Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign.
The mysterious in human development
The growth of humanity is not after a horticultural manner. We cannot say that a good tree will have good off-shoots, if we are speaking of humanity. The holiest father may have a murderer for his son. The sweetest mother may die of a broken heart. Only a foolish criticism is reckless in fixing definite responsibilities in this matter of the nurture and culture of children. The Lord rebukes us when we say that because the father was good the son must be good; or because the father was evil the son must be evil. The Lord permits men to come in between who are bad, or who are good, that all our little speculation about heredity, and all our arrangements for moral progress, may be thrown back and lost in confusion. Herein is the working of that mysterious law which is often misunderstood when denominated the law of election. We cannot tell what God is doing. Your son ought to have been good, for where is there a braver soul than yourself? The boy ought to have been chivalrous, for he never knew you do a mean deed or give lodgment to an ungenerous thought. In a way, too, he was proud of his father; yet there was no devil’s work he would not stoop to do. He did not get the bad blood from his mother, for gentler, sweeter soul never sang God’s psalms in God’s house. Yet there is the mystery, and it is not for a reckless criticism to define the origin and the issue of this mysterious phenomenon in human development. (J. Parker, D.D.)
Holy influences resisted produce increased wickedness
It is very noticeable that those who, in their early days, have resisted holy influences generally turn out the most wicked of men. This, indeed, is a fundamental law of character. Just as a good man, who is good notwithstanding a very bad up-bringing, and despite the most pernicious examples around him, is not infrequently one of the best of men, so a youth who has come from a godly home, and turns out evil himself, is one of the worst characters you can meet with.
The bad son of a good father
I. It is a sorrowful fact that good men are sometimes the fathers of bad sons. “Like father, like son,” we have often heard men say. But this is not always so. Alas! we know but too well that piety, virtue, goodness do not always run in the blood. You may pass on the crown, the throne, the kingdom, but the high moral and religious qualities which make a man a king among men do not always go with the crown and sceptre.
II. The bad sons of good fathers are often ruined by the sins they allow to deceive them. Read the twenty-third verse of this chapter. It is very instructive. Ahaz, weakened by his questionable ways, and not supported by the power of the God whose worship he had forsaken, fell into the hands of the foreigner. Conquered by the superior forces and better trained men of Damascus, he fondly imagined that they won because their gods, their idols, helped them in battle. Deceived, deluded, blinded by all this, he determined to follow their bad example. Others are involved in his fall. “They were the ruin of him and of all Israel.” It would be sad enough if he were the only one blinded and deluded by sin. But unfortunately its victims are all about us.
III. This chapter teaches that God often chastens the sons of godly parents who fall into sin, and seeks to win them back to Himself. God did not leave Ahaz without warning, reproof, and trouble. Through his long night of sin God often spake to him. God made this man understand that the way of the transgressor is hard. It is a mercy that God does not allow the sinner to go to hell without warning. (C. Leach, D.D.)
Entering on a royal inheritance
Every young man enters, like Ahaz, upon a royal inheritance; character and career are as all-important to peasant or a shopgirl as they are to an emperor or a queen. When a girl of seventeen or a youth of twenty succeeds to some historic throne we are moved to think of the heavy burden of responsibility laid upon unexperienced shoulders and of the grave issues that must be determined during the swiftly passing years of the early manhood or womanhood. Alas! this heavy burden and these grave issues are but the common lot. His lot is only the common lot set upon a hill, in the full sunlight, to illustrate, interpret, and influence lower and obscurer lives. (W. H. Bennett, M.A.)
Men should be educated to reign
Men should all be educated to reign, to respect themselves and to appreciate their opportunities. We do in some measure adopt this principle with promising lads and gifted girls. We need to apply the principle more consistently and to recognise the royal dignity of the average life and of those whom the superior person is pleased to call commonplace people. It may then be possible to induce the ordinary young men to take a serious interest in his own future. (W. H. Bennett, M.A.)
The kind of “reign” a source of anxiety to parents
The fortunes of millions may depend upon the will of some young Czar or Kaiser; the happiness of a hundred tenants or of a thousand workmen may rest on the disposition of the youthful inheritor of a wide estate or a huge factory; but none the less in the poorest cottage mother and father and friends wait with trembling anxiety to see how the boy or girl will “turn out” when they take their destinies into their own hands and begin to reign. (W. H. Bennett, M.A.)