King Jotham
In the second year of Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel, Jotham son of Uzziah king of Judah began to reign.
2 Kings 15:32-35 (NIV)
32 In the second year of Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel, Jotham son of Uzziah king of Judah began to reign. 33 He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jerusha daughter of Zadok. 34 He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father Uzziah had done. 35 The high places, however, were not removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there. Jotham rebuilt the Upper Gate of the temple of the Lord.
The King Who Barely Gets a Mention
Jotham is one of the more easily overlooked kings of Judah. Six verses in 2 Kings. Nine in 2 Chronicles. No dramatic confrontation, no famous failure, no celebrated triumph that gets retold in Sunday school. Sandwiched between his father Uzziah — struck with leprosy for entering the temple in pride — and his son Ahaz — who sacrificed his own son in the fire and led the kingdom into deep idolatry — Jotham’s reign reads almost like a quiet interlude.
But the quietness is the point.
He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father Uzziah had done.
This phrase, repeated across the kings of Judah, is the measuring stick the author of Kings consistently uses. Not military success, not the size of the kingdom, not the wealth accumulated. Faithfulness to Yahweh. And Jotham — unremarkable, quiet, easily summarised in six verses — passes the test that mattered most. He governed steadfastly. He did not chase after foreign gods. He rebuilt the Upper Gate of the temple. He grew powerful because, as the fuller account in Chronicles tells us, he walked steadfastly before the Lord his God.
The king who does not make headlines is sometimes the king whose faithfulness is most worth noticing.
Three Kings, Three Journeys
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz — grandfather, father, son in spiritual terms, though Jotham’s relationship to Uzziah is direct father-son and Ahaz is Jotham’s son. Three consecutive reigns. Three entirely different relationships with God.
Uzziah began well, sought God, was given extraordinary success — and then, in the strength of that success, walked into the temple to do what only the priests were permitted to do. Pride led to his downfall. Leprosy struck him in that very moment, and he lived out the rest of his life excluded from the temple he had once been so eager to seek God in, governing from a separate house while Jotham took over the affairs of the kingdom.
Jotham watched all of this. He did not inherit his father’s faith automatically — he chose it. He saw exactly what pride did to a king who had once walked closely with God, and he walked differently. Steadfastly. Without the presumption that destroyed his father.
And then Ahaz — Jotham’s son — did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord. Not like his father David, the text says pointedly, drawing the comparison all the way back. When war came, Ahaz did not turn to Yahweh. He turned to other gods. He looked to Assyria for help rather than to God. He sacrificed his own son in the fire — a depth of desperation and idolatry that is hard to fully absorb. He desecrated the temple itself.
Three generations. Three completely different outcomes. The same household, the same access to the same God, the same temple in the same city — and three entirely different responses.
Your Faith Is Your Own
This is the truth sitting underneath the whole genealogy of these three kings.
We cannot transmit faith to our children the way we transmit eye colour or a surname. Jotham did not become faithful because Uzziah was faithful in his early years — he became faithful because he chose, watching both his father’s success and his father’s failure, to walk steadfastly before God himself. And Ahaz did not become unfaithful because Jotham failed him — Jotham, by every account, governed well and walked rightly. Ahaz turned away despite a father who modelled faithfulness.
The faith journey of your parents is not your faith journey. The faith journey of your children will not be yours either. Circumstances differ. Temptations differ. The specific shape of sin that each generation wrestles with differs. We can share how we relate to God — we can model it, speak of it, live it in front of our children the way Jotham clearly absorbed something real from watching Uzziah both succeed and fail. But we cannot forge that relationship on their behalf. Each person has to find their own way to the place where they meet God authentically.
This is not a discouraging truth. It is a freeing one. It means the failures of the generation before us do not have to determine our own outcome. And it means our own failures, however significant, do not have to be the final word for those who come after us.
Failure Is Not the End
Uzziah’s failure was public, permanent in its consequences, and visible to the entire kingdom. He lived out his days with leprosy, excluded from the temple, governing from a separate residence while his son ran the country. By every external measure, this looks like a story that should end in shame and a legacy of ruin passed down to the next generation.
But it did not end there. Even in the leprosy, even in the exclusion, Uzziah did not turn further from God. He did not go chasing after other gods to cure his condition. He did not become bitter or rebellious in his isolation. He continued, in whatever capacity remained to him, to guide Jotham in how to lead the country well. The success and the wisdom God had given him in the earlier, faithful years of his reign were not erased by the failure — they became part of what he passed on to his son, alongside the visible, undeniable lesson of what pride does to a king who forgets where his success came from.
Jotham learned from both halves of his father’s story. The early faithfulness and the success it produced. The pride and the consequence that followed it. He absorbed the whole of it — and chose the first half rather than repeating the second.
This is the hope embedded in the story for anyone whose own life includes failures they wish their children had not witnessed. The failure is real. The consequences may be real and lasting, as they were for Uzziah. But the failure is not necessarily the end of the story for the generation that comes after. God can use even the visible wreckage of a parent’s mistake to instruct and strengthen a child who is paying attention — if that child chooses to learn rather than to repeat.
Favour Does Not Mean a Long Life
Jotham walked steadfastly with the Lord. He was given power, military success, building projects that flourished, a kingdom that grew strong under his leadership.
And he reigned only sixteen years. Most likely, by the chronology, he died relatively young.
This is worth sitting with honestly, because it cuts against an assumption that creeps into faith without our noticing it — that faithfulness should be rewarded with a long, comfortable, extended life. Jotham is the evidence that this is not the promise. He did what was right. God gave him real and visible favour during his reign. And his reign was still comparatively short.
If this can happen to one of the more faithful kings in the entire history of Judah, it can happen to anyone. Favour from God is not a guarantee against an early death, against loss, against the brevity of a life that looked, by every measure of faithfulness, like it deserved more time. This is hard. It does not resolve neatly. But it is honest — and the honesty matters more than a comforting half-truth would.
What it does mean is that the time given — however long or short — is meant to be treasured. The relationships between parents and children, the moments shared, the faithfulness modelled in the time that is actually given, carry weight regardless of how long that window stays open.
A Special Love for Those Who Have Lost
After Jotham’s death, Ahaz — his son — comes to the throne. And despite Ahaz’s unfaithfulness, despite the desecration of the temple, despite the sacrifice of his own son in the fire, despite turning to Assyria instead of to God, the Lord does not abandon him to silence.
God sends Isaiah.
The message brought to Ahaz, even in the middle of his unfaithfulness, carries a tenderness that is almost startling given everything Ahaz has done. Be careful, keep calm and do not be afraid. And then, the promise that would echo through the centuries and find its fulfillment in a stable in Bethlehem — the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
God so loved Ahaz — the unfaithful king, the one who had walked furthest from everything his father and grandfather had modelled — that He sent a prophet with fatherly words and the promise of Immanuel. God with us. Not abandonment for the failure. Presence offered into the middle of it.
This is the same love that reaches every person reading this passage, regardless of which generation’s pattern they have followed. The love that met Uzziah in his leprosy and did not leave him isolated from purpose. The love that strengthened Jotham as he chose steadfastness. The love that sent Isaiah to Ahaz even in his unfaithfulness, with the promise of Immanuel — God with us — long before the unfaithfulness had been resolved.
We know this love most fully now through Jesus — the way, the truth, and the life — the fulfillment of the very sign given to Ahaz that day.
Walk On
Three kings. Three different relationships with the same God. The faith of one generation did not guarantee the faith of the next, in either direction. Uzziah’s failure did not doom Jotham. Jotham’s faithfulness did not secure Ahaz.
Your faith is your own. It cannot be inherited and it cannot be transmitted by force or by good intention alone. What can be done is what Uzziah did even in his leprosy and what Jotham clearly received — the honest modelling of both the success and the failure, the willingness to keep guiding even from a diminished place, the steadfastness that becomes visible enough for the next generation to notice and choose for themselves.
And whatever generation you find yourself reflecting — the early faithfulness that has not yet been tested by power, the steadfastness that has learned from a parent’s failure, or the wandering that has turned toward other gods in a moment of fear — the same God who sent Isaiah to Ahaz is still sending the same message.
Be careful. Keep calm. Do not be afraid.
Immanuel. God with us.
Find your own place to walk steadfastly before Him — regardless of where the generation before you stood, and trusting that whatever you model, faithfully or imperfectly, is not the final word for the ones who come after you either.
All glory to God — forever and ever. Amen. 🤍
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