7. God helped him against the Philistines, the Arabs who inhabited Gur, and the Meunites.
8. The Meunites paid taxes to Uzziah, whose fame spread even to Egypt because he had grown so powerful.
9. He built towers in Jerusalem, at the Corner Gate, the Valley Gate, and at the Angle, and reinforced them.
10. He also built towers in the wilderness and dug many wells for his large herds in the lowlands and the plain. He had many workers who tended his farms and vineyards, because he loved the soil.
11. Uzziah had a standing army equipped for combat whose units went to war according to the number determined by the scribe Jeiel and Maaseiah, an officer under the authority of Hananiah, one of the king’s officials.
12. The grand total of family heads in charge of these courageous warriors was twenty-six hundred.
13. They commanded an army of three hundred seven thousand five hundred. They formed a powerful force that could support the king against the enemy.
14. Uzziah supplied the entire force with shields, spears, helmets, armor, bows, and sling stones.
15. He set up clever devices in Jerusalem on the towers and corners of the wall designed to shoot arrows and large stones. And so Uzziah’s fame spread far and wide, because he had received wonderful help until he became powerful.
16. But as soon as he became powerful, he grew so arrogant that he acted corruptly. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God by entering the Lord’s sanctuary to burn incense upon the incense altar.
17. The priest Azariah, accompanied by eighty other of the Lord’s courageous priests, went in after him
18. and confronted King Uzziah."You have no right, Uzziah," he said, "to burn incense to the Lord! That privilege belongs to the priests, Aaron’s descendants, who have been ordained to burn incense. Get out of this holy place because you have been unfaithful! The Lord God won’t honor you for this."