the desert, but there is a spirit in the world to worship the antique, to gather relics and to worship them, and so in later days that happened. The serpent that Moses had made became an object of worship. It became one of their gods. Now Hezekiah says, "It is just a piece of brass," and he brake it in pieces. In the sermon I applied that to the misuses that are made of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; that when a priest stands over a wafer and mumbles a few words and says to the bread, "Thou art my God," then it is time to say, "It is just a piece of bread"; time to say, "Nehushtan," and when a man magnifies baptism until he finds the remission of his sins in a pool of water, and when it becomes such a sacrament that just to touch a wet finger to the brow of an unconscious babe will make it a member of Christ, then it is time to say, "Nehushtan." That was the direction of my sermon.

Now let us see the great things done by Hezekiah. In his reformation he destroyed those high places throughout the whole country, so that Jehovah only was worshiped. Second, he destroyed not only the brazen serpent but he brought about a widespread spirit of iconoclasm. "Icon" means an image, and "Iconoclast," an image breaker. One of the most notable features of the revolts against the Spaniards and against Rome in the lower countries was that the Iconoclasts came to the front. Crosses, images, anything in the world that men bow down to and worship violates the command, "Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image and bow down before it to worship it"; all these the Iconoclasts broke to pieces. It intensified the bitterness between the Protestants in the Low Country and the Spaniards, and there were periods of Iconoclastic outbreakings in many other countries, but Hezekiah determined so far as he was concerned in the sense of his responsibility to God that no image however sacred in its memory, even as sacred as that of the brazen serpent, should be the object of worship, and to prevent it he would destroy the image. Image worship is exceedingly convenient. History tells us about an ancient people whose god was a piece of dough, flour dough, molded into form. There was this virtue about that god: that in a time of famine they could eat him. Isaiah uses sarcasm where he describes the image worship and how those gods were made; that having eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not. Bob Ingersoll was fond of quoting rather than originating the saying, "A god is the noblest work of man." In other words, he was saying that gods are made by men, and not men by gods. Well, anyhow, the gods that men make are not deities and we should break them as fast as we come to them.

The next thing that he did was to cleanse and renovate the Temple, inasmuch as his father had defiled it by putting in a new altar and closing up the holy place and breaking up all the services. So Hezekiah cleansed the Temple with great formality and publicity, and then reconsecrated it to the service of God. He put all of its furniture back into its proper place. He revised every important part of the worship, even the service of music. He re-established the Levitical choir and the Levitical instruments of praise and the use of the psalter was in existence before Hezekiah’s time. Then as the clouds were darkening around the Northern Kingdom, as their doom was impending, he sent out an invitation to all the true worshipers of God in the Northern Kingdom inviting them to come and join him in the great passover to be celebrated according to the law of Moses, and the record tells us that a multitude of the Northern Kingdom did come and align themselves with him in the observance of the Passover, and in connection with that we have this Scripture: "A multitude of the people even men of Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet did they eat the passover otherwise than it was written; but Hezekiah prayed for them saying, The Lord God pardon every one, that prepareth his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary, and the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people." I call attention to that passage particularly on account of the use made of it by pedobaptists in replying to Baptists on the subject of communion. They say, "You Baptists insist upon the water cleansing before communion; that a man should not partake of the communion unless there has been the previous ablution of baptism. And as the communion was established on a Passover occasion it meant a transition from the Passover of the Old Testament to the Lord’s Supper of the New Testament, and as here in the days of Hezekiah were people who did partake of the Passover not according to the law, and God forgave them, so it ought to be in the communion." The Baptist reply to it is, "You should not plead in defense of a custom of historical violation of the law, confessed to be a violation of the law, confessed to be a sin, a sin that had to be presented to God and for which pardon had to be obtained. Your Hezekiah case is against you." So the Baptists have the best of it in this case.

Following that Passover he kept an additional seven days and this is said about it: "So there was great joy in Jerusalem: for since the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there was not the like in Jerusalem. Then the priests and the Levites arose and blessed the people; and their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to the holy dwelling place, even unto heaven." To me this account of the reformation wrought by Hezekiah has always been a most interesting section of the Bible to read and a most profitable one. I never read it without being impressed in my mind profoundly with the good that comes in going back to the first principles, in going back to God’s written word and there on the strength of that word sending up a petition to the throne of grace for mercy and being convinced that mercy and help and the power of God will come down upon us.

The next item in his reformation is that he restores all the original Levitical services and the whole tithe system for the support of those services. Now that is all I have to say here about the reign of Hezekiah.

We learn from the prophets that three mighty natural events occurred in this period. In Amos 1:1 we have the statement that Amos commenced his prophecy in the second year before the great earthquake. There was an earthquake that figured in the memory of the people for a long time. In Zechariah 14 a much later prophecy, we find a reference to that great earthquake that came to pass during this period. Then in Amos 8:9 we have an account of an eclipse of the sun at midday which took place in this period, about 763 B.C. The sun went down at noon. That eclipse is not only mentioned in the Bible, but we find in the inscriptions on the monuments raised by neighboring nations a reference to that eclipse at that very date. Not only that, but modern astronomers by a mathematical calculation prove that just at that date an eclipse became visible to all parts of Palestine, a total eclipse of the sun.

Another great event that occurred during this period was the visit of the locusts set forth in Joel, one of the most vivid descriptions in human literature. There is much literature on the subject of locust plagues, from Moses’ account of them in the plague on Pharaoh to the latest account by travelers in Africa, but Joel’s description is the most remarkable in the world, except the one in Revelation which is a plague of symbolic locusts.

In connection with the reigns of Uzziah, Ahaz, and Hezekiah there comes out on the stage the greatest of the prophets. The most evangelistic of all the prophets, Isaiah. The record tells us that he wrote the latter part of the history of Uzziah. Now it is in Isaiah particularly that we find the best description of the moral condition of the people during this period.

Now let us turn to Hoshea and the Northern Kingdom. In order to maintain the integrity of his kingdom, Hoshea pays tribute to Tiglath-Pileser. On the death of Tiglath-Pileser and the ascendancy of Shalmaneser he continues to pay a heavy tribute: "Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria, and Hoshea became his servant and brought him presents," which means the paying of heavy tribute. He might have been secure upon his throne for years had he continued to pay this tribute, but he did not. He began to conspire with Egypt to throw off the yoke of Shalmaneser: "And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea; for he had sent messengers to the king of Egypt, and offered no presents to the king of Assyria as he had done year by year." He conspired with the king of Egypt and refused to pay his tribute to Shalmaneser. This is the occasion of the downfall of Hoshea and of the end of the Northern Kingdom. Shalmaneser at once set in motion his armed force. Samaria is encompassed and besieged, and after a terrible siege with all the horrors attendant upon a siege in that country and age, Samaria fell into the hands of Shalmaneser. Shalmaneser dies and is succeeded by Sargon who captures Samaria and deports the inhabitants, and he says in one of his inscriptions that he carried off 27,290 people and placed them in the land of Assyria, leaving only the poorer classes in the country. This occurred in 722 B.C., the date of the fall of Samaria, and the end of the Northern Kingdom. We have the causes which led to it pictured in the prophecies of Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah. Hoshea’s conspiring with Egypt and refusing to pay tribute to Assyria is the occasion for the destruction of the kingdom.

Notice the repeopling of the country: "And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Awa, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof." Now notice that the population is so scattered that the wild animals increase, the lions become so plentiful that they devour them, and the people feel that they haven’t the right god. They do not know the god of these hills, and they want to be taught how to worship him in the right way. So they appeal to the king of Assyria and he sends them a priest to teach them how to worship the good of this land, and the result is that we have a mixture, a conglomeration, a mongrel race, and a mongrel religion, described thus: "Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. . . . They feared the Lord and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away." They feared Jehovah whom they thought to be the god of this hill country, but they served other gods. So we have the strange mixture of these people brought from the various parts of Assyria, Jews who were residents of Israel, and all these other various forms of gods mixed up with Jehovah worship, a strange mixture indeed. These were the forerunners, or ancestors of the Samaritans, whom we find in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and in the New Testament. We know something of their attitude toward Israel. They have remained there from the time they were transported by Sargon unto this day, and today there is a colony of them there, about one hundred and seventy people, the remnant of this old mongrel race. They still have their old customs, their patriarchs, the Pentateuch, the law of Moses, and they keep the sabbath even more strictly than the Pharisees did. This closes the history of northern Israel.

QUESTIONS

1. Who was the last king of Israel and what was his character?

2. Who was king of Judah when Israel was carried into captivity and what was his character?

3. What did he do that no other king had done since the division of the kingdom?

4. What relic of Moses was worshiped by Israel and what did he do with it?

5. In what particulars did his religious reformation consist?

6. What were the essential points in the cleansing of the Temple?

7. Describe the reconsecration service.

8. Describe his keeping of the Passover, (1) as to the preparation, (2) as to celebration, (3) as to “other seven days,” (4) as to the results.

9. What were the essential points in Hezekiah’s further religious

10. What three remarkable events fall within this period and what their significance? .

11. What great prophet comes on the stage here and what was his greatest characteristic? , .

12. What was his relation to Uzziah and to this period of history!

13. What was the condition of Israel at this time, how did Hoshea try to extricate himself and what was the result?

14. Who was the king of Assyria at this time and where did he carry the children of Israel? .

15. What were the sins of Israel for which they were carried away into captivity? . .

16. What were God’s efforts to save them from their sins and what were the results?

17. How was Samaria repeopled?

18. What was their idea of God?

19 How did God rebuke the disregard of him by the new inhabitant?

20. What of the mixed character of the religion of the Samaritans?