God’s Word for You

2 Chronicles 28:20-27 A rejected branch

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, May 17, 2025

20 Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria came, but he attacked him instead of helping him. 21 Ahaz took some of the things from the House of the LORD and from the royal palace and from the princes, and gave them to the king of Assyria, but that did not help him. 22 In his time of trouble King Ahaz became even more unfaithful to the LORD (for this is how Ahaz was). 23 He offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus, who had defeated him. He thought, “Since the gods of the kings of Aram have helped them, I will sacrifice to them so they will help me.” But they were his downfall and the downfall of all Israel. 24 Ahaz gathered together the furnishings from the house of God, and he cut them to pieces—the furnishings of the house of God! He shut the doors of the LORD’s house and set up altars at every street corner in Jerusalem. 25 Town by town, all through Judah, he built high places to burn sacrifices to other gods and provoked the LORD, the God of his fathers, to anger. 26 The other events of his reign and all his ways, from beginning to end, are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. 27 Ahaz rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of Jerusalem, but he was not placed in the tombs of the kings of Israel. And Hezekiah his son became king after him.

Despite a couple of translation problems in this passage, the end of the reign of Ahaz is clear and chaotic. Omitted from the record is the downfall of the north, which happened in 722 seven years before the death of Ahaz. Perhaps this is hinted at now when our prophet says, “But they were his downfall and the downfall of all Israel,” since now that there was no longer an Israel separate from Judah, that land could be called by either name and only refer to Judah—unless “the downfall of Israel” is in fact a reference to the fall and captivity of the northern kingdom.

When Ahaz called to Assyria for help, he had to bribe them to go away, which did not help very much. In fact, this act is mentioned in the a record on the palace wall of Tiglath Pileser, who uses a fuller name for Ahaz, “Jehoahaz.”

One of the most shocking parts of his collapse is that Ahaz had the furnishings of the temple cut apart. Those things that were wooden or linen could be easily understood with this verb, but the usual meaning of “furnishings” is the metal items like spoons, shovels, bowls and other small golden things used in and around the altar. Here the author’s choice of using the piel stem for the word adds the difficulty of the task to our understanding: “they cut and cut and cut them to pieces.” This is the verb showing strenuous, repeated, and unexpected actions.

In a rage, the king wrecked the temple, ruined it, and shut its doors. Then he set up his own high places and new altars “at every street corner” of the cities and towns. He virtually forced the people to change their religion and worship false gods. Any pretense of worshiping the true God in new ways was stripped away. He openly worshiped the gods of Aram, since Aram had defeated him.

We were already told that Ahaz died young, at just thirty-six. The people refused to bury him with the kings of Judah, like his grandfather Uzziah. But Uzziah had suffered from leprosy. Ahaz was left out for no other reason we know of than that he was an idolater. His own son, Hezekiah, probably had a hand in where this man was buried, and since Hezekiah worshiped the Lord, he may have wanted to show this by his choice in where his father was buried. This is confirmed by Isaiah. The same year that Ahaz died, the prophet Isaiah had a vision from God and said these things: “You are cast out of your tomb like a rejected branch, you are covered with the slain… Like a corpse trampled underfoot, you will not join them in burial, for you have destroyed your land and killed your people” (Isaiah 14:19-20). And the Lord also gave this promise to Judah: “I will crush the Assyrian in my land; on my mountain I will trample him down. His yoke will be taken from my people, and his burden removed from their shoulders” (Isaiah 14:25).

The Lord will not forsake his faithful people (Psalm 37:28). There were still people in Judah, and even in Jerusalem, who hated the idolatry of Ahaz and who put their faith in the Lord. Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, and their families, to name a few. And there was the patient and longsuffering Abijah, the mother of Hezekiah the next king, who had raised her son as a Jew and not in the pagan idolatry of her wicked husband. She is an example of a wife who, married to a man who turns out to be an outrageous sinner, patiently does her duty and remains faithful to her marriage vow, respects their marriage and God’s plan for marriage, and reaps the overwhelming harvest of a believing son with faith in the Lord, who looks ahead to the coming Christ. She was a woman who undoubtedly listened to the preaching of Isaiah there in Jerusalem and who heard about the fine preaching of Micah out in the villages of Judah. The Lord ended her troubled marriage by removing wicked Ahaz from her vow through death after twenty-six or twenty-seven years. She was still young; she would see her son take the throne and she would support him with advice and true faith; a woman who truly deserved her title of Queen Mother. What a cross she had carried! What an example she is for all who are in difficult marriages. Pray for a patience like that of good Queen Abijah. Take her example to heart, and be brave. Pray for those who need your prayers, and don’t be afraid to pray for yourself, for strength, and for God to deliver you from temptations as well as from the sins and unbelief of people around you. The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him (Nahum 1:7).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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