I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Chronicles 26-28.

    For most of my life my perception of the kings of the Divided Kingdoms (Israel and Judah) was that they were mostly wicked kings punctuated by the occasional righteous king (Joash, Hezekiah, Josiah). I have realized that while the kings of Israel in this period were universally men who “did not do what was pleasing in the sight of God”, a large number of the kings of Judah “did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight.” In fact, it was probably the majority. Of course, in today’s passage we have an example of something which was not uncommon. Uzziah did what was pleasing to God for most of his reign, but when he became powerful he became proud and took the prerogative of burning incense on the incense altar in the Temple. When Uzziah was confronted by a large number of priests (the number noted was probably to ensure that he could not do to them what Joash did to the son of the priest who had raised him) he became enraged. In the middle of his confrontation with the priests, symptoms of a contagious skin disease broke out on his forehead. King Uzziah lived in quarantine for the rest of his life.

    It is worth noting that according to the Law, Uzziah would have needed a priest to declare that he was no longer infected with the infectious skin disease. Uzziah’s son Jotham was made regent for Uzziah and succeeded him upon his death. The passage tells us that Jotham also did what was pleasing in the sight of God. Both Uzziah and Jotham were powerful kings who were able to expand the borders of their kingdom. However, when Jotham’s son Ahaz took the throne he did not do what was pleasing in the sight of the Lord. From a purely secular standpoint, it is clear that Ahaz decided from when he first took the throne to break the power which the priests and Levites had exercised over his father and grandfather. The result was that he was weak and repeatedly defeated in battle. In his efforts to weaken the priests and Levites, Ahaz established the worship of other gods. This created division among the people of his kingdom which resulted in the weakness which he experienced in foreign affairs.
    This passage is one where the connection between politics and religion in the Old Testament is made clear. David and Solomon had blurred the lines between the priesthood and the kingship, but they had done so in a manner which strengthened the priesthood by lending some of their power to the priesthood. On the other hand, when Uzziah attempted to blur the lines, he was seeking to weaken the priesthood and gather some of its power to himself. Later Ahaz attempted to break the power of the priesthood by encouraging the people to worship other gods…gods whose priests owed their authority to him. It is interesting to note that Ahaz did not stick with just one set of gods. When he first became king he set up idols and worshiped the gods which had been worshiped by the people who had lived in the land when the Israelites first arrived there. Later, after his defeat by the king of Aram and betrayal by the king of Assyria Ahaz turned to the gods of Damascus, but he never considered returning to the Lord. Ahaz never learned that his failures as a king resulted from his abandonment of God. Fortunately, his son Hezekiah did learn from his father’s mistakes.