Uzziah

Uzziah (Heb. for "Yah[weh] is [my] strength"), more correctly Azariah (Hebrew for "Yah[weh] helps"), son of Amaziah, grandson of Joash I., and king of Judah (2 Kings xiv. 22, xv. 1-7). Of his long reign of fifty-two years little is recorded. He recovered Elath at the head of the Aelanitic Gulf, evidently in the course of a successful campaign against Edom (a possible reference in Isa. xvi. 1); we read further in 2 Chron. xxvi. of great wars against Philistines, Arabians and Meunim, of building operations in Jerusalem (probably after the attack by Joash), and of political and social reforms. The prosperity which Judah enjoyed during this period (middle of 8th century) is illustrated by the writings of Amos and by the earliest prophecies of Isaiah (e.g. ii. 6 sqq.). In his old age Uzziah was a leper (2 Kings xv. 5), and the later history (2 Chron. xxvi. 16 sqq.) regarded this as a punishment for a ritual fault of which the king was guilty; whilst Josephus (Ant. ix. 10.4) records the tradition that on the occasion of his transgression the land was shaken by the terrible earthquake to which Amos i. 1 and Zech. xiv. 5 refer. During Uzziah's seclusion his son Jotham acted as regent. The growing power of Judah, however, aroused the jealousy of Israel, which, after the death of Jeroboam (2), had fallen on evil days (see Menahem). Jotham's victory over Ammon (2 Chron. xxvii. 5) could only increase the hostility, and preparations were made by Israel for an alliance with Damascus which culminated in an attack upon Judah in the time of Jotham's son, Ahaz.

The identification (Schrader, McCurdy, &c.) of Azariah with Azriyau of Ja'udi, the head of a North Syrian confederation at Hamath (Hamah) overcome by Tiglath-Pileser IV. (738 B.C.), conflicts with the chronological evidence, with what is known of Uzziah's life and policy, and with the historical situations represented in the Biblical narratives (see Winckler, Alttest. Forschungen [1893], i. 1-23; S. A. Cook, Ency. Bib. col. 5244; Whitehouse, Diet. Bib. iv. p. 844 seq.; id. Isaiah, p. 9 seq.; Skinner, Kings, p. 359). On the other hand, the interrelation of events in Palestine and Syria during this period combine with the sudden prominence of Judah (under Uzziah) and the subsequent anti-Judaean and anti-Assyrian coalition (against Ahaz) to suggest that Uzziah had been supported by Assyria (cf. Winckler, Keilinschr. u. d. Alte Test., 3rd. ed., p. 262). In fact, since the Biblical evidence is admittedly incomplete, and to a certain extent insecure, the question of the identification of Azariah of Judah and Azriyau of Ja'udi may be reopened. See H. M. Haydn, Journ. of Bibl. Lit., xxviii.(1909), pp.182-199, and artt. JEWS, §§ 13 (beginning), 15; PALESTINE, Old Test. Hist. (S. A. C.) V This letter was originally, like Y, only one of the earlier forms of the letter U. According to Florio (i 6 i 1) V is "sometimes a vowel, and sometimes a consonant." In modern times attempts have been made to assign to it the consonantal value of U, but in English another symbol W is used for this, while V has received the value of the voiced form of F, which itself had originally a sound resembling the English W (see under F). V is therefore a voiced labio-dental spirant, the breath escaping through a very narrow slit between the lower lip and the upper teeth. In German, however, V is used with the same value as F, while W takes the value that V has in English. Apart from some southern dialect forms which have found their way into the literary language, as vat (for fat or wine fat  which still survives in the English Bible) and vixen the feminine of fox, all the words in English which begin with V are of foreign, and most of Latin origin. In the middle of words between vowels f was originally regularly voiced: life, lives; wife, wives, &c. The Latin V, however, was not a labio-dental spirant like the English v, but a bi-labial semivowel like the English w, as is clear from the testimony of Quintilian and of later grammarians. This quality has remained to it in southern Italy, in Spain and Gascony. In Northern French and in Italian it has become the labio-dental v, and from French English has adopted this value for it. Early borrowings like wine  (Latin vinum), wall (Latin vallum), retain the w sound and are therefore spelt with w. In the English dialects of Kent, Essex and Norfolk there is a common change of v to w, but Ellis says (English Pronunciation, V, pp. 132, 229) that though he has made diligent search he has never been able to hear the v for w which is so characteristic of Sam and Tony Weller in the Pickwick Papers. It is, however, illustrated in Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language (1803) and confirmed by the editor of the 3rd edition (1844), pp. 65-66. The history of V as the Latin numeral for 5 is uncertain. An old theory is that it represents the hand, while X= io is the two hands with the finger tips touching. This was adopted by Mommsen (Hermes, xxii. 598). The Etruscan used the same v-symbol inverted. V with a horizontal line above it was used for 5000. (P. GI.)