Thick black smoke rises from the deep ravine of the Valley of Hinnom. This gorge sits just southwest of the stone walls surrounding Jerusalem. Workmen heat furnaces to cast metal figures for local fertility gods. The flames consume human offerings in a physical shift toward Canaanite rites during the reign of Ahaz. The king strips gold and silver from the royal temple to pay foreign armies. The heavy air holds the scent of burning cedar and charred bone.
Assyrian clay tablets from the royal archives at Nimrud record these transactions in exact detail. Tiglath-Pileser III marched his army through the Levant during the campaigns of 734 to 732 b.c. to crush regional rebellions. His scribes carved the name of Ahaz into the royal tribute lists alongside kings from Moab and Edom. Ahaz emptied his own treasuries to purchase a military alliance with this Gentile power. He sent thousands of pounds of silver northward. This desperate payment failed to stop raiding parties from striking towns less than 30 miles south of the capital.
This political capitulation required Ahaz to travel directly to Damascus to meet his Assyrian overlord. There he examined a massive foreign altar and sent its precise dimensions back to Jerusalem. Judean craftsmen built an exact replica of this stone and bronze structure before the king returned. Workers shoved the older temple altar aside to make room for the new installation. Ahaz commanded his priests to burn all morning and evening sacrifices on the imported design. He dismantled the large bronze sea and removed the heavy water basins from their carved metal oxen. His men cut down the remaining panels to satisfy the endless demands of the empire.
Men tear down their own sanctuaries to buy the illusion of safety from the very swords at their throats.
That illusion shattered as the Assyrian army marched past Jerusalem without offering military aid. Ahaz responded by locking the heavy wooden doors of the main temple complex. He severed all official worship of God and established shrines at four different intersections of the city. The king ordered constant fires to burn for Syrian deities who had just defeated his own armies. He banked his survival on the gods of his conquerors while his own territory shrank. The bronze hinges of the temple doors remained cold and locked until his death.