Ahaz became king at the age of twenty… He had metal images of Baal made, …and even sacrificed his own sons as burnt offerings to idols, imitating the disgusting practice of the people whom the Lord had driven out of the land as the Israelites advanced.
The never ending search for the magic formula for success. I suppose the idea here is the greater the value of the sacrifice, the better your return on investment will be. Not in God’s economy (Leviticus 5:7).
A man named Oded, a prophet of the Lord, lived in the city of Samaria. He met the returning Israelite army with its Judean prisoners as it was about to enter the city, and he said, “The Lord God of your ancestors was angry with Judah and let you defeat them, but now he has heard of the vicious way you slaughtered them.”
That doesn’t happen often (Genesis 18:21).
Four of the leading men of the Northern Kingdom… said, “Don’t bring those prisoners here! We have already sinned against the Lord and made him angry enough to punish us. Now you want to do something that will increase our guilt.” So then… the four men were appointed to provide the prisoners with clothing from the captured loot. They gave them clothes and sandals to wear, gave them enough to eat and drink, and put olive oil on their wounds.
Words that influence people for a great good. May my word have such an effect, Lord!
The Edomites began to raid Judah again and captured many prisoners…
Memory can be so short! Second thoughts, seller’s remorse (Jeremiah 34:8-11)…
The Assyrian emperor, instead of helping Ahaz, opposed him and caused him trouble. So Ahaz took the gold from the Temple, the palace, and the homes of the leaders of the people, and gave it to the emperor, but even this did not help.
The Syrian emperor came to help Judah in 2 Kings 16:7-9. The author clearly did not wish to attribute anything positive to Ahaz who did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
When his troubles were at their worst, that man Ahaz sinned against the Lord more than ever. He offered sacrifices to the gods of the Syrians, who had defeated him. He said, “The Syrian gods helped the kings of Syria, so if I sacrifice to them, they may help me too.” …He closed the Temple and set up altars in every part of Jerusalem. In every city and town in Judah he built pagan places of worship, where incense was to be burned to foreign gods.
Once again, the never ending search for the magic formula for success (Jeremiah 44:16-18). Cracked cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13).