Wednesday Bible Study: U is for Uzziah

A phrase I hear often in my reading is, "It's a generational thing".  And that is the key to figuring out what there is to learn about Uzziah, King of Judah.  And so, before we get TO Uzziah, we need to go back a few generations.

Back to Uzziah's grandfather Joash.  See, Judah had had a good king in Jehoshaphat, but his son Jehoram married the daughter of Israel's king Ahab- and thus daughter of Jezebel.  Her name was Athaliah, and she was the mother of  king Ahaziah.  Ahaziah was meeting with another Jehoram, the son of Ahab and king of Israel, when Jehu killed them both and became king in Israel.  With Ahaziah's death, Athaliah usurped the throne of Judah and put to death all of the line of her grandfather Omri and all of the House of David in Judah- or so she thought.

See, Ahaziah had a good daughter whose name is a mouthful in any time period, and she was married to the priest Jehoiada.  She saved the youngest son- Joash, and she and Jehoiada raised him.  Eventually he came of age, and Jehoiada organized a palace coup, got rid of Athaliah, and installed Joash upon the throne.

Which is where we come in.

Now the four generations we have to look at all followed the Lord to one extend or another.  And the story of Joash from 2 Chronicles 24 starts out ominously for young Joash:

 And Joash did what was right in the eyes of the LORD all the days of Jehoiada the priest.

But alas, Jehoiada died first, so what did Joash do?  Well, first let me say he did an amazing job re-establishing the priesthood and the Temple worship.  But unlike the line of Hezekiah-Josiah, they did nothing to bring the PEOPLE back to God.  So when the priest died...

2Ch 24:17  Now after the death of Jehoiada the princes of Judah came and paid homage to the king. Then the king listened to them. 
2Ch 24:18  And they abandoned the house of the LORD, the God of their fathers, and served the Asherim and the idols. And wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this guilt of theirs. 

And God even sent prophets to warn them- including Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada.  But when Zechariah spoke against Joash, he had him killed- fine repayment to the man that raised you, to kill his son.  So God let him get waxed by Syria.  He was severely injured, and the household servants who hated his abandonment of God, finished him off.  And his son Amaziah took the throne.  His outlook proved as ominous as his father's:

2Ch 25:2  And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, yet not with a whole heart. 

2Ch 25:3  And as soon as the royal power was firmly his, he killed his servants who had struck down the king his father. 

2Ch 25:4  But he did not put their children to death, according to what is written in the Law, in the Book of Moses, where the LORD commanded, "Fathers shall not die because of their children, nor children die because of their fathers, but each one shall die for his own sin." 

Here I want to point out the theme that sets these four kings apart.  With good Jehoshaphat before, and with bad Ahaz and good Hezekiah after, the kings are compared in how they walked "according to their father David."  But these four are going to be judged against what their OWN fathers did.  I really believe that the reason is, like I said- no matter what good they did, none of them turned the peoples' hearts back to God.

Now Amaziah did a pretty fair job- at first.  And God rewarded him- at first.  But where Joash's downfall was listening to man- first Jehoiada, then the princes- Amaziah's problem was listening when it was convenient.  As soon as he started getting comfortable, God let him get waxed by the Syrians as well.  So he thought he would salve his pride by beating up his 'hillbilly relations' in Israel.  But it wasn't God's plan, and when he got told so...

2Ch 25:14  After Amaziah came from striking down the Edomites, he brought the gods of the men of Seir and set them up as his gods and worshiped them, making offerings to them. 

2Ch 25:15  Therefore the LORD was angry with Amaziah and sent to him a prophet, who said to him, "Why have you sought the gods of a people who did not deliver their own people from your hand?" 

2Ch 25:16  But as he was speaking, the king said to him, "Have we made you a royal counselor? Stop! Why should you be struck down?" So the prophet stopped, but said, "I know that God has determined to destroy you, because you have done this and have not listened to my counsel." 

So now, listening to God was inconvenient, and he told God, and his prophet, to buzz off.  Jehu, who was only marginally closer to God himself, but had fulfilled the prophecy against Ahab's line, beat him soundly, and broke into Jerusalem itself.  After the defeat, Amaziah was so unpopular he had to go live in the nearby city of  Lachish, where they tracked him down and killed him.

And that brings us to Uzziah, who should by now have learned the correlation between sin and disaster, obedience and blessing, and for the most part he had.  He was able, skipping the fine details, to put Judah back on the map as a regional power- and he was blessed by God in the weakness of his neighbors.  We know Egypt was going through a string of crumbling dynasties at the same time, the most powerful of which wasn't even Egyptian, but usurpers from Cush (think 'Sudan').  The Assyrians were more or less in the 'Jonah' era, with the kingship weakened by court intrigues and the citizenry panicked by an eclipse and a plague.  And Babylon had a brief moment of mostly freedom from the Assyrians, but it was under a non-native Chaldean ruler that was happy he didn't have to deal with the struggling Assyrians while keeping his Kassite population under wraps.
And we know this was the approximate time because Amos mentions a tremendous earthquake coming during Uzziah's reign; the quake, scientists have learned, was somewhere between a 7.8 and an 8.2 in the neighborhood of Lebanon- oh, and it happened around 750 BC give or take 30 years.

But his fall is the one that really puzzled me:

2Ch 26:16  But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the LORD his God and entered the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the altar of incense. 
2Ch 26:17  But Azariah the priest went in after him, with eighty priests of the LORD who were men of valor, 
2Ch 26:18  and they withstood King Uzziah and said to him, "It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the LORD, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out of the sanctuary, for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the LORD God." 
2Ch 26:19  Then Uzziah was angry. Now he had a censer in his hand to burn incense, and when he became angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead in the presence of the priests in the house of the LORD, by the altar of incense. 
2Ch 26:20  And Azariah the chief priest and all the priests looked at him, and behold, he was leprous in his forehead! And they rushed him out quickly, and he himself hurried to go out, because the LORD had struck him. 
2Ch 26:21  And King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death, and being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the LORD. And Jotham his son was over the king's household, governing the people of the land. 

Oh, and according to the chronology that puts Uzziah's death at around 739 BC, he became leprous in 750 BC.  This dovetails with Josephus's claim that the earthquake hit at the time of Uzziah's sin, the sun poured through a rent in the Temple, and illuminated Uzziah's leprousy.


What on earth would motivate him to take the priesthood into his own hands?  One commentator said he wanted "to make himself high priest of his kingdom, like the kings of Egypt and of other nations, whose kings were also summi pontifices, and to unite all power in his person, like Moses, who consecrated Aaron and his sons to be priests."  I didn't buy that.  Basically, because none of his neighbors at the time were actually doing that.  Others say he wanted to run the priesthood as David and Solomon had- except they never usurped the function.  Before I speculate, though, we have one more generation to look at.

The last few years of his reign, Uzziah had to turn the reins over to his son Jotham.  Now, Uzziah's story began with, "And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, according to all that his father Amaziah had done"- to which I note that Amaziah had not been whole-hearted in what he had done.  Now, look at the very David-like description of Jotham:

2Ch 27:2  And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD according to all that his father Uzziah had done, except he did not enter the temple of the LORD. But the people still followed corrupt practices. 

Now you want to notice two things here- Uzziah was only charged with the one sin (just like David was only charged with Uriah's death).  And, still, Jotham didn't set the people back to revival.  But the flip side of that first point, unlike Great Grandpa, Grandpa, and Dad, Jotham did NOT make the big mistake.  And his result?

2Ch 27:6  So Jotham became mighty, because he ordered his ways before the LORD his God. 

2Ch 27:7  Now the rest of the acts of Jotham, and all his wars and his ways, behold, they are written in the Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah. 

2Ch 27:8  He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. 

2Ch 27:9  And Jotham slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David, and Ahaz his son reigned in his place. 

1- He became mighty because of his obedience- and STAYED that way.

2- He didn't get murdered, he didn't have to flee, he didn't get exiled.  He lived and died in Jerusalem, and was buried there in peace.

But I was still not quite getting Uzziah.  Then I got a message- think in terms of the Parable of the Sower...

Joash was the hard ground.  Once Jehoiada was gone, he listened to men, and was easy pickings.

Amaziah was the stony ground.  His roots in God were shallow- when it came time to choose, he chose himself and lost.

Jotham was the good soil- he was fruitful; not as much as he COULD have been, but fruitful nonetheless.

So that would make Uzziah the seed that found thorny ground:

Mat 13:22  As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. 

What care was it, what deceit, that choked off Uzziah in the end?  The Jewish Encyclopedia says, "Uzziah's strength became his weakness; for he attempted to usurp the power of the priesthood in burning incense in the Temple of Yhwh. "  Makes sense.  Joash failed to humble himself before Zechariah the son of the priest;  Amaziah failed to humble himself before the unnamed prophet who warned him; and now, Uzziah failed to humble himself in recognizing that God purposefully puts a priest between Himself and any king.

The lesson here would seem to be that we ALL need to have someone between ourselves and God. Whether salvationally in Jesus or educationally with Pastors, teachers, commentators, or mentors. And we have to be willing to admit our mistake; witness Uzziah:

 And they rushed him out quickly, and he himself hurried to go out, because the LORD had struck him. 

He did hurry from his sin, and I believe he had true repentance; but he didn't escape the consequences, and perhaps those were the thorns that choked away his ability to bear fruit.