2 Kings 16 - NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
16:3 sacrificed his son in the fire. Child sacrifice was a prominent feature of at least some of the polytheistic Canaanite religions practiced in ancient times in Syria and Palestine (see notes on 3:27; 1Ki 11:5; Lev 20:2; Jer 7:31). In the aftermath of Jotham’s relatively orthodox reign comes a renewed period of officially sanctioned idolatry in Judah, as King Ahaz “followed the ways of the kings of Israel” and the high places became centers, not of the worship of Yahweh, but of the worship of Baal Hadad.
16:6 Elath. Elath had only recently been won back for Judah by Azariah (see note 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 (see note on Nu 20:17). 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 (2Ch 28:17–18).
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 and Palestine of 733–732 BC that resulted in the capture of Damascus and the death of Rezin, as well as the annexation of large parts of northern Israel and the death of Pekah (15:29–30).
16:10–16 For the Biblical authors, the direct intervention of Assyria into Judahite affairs in 734–732 BC was fateful for Judah in terms of its religious, not just its political, consequences. A king open to foreign influence in his religious policy from the beginning (cf. vv. 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. 2Ch 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 note on 2Ki 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 the Assyrian king, in part by incorporating into Judahite religion further elements of the worship of Hadad. Nevertheless, the altar could simply represent artistic innovation rather than religious syncretism.
16:15 seeking guidance. The new and impressively large Hadad altar displaced the bronze altar that had been used for sacrifice since the days of Solomon (v. 14; 1Ki 8:22–23, 62–64; 9:25), the latter now being reserved for Ahaz’s practice of “seeking” oracles. 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; Lev 13:36; 27:33 use the same verb for ritual examination; see the article “Extispicy”). Although the OT 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, see the article “Urim and Thummim”), there is no question 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,” 2Ki 17:17 appears to be looking back at Ahaz above all others when it speaks of those Israelites who “sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire . . . practiced divination and sought omens,” recalling the explicit prohibition of Dt 18:10 that “no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination . . . interprets omens” (see notes on Dt 18:10–11).
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