Bible Dictionaries
Ahaz

Holman Bible Dictionary

(ay' haz) 1. The evil king of Judah (735-715). Ahaz, whose name means “he has grasped,” was the son and successor of Jotham as king of Judah and the father of Hezekiah. The Bible characterizes Ahaz as an evil man who participated in the most monstrous of idolatrous practices (2 Kings 16:3 ). His sixteen-year reign was contemporary with the prophets Isaiah and Micah. Isaiah gave counsel to Ahaz during the Syro-Ephraimitic crisis, when Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, joined forces to attack Jerusalem. The prophet Oded rescued some captives from Israel (2 Chronicles 28:1 ). Ahaz refused the prophet's advice and appealed for help to Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria (Isaiah 7:1 ). That appeal and the resulting entanglement had unfortunate results religiously and politically in that Ahaz surrendered to Assyrian domination. He even placed an altar made from a Syrian model in the Temple (2 Kings 16:11 ). Ahaz suffered the final humiliation of not being buried in the royal tombs (2 Chronicles 28:15 ). See 1 Chronicles 8:35-36; 1 Chronicles 9:42 ).