Uzziah (/əˈzaɪə/; Hebrew: עֻזִּיָּהוּ ‘Uzzīyyāhū, meaning "my strength is Yah";[1] Greek: Ὀζίας; Latin: Ozias), also known as Azariah (/ˈæzəˈraɪə/; Hebrew: עֲזַרְיָה ‘Azaryā; Greek: Αζαρίας; Latin: Azarias), was the tenth king of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, and one of Amaziah's sons.

In the earlier part of his reign, under the influence of a prophet named Zechariah, he was faithful to God and "did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord" (2 Kings 15:3; 2 Chronicles 26:4–5).

relates how Uzziah conquered the Philistines and the Arabians and received tribute from the Ammonites; how he fortified his country, reorganized and reequipped his army, and personally engaged in agricultural pursuits.

[5] His success as king, administrator, and commander-in-chief of the army made him ruler over the largest realm of Judah since the disruption of the kingdom.

His power and authority over the peoples of this realm help to explain to a certain extent the political situation in the reign of Judah's later kings, and probably also in 739, when Tiglathpileser III conquered nineteen districts in northern Syria which had belonged to Uzziah (Azri-ia-u).

[6] In Jerusalem he made machines designed by skillful men for use on the towers and on the corner defenses to shoot arrows and hurl large stones.

Uzziah's strength became his weakness; for he attempted to usurp the power of the priesthood in burning incense in the Temple of Yhwh.

In the meantime a great earthquake shook the ground, and a rent was made in the temple, and the bright rays of the sun shone through it, and fell upon the king's face, insomuch that the leprosy (Hebrew: tzaraath) seized upon him immediately (Josephus Flavius, Antiquities IX 10:4).

The total number of years, fifty-two, attributed to Uzziah's reign include the period from his accession to his death.

[8] A highly fragmentary portion attributed to Tiglath-Pileser's annals mention the king "Azaria'u" of "Ya'uda", seemingly "Azariah of Judah", which some have stated is a reference to Uzziah; however, Nadav Na'aman showed the fragment actually belongs to the time of Sennacherib and refers not to Azariah but to Hezekiah.

Debris at six sites (Hazor, Deir 'Alla, Gezer, Lachish, Tell Judeideh, and 'En Haseva) is tightly confined stratigraphically to the middle of the 8th-century B.C., with dating errors of ~30 years.

This severe geologic disaster has been linked historically to a speech delivered at the city of Bethel by a shepherd-farmer named Amos of Tekoa.

[19] A 2019 Haaretz report by geologists studying layers of sediment on the floor of the Dead Sea further confirms the occurrence of this particular seismic event.

According to Thiele's widely accepted chronology, Jeroboam II began a coregency with his father in 793/792, became sole regent in 782/781, and died in late summer or the fall of 753 BC.

They are inconsistent with the tradition, found in Josephus[21] and the Talmud but not in the Bible, that the earthquake occurred when Uzziah entered the Temple to offer incense, accepting that the beginning of the Uzziah/Jotham coregency began sometime in the six-month period after Nisan 1 of 750 BC.

For Uzziah, the Scriptural data allow the narrowing of the beginning of his sole reign to some time between Nisan 1 of 767 BCE and the day before Tishri 1 of the same year.

In the case of Uzziah, however, the statement that after he was stricken with leprosy, his son Jotham had charge of the palace and governed the people of the land (2 Kings 15:5) is a fairly straightforward indication of what in modern terms is called a coregency.

After noting how David set a pattern by setting his son Solomon on the throne before his death, Nadav Na'aman wrote, "When taking into account the permanent nature of the co-regency in Judah from the time of Joash, one may dare to conclude that dating the co-regencies accurately is indeed the key for solving the problems of biblical chronology in the eighth century BC".