Ahaz Reigns in Judah
In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, became king.
Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do the upright in the eyes of the LORD his God, like David his father;
and he walked in the way of the kings of Israel — and even his own son he made pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD had dispossessed before the sons of Israel.
And he sacrificed and burned incense at the high places, and on the hills, and under every leafy tree.
Then Rezin, king of Aram, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem for war; and they besieged Ahaz, but they could not prevail in battle.
At that time Rezin, king of Aram, restored Elath to Aram, and drove the Judeans out of Elath; and Edomites came to Elath and have lived there to this day.
And Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, saying: “I am your servant and your son. Come up and save me from the palm of the king of Aram and from the palm of the king of Israel, who are rising against me.”
And Ahaz took the silver and the gold found in the house of the LORD and in the treasuries of the house of the king, and sent it to the king of Assyria as a bribe.
And the king of Assyria listened to him; and the king of Assyria went up against Damascus and seized it, and exiled it to Kir — and Rezin he put to death.
The Idolatry of Ahaz
And King Ahaz went to meet Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, at Damascus; and he saw the altar that was at Damascus. And King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest the likeness of the altar and its pattern, according to all its workmanship.
And Uriah the priest built the altar; according to all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus, so Uriah the priest made it, before King Ahaz came from Damascus.
And the king came from Damascus, and the king saw the altar; and the king approached the altar and went up on it.
And he burned his burnt offering and his grain offering, and poured out his drink offering, and threw the blood of his peace offerings against the altar.
And the bronze altar that was before the LORD he brought forward — away from the front of the house, from between the altar and the house of the LORD — and he set it at the north side of the altar.
And King Ahaz commanded Uriah the priest, saying: “On the great altar burn the burnt offering of the morning and the grain offering of the evening, and the burnt offering of the king and his grain offering, and the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their grain offering and their drink offerings; and all the blood of burnt offering and all the blood of sacrifice you shall throw against it. But the bronze altar shall be for me, to inquire by.”
And Uriah the priest did according to all that King Ahaz commanded.
And King Ahaz cut off the frames of the stands and removed the basin from on them; and the sea he took down from on the bronze oxen that were under it, and set it on a pavement of stones.
And the covered walkway for the sabbath that they had built in the house, and the outer entrance of the king, he turned away from the house of the LORD — because of the king of Assyria.
And the rest of the acts of Ahaz that he did — are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
And Ahaz lay down with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David; and Hezekiah his son became king in his place.