Saved by the arms of Assyria from the overpowering advance of the Damascenes and Israelites, the Philistines and Edomites, Ahaz, king of Judah, had paid homage to Tiglath Pilesar at Damascus. "When Ahaz saw the altar which was at Damascus," so we are told by the Books of Kings, "he sent a pattern of it to Uriah the priest, and Uriah built the altar after this pattern, and when Ahaz came from Damascus he sacrificed on this altar, and offered burnt offerings and meat offerings, and poured out his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of his thank offering on the altar. The iron altar, which stood before Jehovah, he removed, and the iron sea he took from the oxen and placed it on the pavement (II. 184). And Ahaz bade Uriah offer the burnt offering in the morning, and the meat offering in the evening, and the burnt and meat offering of the king, and all the sacrifices of the whole people of the land, on the new altar, and the king's entry he turned to the house of Jehovah for the king of Assyria."[175] According to this Ahaz, in order to prove his submission to his sovereign, altered the altar and arrangements of the temple at Jerusalem after the pattern of an altar on which he had seen Tiglath Pilesar sacrifice to his gods at Damascus, and the ritual there observed.[176] The high priest Uriah submitted. He not only allowed the king to sacrifice in person, against which the priesthood had contended in the case of Uzziah, but he altered the service of the temple according to the wishes of the king. Judah was laid waste through her length and breadth. The Damascenes and the Israelites, the Philistines and the Edomites, had got the whole land into their power as far as the metropolis. Even from this heavy blow Judah would learn nothing. Instead of turning thankfully to Jehovah for rescue from such distress, the altars of the temples were altered after an Assyrian pattern. Isaiah saw this movement with the deepest indignation. "Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence. And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. Had not Jehovah left to us a small remnant, we had been as Sodom and Gomorrah. From the sole of the foot to the head there is no soundness in us, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; they have not been pressed out, nor bound up, nor mollified with ointment. Why should ye be stricken any more, and revolt any more? They are replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and agree with the children of strangers. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel knows him not."[177]