Hezekiah comes to the throne several years before the northern kingdom is conquered by Assyria. King Hoshea of Israel is in the third year of his nine years as king. "In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign." (2 Kings 18:1) You'll recall that Ahaz was an exceedingly wicked king. He worshiped many pagan deities and even sacrificed some of his children to the abominable Molek, a god of the Canaanites. We might expect the heir of Ahaz to be just as wicked as he was, or even more so, and if that had been the case I think the nation of Judah would have fallen to an enemy soon after the nation of Israel did. But Hezekiah could not be more unlike his father! He will be one of the godliest leaders the southern kingdom ever had.
"He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother's name was Abijah daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done." (2 Kings 18:2-3) The author of 2 Kings compares Hezekiah favorably with his forefather David and not with his biological father. Hezekiah is nothing like his biological father and the reasons for him being the complete opposite of his father are not provided to us in the Scriptures. Some scholars believe it was because his father killed some of his siblings and made burnt offerings of them. In studying the chronology provided to us in the Scriptures, it seems certain that Hezekiah was already born when his father committed these unspeakable acts and it seems certain that Hezekiah was old enough to understand and be able to remember what happened. We can calculate approximately when Hezekiah was born to Ahaz because Ahaz was only twenty when he became king and he reigned for sixteen years. The author of 2 Kings states that Hezekiah was twenty-five when he began to reign and that means he was born when Ahaz was only eleven years old! Is this really possible?
It was not uncommon in many ancient cultures for the reigning king to provide a wife or wives for his heir-apparent even while his son was still quite young, for they considered it of the utmost importance for their successor to begin siring his own line of succession as quickly as possible. There's very clear evidence that the ancient Egyptians did this, for example. The guardians of the young King Tut married him to his half-sister when he ascended to the throne at the age of nine. This doesn't mean that young royal couples were physically able to immediately consummate their marriages. But if a preteen couple (aged eleven or twelve) was physically mature enough it would certainly not be impossible for them to produce a child.
I can remember how I and many of my school classmates looked when we were around that age. I seemed to grow up overnight and I was regularly mistaken for being sixteen when I was only twelve. Some of the boys in my class were nearly six feet tall by that age and looked old enough to be learning how to drive a car. But other boys and girls in my class still looked like little kids at that age. So, if we assume that Ahaz was like those boys in my class who matured early, and if we assume that his wife Abijah was like the girls who matured early, then the two of them definitely could have conceived a child when they were the age of a seventh-grader. If that's the case then Hezekiah would have been nine years old when his father ascended to the throne and, since the Bible appears to be stating that Ahaz sacrificed some of his children to Molek during his reign as king, Hezekiah would have been well aware of what was happening and I believe he was horrified by it.
Some scholars, however, propose that Ahaz was around thirteen or fourteen when he fathered Hezekiah. Another practice that was common in ancient royal families was to bring the successor on board as co-regent several years before the outgoing king passed away. This was most likely to happen if the king was elderly (which Ahaz was not) or if the king had a health condition or serious injury that was expected to prevent him from living into his old age. The Bible doesn't tell us what caused the death of Ahaz at the age of only thirty-six but he evidently perished from natural causes since there is no indication he died in battle or of any other type of injury. The authors of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles simply say that he "rested with his ancestors", which is what is usually said of kings who die in their own beds. It would not be at all unreasonable to conclude that Ahaz might have been ill for the final years of his life and that his son Hezekiah might have been appointed as co-regent. We will see momentarily why a co-regency is important when trying to figure out the ages of Ahaz and Hezekiah.
You'll recall that King Uzziah, who was stricken with leprosy, had to appoint his son Jotham as his co-regent for the remaining eleven years of his life. If Ahaz appointed Hezekiah as his co-regent several years before he passed away, we can't accurately gauge Ahaz's age at death or accurately gauge his age when he fathered Hezekiah. This is because we don't know whether the Bible means that Ahaz reigned for sixteen years total or whether it means he reigned for sixteen years alone before Hezekiah became his co-regent. In the records of many ancient cultures we find discrepancies in the records of the reigns of kings, with some of the reigns appearing to overlap. Even in the Bible we will find, for example, the books of Kings and Chronicles not being in total agreement about during which reignal year of a king of Israel a king of Judah came to the throne (and vice versa). This can easily be explained by the practice of co-regency, which is believed to be the reason for the discrepancies in the records of the kings of other ancient nations.
The only thing we can really conclude is that Ahaz was married to a wife somewhere between the ages of eleven and fourteen and that he fathered Hezekiah soon after. And of course we already know that Ahaz was a very wicked, idolatrous, and cold-hearted man---so cold-hearted that he had no pity on some of his own children. As we conclude our introduction to the study of King Hezekiah we can come to one other conclusion: Hezekiah wanted to be nothing like his father. I think he was just waiting for the moment when he would be the sole leader of the nation so he could begin the religious reforms we find him beginning in tomorrow's study. Hezekiah's heart is nothing like Ahaz's heart. Hezekiah's heart is compared instead to that of his ancestor David.
No comments:
Post a Comment