upon that altar in the temple-court, and not rather sacrifices which Ahaz offered upon some bamah to the gods of Syria, when he was defeated and oppressed by the Syrians, for the purpose of procuring their assistance. As Ahaz offered his son in sacrifice to Moloch according to 2Ki 16:3, he might just as well have offered sacrifice to the gods of the Syrians.
Verses 17-18
Ahaz also laid his hand upon the other costly vessels of the court of the temple. He broke off the panels of the Solomonian stands, which were ornamented with artistic carving, and removed the basins from the stands, and took the brazen sea from the brazen oxen upon which they stood, and placed it upon a stone pavement. The ו before את־הכּיּר can only have crept into the text through a copyist’s error, and the singular must be taken distributively: he removed from them (the stands) every single basin. אבנים מרצפת (without the article) is not the stone pavement of the court of the temple, but a pedestal made of stones (βάσις λιθίνη, lxx) for the brazen sea. The reason why, or the object with which Ahaz mutilated these sacred vessels, is not given. The opinion expressed by Ewald, Thenius, and others, that Ahaz made a present to Tiglath-pileser with the artistically wrought panels of the stands, the basins, and the oxen of the brazen sea, is not only improbable in itself, since you would naturally suppose that if Ahaz had wished to make a “valuable and very welcome present” to the Assyrian king, he would have chosen some perfect stands with their basins for this purpose, and not merely the panels and basins; but it has not the smallest support in the biblical text, - on the contrary, it has the context against it. For, in the first place, if the objects named had been sent to Tiglath-pileser, this would certainly have been mentioned, as well as the sending of the temple and palace treasures. And, again, the mutilation of these vessels is placed between the erection of the new altar which was constructed after the Damascene model, and other measures which Ahaz adopted as a protection against the king of Assyria (2Ki 16:18). Now if Ahaz, on his return from visiting Tiglath-pileser at Damascus, had thought it necessary to send another valuable present to that king in order to secure his permanent friendship, he would hardly have adopted the measures described in the next verse.
Verse 18
2Ki 16:18 “The covered Sabbath-stand, which they had built in the house (temple), and the outer
