Judah’s good king Amaziah
14
📚In the second year of Joash 📖 son of Jehoahaz, king of Israel, Amaziah the son of Joash became king of Judah. 2 He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jehoaddan. She was from Jerusalem. 3 📚And he did what was right in the sight of the LORD, but not like David his father. He did everything as his father Joash had done.14:3 David worshiped Jehovah, the only true God, and had nothing to do with gods. Amaziah did not follow that example. See 2 Chron 25:14-16.⚜
4 📚However the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places 📖.
5 📚And it came about, as soon as the kingdom was established in his hands, that he killed his servants who had killed his father the king. 6 📚But he did not kill the children of the murderers, in accordance with what is written in the book of the law of Moses, in which the LORD gave a command, saying, “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but each man shall be put to death for his own sin”.
7 📚He killed ten thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt, and took Selah in a battle and called its name Joktheel, as it is to this day.
8 📚Then Amaziah sent messengers to Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, “Come, let us look one another in the face 📖”.
9 📚And Jehoash the king of Israel sent word to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, “The thistle that was in Lebanon sent word to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, ‘Give your daughter in marriage to my son.’ And a wild beast that was in Lebanon passed by and trampled down the thistle.
14:9 Jehoash thinks of himself as a mighty cedar, Amaziah as a tiny thistle.⚜
10 📚You have indeed defeated Edom, and your heart has lifted you up. Glory in this, but stay at home, for why should you meddle with trouble so that you fall, you, and Judah with you?”
11 📚But Amaziah would not listen. Therefore Jehoash king of Israel went up, and he and Amaziah king of Judah looked one another in the face at Beth-Shemesh 📖, which belongs to Judah. 12 📚And Judah was defeated by Israel, and they all fled to their tents.
13 📚And Jehoash king of Israel captured Amaziah king of Judah, the son of Jehoash the son of Ahaziah, at Beth-Shemesh, and came to Jerusalem and broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the Gate of Ephraim to the Corner Gate, four hundred cubits. 14 📚He took all the gold and silver, and all the articles that were found in the house of the LORD and in the treasuries of the king’s house, and hostages, and returned to Samaria.
15 📚Now the rest of the acts of Jehoash which he did, and his might and how he fought with Amaziah king of Judah, are they not written in the book of The Annals 📖 of the Kings of Israel? 16 📚And Jehoash slept 📖 with his ancestors, and was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel, and his son Jeroboam reigned in his place.
17 📚And Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, lived fifteen years after the death of Jehoash son of Jehoahaz, king of Israel. 18 📚And the rest of the acts of Amaziah, are they not written in the book of The Annals of the Kings of Judah?
19 📚Now they made a conspiracy against him in Jerusalem, and he fled to Lachish, but they sent men after him to Lachish and killed him there. 20 📚And they brought him on horses, and he was buried at Jerusalem with his ancestors in the city of David.
21 📚And all the people of Judah took Azariah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king in place of his father Amaziah.
14:21 2 Chron 26:1-2. Azariah is known also as Uzziah.⚜
22 📚He built Elath 📖 and restored it to Judah, after the king slept with his ancestors.
Israel’s evil king Jeroboam II
23 📚In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. 24 📚And he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. 25 📚He restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Plain, in accordance with the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spoke through his servant Jonah 📖, the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-Hepher.
14:25 2 Kings 10:32; 2 Kings 13:25. Hamath was in the extreme north of the land of Israel. The Sea of the Plain is the Dead Sea.⚜
26 📚For the LORD saw 📖 that the suffering 📖 of Israel was very bitter; for there was no one either slave or free to come to the help of Israel. 27 📚And the LORD did not say that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but he saved them by the hands of Jeroboam the son of Joash.
14:27 2 Kings 13:5, 23. The fact that God used Jeroboam does not mean he was a good man. It means God had mercy on the people and used their leader to help them even though he was a wicked man – v 24.⚜
28 📚Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, and all that he did and his might, how he made war and how he recovered Damascus and Hamath, which had belonged to Judah, for Israel, are they not written in the book of The Annals of the Kings of Israel?
14:28 From the military and secular point of view Jeroboam II was a mighty king who brought victory and prosperity to Israel. But from a spiritual point of view he was a disaster, even as the first Jeroboam had been. Both Hosea and Amos prophesied during his reign, and a reading of their books makes clear the sad spiritual condition of the people during his rule.⚜
29 📚And Jeroboam slept 📖 with his ancestors, with the kings of Israel, and his son Zachariah reigned in his place.