The type of the wicked king is not worked out with any fulness in
Chronicles. There are wicked kings, but no one is raised to the “bad
eminence” of an evil counterpart to David; there is no anti-David, so to
speak, no prototype of antichrist. The story of Ahaz, for instance, is not
given at the same length and with the same wealth of detail as that of
David. The subject was not so congenial to the kindly heart of the
chronicler. He was not imbued with the unhappy spirit of modern realism,
which loves to dwell on all that is foul and ghastly in life and
character; he lingered affectionately over his heroes, and contented
himself with brief notices of his villains. In so doing he was largely
following his main authority: the books of Samuel and Kings. There too the
stories of David and Solomon, of Elijah and Elisha, are told much more
fully than those of Jeroboam and Ahab.
But the mention of these names reminds us that the chronicler’s limitation
of his subject to the history of Judah excludes much of the material that
might have been drawn from the earlier history for a picture of the wicked
king. If it had been part of the chronicler’s plan to tell the story of
Ahab, he might have been led to develop his material and moralise upon the
king’s career till the narrative assumed proportions that would have
rivalled the history of David. Over against the great scene that closed
David’s life might have been set another summing up in one dramatic moment
the guilt and ruin of Ahab. But these schismatic kings were “alienated
from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of the
promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”(251) The
disobedient sons of the house of David were still children within the
home, who might be rebuked and punished; but the Samaritan kings, as the
chronicler might style them, were outcasts, left to the tender mercies of
the dogs, and sorcerers, and murderers that were without the Holy City,
Cains without any protecting mark upon their forehead.
Hence the wicked kings in Chronicles are of the house of David. Therefore
the chronicler has a certain tenderness for them, partly for the sake of
their great ancestor, partly because they are kings of Judah, partly
because of the sanctity and religious significance of the Messianic
dynasty. These kings are not Esaus, for whom there is no place of
repentance. The chronicler is happy in being able to discover and record
the conversion, as we should term it, of some kings whose reigns began in
rebellion and apostacy. By a curious compensation, the kings who begin
well end badly, and those who begin badly end well; they all tend to about
the same average. We read of Rehoboam(252) that “when he humbled himself
the wrath of the Lord turned from him, that he would not destroy him
altogether; and, moreover, in Judah there were good things found”; the
wickedness of Abijah, which is plainly set forth in the book of
Kings,(253) is ignored in Chronicles; Manasseh “humbled himself greatly
before the God of his fathers,” and turned altogether from the error of
his ways(254); the unfavourable judgment on Jehoahaz recorded in the book
of Kings, “And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord,
according to all that his fathers had done,”(255) is omitted in
Chronicles.
There remain seven wicked kings of whom nothing but evil is recorded:
Jehoram, Ahaziah, Ahaz, Amon, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. Of
these we may take Ahaz as the most typical instance. As in the cases of
David and Solomon, we will first see how the chronicler has dealt with the
material derived from the book of Kings; then we will give his account of
the career of Ahaz; and finally, by a brief comparison of what is told of
Ahaz with the history of the other wicked kings, we will try to construct
the chronicler’s idea of the wicked king and to deduce its lessons.
The importance of the additions made by the chronicler to the history in
the book of Kings will appear later on. In his account of the attack made
upon Ahaz by Rezin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Israel, he
emphasises the incidents most discreditable to Ahaz. The book of Kings
simply states that the two allies “came up to Jerusalem to war; and they
besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him”(256); Chronicles dwells upon
the sufferings and losses inflicted on Judah by this invasion. The book of
Kings might have conveyed the impression that the wicked king had been
allowed to triumph over his enemies; Chronicles guards against this
dangerous error by detailing the disasters that Ahaz brought upon his
country.
The book of Kings also contains an interesting account of alterations made
by Ahaz in the Temple and its furniture. By his orders the high-priest
Urijah made a new brazen altar for the Temple after the pattern of an
altar that Ahaz had seen in Damascus. As Chronicles narrates the closing
of the Temple by Ahaz, it naturally omits these previous alterations.
Moreover, Urijah appears in the book of Isaiah as a friend of the prophet,
and is referred to by him as a “faithful witness.”(257) The chronicler
would not wish to perplex his readers with the problem, How could the
high-priest, whom Isaiah trusted as a faithful witness, become the agent
of a wicked king, and construct an altar for Jehovah after a heathen
pattern?
The chronicler’s story of Ahaz runs thus. This wicked king had been
preceded by three good kings: Amaziah, Uzziah, and Jotham. Amaziah indeed
had turned away from following Jehovah at the end of his reign, but Uzziah
had been zealous for Jehovah throughout, not wisely, but too well; and
Jotham shares with Solomon the honour of a blameless record. Without
counting Amaziah’s reign, king and people had been loyal to Jehovah for
sixty or seventy years. The court of the good kings would be the centre of
piety and devotion. Ahaz, no doubt, had been carefully trained in
obedience to the law of Jehovah, and had grown up in the atmosphere of
true religion. Possibly he had known his grandfather Uzziah in the days of
his power and glory; but at any rate, while Ahaz was a child, Uzziah was
living as a leper in his “several house,” and Ahaz must have been familiar
with this melancholy warning against presumptuous interference with the
Divine ordinances of worship.
Ahaz was twenty years old when he came to the throne, so that he had time
to profit by a complete education, and should scarcely have found
opportunity to break away from its influence. His mother’s name is not
mentioned, so that we cannot say whether, as may have been the case with
Rehoboam, some Ammonite woman led him astray from the God of his fathers.
As far as we can learn from our author, Ahaz sinned against light and
knowledge; with every opportunity and incentive to keep in the right path,
he yet went astray.
This is a common feature in the careers of the wicked kings. It has often
been remarked that the first great specialist on education failed utterly
in the application of his theories to his own son. Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah,
and Josiah were the most distinguished and the most virtuous of the
reforming kings, yet Jehoshaphat was succeeded by Jehoram, who was almost
as wicked as Ahaz; Hezekiah’s son “Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants
of Jerusalem to err, so that they did evil more than did the nations whom
the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel”;(258) Josiah’s son and
grandsons “did evil in the sight of the Lord.”(259)
Many reasons may be suggested for this too familiar spectacle: the impious
son of a godly father, the bad successor of a good king. Heirs-apparent
have always been inclined to head an opposition to their fathers’ policy,
and sometimes on their accession they have reversed that policy. When the
father himself has been a zealous reformer, the interests that have been
harassed by reform are eager to encourage his successor in a retrograde
policy; and reforming zeal is often tinged with an inconsiderate harshness
that provokes the opposition of younger and brighter spirits. But, after
all, this atavism in kings is chiefly an illustration of the slow growth
of the higher nature in man. Practically each generation starts afresh
with an unregenerate nature of its own, and often nature is too strong for
education.
Moreover, a young king of Judah was subject to the evil influence of his
northern neighbour. Judah was often politically subservient to Samaria,
and politics and religion have always been very intimately associated. At
the accession of Ahaz the throne of Samaria was filled by Pekah, whose
twenty years’ tenure of authority indicates ability and strength of
character. It is not difficult to understand how Ahaz was led “to walk in
the ways of the kings of Israel” and “to make molten images for the
Baals.”
Nothing is told us of the actual circumstances of these innovations. The
new reign was probably inaugurated by the dismissal of Jotham’s ministers
and the appointment of the personal favourites of the new king. The
restoration of old idolatrous cults would be a natural advertisement of a
new departure in the government. So when the establishment of Christianity
was a novelty in the empire, and men were not assured of its permanence,
Julian’s accession was accompanied by an apostacy to paganism; and later
aspirants to the purple promised to follow his example. But the worship of
Jehovah was not at once suppressed. He was not deposed from His throne as
the Divine King of Judah; He was only called upon to share His royal
authority with the Baals of the neighbouring peoples.
But although the Temple services might still be performed, the king was
mainly interested in introducing and observing a variety of heathen rites.
The priesthood of the Temple saw their exclusive privileges disregarded
and the rival sanctuaries of the high places and the sacred trees taken
under royal patronage. But the king’s apostacy was not confined to the
milder forms of idolatry. His weak mind was irresistibly attracted by the
morbid fascination of the cruel rites of Moloch: “He burnt incense in the
valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, according
to the abomination of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out before the
children of Israel.”
The king’s devotions to his new gods were rudely interrupted. The insulted
majesty of Jehovah was vindicated by two disastrous invasions. First, Ahaz
was defeated by Rezin, king of Syria, who carried away a great multitude
of captives to Damascus; the next enemy was one of those kings of Israel
in whose idolatrous ways Ahaz had chosen to walk. The delicate flattery
implied by Ahaz becoming Pekah’s proselyte failed to conciliate that
monarch. He too defeated the Jews with great slaughter. Amongst his
warriors was a certain Zichri, whose achievements recalled the prowess of
David’s mighty men: he slew Maaseiah the king’s son and Azrikam, the ruler
of the house, the Lord High Chamberlain, and Elkanah, that was next unto
the king, the Prime Minister. With these notables, there perished in a
single day a hundred and twenty thousand Jews, all of them valiant men.
Their wives and children, to the number of two hundred thousand, were
carried captive to Samaria. All these misfortunes happened to Judah
“because they had forsaken Jehovah, the God of their fathers.”
And yet Jehovah in wrath remembered mercy. The Israelite army approached
Samaria with their endless train of miserable captives, women and
children, ragged and barefoot, some even naked, filthy and footsore with
forced marches, left hungry and thirsty after prisoners’ scanty rations.
Multiply a thousandfold the scenes depicted on Egyptian and Assyrian
monuments, and you have the picture of this great slave caravan. The
captives probably had no reason to fear the barbarities which the
Assyrians loved to inflict upon their prisoners, but yet their prospects
were sufficiently gloomy. Before them lay a life of drudgery and
degradation in Samaria. The more wealthy might hope to be ransomed by
their friends; others, again, might be sold to the Phœnician traders, to
be carried by them to the great slave marts of Nineveh and Babylon or even
oversea to Greece. But in a moment all was changed. “There was a prophet
of Jehovah, whose name was Oded, and he went out to meet the army and said
unto them, Behold, because Jehovah, the God of your fathers, was wroth
with Judah, He hath delivered them into your hand; and ye have slain them
in a rage which hath reached up unto heaven. And now ye purpose to keep
the children of Judah and of Jerusalem for male and female slaves; but are
there not even with you trespasses of your own against Jehovah your God?
Now hear me therefore, and send back the captives, for the fierce wrath of
Jehovah is upon you.”
Meanwhile “the princes and all the congregation of Samaria” were waiting
to welcome their victorious army, possibly in “the void place at the
entering in of the gate of Samaria.” Oded’s words, at any rate, had been
uttered in their presence. The army did not at once respond to the appeal;
the two hundred thousand slaves were the most valuable part of their
spoil, and they were not eager to make so great a sacrifice. But the
princes made Oded’s message their own. Four heads of the children of
Ephraim are mentioned by name as the spokesmen of the “congregation,” the
king being apparently absent on some other warlike expedition. These four
were Azariah the son of Johanan, Berechiah the son of Meshillemoth,
Jehizkiah the son of Shallum, and Amasa the son of Hadlai. Possibly among
the children of Ephraim who dwelt in Jerusalem after the Return there were
descendants of these men, from whom the chronicler obtained the
particulars of this incident. The princes “stood up against them that came
from the war,” and forbade their bringing the captives into the city. They
repeated and expanded the words of the prophet: “Ye purpose that which
will bring upon us a trespass against Jehovah, to add unto our sins and to
our trespass, for our trespass is great, and there is fierce wrath against
Israel.” The army were either convinced by the eloquence or overawed by
the authority of the prophet and the princes: “They left the captives and
the spoil before all the princes and the congregation.” And the four
princes “rose up, and took the captives, and with the spoil clothed all
that were naked among them, and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them
to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them
upon asses, and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto
their brethren; then they returned to Samaria.”
Apart from incidental allusions, this is the last reference in Chronicles
to the northern kingdom. The long history of division and hostility closes
with this humane recognition of the brotherhood of Israel and Judah. The
sun, so to speak, did not go down upon their wrath. But the king of Israel
had no personal share in this gracious act. At the first it was Jeroboam
that made Israel to sin; throughout the history the responsibility for the
continued division would specially rest upon the kings, and at the last
there is no sign of Pekah’s repentance and no prospect of his pardon.
The various incidents of the invasions of Rezin and Pekah were alike a
solemn warning and an impressive appeal to the apostate king of Judah. He
had multiplied to himself gods of the nations round about, and yet had
been left without an ally, at the mercy of a hostile confederation,
against whom his new gods either could not or would not defend him. The
wrath of Jehovah had brought upon Ahaz one crushing defeat after another,
and yet the only mitigation of the sufferings of Judah had also been the
work of Jehovah. The returning captives would tell Ahaz and his princes
how in schismatic and idolatrous Samaria a prophet of Jehovah had stood
forth to secure their release and obtain for them permission to return
home. The princes and people of Samaria had hearkened to his message, and
the two hundred thousand captives stood there as the monument of Jehovah’s
compassion and of the obedient piety of Israel. Sin was bound to bring
punishment; and yet Jehovah waited to be gracious. Wherever there was room
for mercy, He would show mercy. His wrath and His compassion had alike
been displayed before Ahaz. Other gods could not protect their worshippers
against Him; He only could deliver and restore His people. He had not even
waited for Ahaz to repent before He had given him proof of His willingness
to forgive.(260)
Such Divine goodness was thrown away upon Ahaz; there was no token of
repentance, no promise of amendment; and so Jehovah sent further judgments
upon the king and his unhappy people. The Edomites came and smote Judah,
and carried away captives; the Philistines also invaded the cities of the
lowland and of the south of Judah, and took Beth-shemesh, Aijalon,
Gederoth, Soco, Timnah, Gimzo, and their dependent villages, and dwelt in
them; and Jehovah brought Judah low because of Ahaz. And the king hardened
his heart yet more against Jehovah, and cast away all restraint, and
trespassed sore against Jehovah. Instead of submitting himself, he sought
the aid of the kings of Assyria, only to receive another proof of the
vanity of all earthly help so long as he remained unreconciled to Heaven.
Tilgath-pilneser, king of Assyria, welcomed this opportunity of
interfering in the affairs of Western Asia, and saw attractive prospects
of levying blackmail impartially on his ally and his enemies. He came unto
Ahaz, “and distressed him, but strengthened him not.” These new troubles
were the occasion of fresh wickedness on the part of the king: to pay the
price of this worse than useless intervention, he took away a portion not
only from his own treasury and from the princes, but also from the
treasury of the Temple, and gave it to the king of Assyria.
Thus betrayed and plundered by his new ally, he trespassed “yet more
against Jehovah, this same king Ahaz.” It is almost incredible that one
man could be guilty of so much sin; the chronicler is anxious that his
readers should appreciate the extraordinary wickedness of this man, this
same king Ahaz. In him the chastening of the Lord yielded no peaceable
fruit of righteousness; he would not see that his misfortunes were sent
from the offended God of Israel. With perverse ingenuity, he found in them
an incentive to yet further wickedness. His pantheon was not large enough.
He had omitted to worship the gods of Damascus. These must be powerful
deities, whom it would be worth while to conciliate, because they had
enabled the kings of Syria to overrun and pillage Judah. Therefore Ahaz
sacrificed to the gods of Syria, that they might help him. “But,” says the
chronicler, “they were the ruin of him and of all Israel.” Still Ahaz went
on consistently with his policy of comprehensive eclecticism. He made
Jerusalem a very Athens for altars, which were set up at every street
corner; he discovered yet other gods whom it might be advisable to adore:
“And in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn incense
unto other gods.”
Hitherto Jehovah had still received some share of the worship of this most
religious king, but apparently Ahaz came to regard Him as the least
powerful of his many supernatural allies. He attributed his misfortunes,
not to the anger, but to the helplessness, of Jehovah. Jehovah was
specially the God of Israel; if disaster after disaster fell upon His
people, He was evidently less potent than Baal, or Moloch, or Rimmon. It
was a useless expense to maintain the worship of so impotent a deity.
Perhaps the apostate king was acting in the blasphemous spirit of the
savage who flogs his idol when his prayers are not answered. Jehovah, he
thought, should be punished for His neglect of the interests of Judah.
“Ahaz gathered together the vessels of the house of God, and cut in pieces
the vessels of the house of God, and shut up the doors of the house of
Jehovah”;(261) he had filled up the measure of his iniquities.
And thus it came to pass that in the Holy City, “which Jehovah had chosen
to cause His name to dwell there,” almost the only deity who was not
worshipped was Jehovah. Ahaz did homage to the gods of all the nations
before whom he had been humiliated; the royal sacrifices smoked upon a
hundred altars, but no sweet savour of burnt offering ascended to Jehovah.
The fragrance of the perpetual incense no longer filled the holy place
morning and evening; the seven lamps of the golden candlestick were put
out, and the Temple was given up to darkness and desolation. Ahaz had
contented himself with stripping the sanctuary of its treasures; but the
building itself, though closed, suffered no serious injury. A stranger
visiting the city, and finding it full of idols, could not fail to notice
the great pile of the Temple and to inquire what image, splendid above all
others, occupied that magnificent shrine. Like Pompey, he would learn with
surprise that it was not the dwelling-place of any image, but the symbol
of an almighty and invisible presence. Even if the stranger were some
Moabite worshipper of Chemosh, he would feel dismay at the wanton
profanity with which Ahaz had abjured the God of his fathers and
desecrated the temple built by his great ancestors. The annals of Egypt
and Babylon told of the misfortunes which had befallen those monarchs who
were unfaithful to their national gods. The pious heathen would anticipate
disaster as the punishment of Ahaz’s apostacy.
Meanwhile the ministers of the Temple shared its ruin and degradation; but
they could feel the assurance that Jehovah would yet recall His people to
their allegiance and manifest Himself once more in the Temple. The house
of Aaron and the tribe of Levi possessed their souls in patience till the
final judgment of Jehovah should fall upon the apostate. They had not long
to wait: after a reign of only sixteen years, Ahaz died at the early age
of thirty-six. We are not told that he died in battle or by the visitation
of God. His health may have been broken by his many misfortunes, or by
vicious practices that would naturally accompany his manifold idolatries;
but in any case his early death would be regarded as a Divine judgment.
The breath was scarcely out of his body before his religious innovations
were swept away by a violent reaction. The people at once passed sentence
of condemnation on his memory: “They brought him not into the sepulchres
of the kings of Israel.”(262) His successor inaugurated his reign by
reopening the Temple, and brought back Judah to the obedience of Jehovah.
The monuments of the impious worship of the wicked king, his multitudinous
idols, and their ritual passed away like an evil dream, like “the track of
a ship in the sea or a bird in the air.”
The leading features of this career are common to most of the wicked kings
and to the evil days of the good kings “Walking in the ways of the kings
of Israel” was the great crime of Jehoshaphat and his successors Jehoram
and Ahaziah. Other kings, like Manasseh, built high places and followed
after the abominations of the heathen whom Jehovah cast out before the
children of Israel. Asa’s lapse into wickedness began by plundering the
Temple treasury to purchase an alliance with a heathen king, the king of
Syria, against whose successor Ahaz in his turn hired the king of Assyria.
Amaziah adopted the gods of Edom, as Ahaz the gods of Syria, but with less
excuse, for Amaziah had conquered Edom. Other crimes are recorded among
the evil doings of the kings: Asa had recourse to physicians, that is,
probably to magic; Jehoram slew his brethren; Joash murdered the son of
his benefactor Jehoiada; but the supreme sin was disloyalty to Jehovah and
the Temple, and of this sin the chronicler’s brief history of Ahaz is the
most striking illustration. Ahaz is the typical apostate: he hardens his
heart alike against the mercy of Jehovah and against His repeated
judgment. He is a very Pharaoh among the kings of Judah. The discipline
that should have led to repentance is continually perverted to be the
occasion of new sin, and at last the apostate dies in his iniquity. The
effect of the picture is heightened by its insistence on this one sin of
apostacy; other sins are illustrated and condemned elsewhere, but here the
chronicler would have us concentrate our attention on the rise, progress,
and ruin of the apostate. Indeed, this one sin implied and involved all
others; the man who suppressed the worship of Jehovah, and revelled in the
obscene superstitions of heathen cults, was obviously capable of any
enormity. The chronicler is not indifferent to morality as compared with
ritual, and he sees in the neglect of Divinely appointed ritual an
indication of a character rotten through and through. In his time neglect
of ritual on the part of the average man or the average king implied
neglect of religion, or rather adherence to an alien and immoral faith.
Thus the supreme sin of the wicked kings naturally contrasts with the
highest virtue of the good kings. The standing of both is determined by
their attitude towards Jehovah. The character of the good kings is
developed in greater detail than that of their wicked brethren; but we
should not misrepresent the chronicler’s views, if we ascribed to the
wicked kings all the vices antithetic to the virtues of his royal ideal.
Nevertheless the picture actually drawn fixes our attention upon their
impious denial of the God of Israel. Much Church history has been written
on the same principle: Constantine is a saint because he established
Christianity; Julian is an incarnation of wickedness because he became an
apostate; we praise the orthodox Theodosius, and blame the Arian Valens.
Protestant historians have canonised Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, and have
prefixed an unholy epithet to the name of their kinswoman, while Romanist
writers interchange these verdicts. But underlying even such opposite
judgments there is the same valid principle, the principle that was in the
mind of the chronicler: that the king’s relation to the highest and purest
truth accessible to him, whatever that truth may be, is a just criterion
of his whole character. The historian may err in applying the criterion,
but its general principle is none the less sound.
For the character of the wicked nation we are not left to the general
suggestions that may be derived from the wicked king. The prophets show us
that it was by no vicarious condemnation that priests and people shared
the ruin of their sovereign. In their pages the subject is treated from
many points of view: Israel and Judah, Edom and Tyre, Egypt, Assyria, and
Babylon, serve in their turn as models for the picture of the wicked
nation. In the Apocalypse the ancient picture is adapted to new
circumstances, and the City of the Seven Hills takes the place of Babylon.
Modern prophets have further adapted the treatment of the subject to their
own times, and for the most part to their own people. With stern and
uncompromising patriotism, Carlyle and Ruskin have sought righteousness
for England even at the expense of its reputation; they have emphasised
its sin and selfishness in order to produce repentance and reform. For
other teachers the history of foreign peoples has furnished the picture of
the wicked nation, and the France of the Revolution or the “unspeakable”
Turk has been held up as an example of all that is abominable in national
life.
Any detailed treatment of this theme in Scripture would need an
exposition, not merely of Chronicles, but of the whole Bible. We may,
however, make one general application of the chronicler’s principle that
the wicked nation is the nation that forgets God. We do not now measure a
people’s religion by the number and magnificence of its priests and
churches, or by the amount of money devoted to the maintenance of public
worship. The most fatal symptoms of national depravity are the absence of
a healthy public opinion, indifference to character in politics, neglect
of education as a means of developing character, and the stifling of the
spirit of brotherhood in a desperate struggle for existence. When God is
thus forgotten, and the gracious influences of His Spirit are no longer
recognised in public and private life, a country may well be degraded into
the ranks of the wicked nations.
The perfectly general terms in which the doings and experiences of Ahaz
are described facilitate the application of their warnings to the ordinary
individual. His royal station only appears in the form and scale of his
wickedness, which in its essence is common to him with the humblest
sinner. Every young man enters, like Ahaz, upon a royal inheritance;
character and career are as all-important to a peasant or a shopgirl as
they are to an emperor or a queen. When a girl of seventeen or a youth of
twenty succeeds to some historic throne, we are moved to think of the
heavy burden of responsibility laid upon inexperienced shoulders and of
the grave issues that must be determined during the swiftly passing years
of their early manhood and womanhood. Alas, this heavy burden and these
grave issues are but the common lot. The young sovereign is happy in the
fierce light that beats upon his throne, for he is not allowed to forget
the dignity and importance of life. History, with its stories of good and
wicked kings, has obviously been written for his instruction; if the time
be out of joint, as it mostly is, he has been born to set it right. It is
all true, yet it is equally true for every one of his subjects. His lot is
only the common lot set upon a hill, in the full sunlight, to illustrate,
interpret, and influence lower and obscurer lives. People take such eager
interest in the doings of royal families, their christenings, weddings,
and funerals, because therein the common experience is, as it were,
glorified into adequate dignity and importance.
“Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen
years in Jerusalem”; but most men and women begin to reign before they are
twenty. The history of Judah for those sixteen years was really determined
long before Ahaz was invested with crown and sceptre. Men should all be
educated to reign, to respect themselves and appreciate their
opportunities. We do in some measure adopt this principle with promising
lads. Their energies are stimulated by the prospect of making a fortune or
a name, or the more soaring imagination dreams of a seat on the woolsack
or on one of the Front Benches. Gifted girls are also encouraged, as
becomes their gifts, to achieve a brilliant marriage or a popular novel.
We need to apply the principle more consistently and to recognise the
royal dignity of the average life and of those whom the superior person is
pleased to call commonplace people. It may then be possible to induce the
ordinary young man to take a serious interest in his own future. The
stress laid on the sanctity and supreme value of the individual soul has
always been a vital element of evangelical teaching; like most other
evangelical truths, it is capable of deeper meaning and wider application
than are commonly recognised in systematic theology.
We have kept our sovereign waiting too long on the threshold of his
kingdom; his courtiers and his people are impatient to know the character
and intentions of their new master. So with every heir who succeeds to his
royal inheritance. The fortunes of millions may depend upon the will of
some young Czar or Kaiser; the happiness of a hundred tenants or of a
thousand workmen may rest on the disposition of the youthful inheritor of
a wide estate or a huge factory; but none the less in the poorest cottage
mother and father and friends wait with trembling anxiety to see how the
boy or girl will “turn out” when they take their destinies into their own
hands and begin to reign. Already perhaps some tender maiden watches in
hope and fear, in mingled pride and misgiving, the rapidly unfolding
character of the youth to whom she has promised to commit all the
happiness of a life-time.
And to each one in turn there comes the choice of Hercules; according to
the chronicler’s phrase, the young king may either “do right in the eyes
of Jehovah, like David his father,” or he may walk “in the ways of the
kings of Israel, and make molten images for the Baals.”
The “right doings of David his father” may point to family traditions,
which set a high standard of noble conduct for each succeeding generation.
The teaching and influence of the pious Jotham are represented by the
example of godliness set in many a Christian home, by the wise and loving
counsel of parents and friends. And Ahaz has many modern parallels, sons
and daughters upon whom every good influence seems spent in vain. They are
led astray into the ways of the kings of Israel, and make molten images
for the Baals. There were several dynasties of the kings of Israel, and
the Baals were many and various; there are many tempters who deliberately
or unconsciously lay snares for souls, and they serve different powers of
evil. Israel was for the most part more powerful, wealthy, and cultured
than Judah. When Ahaz came to the throne as a mere youth, Pekah was
apparently in the prime of life and the zenith of power. He is no inapt
symbol of what the modern tempter at any rate desires to appear: the
showy, pretentious man of the world, who parades his knowledge of life,
and impresses the inexperienced youth with his shrewdness and success, and
makes his victim eager to imitate him, to walk in the ways of the kings of
Israel.
Moreover, the prospect of making molten images for the Baals is an
insidious temptation. Ahaz perhaps found the decorous worship of the one
God dull and monotonous. Baals meant new gods and new rites, with all the
excitement of novelty and variety. Jotham may not have realised that this
youth of twenty was a man: the heir-apparent may have been treated as a
child and left too much to the women of the harem. Responsible activity
might have saved Ahaz. The Church needs to recognise that healthy,
vigorous youth craves interesting occupation and even excitement. If a
father wishes to send his son to the devil, he cannot do better than make
that son’s life, both secular and religious, a routine of monotonous
drudgery. Then any pinchbeck king of Israel will seem a marvel of wit and
good fellowship, and the making of molten images a most pleasing
diversion. A molten image is something solid, permanent, and conspicuous,
a standing advertisement of the enterprise and artistic taste of the
maker; he engraves his name on the pedestal, and is proud of the
honourable distinction. Many of our modern molten images are duly set
forth in popular works, for instance the reputation for impure life, or
hard drinking, or reckless gambling, to achieve which some men have spent
their time, and money, and toil. Other molten images are dedicated to
another class of Baals: Mammon the respectable and Belial the polite.
The next step in the history of Ahaz is also typical of many a rake’s
progress. The king of Israel, in whose ways he has walked, turns upon him
and plunders him; the experienced man of the world gives his pupil painful
proof of his superiority, and calls in his confederates to share the
spoil. Now surely the victim’s eyes will be opened to the life he is
leading and the character of his associates. By no means. Ahaz has been
conquered by Syria, and therefore he will worship the gods of Syria, and
he will have a confederate of his own in the Assyrian king. The victim
tries to master the arts by which he has been robbed and ill-treated; he
will become as unscrupulous as his masters in wickedness. He seeks the
profit and distinction of being the accomplice of bold and daring sinners,
men as pre-eminent in evil as Tilgath-pilneser in Western Asia; and they,
like the Assyrian king, take his money and accept his flattery: they use
him and then cast him off more humiliated and desperate than ever. He
sinks into a prey of meaner scoundrels: the Edomites and Philistines of
fast life; and then, in his extremity, he builds new high places and
sacrifices to more new gods; he has recourse to all the shifty expedients
and sordid superstitions of the devotees of luck and chance.
All this while he has still paid some external homage to religion; he has
observed the conventions of honour and good breeding. There have been
services, as it were, in the temple of Jehovah. Now he begins to feel that
this deference has not met with an adequate reward; he has been no better
treated than the flagrantly disreputable: indeed, these men have often got
the better of him. “It is vain to serve God; what profit is there in
keeping His charge and in walking mournfully before the Lord of hosts? The
proud are called happy; they that work wickedness are built up: they tempt
God, and are delivered.” His moods vary; and, with reckless inconsistency,
he sometimes derides religion as worthless and unmeaning, and sometimes
seeks to make God responsible for his sins and misfortunes. At one time he
says he knows all about religion and has seen through it; he was brought
up to pious ways, and his mature judgment has shown him that piety is a
delusion; he will no longer countenance its hypocrisy and cant: at another
time he complains that he has been exposed to special temptations and has
not been provided with special safeguards; the road that leads to life has
been made too steep and narrow, and he has been allowed without warning
and remonstrance to tread “the primrose path that leads to the everlasting
bonfire”; he will cast off altogether the dull formalities and irksome
restraints of religion; he will work wickedness with a proud heart and a
high hand. His happiness and success have been hindered by pedantic
scruples; now he will be built up and delivered from his troubles. He gets
rid of the few surviving relics of the old honourable life. The service of
prayer and praise ceases; the lamp of truth is put out; the incense of
holy thought no longer perfumes the soul; and the temple of the Spirit is
left empty, and dark, and desolate.
At last, in what should be the prime of manhood, the sinner,
broken-hearted, worn out in mind and body, sinks into a dishonoured grave.
The career and fate of Ahaz may have other parallels besides this, but it
is sufficiently clear that the chronicler’s picture of the wicked king is
no mere antiquarian study of a vanished past. It lends itself with
startling facility to illustrate the fatal downward course of any man who,
entering on the royal inheritance of human life, allies himself with the
powers of darkness and finally becomes their slave.