2 Kings 16

2 Kings 16:1

John Chrysostom: Do you see that demons dwell in their souls and that these demons are more dangerous than the ones of old? And this is very reasonable. In the old days the Jews acted impiously toward the prophets; now they outrage the Master of the prophets. Tell me this. Do you not shudder to come into the same place with people possessed, who have so many unclean spirits, who have been reared amid slaughter and bloodshed? Must you share a greeting with them and exchange a bare word? Must you not turn away from them since they are the common disgrace and infection of the whole world? Have they not come to every form of wickedness? Have not all the prophets spent themselves making many and long speeches of accusation against them? What tragedy, what manner of lawlessness have they not eclipsed by their blood guilt? They sacrificed their own sons and daughters to demons. They refused to recognize nature, they forgot the pangs of birth, they trod underfoot the rearing of their children, they overturned from their foundations the laws of kinship, they became more savage than any wild beast. — DISCOURSES AGAINST JUDAIZING CHRISTIANS 1.6.7

2 Kings 16:10

Origen of Alexandria: “And when you say, ‘Why did the Lord God do all of these bad things to us?’ And you will say to them, ‘As you have forsaken me and served other gods in your land, so you shall serve in a land not your own.’ ” Let one consider the literal sense, and it will suffice at the present to refresh the memory from the literal sense for those who can understand. Surely then, the people of Israel possessed the holy land, the temple, the house of prayer. They ought to have served God, but when they transgressed the divine commandments they served idols, both the idols acquired from Damascus, as it is written in Kings, and the other idols brought from other pagan nations into the holy land. Due to the fact that they received these pagan idols, they made themselves worthy to be rejected to the land of the idols, to dwell there where they worship the idols. — HOMILIES ON Jeremiah 7.3.1

2 Kings 16:15

Ishodad of Merv: The words “the bronze altar shall be for me to inquire by,” that is, in order to consult [God]: [the king] says these words in a purely formal manner, and not seriously. — BOOKS OF SESSIONS 2 Kings 16:15

2 Kings 16:17

Theodoret of Cyrus: I certainly do not think that he built [the altar] for the God of all things but just for certain of those who are falsely called gods. This is what the book of Chronicles points out. It reads, “In the time of his distress this king Ahaz became yet more faithless to the Lord. For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, which had defeated him, and said, “Because the gods of the kings of Aram helped them, I will sacrifice to them so that they may help me.” But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel.” And this is also signified by the next verse: “Ahaz gathered together the utensils of the house of God and cut in pieces the utensils of the house of God. He shut up the doors of the house of the Lord and made himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem.” He did these and other similar things, as is also confirmed in the book of Chronicles: “When King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria, he saw the altar that was at Damascus. King Ahaz sent to the priest Uriah a model of the altar, and its pattern, exact in all its details.” He removed the genuine altar of bronze, which Solomon had built, and put in its place another one recently made. And what happened to the stands is revealed by what follows: “King Ahaz cut off the frames of the stands,” the text says, “and removed the laver from them.” And he even dared to commit another act of impiety: he moved the entrance of the royal house into the divine temple, transforming the sacred enclosure into a thoroughfare. — QUESTION 48, ON 2 KINGS

2 Kings 16:18

Richard Challoner: Musach: The covert, or pavilion, or tribune, for the king.