2 Chronicles 26: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Uzziah becomes king of Judah at sixteen and reigns fifty-two years in Jerusalem. While he seeks God he has success: he defeats the Philistines and others, fortifies Jerusalem, builds up his herds and farmland, and equips a large, well-armed army. When he grows strong, he enters the temple to burn incense, and eighty priests confront him for taking a role reserved for Aaron's descendants. A skin disease breaks out on his forehead, and he lives in a separate house, cut off from the LORD's house, until his death, while his son Jotham runs the palace.

Claim by Claim

1. 26:1
   • All the people of Judah took Uzziah.
   • Uzziah was sixteen years old.
   • They made him king in place of his father Amaziah.
2. 26:2
   • Uzziah built Eloth.
   • He restored Eloth to Judah.
   • He did this after the king had died and was laid with his fathers.
3. 26:3
   • Uzziah was sixteen years old when he began to reign.
   • He reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem.
   • His mother's name was Jecoliah.
   • His mother was from Jerusalem.
4. 26:4
   • Uzziah did what was right in the sight of the LORD.
   • He did so according to all that his father Amaziah had done.
5. 26:5
   • Uzziah sought God in the days of Zechariah.
   • Zechariah had understanding in the visions of God.
   • As long as Uzziah sought the LORD, God made him prosper.
6. 26:6
   • Uzziah went out and made war against the Philistines.
   • He broke down the wall of Gath.
   • He broke down the wall of Jabneh.
   • He broke down the wall of Ashdod.
   • He built cities in the territory of Ashdod.
   • He built cities among the Philistines.
7. 26:7
   • God helped Uzziah against the Philistines.
   • God helped him against the Arabians who lived in Gur-baal.
   • God helped him against the Meunites.
8. 26:8
   • The Ammonites gave tribute to Uzziah.
   • His name spread as far as the entrance to Egypt.
   • This was because he had made himself exceedingly strong.
9. 26:9
   • Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem at the Corner Gate.
   • He built towers at the Valley Gate.
   • He built towers at the angle of the wall.
   • He fortified those towers.
10. 26:10
    • Uzziah built towers in the wilderness.
    • He dug many cisterns.
    • He did so because he had much livestock.
    • He had livestock in the lowland and in the plain.
    • He had farmers and vinedressers in the hill country and in the fertile land.
    • He did so because he loved the soil.
11. 26:11
    • Uzziah had an army that made war.
    • The army went out to war in divisions.
    • The army went out according to the number of their muster.
    • The muster was made by Jeiel the scribe and Maaseiah the officer.
    • They acted under the direction of Hananiah.
    • Hananiah was one of the king's officials.
12. 26:12
    • The total number of the heads of fathers' houses over the mighty men of valor was two thousand six hundred.
13. 26:13
    • Under their command was an army of three hundred seven thousand five hundred.
    • That army made war with mighty power.
    • Its purpose was to help the king against the enemy.
14. 26:14
    • Uzziah prepared equipment for the whole army.
    • He prepared shields.
    • He prepared spears.
    • He prepared helmets.
    • He prepared coats of mail.
    • He prepared bows.
    • He prepared stones for slings.
15. 26:15
    • Uzziah made devices in Jerusalem.
    • The devices were designed by skillful men.
    • The devices were to be placed on the towers and on the corners of the wall.
    • The devices were for shooting arrows and great stones.
    • His name spread far abroad.
    • He was helped marvellously until he was strong.
16. 26:16
    • When Uzziah was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction.
    • He acted unfaithfully against the LORD his God.
    • He entered the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the altar of incense.
17. 26:17
    • Azariah the priest went in after Uzziah.
    • Eighty priests of the LORD went in with Azariah.
    • Those priests were valiant men.
18. 26:18
    • The priests took their stand against King Uzziah.
    • They said to him that it was not for him to burn incense to the LORD.
    • They said burning incense belongs to the priests, the sons of Aaron.
    • They said the sons of Aaron are consecrated to burn incense.
    • They told him to go out of the sanctuary.
    • They said he had acted unfaithfully.
    • They said it would not be to his honor from the LORD God.
19. 26:19
    • Uzziah became angry.
    • Uzziah had a censer in his hand to burn incense.
    • While he was angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead.
    • This happened in the presence of the priests.
    • This happened in the house of the LORD.
    • This happened beside the altar of incense.
20. 26:20
    • Azariah the chief priest and all the priests turned toward him.
    • They saw that he was leprous in his forehead.
    • They thrust him out from there.
    • Uzziah himself also hurried to go out.
    • He hurried because the LORD had struck him.
21. 26:21
    • King Uzziah was a leper until the day of his death.
    • He lived in a separate house as a leper.
    • He was cut off from the house of the LORD.
    • Jotham his son was over the king's house.
    • Jotham judged the people of the land.
22. 26:22
    • The rest of the acts of Uzziah, from first to last, were written by Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.
23. 26:23
    • Uzziah died and was laid with his fathers.
    • They buried him with his fathers in the burial field that belonged to the kings.
    • They buried him there because they said he was a leper.
    • Jotham his son reigned in his place.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

26:1

Uzziah's father Amaziah had been killed by conspirators (2 Chronicles 25:27–28); "all the people of Judah" putting the sixteen-year-old on the throne describes the public act of confirming the murdered king's son rather than letting the plotters choose a ruler. Uzziah is called Azariah in the parallel account in 2 Kings 14–15; both names were in use for him.

26:2

Eloth (also spelled Elath) stood at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, at the head of the Red Sea, a port giving Judah access to sea trade with Arabia and Africa. Holding it meant controlling the trade route south.

26:3

Fifty-two years is the longest reign recorded for a king of Judah. Ancient Near Eastern reign totals normally counted co-regencies, so these years probably include time when Uzziah ruled alongside his father at the start and alongside his son Jotham at the end (see verse 21).

26:4

"Right in the sight of the LORD" is Chronicles' standard formula for a king who supported the worship of the LORD in Jerusalem and did not promote other gods. Measuring Uzziah against his father Amaziah is faint praise: Chronicles had just said Amaziah did right, but not with a whole heart, and that he ended badly.

26:5

This Zechariah is otherwise unknown; he is not the prophet whose book stands near the end of the Old Testament, who lived some three hundred years later. "Understood the visions of God" describes him as a recognized prophetic figure who advised the young king; some Hebrew manuscripts read "who instructed him in the fear of God."

26:6

The Philistines occupied the coastal plain south-west of Judah, in five main cities including Gath and Ashdod; they had been Israel's rivals for centuries. Jabneh is the town later known as Jamnia. Tearing down a city's wall did not destroy the town: it stripped away its defenses so it could not resist, and building towns nearby planted Judean settlers to hold the territory.

26:7

Gur-baal is otherwise unknown, somewhere south or south-east of Judah. The Meunites were a people probably based around Ma'an, east of the Arabah in what is now southern Jordan. Both were desert peoples on the trade routes Uzziah was trying to control.

26:8

Tribute was a regular payment (silver, goods, livestock) made by a weaker people to a stronger king as the price of being left alone. It was an admission of political submission, not a gift in the ordinary sense. "The border of Egypt" marks the far south-western edge of the known world from Judah's point of view.

26:9

The Corner Gate and the Valley Gate were points on Jerusalem's city wall; the "angle" was a sharp turn in the wall's line, a naturally weak spot. Amaziah's defeat had left part of this wall broken down (2 Chronicles 25:23), so Uzziah is repairing and strengthening the city's defenses.

26:10

Cisterns are pits cut into rock and sealed to catch and store rainwater, in dry country they made grazing possible where there were no springs. The "western foothills" translate the Shephelah, the low hill country between Judah's central ridge and the coastal plain. The word rendered "fertile fields" is Carmel, which can be either a place name or simply the ordinary word for good farmland.

26:11

The "secretary" (scribe) was a senior official who kept the muster rolls, the written lists of who was liable for military service and which unit they belonged to. Recording an army this way, by divisions under named officers, marks it as a standing royal force rather than a militia raised only when war came.

26:12

"Chief of the fathers" means the heads of extended family groups. Israelite armies were organized along family and clan lines, so the man who led you in battle was usually a relative and your unit was your kin.

26:13

Numbers of this size are typical of the Chronicler's military figures. The Hebrew word translated "thousand" can also mean a clan or a military unit of unspecified size, so the total may represent units rather than a headcount; the text does not settle the question.

26:14

The King James "habergeons" are coats of armor, usually made of overlapping metal scales or rings sewn onto a garment. A sling was a genuine military weapon, not a toy: a leather pouch on two cords, whirled and released to throw a stone hard enough to kill at a considerable distance.

26:15

The Hebrew describes "devices, the invention of skilled men," without saying what they were. Catapults and torsion artillery are not otherwise attested this early, so some take these as machines for shooting arrows and stones, others as shielding structures that protected defenders while they shot by hand. The ambiguity is in the original.

26:16

The incense altar stood inside the temple building itself, in the room called the Holy Place, and was separate from the large altar in the courtyard where animals were sacrificed. Only priests entered that room. The offense is not that Uzziah worshiped, but that he performed an act the law reserved for one hereditary group.

26:17

"Fourscore" is eighty; a score is twenty. The word "valiant" is chosen deliberately, because physically blocking an armed and furious king was dangerous, and priests had no legal protection against him.

26:18

Israel's priesthood was hereditary, restricted to descendants of Aaron within the tribe of Levi; "set apart" (consecrated) means formally installed by ritual for that work. Kings of Judah, from the tribe of Judah, held no priestly office, unlike kings in surrounding nations, who often did. "The holy place" is the temple's inner room, not the open courtyard where anyone could stand.

26:19

A censer is a metal pan or shovel for carrying burning coals on which incense is sprinkled. The Hebrew word traditionally translated "leprosy" covers a range of skin conditions, and also discolourations in cloth and on house walls; it is not modern leprosy (Hansen's disease). Its consequence was ritual, not medical: a person with it was excluded from the sanctuary and from ordinary contact until a priest declared them clean.

26:21

A person with this condition had to live apart from the community (Leviticus 13:46), so the king was permanently barred from the temple and from public life. The Hebrew phrase for the house he lived in is obscure and occurs nowhere else; it has been read as "a house of quarantine" and as "a house of release," meaning free of royal duty. Jotham running the palace and governing amounts to a co-regency lasting until his father's death.

26:22

This is the prophet whose oracles make up the book of Isaiah, which opens by dating his ministry to the reigns of Uzziah and his successors and dates his call vision to "the year that King Uzziah died" (Isaiah 6:1). The record referred to here is not the biblical book but a separate court chronicle, now lost.

26:23

He was buried in ground belonging to the royal family but not in the tombs of the kings themselves, the burial of someone whose condition made him ritually unclean, kept apart even in death.