2 Chronicles 28:20 - Exposition

Tilgath-Pilneser (see 1 Chronicles 5:6 , 1 Chronicles 5:26 ; 2 Kings 15:29 ; 2 Kings 16:10 , our parallel. See our notes in full on 1 Chronicles 5:6 , 1 Chronicles 5:26 ). Gesenius dates his reign as King of Assyria as B.C. 753-734; others as about B.C. 747-728. Distressed him, but strengthened him not . This is in our writer's usual deeper moral and religious vein, and was no doubt most true. For all Ahaz paid and bribed out of the sacrilegiously employed treasure of the temple, out of the depreciating and partial dismantling of "the house of the king," and out of the begged contributions or taxes extortionately wrung "of the princes" (see the succinct account of next verse, and compare the parallel in its 2 Chronicles 28:8 , 2 Chronicles 28:18 ), he bought a master for himself, servitude, tributariness, and the humiliation of disgrace itself. The temporary relief he obtained (and which the writer of Chronicles in no way means to deny) from one enemy rivetted round his neck the yoke of another and greater. And worse than this, he secured in his own heart the greatest adversary of all—a restless, implacable foe, which ever goaded him on to worse folly and deeper sin.