2 Kings 16:18

18. The covert for the sabbath Keil renders, the covered sabbath-stand, and explains it with probable correctness as some “covered place, stand, or hall in the court of the temple, to be used by the king whenever he visited the temple with his retinue on the sabbath, or on feast days.” Such a covert would naturally be furnished and ornamented with many precious things, and would be an evidence of wealth.

That they had built A kind of impersonal expression, equivalent to which had been built. The king’s entry without Probably the magnificent ascent from the palace to the temple, which, in the days of Solomon, had so overwhelmed the queen of Sheba. 1 Kings 10:5.

Turned he from the house of the Lord That is, he turned them aside from the purposes for which they were built; he changed them, perhaps to other uses. He changed them, as he did the bases, and the laver, and the brazen oxen, by removing them from sight, or else taking away all their costly adornings.

For the king of Assyria Rather, from the king of Assyria, or from fear of the king, as Bahr explains, referring for this use of the word מפני to Genesis 7:7; Judges 9:21; Isaiah 20:6, and other passages. Some understand that Ahaz removed all these sacred things from the temple for the purpose of presenting them to the king of Assyria; but 2 Kings 25:16, and Jeremiah 52:20, show that some of them were in Jerusalem at the time of the Babylonian conquest. Ahaz removed them, not as a present for the king of Assyria, but to hide them from the king. He desired to hide from the covetous Assyrian monarch these evidences of wealth, and so removed them from their sacred places. Some are of opinion that under the reformation of Hezekiah or of Josiah they were restored to their places again.

This effort of King Ahaz to conceal his treasures from Tiglath-pileser only confirms the statement made, 2 Chronicles 28:20, that his alliance with the Assyrian king “strengthened him not” was no permanent assistance, but rather a curse, for it “distressed him,” and left him a dishonoured vassal of a great heathen power.