Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on 2 Chronicles 28:22
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
Increase of Ahaz' transgressions against the Lord. - Ch2 28:22. After this proof that Ahaz only brought greater oppression upon himself by seeking help from the king of Assyria ( Ch2 28:16-21), there follows ( Ch2 28:22.) an account of how he, in his trouble, continued to sin more and more against God the Lord, and hardened himself more and more in idolatry. לו הצר וּבעת corresponds to the ההיא בּעת Ch2 28:16. "At the time when they oppressed him, he trespassed yet more against the Lord, he King Ahaz." In the last words the rhetorical emphasizing of the subject comes clearly out. The sentence contains a general estimation of the attitude of the godless king under the divine chastisement, which is then illustrated by facts ( Ch2 28:23-25). Ch2 28:23 He sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, which smote him, saying, i.e., thinking, The gods of the kings of Aram which helped them, to them will I sacrifice, and they will help me. כּי serves to introduce the saying, and both הם and להם are rhetorical. Berth. incorrectly translates the participle המּכּים by the pluperfect: who had smitten him. It was not after the Syrians had smitten him that Ahaz sought to gain by sacrifice the help of their gods, but while the Syrians were inflicting defeats upon him; not after the conclusion of the Syrian war, but during its course. The ungrammatical translation of the participle by the pluperfect arises from the view that the contents of our verse, the statement that Ahaz sacrificed to the Syrian gods, is an unhistorical misinterpretation of the statement in Kg2 16:10., about the altar which Ahaz saw when he went to meet the Assyrian king in Damascus, and a copy of which he caused to be made in Jerusalem, and set up in the temple court, in the place of the copper altar of burnt-offering. But we have already rejected that view as unfounded, in the exposition of Kg2 16:10. Since Ahaz had cast and erected statues to the Baals, and even sacrificed his son to Moloch, he naturally would not scruple to sacrifice to the Assyrian gods to secure their help. But they (these gods) brought ruin to him and to all Israel. לכל־ישׂ is in the accusative, and co-ordinate with the suffix in הכשׁילו. Ch2 28:24-25 Not content with thus worshipping strange gods, Ahaz laid violent hands upon the temple vessels and suppressed the temple worship. He collected all the vessels of the house of God together, and broke them in pieces. These words also are rhetorical, so that neither the יאסף, which depicts the matter vividly, nor the כּל, is to be pressed. The קצּץ of the vessels consisted, according to Kg2 16:17, in this, that he mutilated the artistically wrought vessels of the court, and cut out the panels from the bases, and took away the lavers from them, and took down the brazen sea from the oxen on which it stood, and set it upon a pavement of stones. "And he closed the doors of the house of Jahve," in order to put an end to the Jahve-worship in the temple, which he regarded as superfluous, since he had erected altars at the corners of all the streets in Jerusalem, and in all the cities of Judah. The statement as to the closing of the temple doors, to which reference is made in Ch2 29:3, Ch2 29:7, is said by Berth. not to reset upon good historical recollection, because the book of Kings not only does not say anything of it, but also clearly gives us to understand that Ahaz allowed the Jahve-worship to continue, Kg2 16:15. That the book of Kings ( Ch2 2:16) makes no mention of t…
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