A King Brings Home Gods That Could Not Defend Their Own People

Twenty-five at accession, twenty-nine years’ reign, as in 2 Kings 14:2. His mother Jehoaddan, Jehoaddin in Kings, means something like “the LORD is delight”. She is “of Jerusalem”, a native of the capital, where the two men who murdered his father had foreign mothers (24:26).

2 Kings 14:3 says he did right “yet not like David his father: he did according to all things as Joash his father did.” The Book of 2 Chronicles replaces the comparison with a single diagnosis about his heart, and the rest of the chapter unfolds it.

“Established to him” means firmly in his grip. He waits until he is secure before touching the killers, which suggests they had backing at court. “His servants” are royal officials, the men of 24:25–26.

The command is Deuteronomy 24:16, quoted almost word for word, as 2 Kings 14:6 also quotes it. Earlier Israel had seen whole families die for one man’s crime, as Achan’s did (Joshua 7:24–25). Ezekiel 18:20 later makes the principle a centre of his preaching: “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.”

The census from twenty years old follows Numbers 1:3. Three hundred thousand is about a quarter of the force credited to Jehoshaphat in 17:14–18, a sign of how far Judah had fallen after the Syrian defeat of 24:24.

A hundred talents was about three and a half tonnes of silver, a talent being three thousand shekels. Spread over a hundred thousand men that is three shekels a head, a small wage, which suggests the payment went to commanders or the numbers count units rather than men.

“To wit, with all the children of Ephraim” is an explanatory aside: by this time Ephraim, the largest northern tribe, could stand for the whole northern kingdom, as it often does in Hosea. The man of God, unnamed, speaks before any battle has been fought.

The Hebrew is difficult. The King James reads the man of God as ironic: go if you will, be strong, God will throw you down anyway. Many translators emend slightly to read “if thou thinkest to be strong by these”, meaning the hired troops.

The answer is literally “there is to the LORD to give thee more than this”: a statement of what God is able to do, with no date or form attached. Episodes like this one, verses 5–16, have no parallel in Kings, which records only the Edomite victory.

“Separated” is badal, the verb used for setting things apart. Mercenaries were usually paid as much in plunder as in silver; dismissed before the campaign, they lost their share of the spoil, which may explain the “great anger” better than wounded pride. That is an inference.

The valley of salt, probably south of the Dead Sea, is where David’s army defeated Edom (1 Chronicles 18:12). 2 Kings 14:7 adds that Amaziah took Sela and renamed it Joktheel. “Strengthened himself” is hazaq again, this time before a war the LORD allows him to win.

“The rock” is hasela, and Sela was the Edomite stronghold Amaziah captured (2 Kings 14:7), often linked with the cliffs near Bozrah or with Petra. The captives are thrown from the heights of their own fortress. Kings does not mention this killing.

“From Samaria even unto Beth-horon” is an odd range, since Samaria was the northern capital. It may mark the route from the soldiers’ base to the border descent at Beth-horon. The three thousand dead are Judah’s price for a correct decision.

Conquerors routinely carried off the gods of defeated peoples as trophies, as the Philistines took the ark to Ashdod (1 Samuel 5:2). Setting them up as “his gods” and burning incense to them turns a trophy into worship, which is the step no one expected.

“Sought after” is darash, the verb the book uses for seeking the LORD, now misdirected. The prophet’s argument, that these gods could not save their own people, is the one Sennacherib’s officers will use against Jerusalem’s God in 32:13–15. Here it is aimed the right way.

The verse turns on one Hebrew root, yaats, to counsel. “The king’s counsel”, “God hath determined” and “my counsel” are all forms of it: the king refuses a counsellor, and God has already taken counsel. The next verse opens with the king taking counsel elsewhere.

Joash of Israel is the grandson of Jehu, who had killed Amaziah’s grandfather Ahaziah (22:9). “Let us see one another in the face” is a challenge to open battle. The raid of the dismissed mercenaries in verse 13 may lie behind it; the text does not say.

This is one of two plant fables in the Old Testament; the other is Jotham’s fable of the trees choosing a king (Judges 9:8–15). A marriage proposal was a claim to equal rank between royal houses. The thistle does not lose a battle; it is simply walked on.

“Lifteth thee up to boast” is literally “to get glory”. “Abide now at home” is “sit in thy house”. “Meddle” means to stir up trouble. Joash’s advice is sound, and it comes from the enemy; the book has shown before that a warning can be true whatever its source.

“It came of God” recalls 10:15, where Rehoboam’s refusal to listen was “of God” too. The Book of 2 Chronicles adds a reason Kings does not give, “because they sought after the gods of Edom”: the refusal to hear becomes the means of judgment for the idols of verse 14.

Beth-shemesh, “house of the sun”, lay in the Sorek valley on Judah’s western edge, where the ark came back from the Philistines on a cart (1 Samuel 6:12–15). “Which belongeth to Judah” stresses that the northern king fought and won on Judah’s own ground.

“Fled every man to his tent” is the phrase of a dispersing army going home, and the same words the northern tribes used to break with David’s house in 10:16. The army of Judah dissolves without a last stand.

Four hundred cubits is about two hundred metres of wall, from the Ephraim gate to the corner gate on the north-west side, the side that faces Israel. It is the first recorded breach of Jerusalem’s walls since David took the city. Uzziah will build towers at the corner gate (26:9).

Obed-edom’s family were the gatekeepers who kept the temple storehouses (1 Chronicles 26:15); only Chronicles adds his name here. “Hostages” is literally “sons of pledges”, a phrase found only here and in 2 Kings 14:14: people held to guarantee good behaviour.

Fifteen years is the same span given in 2 Kings 14:17. Some historians suggest Amaziah was held captive in Samaria until Joash died, with his son acting in Jerusalem meanwhile; that would explain a good deal of the dating, but it is a reconstruction, not something either book says.

For Amaziah the Book of 2 Chronicles cites only the royal annals and names no prophet’s record, unlike the reigns before him, even though two prophets speak in this chapter.

Lachish was the strongest fortress in Judah after Jerusalem, one of Rehoboam’s cities (11:9). Flight there suggests the plot had the capital on its side. Kings says the same, but only Chronicles dates it “after the time that Amaziah did turn away”, possibly years before.

“Upon horses” means on a horse-drawn bier or carried by horsemen, as Josiah would be brought back from Megiddo in a chariot (35:24). “The city of Judah” is unusual; 2 Kings 14:20 and some Hebrew manuscripts read “the city of David”, which is probably right.