And king Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, Upon the great altar burn the morning burnt offering, and the evening meat offering, and the king’s burnt sacrifice, and his meat offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their meat offering, and their drink offerings; and sprinkle upon it all the blood of the burnt offering, and all the blood of the sacrifice: and the brasen altar shall be for me to enquire by. (2 Kings 16:15)
Heb. baqar, “to inquire,”“to seek,”“to look for.” The passage may be understood in two ways. It may mean that Ahaz was going to look into the matter as to what use was to be made of the brazen altar; or it may apply specifically to the use of the altar for divination. Some have suggested that Ahaz had adopted the Babylonian custom of divination by means of omen-sacrifices in which the will of the gods was ascertained by examining the entrails of sacrificial animals (see Eze. 21:21-23).
Brasen altar.
The designation “brasen” may imply that the new altar was of different material, probably stone.
The great altar.
The new altar took the place of Solomon’s brazen altar. It is called “great,” probably not with reference to size, for it may have been much smaller than Solomon’s altar of huge dimensions (2 Chron. 4:1), but from the standpoint of its function. The new altar was now to supersede the old one for many of the principal offerings prescribed by the Mosaic code (see Ex. 29:38-42; Num. 28:3-31; 29:2-39).