1 In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign.

2 Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem; and he did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord his God, as his father David had done.

3 But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel; indeed ^ahe made his son pass through the fire, according to the ^babominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel.  ‡