Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Chronicles · About this commentary
Ahaz, and the Prisoners Sent Home
2 Chronicles 28:1-27
1 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. He didn’t do that which was right in Yahweh’s eyes, like David his father, · WEB
The worst king so far shuts the doors of the house, and the only people in the chapter who act rightly are the enemy army.
The catalogue is the worst in the book. Molten images, incense in the valley outside the city, high places under every green tree — and burned his children in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh cast out 2 Chronicles 28:3. The comparison is exact and damning: he is doing what the previous occupants of the land were removed for.
The defeats follow immediately and they are enormous. A hundred and twenty thousand killed in a day, two hundred thousand women and children carried off toward Samaria with the plunder 2 Chronicles 28:6–8.
And then the chapter does something no other chapter in either volume does. It stops following Judah, and the people who act rightly are the enemy.
A prophet meets the victorious army at the gate of their own capital. His charge has two parts. God has delivered them into your hand — the victory is granted, not earned — but you have slain them in a rage which has reached up to heaven 2 Chronicles 28:9. A commission does not license the manner of its execution.
Then the question that disarms them: aren't there even with you trespasses of your own against Yahweh your God? 2 Chronicles 28:10. An instrument of judgment is asked to consider its own record.
Four men of Ephraim are named, and they stand up in front of returning soldiers and refuse the prisoners entry 2 Chronicles 28:12–13. The reason they give is not compassion but liability: our guilt is great, and this would add to it.
What happens next is described at unusual length for this writer, verb by verb. They clothed the naked from the plunder, dressed them, gave them sandals, gave them food and drink, anointed them, carried all the feeble of them on donkeys, and brought them home 2 Chronicles 28:15.
The captured goods are spent on the captives. The men who do it belong to the kingdom this book treats as illegitimate in its worship, and they are named individually — which is how this book records people it wants remembered.
Meanwhile Ahaz is buying help. Assyria arrives and gave him trouble, but didn't strengthen him; he strips the temple to pay, but it didn't help him 2 Chronicles 28:20–21.
His conclusion from the failure is stated in his own words and it is the exact inverse of Amaziah's error. Because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them, I will sacrifice to them, that they may help me 2 Chronicles 28:23. One king worshiped gods that had visibly failed; this one worships gods that appear to have won. Both readings ignore the same fact, which the chapter has already stated twice: the outcomes were God's doing.
The last act is the logical end of the reign. He cuts up the vessels, shut up the doors of Yahweh's house, and builds altars on every corner of the city 2 Chronicles 28:24. The building the whole book is about is locked, and the next chapter opens with a young man unlocking it.
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