I. INFATUATION. He robbed the palace and even plundered the temple in order to bribe the King of Assyria to help him, instead of going to the house of the Lord as a servant and suppliant of Jehovah, to seek and find his help. That is to say, he committed robbery and sacrilege in order to secure the succour of a man who afterwards deceived and defrauded him (ver. 21), when, by simple piety and integrity, he might have secured the aid of Omnipotence, the help of One that never fails his people. His course was one of utter infatuation. He neglected the one way that was quite open to him, and that would certainly have succeeded; he adopted a measure that was full of iniquity, and that was likely to end, as it did, in failure. He put the finishing stroke to his fatuity when he worshipped "the gods which smote him" (ver. 23). Sin does lead down to infatuation, it leads men to seek their joy and their heritage in the poorest and most unsatisfying springs, to pursue wisdom and wealth in directions where emptiness and poverty are alone to be obtained; it leads men to neglect the Fountain of living waters, the Source of all truth and wisdom, of all excellency and joy. It strews the path of the guilty with melancholy failures.

II. DEFIANCE. Ahaz could hardly go further in defying the Lord God of his fathers, the Divine One whom he was taught and trained to worship, than he did by his conduct as here described (vers. 24, 25). It was an act of unholy hardihood, of almost desperate defiance, that could only be the outcome of a guilty obduracy of spirit. He must have resented the action of Jehovah and determined to go all possible lengths in defying his authority. Well might the spirit of Isaiah be aroused as he witnessed this profanation, this open and daring rebellion against the living God. When men have long given way to their folly and to their sinful inclinations they do sometimes go to this awful length. They defy the God that made them, in whose power they stand. They may deny his existence; they may mock at his judgments, and at his final condemnation of their course; they may speak arrogantly and impiously of his power and of his rule: "How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?" (Psalm 73:11).

III. DEATH. Ahaz went down to an early and a dishonoured death (ver. 27). We do not wonder that he died before he reached the age of forty. The disasters he brought upon his country, and the mental strain which he must have undergone to proceed to such lengths of impiety, are enough to account for a premature decline and death. And all the better instincts of that instructed people led them to refuse the funereal honour they usually paid to their kings. "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." The issue of all sin is death - physical, spiritual, eternal. This is its wages. Let those who are moving down its sad decline take note of the end to which they move. But let us realize that to all who will turn from its enticements and break from its evil power, to all who will accept the supreme gift of God in Jesus Christ, "eternal life" is open (Romans 6:23). - C.

(W. H. Bennett, M.A)