A'haz (Heb. Avhaz', TnN, possessor), the name of two men.
1. (Sept. XaaZ v. r. 'Aj£a£.) A great grandson of Jonathan, son of King Saul, being one of the four sons of Micah, and the father of Jehoiadah or Jarah (1 Chron. viii, 35 ; ix, 42). B.C. post 1037.
2. (Sept. and N. T.'AxpZ, Josephus 'A\d^r]Q, Auth. Vers. " Achaz," Matt, i, 9.) The son and successor of Jo- tham, being the twelfth king of the separate kingdom of Judah, who reigned fourteen years, B.C. 740-726 (besides two years as vicero}' under his father). In 2 Kings xvi, 2, he is said to have ascended the throne at the age of 20 j-ears. This has been regarded as a transcriber's error for 25, which number is found in one Hebrew MS., the Sept., the Peshito, and Arabic version of 2 Chron. xxviii, 1 ; for otherwise his son Hezekiah was born when he was eleven years old (so Clinton, Fasti Hell, i, 318). But it more probably re- fers to a -till earlier viceroyship at. the. date of Ids fa- ther's full coronation (2 Kings xv, 32, 33), B.C. 750. At the time of his accession, Rezin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Israel, had recently formed a league against Judah, and they proceeded to lay siege to Je- rusalem, intending to place on the throne Ben-Tabeal, who was not a prince of the royal family of Judah, but probably a Syrian noble. Upon this the prophet Isaiah, full of zeal for God and patriotic loyalty to the house of David, hastened to e;ive advice and encourage- ment to Ahaz (see Richardson's Sermons, ii, 186), and it was probably owing to the spirit of energy and re- ligious devotion which he poured into his counsels
l that the allies failed in their attack on Jerusalem.
j Thus much, together with anticipations of danger from the Assyrians, and a general picture of weakness and unfaithfulness both in the king and the people, we find in the famous prophecies of the 7th, 8th, and 9th chapters of Isaiah, in which he seeks to animate and support them by the promise of the Messiah. From 2 Kings xvi, and 2 Chron. xxviii, we learn that the allies took a vast number of captives, who, how- ever, were restored in virtue of the remonstrances of the prophet Oded ; and that they also inflicted a most severe injury on Judah by the capture of Elath, a flourishing port on the Red Sea, in which, after ex- pelling the Jews, they re-established the Edomites (according to the true reading of 2 Kings xvi, 6, EPOilX for QipilX), who attacked and wasted the east part of Judah, while the Philistines invaded the west and south. The weak-minded and helpless Ahaz sought deliverance from these numerous troubles by appealing to Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, who freed him from his most formidable enemies by in- vading Syria, taking Damascus, killing Rezin, and depriving Israel of its northern and Transjordanic dis- tricts— an extension of their dominions for which the AssjTians had been already preparing (see Kitto's Daily Bible, lllustr. in loc). But Ahaz had to pur- chase this help at a costly price : he became tributary to Tiglath-pileser, sent him all the treasures of the Temple and his own palace, and even appeared before him in Damascus as a vassal. He also ventured to seek for safety in heathen ceremonies, despite the ad- monitions of Isaiah, Hosea, and Micah ; making his
1 son pass through the fire to Moloch, consulting wizards
I and necromancers (Isa. viii, 19), sacrificing to the Syrian gods, introducing a foreign (originally Assyr-
| ian, apparently, Rawlinson, Hist. Evidences, p. 117) altar from Damascus, and probably the worship of the heavenly bodies from Assyria and Babylon, as he would seem to have set up the horses of the sun men- tioned in 2 Kings xxiii, 11 (comp. Tacit. Ann. xii, 13) ; and " the altars on the top (or roof) of the upper cham- ber of Ahaz" (2 Kings xxiii, 12) were connected with the adoration of the stars. See Astrology. The worship of Jehovah became neglected, and the Temple at length altogether closed. We see another and blameless result of this intercourse with an astronom- ical people in the "sundial of Ahaz" (Is. xxxviii, 8). See Dial. He died at the age of fifty years, and his
j body was refused a burial in the roj'al sepulchre (2 Kings xvi; 2 Chron. xxviii; Isa. vii). He was suc- ceeded by his son Hezekiah (see Simeon's Works, iv, 177).-— Smith, s. v. See Judah, Kingdom of.
Ahazi'ah (Heb. Achazyah' ', rpmx, held by Je- hovah, 2 Kings i, 2 ; ix, 16, 23, 27, 29'; xi, 2 ; 2 Chron. xx, 35; elsewhere in the prolonged form, Achazya'hu, >l!"r"ns< • Sept. 'Ovo^'ar, but v. r. 'O^iag in 1 Chron. iii, 11), the name of two Jewish kings.
1. The son and successor of Ahab, and ninth king of Israel, who reigned two years (current, B.C. 895-4). Under the influence of his mother, Jezebel, Ahaziah pursued the evil courses of his father. The most signal public event of his reign was the revolt of the vassal king of the Moabites, who took the opportunity of the defeat and death of Ahab to discontinue the tribute which he had paid to the Israelites, consisting of 100,000 lambs and as many rams, with their wool (comp. Isa. xvi, 1). The difficulty of enforcing this tribute was enhanced by the fact that after the battle of Ramoth in Gilead [see Ahab] the Syrians had the command of the country along the east of Jordan, and they cut off all communication between the Israelites and Moabites. Ahaziah became a party in the at- tempt of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, to revive the maritime traffic bj' the Red Sea, in consequence of which the enterprise was blasted, and came to nothing (2 Chron. xx, 35-37). Soon after, Ahaziah, having