UZZIAH ə zī’ ə (עֻזִּיָּ֥ה, LXX ̓Οζίας, G3852, my strength is the Lord; Noth considers the form subject-predicate to be a late development [Israelitische Personennamen 16-18, 160], but cf. Uzziel, Urijah, Uriel, etc.). A king of Judah, son of Amaziah and Jecoliah, also known as Azariah. Myers suggests “Uzziah” as his throne name because it is used almost consistently in Chronicles, while its use also in the prophets (Isa 1:1; 6:1; 7:1; Hosea 1:1; Amos 1:1; Zech 14:5) has been taken to imply that it was his personal name. In 2 Kings, “Uzziah” is used four times out of twelve (15:13, 30-34; Honeyman sees this as a sign of reversion to “private status” during his illness); LXX gives Azarias in all these cases (though not all MSS), presumably by revision. Both names occur on seals (Diringer 122, 184, 196, 221); the Heb. roots ’zr, ’zz tend to interchangeability (Tadmor, 232).
A. Chronology. Uzziah was prob. coregent with Amaziah for many years. The evidence in 2 Kings is in (1) 14:23, that Jeroboam’s reign lasted forty-one years; (2) 15:1, that Uzziah became king (impliedly, that his father died) in the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam; (3) 15:8, that Jeroboam’s reign ended in Uzziah’s thirty-eighth year. From Jehu’s rebellion in 841 b.c., through the reigns of Athaliah, Joash, and Amaziah, the date of Amaziah’s death can be derived as 768/7; on this basis Uzziah counted his years from 792/1 and died in 740/39 (Thiele, Pavlovsky and Vogt).
W. F. Albright, working from a terminal date of 738 b.c. for Menahem, dates Uzziah 783-742, and alters the lengths of some reigns to dispose of the surplus arising from simply adding up the MT figures. H. Tadmor arrives at 785/4-733/2 b.c.
B. Achievements
1. Expansion. Uzziah’s reign is briefly noted in 2 Kings 15:1-7 as events in Israel move to their climax; but 2 Chronicles 26 reveals him as one of the most energetic and successful kings of Judah. His crowning achievement was the rebuilding of Elath (once Ezion-Geber, modern Eilat/Tell el-Kheleifeh) “after the king (Amaziah) slept with his fathers,” and when he himself was forty years old. Although Amaziah’s victory over the Edomites had opened a way into the territory which they had won from Jehoram, Uzziah had had to build up his strength after the defeat by Joash, and had been extending his control across the Negev, building forts and securing water supplies. 2 Chronicles 26:10 may refer to the Negev, or to the wilderness of NE Judah (Cross, Milik, BASOR 142). No full archeological proof connects such forts as Kh. Gharra and Kh. Ghazza with Uzziah, but Glueck shows at length (Rivers) how the effective use of the Negev has depended on firm government, and Elath could not have been held in isolation. It was all part of one policy for Uzziah to reduce the Philistines, extend his control up to Beersheba, and subdue the Meunites (2 Chron 26:6, 7; perhaps read “...the Arabians living at Gur, and against the Meunites” [w’al for ba’al, instead of additionally as RSV]. “Gur” might be Jagur (Josh 15:21) or Gerar (cf. 2 Chron 14:14). See also 1 Chronicles 4:41.
2. Consolidation. Uzziah’s southward policy had three clear aims: (1) to bring Arabian trade by the sea coast; (2) to exploit the mineral wealth of the Rift Valley; (3) to develop agriculture in the Shephelah W of the Judaean Hills, and to extend pasturing in the Negev. Much of the coast plain too, now covered in sand, was then fertile. Uzziah established defended settlements on land which the Philistines prob. could no longer cultivate, for lack of manpower; 8th-cent. remains at Tell Mor, about a kilometer inland of Ashdod, may illustrate 2 Chronicles 26:6. He may have built the forts in the N wilderness (Cross and Milik attribute these to Jehoshaphat, but see de Vaux, RB 63), and SE of Hebron (“attesting the existence of desert routes,” Aharoni, IEJ 11).
The defenses of Jerusalem were rebuilt and developed, with new towers at two principal gates (2 Chron 26:9). Assyrian reliefs show the new-style upperworks which gave the defenders better protection (Yadin, Art of Warfare, 325f.; Eng. VSS “engines,” 2 Chron 26:15, has been taken to mean catapults, but evidence for these is very doubtful). Uzziah reorganized the army with a regular staff, and made shields and weapons a government issue; thus he provided the military support for his expansion, without disrupting agriculture by frequently calling out a militia.
C. The Azriyau mystery. The Annals of Tiglath-pileser (745-723 b.c.) record that in or after his third year he assaulted the city of Azriyau of Ya-u-da; it seems that he built a royal palace there to mark its subjection. Though the context is apparently Syrian, many scholars have argued that Azriyau must have been Uzziah (Azariah) of Judah; this view has been as strongly contested.
Winckler (Altorient. Forschung. I:1) noted clues to an alternative interpretation. A N-Syrian state of Y’di is known from Aram. inscrs. found at Sam’al; its king witnessed the triumph of Tiglath-pileser at Damascus in 732 b.c.
Luckenbill (AJSL 41) and Albright (JBL 71) rejected the theory of an Azriyau of Y’di; Tadmor likewise (Scripta Hierosolymitana 8) denies that Assyr. Ya-u-da could represent Y’di, or that such an insignificant state could have headed a coalition against Assyria. He suggests that after the death of Jeroboam, while Israel was rent by civil war, Uzziah inherited the leadership in the N; he dates the events noted in the Annals to 738 b.c., following the usual reconstruction, disputed by Thiele (see Menahem, 2b). Thiele rejects the Y’di hypothesis, though for him the period falls in Jotham’s coregency.
The available fragments of the Annals are not clear as to Azriyau’s activities or his ultimate fate; but Uzziah could not have been involved except as a leader. Tadmor (p. 271) does not show that he could be defeated without repercussions in Judah. Further, a northern involvement would be out of keeping with Uzziah’s general policy, and unlikely at the very end of his reign.
D. Illness (2 Kings 15:5-7; 2 Chron 26:16-23).
1. Downfall. Chronicles records a confrontation between King Uzziah and Azariah the high priest, who objected to the king’s offering incense in the Holy Place. During this unhappy scene, as Uzziah was simultaneously in an act of prayer and losing his temper with the priests, a skin disease broke out on his forehead. Humiliated and rejected, he left the Temple, and for his remaining years was unable to fulfil the royal office, particularly as he was excluded from the Temple. The event is dated by Jotham’s coregency in 750/1 b.c.
Josephus (Antiq. IX. x. 4) adds that (1) the day was a great festival (which is likely); (2) there was a severe earthquake (one occurred in Uzziah’s time, cf. Zech 14:5 and Targum on Isa 28:21); (3) that the leprosy came by the sun shining through a crack in the Temple. J. Morgenstern (HUCA 12/13) takes these details as “essential and significant” to support his theory that the king had hitherto officiated at a sunrise ceremony on New Year’s Day. This is hardly consistent with his basic hypothesis that, at the moment in question, the sun would in any case be shining down the central axis of the Temple.
2. Closing years. Uzziah now lived in a “separate house,” or “house of separation,” bēt hăḥŏpshīt. The meaning of the phrase is debated. Ḥŏpshī in 1 Samuel 17:25 prob. indicates exemption from certain obligations; the adjective is used of freed slaves or prisoners, but Psalm 88:6 has “forsaken (KJV, ‘free’) among the dead.” Since ḥŏpshīt is an adverbial form, Klostermann (comm. 1887) emended to bētōh ḥŏpshīt, “in his house without duties” (or, “forsaken”); but there is MS evidence for ḥōpshūt in Kings, supported by 2 Chronicles 26:21 (Kethiv) and by the LXX transliterations in both places. T. Gaster rendered “house of pollution,” adducing the Ugaritic thpst (“filthy”); Gordis explained “confinement” as opposite of the sense of “free,” but Montgomery comments that this is not necessary.
In comparing Uzziah’s case with Naaman’s, it may be relevant that Naaman was not an Israelite, and he may have had a less serious form of the disease (cf. Herodotus I:138, LSJ s.v. leukē; but these references imply no distinction of grade).
3. Burial. Uzziah was buried “in the city” (2 Kings 15:7), “in the royal burial field” (2 Chron 26:23), “with his fathers” (both; cf. Joash, 2 Chron 24:25). An inscr. in Aram. of the 1st cent. a.d. purports to identify a tomb to which his bones were at some time removed; see PEQ Supplement 1931 (Oct), 217ff., plate; W. F. Albright, BASOR 44 (1931), 8ff.; S. Yeivin, JNES 7 (1948), 31-36.
Bibliography G. Cooke, North Semitic, 185; D. D. Luckenbill, AJSL 41 (1925), 217ff.; D. Diringer, Iscr. Ant. Ebr. (1934); J. Morgenstern, HUCA 12/13 (1935), 1-53, 15 (1940), 267-274; N. Glueck, BASOR 72 (1938), 2-10, 75 (1939), 10-19, 79 (1940), 3-17; W. F. Albright, BASOR 100 (1945), 18-22; A. Honeyman, JBL 67 (1948), 20f.; J. Montgomery, Kings ICC, (1951); J. Simons, Jerusalem in the OT (1952), 330; W. F. Albright, JBL 71 (1952), 78; BASOR 140 (1955), 34ff.; J. Pritchard, ANET2 (1955), 282; F. Cross, J. Milik, BASOR 142 (1956); M. Unger, Israel and the Aramaeans (1957), 97f.; Y. Aharoni, IEJ 8 (1958), 33-38; N. Glueck, Rivers in the Desert (1959), 166-179; W. Hallo, BA 23 (1960), 44-48; B. Rothenberg, God’s Wilderness (1961), 41, 124ff.; H. Tadmor, Scr. Hierosol. 8 (1961), 232-271; Y. Aharoni, IEJ 11 (1961), 15f.; C. Schedl, Vet Test 12 (1962), 90ff., 101ff.; G. Rinaldi, Vet Test Suppl. 9 (1962), 225-234; Y. Yadin, Art of Warfare (1963), 325f.; V. Pavlovsky, E. Vogt, Biblica 45 (1964), 326-337; J. Milgrom, Vet Test 14 (1964), 164-182; J. Gray, Kings (1964); J. Myers, Chronicles (1965); N. Glueck, BA 28 (1965), 70-87; Y. Aharoni, Land of the Bible (1966), 313ff.; E. Thiele, Vet Test 16 (1966), 103ff.; Y. Aharoni, IEJ 17 (1967), 1-17.