King Amaziah
25
📚Amaziah 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. 2 📚And he did what was right in the sight of the LORD, but not with a perfect heart 📖. 3 📚Now it came about, when the kingdom was firmly in his power, that he killed his servants who had killed his father the king. 4 📚But he did not kill their children, but did as it is written in the law in the book of Moses, where the Lord commanded, saying, “The fathers shall not die for the children, nor shall the children die for the fathers, but each man shall die for his own sin”. 5 📚Moreover Amaziah gathered Judah together, and made for them captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, according to the houses of their fathers, throughout all Judah and Benjamin, and he counted them from twenty years old and over, and found them to be three hundred thousand choice men, able to go out to war, who could handle spear and shield. 6 📖He also hired a hundred thousand strong and brave men out of Israel for a hundred talents of silver.
7 📚But a man of God 📖 came to him, saying, “O king, do not let the army of Israel go with you, for the LORD is not with Israel 📖, that is, with all the children of Ephraim. 8 📚But if you do that and go, be strong for the battle, for God will make you fall before the enemy. For God has power to help or to throw down”.
25:8 2 Chron 14:11; 2 Chron 20:6. Courageous fighting alone would not bring victory. They had to fight in God’s way. Compare 1 Cor 9:24-26; 1 Tim 6:12; 2:5.⚜
9 And Amaziah said to the man of God, “But what shall we do about the hundred talents which I have given to the army 📖 of Israel?” And the man of God answered, “The LORD is able to give you much more than this 📖”.
10 📚Then Amaziah separated them, that is, the army that had come to him out of Ephraim, to go back home. Therefore their anger burned hotly against Judah, and they returned home in great anger.
11 📚And Amaziah strengthened himself and led out his people, and went to the Valley of Salt, and struck down ten thousand of the children of Seir. 12 📚And the children of Judah carried away captive the ten thousand who were left alive, and brought them to the top of a rock, and threw them down from the top of the rock, so that they were all broken in pieces.
13 📚But the soldiers of the army which Amaziah sent back, so that they would not go with him to battle, attacked the cities of Judah from Samaria to Beth Horon, and struck down three thousand people in them, and took away much plunder.
25:13 Verses 6,10. Part of the sad results of Amaziah’s error in hiring them in the first place.⚜
14 📚Now it so happened, when Amaziah had come from the slaughter of the Edomites, that he brought the gods of the children of Seir and set them up to be his gods, and prostrated himself before them, and burned incense to them. 15 📚Therefore the anger of the LORD burned against Amaziah, and he sent a prophet to him, who said to him, “Why have you sought after the gods of the nation which could not deliver 📖 their own people out of your hands?”
16 📚And it came about, as he talked with him, that the king said to him, “Have we appointed you a counsellor for the king? Stop 📖! Why should you be struck down?” Then the prophet stopped and said, “I know that God has decided to destroy you, because you have done this, and have not listened to my counsel”.
17 📚Then Amaziah, king of Judah, took advice and sent word to Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, “Come, let us look one another in the face”.
18 📚And Joash, king of Israel, sent word to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, “The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, ‘Give your daughter to my son in marriage’, and a wild beast that was in Lebanon passed by and trampled down the thistle. 19 📚You say, ‘Look’, for you have defeated the Edomites, and your heart lifts you up to boast. Now stay at home. Why should you stir up trouble to your harm, that you should fall, you, and Judah with you?”
20 📚But Amaziah would not listen, for it came about from God, so that he might deliver them into the hands of their enemies, because they sought after the gods of Edom.
21 📚So Joash, the king of Israel, went up, and they looked one another in the face, he and Amaziah king of Judah, at Beth Shemesh, which belongs to Judah. 22 📚And Judah was defeated before Israel, and each man of them fled to his tent. 23 📚And Joash, the king of Israel, took Amaziah, king of Judah, the son of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, at Beth Shemesh, and brought him to Jerusalem, and broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate, four hundred cubits. 24 📚And he took all the gold and the silver and all the articles that were found in the house of God with Obed-Edom, and the treasures of the king’s house, hostages also, and returned to Samaria.
25 📚And Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, lived fifteen years after the death of Joash, son of Jehoahaz, king of Israel. 26 📚Now the rest of the acts of Amaziah, first and last, look, are they not written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel? 27 📚Now after the time that Amaziah turned away from following the LORD they conspired against him in Jerusalem, and he fled to Lachish; but they sent men to Lachish after him, and they killed him there. 28 📚And they brought him on horses and buried him with his ancestors in the city of Judah.