2 Kings 15:2

The usual explanations do not satisfy. Some say a copyist confused similar letters. Others say he simply bore two names. And the two names do not mean quite the same thing. Azariah means "Jehovah helps." Uzziah means "My strength is Jehovah." Could it be that Azariah was his real name? Then came his bold intrusion into the sanctuary (2 Chron. 26:16-20), and leprosy struck him for life. At that point his name may have been changed to the related Uzziah — "My strength is Jehovah" — to mark that the "help" he had received had depended on his relation to the LORD. One fact seems to confirm this. Although 2 Chronicles always calls this king Uzziah, the Hebrew word for "help," which forms the first part of the name Azariah, comes back with marked emphasis in the account of the divine help given in his campaigns (2 Chron. 26:7, 13, 15).

Uzziah was one of the descendants of David who reigned in Jerusalem for fifty-two years. He was crowned king when he was only sixteen. The post carried heavy responsibility, and he was very young for it. Yet he filled it well, because the fear of God was before his eyes. The history tells us that "God helped him." God helped him in such a marked way that we read a second time how "he was marvellously helped, till he was strong" (2 Chron. 26:7, 15).

His was the longest unbroken reign of any king of Judah. Manasseh ruled fifty-five years, but the king of Babylon removed him and carried him off captive, so that reign was broken. His mother's name, "Jah will enable," may show that she had godly hopes for her son, by the help of God. She was not disappointed. Scripture says he "did what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah did" — that is, during the earlier part of his reign.

Notice here, in the record of Kings, the part mothers play in how their children turn out. When these mothers come from Judah and Jerusalem, it is rare to see their sons follow the worship of false gods… On the other hand, mothers or wives who served false gods had a harmful influence on the kings… This observation should make Christian mothers realize their responsibility, and should stir them to bring up their children in the fear of the Lord.

The sin of Uzziah, reported in 2 Chronicles 26, is passed over in silence. We have said above that the reason is clear. The point is to bring out the godliness of the kings of Judah. The account does not weaken it by listing their faults and inconsistencies. It sets that godliness against the idolatry of the kings of Israel, which cried to the Lord for vengeance. Here we read only this: "And Jehovah struck the king, so that he was a leper to the day of his death, and lived in a separate house." Kings never gives the cause of his judgment.

Uzziah was sixteen years old when he began to reign. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord. He sought God, and God made him prosper. But in his old age his heart was lifted up, and that ruined him. In his proud presumption he sinned against the Lord God. He died a leper, in his sixty-ninth year.