King of Judah for about fifty-two years in the eighth century BC (also called AZARIAH in Kings), and one of the two monarchs who date the book of Amos. His long reign, running parallel to Jeroboam II's in the north, was the most prosperous Judah had known since Solomon: he rebuilt the ports, broke the Philistines, and equipped an army (2 Chronicles 26). ⚠ It ended badly — he took a censer into the temple to burn incense, a priest's prerogative, and lived out his life in isolation with a skin disease. His death is the date-stamp on Isaiah's call: 'in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord' (Isaiah 6:1). A limestone plaque now in the Israel Museum, cut some seven centuries later, reads 'Hither were brought the bones of Uzziah king of Judah — do not open.'