2 Kings 16:12
And when the king was come from Damascus, the king saw the altar: and the king approached to the altar, and offered thereon. And when the king was come from Damascus, the king saw the altar: and the king approached to the altar, and offered thereon.
The verse belongs to the reign of Ahaz over Judah, a weak king who came after Amaziah, Azariah and the good Jotham and before the good Hezekiah, at a time when Judah was following Israel in departure from God toward captivity. When Rezin king of Syria and Pekah king of Israel conspired against him, Ahaz refused to trust the Lord and hired Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria for help, acknowledging him as sovereign and sending him silver and gold from the house of the Lord and the king's house as tribute. Assyria then took Damascus and slew Rezin, and Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser, a submission confirmed by Tiglath-pileser's own inscriptions naming Ahaz among those who submitted.
At Damascus Ahaz saw a pagan altar, sent its fashion and pattern to Urijah the priest, who built a copy before Ahaz returned. When Ahaz came from Damascus he inspected the copied altar, approached it, and offered sacrifices on it, adopting an elaborate pattern from elsewhere. The offering means he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus in the belief that because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them they would help him, but they were the ruin of him and of all Israel. The act introduced an unauthorized altar into the temple worship and marked a further departure from its established service.
In following this worship he shut up the house of the Lord and made high places in every city of Judah to burn incense to other gods. Having put himself into Assyria's hands, he also robbed the house of the Lord to satisfy its demands, cut off the borders of the bases and removed the laver, took down the sea from the brazen oxen and set it on a pavement of stones, and turned the covert for the Sabbath and the king's entry away from the house of the Lord for the king of Assyria. Making the altar was sinful because Ahaz made it and used it for worship in violation of God's law of worship.
The Damascus-pattern altar taken in place of God's appointed order signifies church leaders who suppose God's church to be barren and turn to the State or a Christian State to do the church's work. God has placed His own divine, simple church organization in the earth, amply supplied with spiritual gifts to meet every emergency and flexible to adapt to every need. Power can be obtained only from God, as shown by the answer to Abraham's expedients through Eliezer and Hagar and through human organizations made into concubines, This shall not be the heir. Every such human expediency leads to persecution of the lawful wife and final separation from associations and begettings that rupture human heart-strings, while God has called His church to liberty and to proclaim liberty from all sinful and earthly bondage. Applied to God's work, the example warns against importing worldly plans and methods.