---
title: "Uzziah like his Son — E 2025"
description: "The paper asks whether the Masoretic Text (MT) and the Syriac Peshitta of 2 Chronicles 26–27 portray King Uzziah in the same way, especially in relation…"
authors: ["Williams Joshua E."]
year: 2025
venue: "Perichoresis: The Theological Journal of Emanuel University 23"
source: "https://doi.org/10.2478/perc-2025-0005"
doi: "10.2478/perc-2025-0005"
licence: "CC BY-NC-ND (journal licence per DOAJ; Perichoresis: The Theological Journal of Emanuel University)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/e-2025-uzziah-like-his-son-portraits/"
---
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# Uzziah like his Son: Portraits of Uzziah in the Masoretic Text and the Syriac Peshitta of Chronicles

**Authors:** Williams Joshua E. · **Institutions:** Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary · **Year:** 2025 · **Venue:** Perichoresis: The Theological Journal of Emanuel University 23 · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-ND (journal licence per DOAJ; Perichoresis: The Theological Journal of Emanuel University)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.2478/perc-2025-0005) · [PDF](https://reference-global.com/download/article/10.2478/perc-2025-0005.pdf) · [DOI 10.2478/perc-2025-0005](https://doi.org/10.2478/perc-2025-0005) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4408346021)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper asks whether the Masoretic Text (MT) and the Syriac Peshitta of 2 Chronicles 26–27 portray King Uzziah in the same way, especially in relation to his son Jotham. Williams compares the two witnesses closely. He lists the thematic and verbal parallels between the two reigns, separates features that all "good kings" in Chronicles share from those found only with Uzziah, and then studies the Peshitta's omissions and variant readings. In the MT, Jotham continues and enlarges his father's achievements. Uzziah has distinctive traits, and a recurring "help" verb plays on his other name, Azariah. The Peshitta's version is shorter and more generic. It loses the help motif and the unique details, but it links father and son through a framing phrase about "making firm" one's ways. The author argues that such a consistent pattern is unlikely to come from accidental copying errors. He suggests the two witnesses reflect variant literary editions. His methodological point is that variants should be judged within the literary shape of the whole account, not one at a time.

## Key points
- The MT shows about eight parallels between Uzziah (2 Chr 26) and Jotham (2 Chr 27):
  - the "upright in YHWH's eyes" formula
  - devotion to God
  - military victories
  - Ammonite tribute, which for Jotham is specified in amount and lasts three years
  - repairs to Jerusalem's walls
  - city-building
  - towers outside the capital
  - "growing strong"
- Several features are unique to Uzziah in the MT:
  - his love of the soil (26:10)
  - a full weapons inventory (26:14)
  - the ingenious defensive devices (26:15), which appear nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible
  - the verb "to help" in vv. 7, 13 and 15, which contrasts with the priest Azariah in v. 17
- Peshitta minuses include 26:6b–8a, 11b, 14–15a, 17b–18a and 27:8. Losing 27:8 removes the chronological frame that encloses Jotham's account in the MT.
- The Peshitta has notable variant readings:
  - In 26:5, "he prayed" replaces the MT's seeking God.
  - Also in 26:5, "YHWH made all his ways firm" echoes 27:6, forming a frame around both reigns.
  - In 26:8, "he multiplied making war" may come from a misread Hebrew word.
- The conclusion is that variant literary editions best explain the pattern, with Peshitta translation habits accounting for some readings.

## Interesting ideas
- A single variant can often be explained as an accident, but a whole set of differences pointing the same way calls for a systematic cause such as a different edition. — For Mova (learn): When witness parsers disagree on silver data, check whether the disagreements cluster in one consistent direction (a convention or dialect difference) before treating them as random noise to be voted away.
- A link between two characters only counts as specific when it goes beyond the features every member of their class shares, as with traits common to all good kings. — For Mova (world): When aligning entities or stories in the knowledge layer, discount attributes that are typical for the genre or class and give weight only to rarer shared features.
- Repeating a phrase at the start of one unit and the end of another (an inclusio) marks a structural boundary or a bridge between narrative units. — For Mova (world): Detecting repeated framing phrases could help segment a tale into episodes and decide which events belong together in the event order.
- A recurring verb can carry a theme by echoing a character's name, as the "help" root does with Azariah, so tracking repeated predicates across a text reveals authorial emphasis. — For Mova (frames): Counting which predicates recur around a given entity could add an explainable "theme" annotation to frames, useful for questions about a story's moral or focus.
- Asking what an omission does to the overall portrait, for example whether the character becomes more generic, is a way to judge which details were distinctive. — For Mova (back): When evaluating the text → graph → text compressor, measure whether the regenerated text keeps an entity's unique attributes rather than only its generic ones.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/)

Topics: [Hebrew & Aramaic](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/hebrew-aramaic/) · [Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/)

## Cite

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{e2025uzziah,
  title = {{Uzziah like his Son: Portraits of Uzziah in the Masoretic Text and the Syriac Peshitta of Chronicles}},
  author = {E},
  journal = {Perichoresis: The Theological Journal of Emanuel University 23},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.2478/perc-2025-0005},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.2478/perc-2025-0005}
}
```

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## References

22 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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