Jotham and Ahaz of Judah (15:32–16:20)

High places (15:35). See comment on 12:3.

Upper Gate of the temple of the LORD (15:35). Jotham rebuilt the “gate behind the guard” or the Upper Gate that was located in a wall separating the temple and palace complexes (see comment on 11:6; also the sidebar “The Walls and Gates of Jerusalem I” at 11:6). It is intriguing that Jotham should give attention to the boundary marker between temple and palace when it is precisely the transgression of that boundary for which 2 Chronicles 26:16–21 blames his father.

Sacrificed his son in the fire (16:3). Child sacrifice was a prominent feature of at least some of the polytheistic Canaanite religions practiced in ancient times in Syria-Palestine (see comment on 3:27). In the aftermath of Jotham’s relatively orthodox reign comes a renewed period of officially-sanctioned idolatry in Judah as King Ahaz “walks in the ways of the kings of Israel” and the high places become centers, not of the worship of Yahweh but of Baal Hadad.

High places (16:4). See comment on 12:3.

Rezin king of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel … besieged Ahaz (16:5). The pressure on Judah from these two kings has already been mentioned in 15:37 in respect of Jotham’s reign, and now it is mentioned in respect of Ahaz’s reign; in all probability this father and son shared some years of coregency around the time of the crisis (cf. 15:30, which has 732/731 B.C. as Jotham’s twentieth year, whereas 15:33 tells us that he only reigned for sixteen years), just as the reigns of Azariah and Jotham had previously overlapped.

This crisis is usually referred to as the Syro-Ephraimite War.127 It began around 734 B.C. in the context of the opposition to Tiglath-pileser III led by Rezin of Damascus and supported by Pekah of Israel and others (see comment on 15:29), which led in turn to the Assyrian campaigns of 733–732 B.C. against Damascus and its allies. The motive for the attack on Judah is never explicitly given in the biblical sources. However, even if Judah was involved in anti-Assyrian resistance early in Tiglath-pileser’s reign (as the “Azriau of Judah” text may imply—see the sidebar “Az-ri-a-a-u of Ia-u-da-a-a and Azariah of Judah” at 15:1), the evidence suggests that it had been in tributary relationship with Assyria since that time and would have had no desire to fight against the empire.128 It was no doubt this pro-Assyrian stance on the part of Judah under Jotham/Ahaz that prompted the Syro-Ephraimite assault.129

Israel in the 8th Century

Elath (16:6). Elath had only recently been won back for Judah by Azariah (see comment on 14:22). It is here implied, however, that Rezin was able to reestablish Aramean control over the entirety of the King’s Highway in Transjordan from Damascus to Elath. He then apparently gave it to the Edomites, who appear to have taken part as allies in the assault on Judah along with the Philistines (2 Chron. 28:17–18).

I am your servant and vassal (16:7–9). Besieged in Jerusalem, King Ahaz’s response was to call on Tiglath-pileser for help, sending at the same time a large gift to encourage compliance (possibly the same tribute referred to in an Assyrian text from Tiglath-pileser’s time). The help is represented in 2 Kings as the Assyrian campaigns in Syria-Palestine of 733–732 B.C. that resulted in the capture of Damascus and the death of Rezin (16:7–9), as well as the annexation of large parts of northern Israel and the death of Pekah (15:29–30).

Ahaz was by no means the only king in the region at this time to call for Tiglath-pileser’s help. The Aramaic Panammuwa Inscription, found at Zinçirli on a statue erected by Panamuwa of Samʾal’s son Bar-Rakib around 733–727 B.C., records the following: “Then my father, Pana[mmuwa, son of Ba]rsur, brought a gift to the king of Assyria; and he [Tiglath-pileser] made him king over the house of his father.”130

Kir (16:9). According to the book of Amos Kir was the original home of the Arameans (Amos 9:7) and the place to which they would one day be returned (1:5). It is mentioned along with Elam in Isaiah 22:6, which is consistent with a location for the region in Mesopotamia, but its precise identification is beyond us at the present time.131

He saw an altar in Damascus (16:10). For the biblical authors the direct intervention of Assyria into Judean affairs in 734–732 B.C. was fateful for Judah in terms of its religious, not just its political, consequences. Already a king open to foreign influence in his religious policy from the beginning (16:2–4), Ahaz is presented here as traveling to Damascus to pay homage to the Assyrian king and being so impressed by an altar there that he reorganizes worship in Jerusalem around its facsimile. The origin of the altar—Assyrian or Aramean—is not stated, but it was most likely the latter.

The assumption that it was an Assyrian altar has led some to suggest that implicit in this story is the imposition of Assyrian religion on Judah as a vassal state. There is, however, no compelling reason to think that Tiglath-pileser imposed Assyrian religious architecture on a vassal state, and nothing in Ahaz’s actions upon returning to Jerusalem implies specifically Assyrian religious practice as such.132 Second Chronicles 28:23 explicitly says that in fact it was the gods of Damascus that Ahaz introduced into Jerusalem—a particular variant of the Baal worship that had so recently plagued northern Israel (see comment on 2 Kings 5:18). If some of the things that Ahaz did were “in deference to the king of Assyria” (16:18), these are less likely to have been impositions than voluntary attempts to please him, in part by assimilating into Judean religion further elements of the worship of Hadad.

I will use the bronze altar for seeking guidance (16:15). The new and impressively large Hadad altar displaced the bronze altar that had been used for sacrifice since the days of Solomon (1 Kings 8:22, 62–64; 9:25; 2 Kings 16:14), the latter now being reserved for Ahaz’s practice of “seeking” (Heb. bqr). This no doubt refers to the use of the bronze altar for divination (the interpretation of omens). It is probably specifically a reference to extispicy—the examination of the entrails of sacrificial animals in order to divine the will and intentions of the gods, most importantly focusing on the inspection of the liver (hepatoscopy; note the use of the verb bqr in Lev. 13:27, 33, of ritual examination).

Clay model from Hazor of a liver used for divination

Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY, courtesy the Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Extispicy is attested in the ancient Near East from early in the second millennium B.C. and played an important role not only at royal courts but also in the everyday life of ordinary people. It is attested not just in Mesopotamia but also in Syria-Palestine, where clay models of livers used by the apprentice diviner to learn his craft have been found (e.g., at Megiddo and Hazor).133 Such models typically have inscriptions on them indicating interesting features observed on the organ that has been modeled or informing the handler of the circumstances in which the consultation took place, as in this example from Ugarit: “This liver model is for ʾAgaptarri when he was to buy the boy of the Alashian [Cyprus].”134

Hadad himself was one of the cosponsors of Mesopotamian divination, along with Shamash, the sun god. It was from these deities that Enmedurranki, the ancient king of Sippar, was believed to have first received the secrets of heaven and earth (oil and liver divination), so that he could later pass them on to wise men in the cities of Sippar, Nippur, and Babylon.

Although the Old Testament describes legitimate ways of seeking divine guidance that are not dissimilar to some forms of divination elsewhere in the ancient world (e.g., the use of the Urim and Thummim, Ex. 28:30–31), there is no question but that the authors of Kings intend the reader to disapprove of Ahaz’s reassignment of the bronze altar for this divinatory practice. Whereas Ahaz’s own word for the practice is the innocuous “seeking” (Heb. bqr), 2 Kings 17:17 appears to be looking back at Ahaz above all when it speaks of those Israelites who “sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire … practiced divination [qsm] and sorcery [nḥš],” recalling the explicit prohibition of Deuteronomy 18:10 that “no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination[qsm] … interprets omens [nḥš].”