Dual PanelDownfall of the northern kingdom
1IN the seventeenth year of Pekah son of Remaliah, Ahaz son of King Jotham of Judah became king.
2Ahaz was twenty years old when he came to the throne, and he reigned in Jerusalem for sixteen years. He did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD his God like his forefather David,
3but followed in the footsteps of the kings of Israel; he even passed his son through the fire according to the abominable practice of the nations whom the LORD had dispossessed in favour of the Israelites.
4He sacrificed and burned offerings at the shrines and on the hilltops and under every spreading tree.
5Then King Rezin of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah, king of Israel, attacked Jerusalem and besieged Ahaz but could not bring him to battle.
6At that time the king of Edom recovered Elath by driving the Judaeans out of it; the Edomites entered the city and have occupied it to this day.
7Ahaz sent messengers to King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria to say, “I am your servant and your son. Come and save me from the king of Aram and from the king of Israel, who are attacking me.”
8Ahaz took the silver and gold found in the house of the LORD and in the treasuries of the royal palace and sent them as a gift to the king of Assyria,
9who listened to him; he advanced on Damascus, captured it, deported its inhabitants to Kir, and put Rezin to death.
10When King Ahaz went to meet King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria at Damascus, he saw there an altar of which he sent a sketch and a detailed plan to Uriah the priest.
11Accordingly, Uriah built an altar, following all the instructions that the king had sent him from Damascus, and had it ready against the king's return.
12When the king came back from Damascus, he saw the altar, approached it, and mounted the steps;
13there he burnt his whole-offering and his grain-offering and poured out his drink-offering, and he flung the blood of his shared-offerings against it.
14The bronze altar that was before the LORD he removed from the front of the house, from between this new altar and the house of the LORD, and put it on the north side of this altar.
15King Ahaz gave these instructions to Uriah the priest: “Burn on the great altar the morning whole-offering and the evening grain-offering, and the king's whole-offering and his grain-offering, and the whole-offering of all the people of the land, their grain-offering and their drink-offerings, and fling against it all the blood of the sacrifices. But the bronze altar shall be for me, to offer morning sacrifice.”
16Uriah the priest carried out all the king's orders.
17King Ahaz stripped the trolleys and removed the panels, and he took down the basin and the Sea of bronze from the oxen which supported it and put it on a stone base.
18In the house of the LORD he removed the structure they had erected for use on the sabbath, and the outer gate for the king, to satisfy the king of Assyria.
19The other acts and events of the reign of Ahaz are recorded in the annals of the kings of Judah.
20Ahaz rested with his forefathers and was buried with them in the city of David. His son Hezekiah succeeded him.