And the Lord smote the King. 2 Kings 15:5 Familiarity with religious things E. Monro. 1. The character and conduct of King Uzziah are very full of instruction. His life was marked by one fault, and by one signal act of punishment from God. His fault was the offering sacrifice, that which only the priest might do; and his punishment a leprosy, inflicted on him by the word of a priest on his persevering in his fault. This is the more remarkable as he is on the whole described as a good character. One notable circumstance is, that in the Book of Kings he goes by the name of Azariah, and is there also described as a good king, and all that we are told is that he died a leper, having dwelt in a several house until the day of his death. He made constant reference to Zachariah the prophet, and we are told, as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. He made war on Philistia, and prospered. Again, we are told that God helped him against the Philistines and against the Arabians. Having come back, he built towers in the desert, and he had much cattle. It appears that in his campaigns he won a high name for courage. He transgressed against God by going into the temple and offering incense on the altar. The priest went in after him with fourscore other priests — all valiant men; and they withstood Uzziah, saying, "It appertaineth not to thee, O Uzziah, to burn it." Uzziah, having a censer in his hand, was wroth; and while angry, holding the censer in his hand, the leprosy rose up into his forehead, and the priests thrust him forcibly out; and he himself hasted to go out, because the Lord had smitten him. 2. It seems clear that Uzziah was a man whose life throughout, until the finishing act of it, was in conformity to God's will, and blessed with God's mercy. That crowning act of his life — the offering the incense, we are told, was the result of a presumptuous spirit brought on by the success of his life. But while this cause is assigned for the fault, and the fault is mentioned to explain the punishment in the Book of Chronicles, in the Book of Kings the punishment only is mentioned; and we are simply told that the Lord smote the king till he was a leper; and that he dwelt in a several house; so that any one reading the account in this book, without referring to Chronicles, would be in the dark as to the motive of the Almighty in afflicting the king. We must refer to one portion of God's counsels to understand the other. The light shed from one page of His will, will irradiate and explain that which hitherto may have appeared to be obscure; and how often is this the case in daily life! 3. And this leads us to consider that particular form of sin in King Uzziah which called out the vengeance of God, and which developed itself into so singular an act, and one, at first sight, so little in keeping with the former portions of his life. His early career was one of a good and religious man, blessed by God with prosperity on that account. Trusting to his success as a sign not only of God's favour, but of his own moral security, he became inflated with pride and self-sufficiency, and his temptation was to fall into that very sin, so natural to those who, having once been earnest or sincere in their religion, have by degrees familiarised themselves with it; so that they think they may play with it as a bauble, or use its influence to serve their own ends, and, like Uzziah, thrust themselves into the very office of the priest, by a profane and irreverent handling of holy things. This familiarity with the things of religion is the natural result of that precocity of spiritual knowledge which belongs to many. It ends in more than one false condition of mind. Familiarity itself quickly shades off into irreverence, pride and self-sufficiency, and independence of those means of grace and elevated helps to the religious life which are so inseparably mixed up with the life of the earnest Christian. Into these faults Uzziah fell. A disposition of independence, which his seems to have been, would naturally lead him to think very much for himself in things religious; and thinking for himself would naturally lead him to too subjective a view of religion generally. 4. There are many forms which this particular error takes that come before our eye — familiarity with holy things and holy names, which look upon reserve with the same eye as they look on hypocrisy, and on reverence with the same feeling with which they regard superstition. Many sad conditions result from this so great a familiarity of treatment of the external objects of religion, that, by degrees, such men lose sight of objective religion altogether, and blend it into themselves. In the realms of faith, where the shadowy forms which pass before the mind's eye are matters of apprehension more to the mind than to the sense, there is ever a danger of our ignoring the separate existence of those forms, making them after all but the idols of our own creation. The attitude necessary towards those objects is one of reverence and reserved delicacy. The forms of the unseen world are in themselves to our eye infinitely fine; the rude touch, the over-curious gaze, may dissipate them as far as our perception of them goes. So that some have dealt with the Second blessed Person of the Trinity, till they have denied His Divinity, and with the Holy Spirit until they have denied His Personality. With an unauthorised touch they have entered the holiest place, and dared to intrude upon scenes for which they have neither warrant nor commission. Another end in which this kind of spirit results is, very naturally, pride and self-sufficiency. In proportion as we melt off the outlines of the objects of our creed, we lower our estimation of them; and in proportion as they are made parts only of our own interior self, we by degrees find nothing on which we can place reliance, save on our own opinion or personal energy. It is to this condition of mind that our familiarity with religious subjects will judicially bring us, and those whose intentions were best, may in this life have to bewail Uzziah's end. ( E. Monro. ) And carried them captive to Assyria. 2 Kings 15:29 Captivity J. Parker, D. D. A very humbling expression! But this is an aspect of providence we cannot afford, if we be wise men, to ignore. Tiglath-pileser, King of Assyria, came and carried away all these people captive to Assyria — simply "carried" them. When men have lost their soul, their spirit, their fire, they are simply carted away like so many hundredweights and tons of dead matter. We are not men if we have lost manliness — in other words, if we have lost the indwelling Spirit of God, the force eternal, the seal Divine; we are not then conquered, because to be "conquered" would imply some measure of calculated and rational resistance — we are simply carried away, borne off, as men might carry dead matter. This is the lot of all nations that forget God: this is the lot of every man whose heart ceases to be the sanctuary of the living Spirit: he is but so much bulk; name him in pounds avoirdupois, report him in so many inches and feet of stature and girth; — he has grieved the Spirit; he has quenched the Spirit; henceforth he is to be driven as one of a herd of dumb cattle; he is to be carried as if he were but so much flesh. ( J. Parker, D. D. )

Benson Commentary 2 Kings 15:1 In the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel began Azariah son of Amaziah king of Judah to reign. 2 Kings 15:1 . In the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam — After an interregnum of twelve years in the kingdom of Judah, either through the prevalency of the faction which cut off Amaziah the father, and kept the son out of his kingdom; or, rather, because Azariah was very young, it is thought only four years of age, when his father was slain, and the people were not agreed to restore him till he was in his sixteenth year: see on 2 Kings 14:21 . Began Azariah to reign — Solely and fully to exercise his regal power. 2 Kings 15:2 Sixteen years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned two and fifty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jecholiah of Jerusalem. 2 Kings 15:3 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father Amaziah had done; 2 Kings 15:3-4 . According to all that his father had done — Like him beginning well, but not persevering. Save that — It should rather be read, howbeit, or nevertheless, (as in 2 Kings 14:4 ,) the high places were not removed — That irregularity, in the mode and place of worship, still continued. 2 Kings 15:4 Save that the high places were not removed: the people sacrificed and burnt incense still on the high places. 2 Kings 15:5 And the LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper unto the day of his death, and dwelt in a several house. And Jotham the king's son was over the house, judging the people of the land. 2 Kings 15:5 . The Lord smote the king, so that he was a leper — The cause of this stroke is related at large, 2 Chronicles 26:16-21 . And dwelt in a several house — Separated from conversation with others by virtue of the law, recorded Leviticus 13:46 , which, being the law of the King of kings, bound kings no less than subjects. The Jews, by the term several house, understand a house in the country; where he might have liberty to take his pleasure, but not to meddle with public affairs. Jotham, the king’s son, was over the house, &c. — That is, he lived in the palace, and managed all the affairs of the court and of the kingdom, governing in his father’s name as his vicegerent. It was in the twenty-seventh year of Azariah’s reign that he was smitten with the leprosy, and he continued a leper twenty-five years, during which time Jotham administered the government, his father being incapable of it. 2 Kings 15:6 And the rest of the acts of Azariah, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? 2 Kings 15:7 So Azariah slept with his fathers; and they buried him with his fathers in the city of David: and Jotham his son reigned in his stead. 2 Kings 15:7 . They buried him with his fathers, &c. — Not in the very sepulchre of the kings, because he was a leper, ( 2 Chronicles 26:23 ,) but in the same field, and very near to the same place, where his ancestors lay interred. 2 Kings 15:8 In the thirty and eighth year of Azariah king of Judah did Zachariah the son of Jeroboam reign over Israel in Samaria six months. 2 Kings 15:9 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as his fathers had done: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. 2 Kings 15:10 And Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him, and smote him before the people, and slew him, and reigned in his stead. 2 Kings 15:10 . Shallum the son of Jabesh — Probably one of his chief captains; conspired against him — On what pretence is quite uncertain. And smote him before the people — Openly and impudently, which, it is likely, he presumed to do, either because he remembered that the promise of the kingdom, made to Jehu, was confined to the fourth generation, ( 2 Kings 10:30 ,) which he observed to be now expired; or because he perceived the people were generally disaffected to their king, and favourable to his attempt. 2 Kings 15:11 And the rest of the acts of Zachariah, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. 2 Kings 15:11 . The rest of the acts of Zachariah, &c. — We read of nothing that he did; therefore the meaning is, that his behaviour during the six months in which he reigned, how he managed things, and provoked this conspiracy, are recorded elsewhere. 2 Kings 15:12 This was the word of the LORD which he spake unto Jehu, saying, Thy sons shall sit on the throne of Israel unto the fourth generation . And so it came to pass. 2 Kings 15:12 . This was the word of the Lord, Thy sons, &c. — How unfaithful soever they proved to God, he faithfully performed the promise which he made to Jehu, whose sons, to the fourth generation, succeeded him in the throne of Israel. But this Shallum put an end to that family, and fulfilled the prophecy of Hosea, ( Hosea 1:4 ,) I will average the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. For though Jehu had a command from God to destroy the house of Ahab, yet because he did it not so much in obedience to God, and with a view to his glory, as to satisfy his own private ambition, and in a way of cruelty quite abhorrent to the divine nature, God cut his family short, as soon as he had fulfilled his promise, and avenged that blood by this man, who slew Zachariah, and the rest of his posterity, if there were any. At least, he made the kingdom to cease in his family, and, not long after, it ceased in all Israel, who were rooted out, and never restored to their own country, as Judah was. 2 Kings 15:13 Shallum the son of Jabesh began to reign in the nine and thirtieth year of Uzziah king of Judah; and he reigned a full month in Samaria. 2 Kings 15:13-14 . He reigned a full month — That dominion seldom lasts long that is founded in blood and falsehood. Menahem, either provoked by his crime, or animated by his example, soon served him as he had served his master: he went up from Tirzah — A city in the tribe of Ephraim, where Jeroboam first dwelt; and smote Shallum — Probably he was general of the army, which then lay encamped at Tirzah, and hearing of Shallum’s treason and usurpation, he hastened to Samaria to avenge it, as Omri acted, in a like case, with regard to Zimri. 2 Kings 15:14 For Menahem the son of Gadi went up from Tirzah, and came to Samaria, and smote Shallum the son of Jabesh in Samaria, and slew him, and reigned in his stead. 2 Kings 15:15 And the rest of the acts of Shallum, and his conspiracy which he made, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. 2 Kings 15:16 Then Menahem smote Tiphsah, and all that were therein, and the coasts thereof from Tirzah: because they opened not to him , therefore he smote it; and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up. 2 Kings 15:16 . Then Menahem smote Tiphsah — Either that Tiphsah mentioned 1 Kings 4:24 , or another city of the same name. And the coasts thereof, from Tirzah — All the people dwelling between those places. Because they opened not to him — Refused to open the gates of their city, and submit to him as conqueror. All the women that were with child he ripped up — That by this example of severity he might affright all the rest of the people into obedience. The frequent mention of this kind of cruelty, shows how inhumanly barbarous the eastern people were in those ages. 2 Kings 15:17 In the nine and thirtieth year of Azariah king of Judah began Menahem the son of Gadi to reign over Israel, and reigned ten years in Samaria. 2 Kings 15:18 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not all his days from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. 2 Kings 15:19 And Pul the king of Assyria came against the land: and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand. 2 Kings 15:19 . Pul the king of Assyria came against the land — This is the first time that we find any mention of the kingdom of Assyria, since the days of Nimrod, who erected a small principality there, Genesis 10:11 . And they were no great people, one would suppose, when the eighty-third Psalm was written, in which they are mentioned as auxiliaries to the children of Lot, against the Israelites, together with other small nations. But now they were become very powerful. This Pul, or Phul, was the first monarch of that nation that invaded Israel, and began their transportation out of their country. Some have been of opinion, with Bishop Patrick, Poole, and others, that he was the same with Belesis, the governor of Babylon, who, together with Arbaces the Mede, slew Sardanapalus, the last of the Assyrian monarchs, and translated the empire to the Chaldeans. But, according to Dr. Prideaux, Belesis was one generation later. It is supposed, therefore, that this Pul was the father of Sardanapalus, and the same king of Assyria who, when Jonah preached against Nineveh, gave great tokens of his humiliation and repentance. See Prideaux’s Con. A. 747, and Bedford’s Script. Chronology. Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver — A very considerable present indeed, being no less than f450,000 sterling. This sum he gave, not only with a view to turn away the army of Pul from him, but also to purchase his friendship and assistance against those of his own subjects who opposed him, and to confirm the kingdom in his hand. By which it appears, that his cruelty at Tiphsah was so far from establishing him as he expected, that it weakened and endangered him, so that he was obliged to call in a foreign power to his aid. 2 Kings 15:20 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. 2 Kings 15:20 . Of all the mighty men of wealth — By exacting the money only of the rich, it is likely, he thought he should ingratiate himself with the common people, upon whom he laid no tax. Fifty shekels of silver, demanded of each man of wealth, were a sum equal to f7. 10 s . of our money. 2 Kings 15:21 And the rest of the acts of Menahem, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? 2 Kings 15:22 And Menahem slept with his fathers; and Pekahiah his son reigned in his stead. 2 Kings 15:23 In the fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah Pekahiah the son of Menahem began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned two years. 2 Kings 15:24 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. 2 Kings 15:24-25 . He did that which was evil, &c. — He was the wicked son of a wicked father, and so perished by such a conspiracy as his father formed against Shallum. With Argob and Arieh — It does not appear from the text whether these persons were Pekah’s partners in this treason, or Pekahiah’s courtiers and officers now slain with him. With fifty men of the Gileadites — Who, it is probable, were Pekahiah’s body-guard. 2 Kings 15:25 But Pekah the son of Remaliah, a captain of his, conspired against him, and smote him in Samaria, in the palace of the king's house, with Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men of the Gileadites: and he killed him, and reigned in his room. 2 Kings 15:26 And the rest of the acts of Pekahiah, and all that he did, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. 2 Kings 15:27 In the two and fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah Pekah the son of Remaliah began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned twenty years. 2 Kings 15:27 . In the two and fiftieth year of Azariah Pekah began to reign — This is the fifth king that reigned over Israel during the reign of Azariah king of Judah. Pekah, however, reigned much longer than any of the preceding four. For though he also, like Shallum and Menahem, got the kingdom by treason and blood, he kept possession of it twenty years. So long it was before his violent dealing returned upon his own head. And he made himself more noted abroad than any of these usurpers; for even in the latter part of his time, in the reign of Ahaz, (which began in his seventeenth year,) he was a great terror to the kingdom of Judah, as we find, Isaiah 7:1 . Mr. Locke justly observes, that the prophecies of Hosea, Joel, and Amos, come in here, who all prophesied about this time. 2 Kings 15:28 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. 2 Kings 15:29 In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abelbethmaachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria. 2 Kings 15:29 . In the days of Pekah came Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, &c. — He is supposed by some to have been the son and successor of Sardanapalus, who restored the kingdom of Assyria, and possessed it after it bad been dismembered by Belesis and Arbaces: but our learned Prideaux, who begins his valuable connection of the Old and New Testaments at this period, makes him to be the same with Arbaces, who, together with Belesis, headed the conspiracy against Sardanapalus, and fixed his royal seat at Nineveh, the ancient residence of the Assyrian kings, as Belesis fixed his at Babylon, and there governed his newly-erected kingdom for nineteen years. And took Ijon, &c., and Gilead, and Galilee, and all Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria — Thus Pekah lost a great part of his kingdom. And by this judgment God punished him for his attempt upon Judah and Jerusalem. For it was then foretold by Isaiah, that within two or three years after he had made that attempt, before a child then born should be able to cry, My father, and my mother, the riches of Samaria should be taken away before the king of Assyria; and here we have the accomplishment of that prediction. It may be proper to observe here, that the kingdom of the ten tribes was not destroyed at one time. The first invasion of their country, and prelude to their destruction, was made by Pul, who took away an immense booty, and drained them of their wealth; probably also carrying captive some of the people that dwelt on the east of Jordan. The second was by this Tiglath-pileser, who carried away the inhabitants of the northern parts, with the Reubenites, Gadites, and half-tribe of Manasseh, 1 Chronicles 5:26 . The third and last was by Shalmaneser, who took Samaria, and carried into captivity the rest of the Israelites, 2 Kings 17:1-23 . 2 Kings 15:30 And Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, and smote him, and slew him, and reigned in his stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah. 2 Kings 15:30 . Hosea made a conspiracy against Pekah, and smote him — It is probable that the people were provoked at him for leaving them exposed to a foreign enemy, while he invaded Judah; and that Hosea took advantage of their discontent and disgust to seize and slay him. Thus Pekah’s treason and violence returned upon himself at last. And reigned in his stead in the twentieth year of Jotham — The meaning is, that he began his reign in the twentieth year after the beginning of Jotham’s reign; or, which is the same thing, in the fourth year of Ahaz, son of Jotham. 2 Kings 15:31 And the rest of the acts of Pekah, and all that he did, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. 2 Kings 15:32 In the second year of Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel began Jotham the son of Uzziah king of Judah to reign. 2 Kings 15:32 . Began Jotham the son of Uzziah to reign — Why he should be called all along Azariah, and here, and 2 Kings 15:34 , Uzziah, no account can be given, unless it was to show that he had two names. And it appears by the book of Chronicles, that the name Uzziah was as much used, when that book was written, as the other. 2 Kings 15:33 Five and twenty years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jerusha, the daughter of Zadok. 2 Kings 15:33-34 . Five and twenty years old was he when he began to reign — Namely, properly and alone; for he had reigned before this as his father’s deputy. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord — Josephus gives him a very high character; that he was pious toward God, just toward men, and laid himself out for the public good; that whatever was amiss he took care to have it rectified; and, in short, wanted no virtue that became a good prince. And though the high places were not taken away, yet, to draw the people from them, and keep them close to God’s holy place, he showed great respect to the temple, and built, or rebuilt rather, the higher gate, not indeed of the temple itself, but of one of its courts, probably that which led to the king’s palace, 2 Chronicles 23:20 . “If magistrates,” says Henry, “cannot do all they would for the suppression of vice and profaneness, let them do so much the more for the support and advancement of piety and virtue, and bringing of them into reputation. If they cannot pull down the high places of sin, yet let them build and beautify the high gate of God’s house.” 2 Kings 15:34 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD: he did according to all that his father Uzziah had done. 2 Kings 15:35 Howbeit the high places were not removed: the people sacrificed and burned incense still in the high places. He built the higher gate of the house of the LORD. 2 Kings 15:36 Now the rest of the acts of Jotham, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? 2 Kings 15:37 In those days the LORD began to send against Judah Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah. 2 Kings 15:37 . In those days — That is, toward the end of Jotham’s reign; the Lord began to send against Judah, Rezin and Pekah — As he bid Shimei curse David, when he gave him an opportunity of doing it, without fear of punishment. Wicked men are the sword, the rod in God’s hand, which he makes use of as he pleases, to serve his own righteous counsels, though they be unrighteous in their intentions. This storm was gathered in the reign of pious Jotham, but he came to his grave in peace, and it fell upon his degenerate son Ahaz, whose heart, upon notice of it, was moved, as were the hearts of the people, as the trees of the wood are moved by the wind, Isaiah 7:2 . 2 Kings 15:38 And Jotham slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David his father: and Ahaz his son reigned in his stead. 2 Kings 15:38 . Jotham slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David — He died in the midst of his days, being only forty-one years of age. He was too great a blessing to be continued long to such an unworthy people. His death was a judgment, especially considering the character of his son and his successor. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary 2 Kings 15:1 In the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel began Azariah son of Amaziah king of Judah to reign. AZARIAH-UZZIAH B.C. 783 (?)- 737 JOTHAM B.C. 737-735 2 Kings 15:1-7 ; 2 Kings 15:32-38 "This is vanity, and it is a sore sickness." - Ecclesiastes 6:2 . BEFORE we watch the last "glimmerings and decays" of the Northern Kingdom, we must once more revert to the fortunes of the House of David. Judah partook of the better fortunes of Israel. She, too, enjoyed the respite caused by the crippling of the power of Syria, and the cessation from aggression of the Assyrian kings, who, for a century, were either unambitious monarchs like Assurdan, or were engaged in fighting on their own northern and eastern frontiers. Judah, too, like Israel, was happy in the long and wise governance of a faithful king. This king was Azariah ("My strength is Jehovah"), the son of Amaziah. He is called Uzziah by the Chronicles, and in some verses of the brief references to his long reign in the Book of Kings. It is not certain that he was the eldest son of Amaziah; but he was so distinctly the ablest, that, at the age of sixteen, he was chosen king by "all the people." His official title to the world must have been Azariah, for in that form his name occurs in the Assyrian records. Uzziah seems to have been the more familiar title which he bore among his people. There seems to be an allusion to both names-Jehovah-his-helper, and Jehovah-his-strength-in the Chronicles: "God helped him, and made him to prosper; and his name spread far abroad, and he was marvelously helped, till he was strong." The Book of Kings only devotes a few verses to him; but from the Chronicler we learn much more about his prosperous activity. His first achievement was to recover and fortify the port of Elath, on the Red Sea, {2Ch 26:2-15} and to reduce the Edomites to the position they had held in the earlier days of his father’s reign. This gave security to his commerce, and at once "his name spread far abroad, even to the entering in of Egypt." He next subdued the Philistines; took Gath, Jabneh, and Ashdod; dismantled their fortifications, filled them with Hebrew colonists, and "smote all Palestine with a rod." He then chastised the roving Arabs of the Negeb or south country in Gur-Baal and Maon, and suppressed their plundering incursions. His next achievement was to reduce the Ammonite Emirs to the position of tributaries, and to enforce from them rights of pasturage for the large flocks, not only in the low country ( shephelah ), but in the southern wilderness ( midbar ), and in the carmels or fertile grounds among the Trans-Jordanic hills. Having thus subdued his enemies on all sides, he turned his attention to home affairs-built towers, strengthened the walls of Jerusalem at its most assailable points, provided catapults and other instruments of war, and rendered a permanent benefit to Jerusalem by irrigation and the storing of rain-water in tanks. All these improvements so greatly increased his wealth and importance that he was able to renew David’s old force of heroes ( Gibborim ), and to increase their number from six hundred to two thousand six hundred, whom he carefully enrolled, equipped with armor, and trained in the use of engines of war. And he not only extended his boundaries southwards and eastwards, but appears to have been strong enough, after the death of Jeroboam II, to make an expedition northwards, and to have headed a Syrian coalition against Tiglath-Pileser III, in B.C. 738. He is mentioned in two notable fragments of the annals of the eighth year of this Assyrian king. He is there called Azrijahu, and both his forces and those of Hamath seem to have suffered a defeat. It is distressing to find that a King so good and so great ended his days in overwhelming and irretrievable misfortune. The glorious reign had a ghastly conclusion. All that the historian tells us is that "the Lord smote the king, so that he was a leper, and dwelt in a several [ i.e. , a separate] house." The word rendered "a several house" may perhaps mean (as in the margin of the A.V) "a lazar house," like the Belt el Massakin or "house of the unfortunate," the hospital or abode of lepers, outside the walls of Jerusalem. The rendering is uncertain, but it is by no means impossible that the prevalence of the affliction had, even in those early days, created a retreat for those thus smitten, especially as they formed a numerous class. Obviously the king could no more fulfill his royal duties. A leper becomes a horrible object, and no one would have been more anxious than the unhappy Azariah himself to conceal his aspect from the eyes of his people. His son Jotham was set over the household; and though he is not called a regent or joint-king-for this institution does not seem to have existed among the ancient Hebrews-he acted as judge over the people of the land. We are told that Isaiah wrote the annals of this king’s reign, but we do not know whether it was from Isaiah’s biography that the Chronicler took the story of the manner in which Uzziah was smitten with leprosy. The Chronicler says that his heart was puffed up with his successes and his prosperity, and that he was consequently led to thrust himself into the priest’s office by burning incense in the Temple. Solomon appears to have done the same without the least question of opposition; but now the times were changed, and Azariah, the high priest, and eighty of his colleagues went in a body to prevent Uzziah, to rebuke him, and to order him out of the Holy Place. The opposition kindled him into the fiercest anger, and at this moment of hot altercation the red spot of leprosy suddenly rose and burned upon his forehead. The priests looked with horror on the fatal sign; and the stricken king, himself horrified at this awful visitation of God, ceased to resist the priests, and rushed forth to relieve the Temple of his unclean presence, and to linger out the sad remnant of his days in the living death of that most dishonoring disease. Surely no man was ever smitten down from the summits of splendor to a lower abyss of unspeakable calamity! We can but trust that the misery only laid waste the few last years of his reign; for Jotham was twenty-five when he began to reign, and he must have been more than a mere boy when he was set to perform his father’s duties. So the glory of Uzziah faded into dust and darkness. At the age of sixty-eight death came as the welcome release from his miseries, and "they buried him with his fathers in the City of David." The Levitically scrupulous Chronicler adds that he was not laid in the actual sepulcher of his fathers, but in a field of burial which belonged to them-"for they said, He is a leper." The general outline of his reign resembled that of his father’s. It began well; it fell by pride; it closed in misery. The annals of his son Jotham were not eventful, and he died at the age of forty-one or earlier. He is said to have reigned sixteen years, but there are insuperable difficulties about the chronology of his reign, which can only be solved by hazardous conjectures. He was a good king, "howbeit the high places were not removed." The Chronicler speaks of him chiefly as a builder. He built or restored the northern gate of the Temple, and defended Judah with fortresses and towns. But the glory and strength of his father’s reign faded away under his rule. He did indeed suppress a revolt of the Ammonites, and exacted from them a heavy indemnity; but shortly afterwards the inaction of Assyria led to an alliance between Pekah, King of Israel, and Rezin, King of Damascus; and these kings harassed Jotham-perhaps because he refused to become a member of their coalition. The good king must also have been pained by the signs of moral degeneracy all around him in the customs of his own people. It was in the year that King Uzziah died that Isaiah saw his first vision, and he gives us a deplorable picture of contemporary laxity. Whatever the king may have been, the princes were no better than "rulers of Sodom," and the people were "people of Gomorrah." There was abundance of lip-worship, but little security; plentiful religionism, but no godliness. Superstition went hand in hand with formalism, and the scrupulosity of outward service was "made a substitute for righteousness and true holiness. This was the deadliest characteristic of this epoch, as we find it portrayed in the first chapter of Isaiah. The faithful city had become a harlot-but not in outward semblance. She "reflected heaven on her surface, and hid Gomorrah in her heart." Righteousness had dwelt in her-but now murderers; but the murderers wore phylacteries, and for a pretence made long prayers. It was this deep-seated hypocrisy, this pretence of religion without the reality, which called forth the loudest crashes of Isaiah’s thunder. There is more hope for a country avowedly guilty and irreligious than for one which makes its scrupulous ceremonialism a cloak of maliciousness. And thus there lay at the heart of Isaiah’s message that protest for bare morality, as constituting the end and the essence of religion, which we find in all the earliest and greatest prophets:- "Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; Give ear unto the Law of our God, ye people Of Gomorrah! To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to see My face, who hath required this at your hands, to trample My courts? Bring no more vain oblations! Incense is an abomination unto Me: New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies-I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting Wash you! make you clean!" {Isa 1:10-17} Of Jotham we hear nothing more. He died a natural death at an early age. If the years of his reign are counted from the time when his father’s affliction developed on him the responsibilities of office, it is probable that he did not long survive the illustrious leper, but was buried soon after him in the City of David his father. 2 Kings 15:8 In the thirty and eighth year of Azariah king of Judah did Zachariah the son of Jeroboam reign over Israel in Samaria six months. THE DYNASTY OF JEHU Jehoahaz 814-797 {2Ki 13:1-9} Joash 797-781 {2Ki 13:10-21; 2Ki 14:8-16} Jeroboam II 781-740 {2Ki 14:23-29} Zechariah 740 {2Ki 15:8-12} "Them that honor Me I will honor, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed." - 1 Samuel 2:30 ISRAEL had scarcely ever sunk to so low a nadir of degradation as she did in the reign of the son of Jehu. We have already mentioned that some assign to his reign the ghastly story which we have narrated in our sketch of the work of Elisha. It is told in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Kings, and seems to belong to the reign of Jehoram ben-Ahab; but it may have got displaced from this epoch of yet deeper wretchedness. The accounts of Jehoahaz in 2 Kings 13:1-25 are evidently fragmentary and abrupt. Jehoahaz reigned seventeen years. Naturally, he did not disturb the calf-worship, which, like all his predecessors and successors, he regarded as a perfectly innocent symbolic adoration of Jehovah, whose name he bore and whose service he professed. Why should he do so? It had been established now for more than two centuries. His father, in spite of his passionate and ruthless zeal for Jehovah, had never attempted to disturb it. No prophet-not even Elijah nor Elisha, the practical establishers of his dynasty-had said one word to condemn it. It in no way rested on his conscience as an offence; and the formal condemnation of it by the historian only reflects the more enlightened judgment of the Southern Kingdom and of a later age. But according to the parenthesis which breaks the thread of this king’s story, {2Ki 13:5-6} he was guilty of a far more culpable defection from orthodox worship; for in his reign, the Asherah -the tree or pillar of the Tyrian nature-goddess-still remained in Samaria, and therefore must have had its worshippers. How it came there we cannot tell. Jezebel had set it up, {1Ki 16:33} with the connivance of Ahab. Jehu apparently had "put it away" with the great stele of Baal, {2Ki 3:2} but, for some reason or other, he had not destroyed it. It now apparently occupied some public place, a symbol of decadence, and provocative of the wrath of Heaven. Jehoahaz sank very low. Hazael’s savage sword, not content with the devastation of Bashan and Gilead, wasted the west of Israel also in all its borders. The king became a mere vassal of his brutal neighbor at Damascus. So little of the barest semblance of power was left him, that whereas, in the reign of David, Israel could muster an army of eight hundred thousand, and in the reign of Joash, the son and successor of Jehoahaz, Amaziah could hire from Israel one hundred thousand mighty men of valor as mercenaries, Jehoahaz was only allowed to maintain an army of ten chariots, fifty horsemen, and ten thousand infantry! In the picturesque phrase of the historian, "the King of Syria had threshed down Israel to the dust," in spite of all that Jehoahaz did, or tried to do, and "all his might." How completely helpless the Israelites were is shown by the fact that their armies could offer no opposition to the free passage of the Syrian troops through their land. Hazael did not regard them as threatening his rear; for, in the reign of Jehoahaz, he marched southwards, took the Philistine city of Gath, and threatened Jerusalem. Joash of Judah could only buy them off with the bribe of all his treasures, and according to the Chronicler they "destroyed all the princes of the people," and took great spoil to Damascus. {2Ch 24:23} Where was Elisha? After the anointing of Jehu he vanishes from the scene. Unless the narrative of the siege of Samaria has been displaced, we do not so much as once hear of him for nearly half a century. The fearful depth of humiliation to which the king was reduced drove him to repentance. Wearied to death of the Syrian oppression of which he was the daily witness, and of the utter misery caused by prowling bands of Ammonites and Moabites-jackals who waited on the Syrian lion-Jehoahaz "besought the Lord, and the Lord hearkened unto him, and gave Israel a savior, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians: and the children of Israel dwelt in their tents, as beforetime." If this indeed refers to events which come out of place in the memoirs of Elisha; and if Jehoahaz ben-Jehu, not Jehoram ben-Ahab, was the king in whose reign the siege of Samaria was so marvellously raised, then Elisha may possibly be the temporary deliverer who is here alluded to. On this supposition we may see a sign of the repentance of Jehoahaz in the shirt of sackcloth which he wore under his robes, as it became visible to his starving people when he rent his clothes on hearing the cannibal instincts which had driven mothers to devour their own children. But the respite must have been brief, since Hazael ( 2 Kings 13:22 ) oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. If this rearrangement of events be untenable, we must suppose that the repentance of Jehoahaz was only so far accepted, and his prayer so far heard, that the deliverance, which did not come in his own days, came in those of his son and of his grandson. Of him and of his wretched reign we hear no more; but a very different epoch dawned with the accession of his son Joash, named after the contemporary King of Judah, Joash ben-Ahaziah. In the Books of Kings and Chronicles Joash of Israel is condemned with the usual refrains about the sins of Jeroboam. No other sin is laid to his charge; and breaking the monotony of reprobation which tells us of every king of Israel without exception that "he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord," Josephus boldly ventures to call him "a good man; and the antithesis to his father." He reigned sixteen years. At the beginning of his reign he found his country the despised prey, not only of Syria, but of the paltry neighboring bandit-sheykhs who infested the east of the Jordan; he left it comparatively strong, prosperous, and independent. In his reign we hear again of Elisha, now a very old man of past eighty years. Nearly half a century had elapsed since the grandfather of Joash had destroyed the house of Ahab at the prophet’s command. News came to the king that Elisha was sick of a mortal sickness, and he naturally went to visit the death-bed of one who had called his dynasty to the throne, and had in earlier years played so memorable a part in the history of his country. He found the old man dying, and he wept over him, crying, "My father; my father! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof." {Comp. 2Ki 2:12} The address strikes us with some surprise. Elisha had indeed delivered Samaria more than once when the city had been reduced to direst extremity; but in spite of his prayers and of his presence, the sins of Israel and her kings had rendered this chariot of Israel of very small avail. The names of Ahab, Jehu, Jehoahaz, call up memories of a series of miseries and humiliations which had reduced Israel to the very verge of extinction. For sixty-three years Elisha had been the prophet of Israel; and though his public interpositions had been signal on several occasions, they had not been availing to prevent Ahab from becoming the vassal of Assyria, nor Israel from becoming the appendage of the dominion of that Hazael whom Elisha himself had anointed King of Syria, and who had become of all the enemies of his country the most persistent and the most implacable. The narrative which follows is very singular. We must give it-as it occurs, with but little apprehension of its exact significance. Elisha, though Joash "did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord," seems to have regarded him with affection. He bade the youth take his bow, and laid his feeble, trembling hands on the strong hands of the king. Then he ordered an attendant to fling open the lattice, and told the king to shoot eastward towards Gilead, the region whence the bands of Syria made their way over the Jordan. The king shot, and the fire came back into the old prophet’s eye as he heard the arrow whistle eastward. He cried, "The arrow of Jehovah’s deliverance, even the arrow of victory over Syria: for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek, till thou have consumed them." Then he bade the young king to take the sheaf of arrows, and smite towards the ground, as if he was striking down an enemy. Not understanding the significance of the act, the king made the sign of thrice striking the arrows downwards, and then naturally stopped. But Elisha was angry-or at any rate grieved. "You should have smitten five or six times," he said, "and then you would have smitten Syria to destruction. Now you shall only smite Syria thrice." The king’s fault seems to have been lack of energy and faith. There are in this story some peculiar elements which it is impossible to explain, but it has one beautiful and striking feature. It tells us of the death - bed of a prophet. Most of God’s greatest prophets have perished amid the hatred of priests and worldlings. The progress of the truth they taught has been "from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake." "Careless seems the Great Avenger. History’s pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness ‘twixt old systems and the Word- Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own!" Now and then, however, as an exception, a great prophetic teacher or reformer escapes the hatred of the priests and of the world, and dies in peace. Savonarola is burnt, Huss is burnt, but Wicliff dies in his bed at Lutterworth, and Luther died in peace at Eisleben. Elijah passed away in storm, and was seen no more. A king comes to weep by the death-bed of the aged Elisha. "For us," it has been said, "the scene at his bedside contains a lesson of comfort and even encouragement. Let us try to realize it. A man with no material power is dying in the capital of Israel. He is not rich: he holds no office which gives him any immediate control over the actions of men; he has but one weapon-the power of his word. Yet Israel’s king stands weeping at his bedside-weeping because this inspired messenger of Jehovah is to be taken from him. In him both king and people will lose a mighty support, for this man is a greater strength to Israel than chariots and horsemen are. Joash does well to mourn for him, for he has had courage to wake the nation’s conscience; the might of his personality has sufficed to turn them in the true direction, and rouse their moral and religious life. Such men as Elisha everywhere and always give a strength to their people above the strength of armies, for the true blessings of a nation are reared on the foundations of its moral force." The annals are here interrupted to introduce a posthumous miracle-unlike any other in the whole Bible-wrought by the bones of Elisha. He died, and they buried him, "giving him," as Josephus says, "a magnificent burial." As usual, the spring brought with it the marauding bands of Moabites. Some Israelites who were burying a man caught sight of them, and, anxious to escape, thrust the man into the sepulcher of Elisha, which happened to be nearest at hand. But when he was placed in the rocky tomb, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet. Doubtless the story rests on some real circumstance. There is, however, something singular in the turn of the original, which says (literally) that the man went and touched the bones of Elisha; and there is proof that the story was told in varying forms, for Josephus says that it was the Moabite plunderers who had killed the man, and that he was thrown by them into Elisha’s tomb. It is easy to invent moral and spiritual lessons out of this incident, but not so easy to see what lesson is intended by it. Certainly there is not throughout Scripture any other passage which even seems to sanction any suspicions of magic potency in the relics of the dead. But Elisha’s symbolic prophecy of deliverance from Syria was amply fulfilled. About this time Hazael had died, and had left his power in the feebler hands of his son Benhadad III. Jehoahaz had not been able to make any way against him, {2Ki 13:3} but Joash his son thrice met and thrice defeated him at Aphek. As a consequence of these victories, he won back all the cities which Hazael had taken from his father on the west of Jordan. The east of Jordan was never recovered. It fell under the shadow of Assyria, and was practically lost forever to the tribes of Israel. Whether Assyria lent her help to Joash under certain conditions we do not know. Certain it is that from this time the terror of Syria vanishes. The Assyrian king Rammanirari III about this time subjugated all Syria and its king, whom the tablets call Mari, perhaps the same as Benhadad III. In the next reign Damascus itself fell into the power of Jeroboam II, the son of Joash. One more event, to which we have already alluded, is narrated in the reign of this prosperous and valiant king. Amity had reigned for a century between Judah and Israel, the result of the politic-impolitic alliance which Jehoshaphat had sanctioned between his son Jehoram and the daughter of Jezebel. It was obviously most desirable that the two small kingdoms should be united as closely as possible by an offensive and defensive alliance. But the bond between them was broken by the overweening vanity of Amaziah ben-Joash of Judah. His victory over the Edomites, and his conquest of Petra, had puffed him up with the mistaken notion that he was a very great man and an invincible warrior. He had the wicked infatuation to kindle an unprovoked war against the Northern Tribes. It was the most wanton of the many instances in which, if Ephraim did not envy Judah, at least Judah vexed Ephraim. Amaziah challenged Joash to come out to battle, that they might look one another in the face. He had not recognized the difference between fighting with and without the sanction of the God of battles. Joash had on his hands enough of necessary and internecine war to make him more than indifferent to that bloody game. Moreover, as the superior of Amaziah in every way, he saw through his inflated emptiness. He knew that it was the worst possible policy for Judah and Israel to weaken each other in fratricidal war, while Syria threatened their northern and. eastern frontiers, and while the tread of the mighty march of Assyria was echoing ominously in the ears of the nations from afar. Better and kinder feelings may have mingled with these wise convictions. He had no wish to destroy the poor fool who so vaingloriously provoked his superior might. His answer was one of the most crushingly contemptuous pieces of irony which history records, and yet it was eminently kindly and good-humoured: It was meant to save the King of Judah from advancing any further on the path of certain ruin. "The thistle that was in Lebanon" (such was the apologue which he addressed to his would-be rival) "sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying: Give thy daughter to my son to wife. The cedar took no sort of notice of the thistle’s ludicrous presumption, but a wild beast that was in Lebanon passed by, and trod down the thistle." It was the answer of a giant to a dwarf; and to make it quite clear to the humblest comprehension, Joash good-naturedly added: "You are puffed up with your victory over Edom: glory in this, and stay at home. Why by your vain meddling should you ruin yourself and Judah with you? Keep quiet: I have something else to do than to attend to you." Happy had it been for Amaziah if he had taken warning! But vanity is a bad counselor, and folly and self-deception-ill-matched pair-were whirling him to his doom. Seeing that he was bent on his own perdition, Joash took the initiative and marched to Beth-Shemesh, in the territory of Judah. There the kings met, and there Amaziah was hopelessly defeated. His troops fled to their scattered homes, and he fell into the hands of his conqueror. Joash did not care to take any sanguinary revenge; but much as he despised his enemy, he thought it necessary to teach him and Judah the permanent lesson of not again meddling to their own hurt. He took the captive king with him to Jerusalem, which opened its gates without a blow. We do not know whether, like a Roman conqueror, he entered it through the breach of four hundred cubits which he ordered them to make in the walls, but otherwise he contented himself with spoil which would swell his treasure, and amply compensate for the expenses of the expedition which had been forced upon him. He ransacked Jerusalem for silver and gold; he made Obed-Edom, the treasurer, give up to him all the sacred vessels of the Temple, and all that was worth taking from the palace. He also took hostages-probably from among the number of the king’s sons-to secure immunity from further intrusions. It is the first time in Scripture that hostages are mentioned. It is to his credit that he shed no blood, and was even content to leave his defeated challenger with the disgraced phantom of his kingly power, till, fifteen years later, he followed his father to the grave through the red path of murder at the hand of his own subjects. After this we hear no further records of this vigorous and able king, in whom the characteristics of his grandfather Jehu are reflected in softer outline. He left his son Jeroboam II to continue his career of prosperity, and to advance Israel to a pitch of greatness which she had never yet attained, in which she rivaled the grandeur of the united kingdom in the earlier days of Solomon’s dominion. 9 AMOS, HOSEA, AND THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL 2 Kings 14:23-29 ; 2 Kings 15:8-12 "In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt What makes a nation happy and keeps it so. What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat." - MILTON, "Paradise Regained" "We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of Fate: But the soul is still oracular: amid the market’s din List the ominous Stern whisper from the Delphic cave within, ‘They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.’" - LOWELL AMOS and Hosea are the two earliest prophets whose "burdens" have come down to us. From them we gain a near insight into the internal condition of Israel in this day of her prosperity. We see, first, that the prosperity was not unbroken. Though peace reigned, the people were not left to lapse unwarned into sloth and godlessness. The land had suffered from the horrible scourge of locusts, until every carmel -every garden of God on hill and plain-withered before them. There had been widespread conflagrations; {Amo 7:4} there had been a visitation of pestilence; and, finally, there had been an earthquake so violent that it constituted an epoch from which dates were reckoned. There were also two eclipses of the sun, which darkened with fear the minds of the superstitious. Nor was this the worst. Civilization and commerce had brought luxury in their train, and all the bonds of morality had been relaxed. The country began to be comparatively depleted, and the innocent regularity of agricultural pursuits palled upon the young, who were seduced by the glittering excitement of the growing towns. All zeal for religion was looked on as archaic, and the splendor of formal services was regarded as a sufficient recognition of such gods as there were. As a natural consequence, the nobles and the wealthy classes were more and more infected with a gross materialism, which displayed itself in ostentatious furniture, and sumptuous palaces of precious marbles inlaid with ivory. The desire for such vanities increased the thirst for gold, and avarice replenished its exhausted coffers by grinding the faces of the poor, by defrauding the hireling of his wages, by selling the righteous for silver, the needy for handfuls of barley, and the poor for a pair of shoes. The degrading vice of intoxication acquired fresh vogue, and the gorgeous gluttonies of the rich were further disgraced by the shameful spectacle of drunkards, who lolled for hours over the revelries which were inflamed by voluptuous music. Worst of all, the purity of family life was invaded and broken down. Throwing aside the old veiled seclusion of women in Oriental life, the ladies of Israel showed themselves in the streets in all "the bravery of their tinkling ornaments of gold," and sank into the adulterous courses stimulated by their pampered effrontery. Such is the picture which we draw from the burning denunciations of the peasant-prophet of Tekoa. He was no prophet nor prophet’s son, but a humble gatherer of sycamore-fruit, a toil which only fell to the humblest of the people. Who is not afraid, he asks, when a lion roars? and how can a prophet be silent when the Lord God has spoken? Indignation had transformed and dilated him from a laborer into a seer, anti had summoned him from the pastoral shades of his native village-whether in Judah or in Israel is uncertain-to denounce the more flagrant iniquities of the Northern capital. First he proclaims the vengeance of Jehovah upon the transgressions of the Philistines, of Tyre, of Edom, of Ammon, of Moab, and even of Judah; and then he turns with a crash upon apostatizing Israel. {Amo 1:1 - Amo 2:5} He speaks with unsparing plainness of their pitiless greed, their shameless debauchery, their exacting usury, their attempts to pervert even the abstinent Nazarites into intemperance, and to silence the prophets by opposition and obloquy. Jehovah was crushed under their violence. {Amo 2:6-13} And did they think to go unscathed after such black ingratitude? Nay! their mightiest should flee away naked in the day of defeat. Robbery was in their houses of ivory, and the few of them who should escape the spoiler should only be as when a shepherd tears out of the mouth of a lion two legs and a piece of an ear. {Amo 3:9-15} As for Bethel, their shrine-which he calls Bethaven, "House of Vanity," not Bethel, "House of God"-the horns of its altars should be cut off. Should oppression and licentiousness flourish? Jehovah would take them with hooks, and their children with fishhooks, and their sacrifices at Bethel and Gilgal should be utterly unavailing. Drought, and blasting, and mildew, and wasting plague, and