Uzziah

Uzziah, also called Azariah, became king at sixteen and reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem — one of the longest reigns in Judah. 2 Chronicles 26:5 says he 'set himself to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God, and as long as he sought the LORD, God made him prosper.' He warred successfully against the Philistines, broke down the walls of Gath, Jabneh, and Ashdod; the Ammonites brought tribute; and his fame spread as far as the border of Egypt. He fortified Jerusalem with towers, dug cisterns, kept large herds in the Shephelah, and equipped an army of 307,500 with shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows, and slingstones; he placed on the towers and corners of Jerusalem 'engines, invented by skillful men, to shoot arrows and great stones' (2 Chronicles 26:15). But pride was his ruin: in the height of his strength he entered the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the altar of incense, a prerogative of the priests alone. Azariah the priest and eighty others went in after him and confronted him; while Uzziah was raging at the priests, with the censer in his hand, leprosy broke out on his forehead. They thrust him out, and he himself hurried to leave. He lived as a leper in a separate house till his death; his son Jotham governed the people. The kingdom marked his death as the date stamp of Isaiah's commissioning: 'In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up' (Isaiah 6:1).