Day 110. 2 Kings 15-17

King Azariah of Judah is elsewhere called Uzziah (Isaiah 6:1), and is called by both names. When he comes to the throne he is hardly more than a boy, and he reigns fifty-two years in Jerusalem. During his long reign, we are told, Azariah does "what is right in the sight of the LORD." But he does not remove the "high places," and cultic worship continues outside of the Jerusalem temple, much to the compiler's displeasure. For reasons we are not told, Azariah is struck by the LORD with some sort of skin disease—our text calls it "leprosy," but in the Bible that is the name given to any number of persistent skin diseases. Because of this affliction, Azariah lives in a separate house outside the palace (15:5), and his son Jotham rules with him as a sort of co-regent. The long reign of Azariah is time of stability Judah, but chaos reigns in Israel and the court of Samaria continues its history of violence. One king after another is cut down by assassins after ruling only a few months.  Finally a strongman named Menahem seizes control using terrible violence against his own people (15:16).  He sends an enormous treasure to Pul, the King of Assyria –this is Tiglath-pileser III who ruled from 745-727 B.C.E.—in order that he "might help him confirm his hold on the royal power" (15:19). This bribe sets a dangerous precedent, as we shall see. Menahem's death ushers in another period of violence. His son Pekahiah is assassinated after reigning only two years in Samaria, and the crown passes to military man named Pekah.  Pekah continues the tradition in the northern kingdom and does "evil in the sight of the LORD" (15:28). During his reign the Assyrians capture territory in Israel and carry some of the population away into exile (15:29). This is a bitter foretaste of what is to come. Meanwhile in Judah, King Uzziah dies and is succeeded by Jotham. Jotham follows the pattern of his father and grandfather and does what is right, but without removing the "high places" (15:34-35).  The compiler of Kings maintains both an unwavering loyalty to these Judean kings of the house of David, while he looks back with longing to a time when the nation was united in worshiping the LORD only in the temple in Jerusalem, the city of David, and nowhere else. But the righteous Jotham is succeeded by a king who is arguably the worst in the history of  Judah—Ahaz. Ahaz not only tolerates the "high places," he himself worships "under every green tree." He even makes his son "pass through fire"—in other words, he sacrifices his child to the pagan god Moleck (16:3—see Deuteronomy 18:9-14).     When the Arameans wage war on Jerusalem, Ahaz sends the king of Assyria a desperate letter begging for help, accompanied with a vast treasure (16:7-8). The king of Assyria listens to him and attacks Damascus, destroys it, and carries the people of that country away into captivity (16:9). Aram is no longer a threat, but Israel and Judah exchange one enemy for a far more dangerous one. King Ahaz makes a number of dangerous innovations. When he meets the Assyrian king in Damascus, he sees there the altar that that king had erected. He sends instructions to the priest Uriah to remove the bronze altar from in front of the temple and construct an altar on the Assyrian model in its place (16:10-16). The bronze altar of Solomon is relegated to use for divination. Whether the offerings made on this new altar are sacrificed to the LORD or some other god we are not told. Whatever its purpose, to the conservative mind of the compiler of Kings the new altar and the other changes Ahaz makes  are not just a slavish way to curry favor with the king of Assyria (16:18), they are yet another form of unfaithfulness. In the north the Assyrian noose is closing upon the kingdom of Israel. King Hoshea first becomes a vassal of the Assyrian king, then, with the encouragement of the Egyptian Pharaoh, he withholds tribute (17:3). The reaction is swift and terrible. The Assyrians invade the land, and after a three year siege they capture Samaria in the year 722 B.C.E. The king is imprisoned and a significant part of the population is deported to Mesopotamia. They are never heard from again. In his history of the decline and fall of Israel the compiler of the Books of Kings seeks to draw an answer to the question--Why did this happen?  The reason he gives is a theological one—the nation falls and the people go into exile because they "[worship] other gods and [walk] in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel introduced" (17:8). The LORD sends prophets to warn them to turn from their evil ways and to keep his commandment, but they do not listen (17:13).  The compiler gives us a whole laundry list of Israel's sins and lapses (17:14-17). It is because of these that the LORD becomes very angry with Israel and removes them out of his sight, leaving none but the tribe of Judah alone" (17:18). After the deportation, the Assyrian monarch imports foreign people to repopulate the land. These people are pagans, and because they did not worship the LORD, the compiler tells us, lions devour many of them (17:25). An unnamed priest is returned from captivity to instruct "how they should worship the LORD" (17:28), but his missionary efforts are only half successful. These Samaritans, as they are later called, worship the LORD, but they also "[appoint] from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places," and these non-Levitical priests "[sacrifice] for them in the shrines of the high places" (17:32).  Pagan practices continue side-by-side with the worship of the LORD, and this unique form of syncretism continues in the northern territories into the time of the compiler of Kings, as we are told (17:41)