1In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign.
2Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. He did not do what was right in the sight of the LORD his God, as David his father had done.
3Instead he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even made his son pass through the fire, copying the disgusting practices of the nations whom the LORD had driven out before the children of Israel.
4He sacrificed and burned incense at the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree.
5Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to make war. They surrounded Ahaz, but they could not defeat him.
6At that time Rezin king of Syria won back Elath for Syria, and drove the Jews out of Elath. The Syrians came to Elath and have lived there to this day.
7So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, saying, "I am your servant and your son. Come up and save me from the hand of the king of Syria, and from the hand of the king of Israel, who have risen up against me."
8Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king's house, and sent it as a gift to the king of Assyria.
9The king of Assyria listened to him. He went up against Damascus and took it. He carried its people away as captives to Kir, and killed Rezin.
10King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, and he saw an altar that was at Damascus. King Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest a drawing of the altar and a pattern of it, showing all the work of it.
11So Urijah the priest built an altar, just as king Ahaz had sent word from Damascus. Urijah the priest made it before king Ahaz came back from Damascus.
12When the king came from Damascus, he saw the altar. The king went up to the altar and made offerings on it.
13He burned his burnt offering and his grain offering, and poured out his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of his peace offerings on the altar.
14He also moved the bronze altar, which was before the LORD, from the front of the house, from between the new altar and the house of the LORD, and he set it on the north side of the new altar.
15King Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, "On the great altar burn the morning burnt offering, and the evening grain offering, and the king's burnt sacrifice and his grain offering, together with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their grain offering and their drink offerings. Sprinkle on it all the blood of the burnt offering, and all the blood of the sacrifice. The bronze altar will be for me to seek guidance by."
16So Urijah the priest did everything that king Ahaz commanded.
17King Ahaz cut off the panels of the stands, and took the basin off them. He took the sea down from the bronze oxen that were under it, and set it on a pavement of stones.
18Because of the king of Assyria, he also took away from the house of the LORD the covered walk for the sabbath that they had built in the house, and the king's outer entrance.
19The rest of the acts of Ahaz, and what he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?