AHAVA (aha'vN), (11e1). ,1-hav-avo' , water, Ezra 31), the river by which the Jewish exiles assembled their second caravan under Ezra, when returning to Jerusalem. It would seem from ch. viii:15, that it was named from a town of the same name: 'I assembled them at the river that flows toward Ahava.' In that case, it could not have been of much importance in itself ; and possibly it was no other than one of the numerous canals with which Babylonia then abounded. This is probably the true reason that biblical geog raphers have failed to identify it.
Ewald conjectured that the river Ahava or Peleg-Ahava was the same as the Pallaeopas, a stream to the south of Babylon. Rawlinson iden tifies it with the Is (see Herod. i :179), a river flowing by a town of the same name, now called Hit, which is about eight days' journey from Babylon (Hastings' Bib. Diet.).
AH.AZ aw-khaw:/, possessor).
1. Son of Jotham, and twelfth king of Judah• He reigned sixteen years, from B. C. 735-719. About the tenth year of his age he espoused Abi jah, the daughter of Zechariah, by whom, about a year after, he had his son I lezekiah. At twenty years of age Ahaz came to the crown.
(1) Idolatry. In imitation of the kings of Israel, he abandoned himself to the most abomin able idolatries. One of his sons he sacrificed to the idol Moloch; and, perhaps, caused the rest to pass through the fire for lustration. He did not merely connive at the people offering sacrifices in high places, as sundry of his predecessors had done; but himself ordered sacrifices and incense to be of fered in high places, hills, groves, and under green trees.
(2) Wars. Toward the end of his father's reign, the Syrians under Rezin, and the Israelites under Pekah, had begun to harass Judah. Observing Ahaz to be a weak prince, they agreed to dethrone him, and make a son of Tabeel, their deputy, king in his stead. Their armies invaded his kingdom all at once. He and his people were seized with the utmost consternation. The prophet Isaiah assured him that none of their projects should prosper; and that since the Messiah was not yet come, there was no reason to fear the de parture of the sceptre from Judah (Is. vii). This stroke was diverted; but Ahaz proceeding from evil to worse, the two kings made a fresh attack upon him. Rezin marched to Elath, a noted sea
port on the Red Sea, and peopled it with Sy rians. Pekah attacked Ahaz' army and killed i.7o, 000 of them in one day, besides Maaseiah his son, and carried off 200,000 prisoners, men, women and children. Moved with the remonstrance of Oded the prophet, the princes of Israel, Azariah, Bere chiah, Jellizkiali, and Amasa, pet suaded the troops to dismiss their prisoners ; and they accordingly clothed and fed them, and brought them back comfortably to Judah. Meanwhile the Edomites from the south ravaged the country, and carried off a number of the people for slaves. The Philis tines from the west invaded the low country, ad jacent to their territories, and the south; and took Betlisheinesh, Ajalon. Gederoth, Shocho, Timnath, and Gimzo, and peopled them with a colony of their nation.
(3) Becomes a Vassal. In his distress, Ahaz grew more and more wicked; lie sought not to the Lord; but, stripping the temple and city of all the gold he could find, lie sent it as a present to Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria : he surrendered himself his vassal. and begged his as sistance against his enemies. Accordingly Tigl.ith pileser attacked and defeated the Syrians that dis tressed hint in the East ; but, by imposing on his kingdom a tribute, he rather hurt than helped him. Ahaz went to Damascus to congratulate the As syrian monarch on his victory over Syria, and, observing there an idolatrous altar which greatly suited his taste, he sent off a plan of it to Urijah the high priest, ordering him to form one similar, and to have it finished before he returned to Jerusalem. Ahaz ordered it to be placed in the room of the brazen altar erected by Solomon, and to offer all the sacrifices thereon. To gratify the king of Assyria who, it seems, returned him his visit, he turned about the royal entrance to the court of the temple ; he took away the covert of the Sabbath, where, it seems, the priests stood to read the law, or the royal family to hear it: he dis graced the brazen lavers and sea by removing their pedestals, and setting them on the earth, or upon a pavement of stone.