He sacrificed and made offerings on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree — Ahaz's cultic apostasy is comprehensive: he maintains the persistent high places (*bamot*, במות) that earlier kings tolerated, plus he expands unauthorized worship to every elevated location ("on the hills") and sacred tree site ("under every green tree," a common Canaanite cult location). This expansion of syncretistic practice beyond the institutional high places to comprehensive landscape-embedded idolatry suggests systemic religious transformation: Ahaz deliberately cultivates pagan worship as state religion. The comprehensiveness of the phrase "under every green tree" (תַּחַת כָּל־עֵץ־רַעֲנָן, *tachat kol-etz ra'anan*) evokes the fertility cults that characterized Canaanite religion.

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