He ruled for 16 years and was done by the age of 36. He worshiped Baal under every green tree and sacrificed humans to Molech, but later paid for that with the death of his son in battle.
His profound reversal of all that he had inherited from good leaders and good parents, caused God to bring the Syrians and Ephraim (Israel) against Judah.
The sudden fall of Judah
It led to significant losses in Judah's fighting forces (120,000 soldiers died in one day). Over 200,000 men, women and children were also led away as captives to Damascus.
As Israel led the captives away, the prophet Oded reminded them that although they had the advantage over a morally-lapsed Judah, they were as guilty and overdue for judgment.
The greatest sin of Israel was the blood-letting of their brother Judah and the long-standing enmity between the two kingdoms.
Fortunately the princes of Samaria heard the prophet and relented, for they desired not to add to their offence by bringing the captives into the walls of Samaria.
Thus reason prevailed and the captives were freed.
Ahaz squandered all that Ahaziah and Jotham had built up and added insult to injury by sacrificing to the gods of Damascus to secure their favor. What a thoroughly misguided buffoon.
Then, instead of repenting he made an alliance with Tiglathpileser of Assyria, using treasury resources. It was an appeal for help against Syria, the Philistines and the Edomites, but it would remain in infamy as one of the greatest betrayals of Judah.
The Assyrians accepted the treaty and subsumed Damascus, which they had been eyeing for a while until Ahaz gave them the pretext they needed.
That was when the threat of Syria escalated into the surpassing threat of Assyria, the vast, cruel and imperial empire that would bring the drawn the curtain on Israel.
Judah brought them into the battle, much the way that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor drew the Americans into WW2. Well that worked out well for the allies, not Germany, but what Ahaz did would come back to haunt Judah.
It marked the final turning point for the southern kingdom. Hezekiah would later make a brave attempt to reverse the damage, but it came too late.
During all this time, through the reign of Ahaziah and Jotham, God sent strong warnings of a rising tide of judgment against all the near-east nations, through the great prophet Isaiah.
We will reflect on those prophesies separately. That may not be chronologically consistent, but it would detract from the historic narrative.
Ahaz did another foolish thing.
He went off to congratulate Assyria on their conquest (and probably to witness some of the atrocities for which they were renown), but saw a Syrian altar that he thought looked a lot better than their simpler altars.
It was likely engraved with esoteric symbols and demonic incantations, but worst of all it was a foreign altar. The implications were clear: he had broken faith with God to worship at another table.
He further desecrated the name of God, by offering sacrifices to foreign gods on that altar and he imposed his new religion on the people of Judah.
It was the ultimate perversion and it directly led to the decline of Judah despite more than 300 years of fundamentally sound theocratic rule - in such contrast to the pagan practices of Israel.
It was a sad moment in Judah’s long march from the glories of David and Solomon to their ultimate fall. Until then God had honored his covenant with David, but that was about to change.
The only redemptive aspect of Ahaz was that he died and yielded to one of the greatest kings that Judah ever had: Hezekiah.
Although he could not save Judah from the tides of imperialism that were redrawing the map of the near east, he did spare his people from the barbarism of Assyria.
Thus he gave them the hope denied Israel, which the more civilized, benign dictatorship of Babylon and Persia, which facilitated the eventual recovery of Judah and the restoration of Jerusalem.
Such was the offence of Ahaz though, that he was not buried in the sepulcher of the kings. He was given a pauper’s funeral.
He reminds me of Nero, whose profound excesses and superstitious madness triggered the decline of the Roman Empire.
God help us never to allow such evil men to reign.
May the nations be vigilant in electing righteous leaders not those who will lead their peoples into moral bankruptcy. It is a grim warning that a long period of righteous rule was suddenly and permanently reversed in a single reign of 16 years.
It can happen again. For the sake of scale, 300 years is longer than the US has lasted, while 16 years equates to 4 US presidential terms or two administrations.
(c) Peter Missing @ Bethelstone.com
