_AZARIAH-UZZIAH_ (B.C. 783(?)-737)
_JOTHAM_ (B.C. 737-735)
2 KINGS xv. 1-7, 32-38
"This is vanity, and it is a sore sickness."--ECCLES. vi. 2.
Before we watch the last "glimmerings and decays" of the Northern
Kingdom, we must once more revert to the fortunes of the House of David.
Judah partook of the better fortunes of Israel. She, too, enjoyed the
respite caused by the crippling of the power of Syria, and the cessation
from aggression of the Assyrian kings, who, for a century, were either
unambitious monarchs like Assurdan, or were engaged in fighting on their
own northern and eastern frontiers. Judah, too, like Israel, was happy
in the long and wise governance of a faithful king.
This king was Azariah ("My strength is Jehovah"), the son of Amaziah. He
is called Uzziah by the Chronicler, and in some verses of the brief
references to his long reign in the Book of Kings. It is not certain
that he was the eldest son of Amaziah;[342] but he was so distinctly the
ablest, that, at the age of sixteen, he was chosen king by "all the
people." His official title to the world must have been Azariah, for in
that form his name occurs in the Assyrian records. Uzziah seems to have
been the more familiar title which he bore among his people.[343] There
seems to be an allusion to both names--Jehovah-his-helper, and
Jehovah-his-strength--in the Chronicles: "God _helped him_, and made him
to prosper; and his name spread far abroad, and he was marvellously
helped, _till he was strong_."
The Book of Kings only devotes a few verses to him; but from the
Chronicler we learn much more about his prosperous activity. His first
achievement was to recover and fortify the port of Elath, on the Red
Sea,[344] and to reduce the Edomites to the position they had held in
the earlier days of his father's reign. This gave security to his
commerce, and at once "his name spread far abroad, even to the
entering in of Egypt."
He next subdued the Philistines; took Gath, Jabneh, and Ashdod;
dismantled their fortifications, filled them with Hebrew colonists,
and "smote all Palestine with a rod."[345]
He then chastised the roving Arabs of the Negeb or south country in
Gur-Baal and Maon, and suppressed their plundering incursions.
His next achievement was to reduce the Ammonite Emîrs to the position
of tributaries, and to enforce from them rights of pasturage for his
large flocks, not only in the low country (_shephelah_), but in the
southern wilderness (_midbar_), and in the _carmels_ or fertile
grounds among the Trans-Jordanic hills.
Having thus subdued his enemies on all sides, he turned his attention
to home affairs--built towers, strengthened the walls of Jerusalem at
its most assailable points, provided catapults and other instruments
of war, and rendered a permanent benefit to Jerusalem by irrigation
and the storing of rain-water in tanks.
All these improvements so greatly increased his wealth and importance
that he was able to renew David's old force of heroes (Gibborim), and to
increase their number from six hundred to two thousand six hundred, whom
he carefully enrolled, equipped with armour, and trained in the use of
engines of war. And he not only extended his boundaries southwards and
eastwards, but appears to have been strong enough, after the death of
Jeroboam II., to make an expedition northwards, and to have headed a
Syrian coalition against Tiglath-Pileser III., in B.C. 738. He is
mentioned in two notable fragments of the annals of the eighth year of
this Assyrian king. He is there called Azrijahu, and both his forces and
those of Hamath seem to have suffered a defeat.[346]
It is distressing to find that a king so good and so great ended his
days in overwhelming and irretrievable misfortune. The glorious reign
had a ghastly conclusion. All that the historian tells us is that "the
Lord smote the king, so that he was a leper, and dwelt in a several
[_i.e._, a separate] house." The word rendered "a several house" may
perhaps mean (as in the margin of the A.V.) "a lazar house," like the
_Beit el Massakîn_ or "house of the unfortunate," the hospital or
abode of lepers, outside the walls of Jerusalem.[347] The rendering is
uncertain, but it is by no means impossible that the prevalence of the
affliction had, even in those early days, created a retreat for those
thus smitten, especially as they formed a numerous class. Obviously
the king could no more fulfil his royal duties. A leper becomes a
horrible object, and no one would have been more anxious than the
unhappy Azariah himself to conceal his aspect from the eyes of his
people.[348] His son Jotham was set over the household; and though he
is not called a regent or joint-king--for this institution does not
seem to have existed among the ancient Hebrews--he acted as judge over
the people of the land.
We are told that Isaiah wrote the annals of this king's reign, but we
do not know whether it was from Isaiah's biography that the Chronicler
took the story of the manner in which Uzziah was smitten with leprosy.
The Chronicler says that his heart was puffed up with his successes
and his prosperity, and that he was consequently led to thrust himself
into the priest's office by burning incense in the Temple.[349]
Solomon appears to have done the same without the least question of
opposition; but now the times were changed, and Azariah, the high
priest,[350] and eighty of his colleagues went in a body to prevent
Uzziah, to rebuke him, and to order him out of the Holy Place.[351]
The opposition kindled him into the fiercest anger, and at this moment
of hot altercation the red spot of leprosy suddenly rose and burned
upon his forehead. The priests looked with horror on the fatal sign;
and the stricken king, himself horrified at this awful visitation of
God, ceased to resist the priests, and rushed forth to relieve the
Temple of his unclean presence, and to linger out the sad remnant of
his days in the living death of that most dishonouring disease. Surely
no man was ever smitten down from the summits of splendour to a lower
abyss of unspeakable calamity! We can but trust that the misery only
laid waste the few last years of his reign; for Jotham was twenty-five
when he began to reign, and he must have been more than a mere boy
when he was set to perform his father's duties.
So the glory of Uzziah faded into dust and darkness. At the age of
sixty-eight death came as the welcome release from his miseries, and
"they buried him with his fathers in the City of David." The
Levitically scrupulous Chronicler adds that he was not laid in the
actual sepulchre of his fathers, but in a field of burial which
belonged to them--"for they said, He is a leper." The general outline
of his reign resembled that of his father's. It began well; it fell by
pride; it closed in misery.
The annals of his son Jotham were not eventful, and he died at the age
of forty-one or earlier. He is said to have reigned sixteen years, but
there are insuperable difficulties about the chronology of his reign,
which can only be solved by hazardous conjectures.[352] He was a good
king, "howbeit the high places were not removed." The Chronicler
speaks of him chiefly as a builder. He built or restored the northern
gate of the Temple, and defended Judah with fortresses and towns. But
the glory and strength of his father's reign faded away under his
rule. He did indeed suppress a revolt of the Ammonites, and exacted
from them a heavy indemnity; but shortly afterwards the inaction of
Assyria led to an alliance between Pekah, King of Israel, and Rezin,
King of Damascus; and these kings harassed Jotham--perhaps because he
refused to become a member of their coalition. The good king must also
have been pained by the signs of moral degeneracy all around him in
the customs of his own people. It was "in the year that King Uzziah
died" that Isaiah saw his first vision, and he gives us a deplorable
picture of contemporary laxity. Whatever the king may have been, the
princes were no better than "rulers of Sodom," and the people were
"people of Gomorrha." There was abundance of lip-worship, but little
sincerity; plentiful religionism, but no godliness. Superstition went
hand in hand with formalism, and the scrupulosity of outward service
was made a substitute for righteousness and true holiness. This was
the deadliest characteristic of this epoch, as we find it portrayed in
the first chapter of Isaiah. The faithful city had become a
harlot--but not in outward semblance. She "reflected heaven on her
surface, and hid Gomorrha in her heart." Righteousness had dwelt in
her--but now murderers; but the murderers wore phylacteries, and for a
pretence made long prayers. It was this deep-seated hypocrisy, this
pretence of religion without the reality, which called forth the
loudest crashes of Isaiah's thunder. There is more hope for a country
avowedly guilty and irreligious than for one which makes its
scrupulous ceremonialism a cloak of maliciousness. And thus there lay
at the heart of Isaiah's message that protest for bare morality, as
constituting the end and the essence of religion, which we find in all
the earliest and greatest prophets:--
"Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom;
Give ear unto the Law of our God, ye people of Gomorrha!
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith
the Lord.
I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts;
And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of
he-goats.
When ye come to see My face, who hath required this at your hands, to
trample My courts?
Bring no more vain oblations!
Incense is an abomination unto Me:
New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies--
I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting...
Wash you! make you clean!"[353]
Of Jotham we hear nothing more. He died a natural death at an early
age. If the years of his reign are counted from the time when his
father's affliction devolved on him the responsibilities of office, it
is probable that he did not long survive the illustrious leper, but
was buried soon after him in the City of David his father.
FOOTNOTES:
[342] Hence, perhaps, the expression that the people "took him." If
Amaziah died at fifty-nine, he probably had other sons.
[343] Compare the interchange of the names Azariel and Uzziel (Exod.
vi. 18) in 1 Chron. vi. 2, 18. Azariah means "Jehovah hath helped,"
and Uzziah "Strength of Jehovah." It is just possible that his name
was changed at his accession, as the chief priest also was named
Azariah, and confusion might otherwise have arisen.
[344] 2 Chron. xxvi. 2-15.
[345] Isa. xiv. 29. A mixed language arose in this district in
consequence (Neh. xiii. 24; Zech. ix. 6). The word Palestine only
applies strictly to the district of Philistia. Milton uses it, with
his usual accuracy, in the description of Dagon as
"That twice-battered god of Palestine."
[346] Uzziah's opposition to Assyria--of which there seems to be no
doubt, for he must be the Azrijahu of the _Eponym Canon_--took place
about 738, and was a coalition movement. But it gives rise to great
chronological and other difficulties. As the solution of these is at
present only conjectural, I refer to Schrader (E. Tr.), ii. 211-219.
He is called Azrijahu Jahudai.
[347] 2 Kings xv. 5 (2 Chron. xxvi. 21, "a house of sickness"). LXX., ἐν
οἴκῳ ἀφφουσώθ; Vulg., _in domo libera seorsim_. Comp Lev. xiii. 46.
Theodoret understands it that he was shut up privately in his own
palace: ἔνδον ἐν θαλάμῳ ὑπ' οὐδένος ὁρώμενος. Symmachus, ἐγκεκλεισμένος.
[348] His misfortune must have made a deep impression, and is possibly
alluded to in Hos. iv. 4: "For thy people are as they that strive with
the priest."
[349] The Chronicler attributes the good part of his reign to the
influence of an unknown Zechariah, "who had understanding in the
visions of God"; and says that when Zechariah died Uzziah altered for
the worse.
[350] This high priest, Azariah, is only mentioned elsewhere in 2
Chron. xxvi. 17, 20.
[351] Josephus says that he had put on a priestly robe, and that a
great feast was going on, and that the earthquake (Amos i. 1; Zech.
xiv. 5) happened at the moment, which broke the Temple roof, so that a
sunbeam smote his head and produced the leprosy. We here see the
growth of the Haggadah.
[352] For instance, two verses earlier (2 Kings xv. 30) we read of the
twentieth year of Jotham.
[353] Isa. i. 10-17.