Uzziah's Prosperity and Skin Disease

"And he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God: and as long as he sought the LORD, God made him to prosper." He breaks down the walls of Gath, Jabneh and Ashdod. "Also he built towers in the desert, and digged many wells… for he loved husbandry." "And he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by cunning men, to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks, to shoot arrows and great stones withal."

"But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction: for he transgressed against the LORD his God, and went into the temple of the LORD to burn incense upon the altar of incense." "It appertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the LORD, but to the priests the sons of Aaron."

"Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a censer in his hand to burn incense: and while he was wroth with the priests, the leprosy even rose up in his forehead." He lives in "a several house"; Jotham governs. He is buried "in the field of the burial which belonged to the kings; for they said, He is a leper."

Why the disease?

2 Kings 15:5 says only that the LORD struck him; Chronicles gives the reason: he usurped the priests' role.

The Uzziah plaque

A stone plaque in Aramaic, of the 1st century BC or AD (Israel Museum), reads: "Hither were brought the bones of Uzziah, king of Judah. Do not open." It records a later reburial; it does not date from Uzziah's time.

"Engines"

Catapult-like machines were not used in Iron Age Judah; the Lachish reliefs show raised wooden screens on towers to protect archers. Many think Chronicles describes such defenses with later terms, or reflects Hellenistic-era siege machines.