2 Chronicles 25: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Amaziah becomes king of Judah at twenty-five and does what is right before the LORD, but not with his whole heart. He executes his father's killers while sparing their children, hires and then dismisses Israelite troops on a prophet's word, and defeats the men of Seir, after which he takes up their gods and refuses the prophet who confronts him. He then challenges Joash king of Israel, is defeated and captured at Beth-shemesh, and Jerusalem's wall and treasuries are stripped. Years later a conspiracy in Jerusalem drives him to Lachish, where he is killed and then buried with his ancestors.

Claim by Claim

1. 25:1
   • Amaziah was twenty-five years old when he began to reign.
   • Amaziah reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem.
   • Amaziah's mother was named Jehoaddan.
   • Jehoaddan was from Jerusalem.
2. 25:2
   • Amaziah did what was right in the sight of the LORD.
   • Amaziah did not do it with a whole heart.
3. 25:3
   • The kingdom became firmly established under Amaziah.
   • When the kingdom was established, Amaziah killed the servants who had struck down the king his father.
4. 25:4
   • Amaziah did not put the children of those servants to death.
   • Amaziah acted according to what is written in the law, in the book of Moses.
   • The LORD commanded in that book that fathers shall not be put to death for children.
   • The LORD commanded that children shall not be put to death for fathers.
   • The LORD commanded that each person shall die for his own sin.
5. 25:5
   • Amaziah gathered Judah together.
   • Amaziah organized them by their fathers' houses under commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds.
   • This was done throughout all Judah and Benjamin.
   • Amaziah numbered them from twenty years old and upward.
   • He found three hundred thousand choice men able to go out to war.
   • These men handled spear and large shield.
6. 25:6
   • Amaziah hired one hundred thousand mighty warriors out of Israel.
   • He paid one hundred talents of silver for them.
7. 25:7
   • A man of God came to Amaziah.
   • The man of God told the king not to let the army of Israel go with him.
   • The man of God said the LORD is not with Israel.
   • The man of God said the LORD is not with any of the sons of Ephraim.
8. 25:8
   • The man of God said that if Amaziah went and acted and was strong for the battle, God would make him stumble before the enemy.
   • The man of God said God has power to help.
   • The man of God said God has power to cast down.
9. 25:9
   • Amaziah asked the man of God what to do about the hundred talents he had given to the troops of Israel.
   • Amaziah said he had already given the hundred talents to the troops of Israel.
   • The man of God answered that the LORD is able to give him much more than this.
10. 25:10
    • Amaziah separated out the troops that had come to him from Ephraim.
    • Amaziah sent them back to their own place.
    • Their anger burned greatly against Judah.
    • They returned to their own place in fierce anger.
11. 25:11
    • Amaziah strengthened himself.
    • Amaziah led out his people.
    • Amaziah went to the Valley of Salt.
    • Amaziah struck down ten thousand of the sons of Seir.
12. 25:12
    • The sons of Judah captured ten thousand others alive.
    • They brought the captives to the top of the cliff.
    • They threw them down from the top of the cliff.
    • All of the captives were broken to pieces.
13. 25:13
    • The men of the troop that Amaziah had sent back from going with him to battle raided the cities of Judah.
    • The raid extended from Samaria as far as Beth-horon.
    • They struck down three thousand of them.
    • They took much plunder.
14. 25:14
    • Amaziah returned from striking down the Edomites.
    • After returning, Amaziah brought back the gods of the sons of Seir.
    • Amaziah set those gods up as his own gods.
    • Amaziah bowed down before those gods.
    • Amaziah burned offerings to those gods.
15. 25:15
    • The anger of the LORD burned against Amaziah.
    • The LORD sent a prophet to Amaziah.
    • The prophet asked Amaziah why he had sought after the gods of that people.
    • The prophet said those gods had not delivered their own people from Amaziah's hand.
16. 25:16
    • While the prophet was still speaking to him, the king spoke to the prophet.
    • The king asked whether the prophet had been appointed as counselor to the king.
    • The king told the prophet to stop.
    • The king asked why the prophet should be struck down.
    • The prophet stopped speaking.
    • The prophet said he knew God had determined to destroy Amaziah.
    • The prophet said this was because Amaziah had done this thing.
    • The prophet said this was because Amaziah had not listened to his counsel.
17. 25:17
    • Amaziah king of Judah took counsel.
    • Amaziah sent word to Joash king of Israel.
    • Joash was the son of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu.
    • Amaziah said, Come, let us face one another.
18. 25:18
    • Joash king of Israel sent a reply to Amaziah king of Judah.
    • Joash said a thistle in Lebanon sent word to a cedar in Lebanon.
    • The thistle asked the cedar to give its daughter to the thistle's son as a wife.
    • A wild beast of Lebanon passed by.
    • The wild beast trampled the thistle.
19. 25:19
    • Joash said Amaziah had claimed to have struck down Edom.
    • Joash said Amaziah's heart had lifted him up to boast.
    • Joash told Amaziah to stay at home.
    • Joash asked why Amaziah should provoke disaster.
    • Joash said that Amaziah would fall.
    • Joash said Judah would fall with him.
20. 25:20
    • Amaziah would not listen.
    • This refusal was from God.
    • God's purpose was that they be given into a hand; the text does not name whose hand it is.
    • The reason was that they had sought after the gods of Edom.
21. 25:21
    • Joash king of Israel went up.
    • Joash and Amaziah king of Judah faced one another.
    • The confrontation was at Beth-shemesh.
    • Beth-shemesh belongs to Judah.
22. 25:22
    • Judah was defeated before Israel.
    • Every man of Judah fled to his tents.
23. 25:23
    • Joash king of Israel captured Amaziah king of Judah at Beth-shemesh.
    • Amaziah was the son of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz.
    • Joash brought Amaziah to Jerusalem.
    • Joash broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the Gate of Ephraim to the Corner Gate.
    • The broken section was four hundred cubits.
24. 25:24
    • Joash took all the gold and the silver.
    • Joash took all the vessels found in the house of God with Obed-edom.
    • Joash took the treasures of the king's house.
    • Joash took hostages.
    • Joash returned to Samaria.
25. 25:25
    • Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah lived fifteen years after the death of Joash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel.
26. 25:26
    • The rest of the acts of Amaziah, from first to last, are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.
27. 25:27
    • Amaziah turned away from following the LORD.
    • From that time on, a conspiracy was formed against him in Jerusalem.
    • Amaziah fled to Lachish.
    • They sent men after him to Lachish.
    • They killed him there.
28. 25:28
    • They carried him on horses.
    • They buried him with his fathers in the city of Judah.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

25:1

Judah's royal records regularly name the king's mother. The queen mother held a recognized position at court, and naming her identified which branch of the royal family a king came from.

25:2

The King James "not with a perfect heart" does not mean he fell short of flawlessness. "Perfect" here means whole or undivided, so the charge is that his loyalty was only partial.

25:3

The murder referred to happened in the previous chapter: Amaziah's father Joash was killed in his bed by members of his own court.

25:4

The quotation is from Deuteronomy 24:16. In the surrounding kingdoms it was normal for a ruler to wipe out the whole family of anyone who attacked the throne, so that no son survived to take revenge; the point of naming the law here is that Amaziah did not do that.

25:5

"Commanders of a thousand" and "commanders of a hundred" are ranks in a citizen army organized in units of that nominal size, not a professional standing force. Counting men "twenty years old and older" means counting everyone of fighting age. Hebrew numbers of this size in military lists are often thought to be round or formulaic rather than exact head counts.

25:6

Israel here is the separate northern kingdom, which had split from Judah generations earlier; the two were sometimes allies and sometimes at war. A talent was a weight of roughly seventy-five pounds (about thirty-four kilograms), so a hundred talents of silver is somewhere near three and a half tons, an enormous payment for mercenary troops.

25:7

"A man of God" is a standard term for a prophet, someone who speaks a message received from God. Ephraim was the largest tribe of the northern kingdom, so its name is used as shorthand for the whole northern kingdom of Israel.

25:8

The Hebrew of this verse is damaged or unclear, and translators differ on how to read it. The King James takes it as a challenge, "go ahead and fight if you want to", while others read it as a plain statement that going will lead to defeat.

25:9

The money had already been handed over, and nothing in the story suggests the hired soldiers would give it back. Amaziah's objection is that obeying the prophet means writing off an enormous sum.

25:10

Soldiers of this period were paid largely in plunder taken from the defeated. Dismissed before the fighting, these troops kept their hire but lost their share of the spoil, which is why they were enraged, and what they do in verse 13 follows from it.

25:11

The Valley of Salt lay in the arid country south of the Dead Sea. Seir is the mountainous region southeast of the Dead Sea, the homeland of the Edomites, who were regarded as descendants of Esau and so as distant kin of Israel.

25:12

"The rock" translates a Hebrew word, sela, that is also the name of an Edomite stronghold built on a cliff, so the phrase may name a specific place as well as describe one.

25:13

Beth-horon was a pair of towns guarding the main road from the coastal plain up into the hill country, on the border between the two kingdoms. "From Samaria" marks the northern end of the raiders' route home; Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom.

25:14

Carrying off the images of a defeated people's gods was ordinary practice in the ancient world, usually as trophies proving the enemy's gods had failed. What is reported here goes further: Amaziah installs them as his own gods and worships them. Burning incense was one of the standard acts of worship offered to a god.

25:15

The prophet's argument turns on the logic of ancient religion, where a god's power was measured by whether it protected its own people in battle. Amaziah has just defeated the Edomites, so by that standard he is worshiping gods he has already proved useless.

25:16

Kings kept a formal body of official advisors, and speaking into royal policy without that standing was a breach of protocol. "Why should you be struck down?" is a threat of execution, not a question.

25:17

"Let us meet face to face" is not an invitation to talks. It is a formal challenge to fight, the same phrase is used in verse 21 of the two armies confronting each other in battle.

25:18

Joash answers with a fable, a standard form of political insult. The cedars of Lebanon were the most valuable timber in the region and stood for greatness; a thistle is a worthless weed. A request to marry a daughter to a son was how kings proposed an alliance between equals, so the thistle's request is absurd, and the wild animal flattens it without noticing. Joash is calling Amaziah a nobody.

25:21

Beth-shemesh was a town in the lowlands west of Jerusalem, on the frontier between the two kingdoms, so the fighting took place on Judah's own territory, not Israel's.

25:22

"Fled every man to his tent" was an old saying meaning the army fell apart and the soldiers scattered for home.

25:23

A cubit was about eighteen inches, roughly the length of a forearm, so four hundred cubits is around six hundred feet, or one hundred and eighty meters. The Ephraim Gate and the Corner Gate were both on the northern side of Jerusalem. Breaking a long stretch of city wall left the capital defenseless and was a public humiliation rather than a step toward occupying it.

25:24

"The house of God" is the temple in Jerusalem. Obed-edom's family held the hereditary post of guarding the temple's storerooms and treasures. Hostages were relatives or nobles of the defeated king held to guarantee that he would not rebel or withhold tribute.

25:26

This refers to an official court chronicle kept by royal record-keepers, a source the writer expects readers to know. It is not the biblical books of Kings, and it has not survived.

25:27

Lachish was a heavily fortified city about thirty miles southwest of Jerusalem, the strongest place in Judah after the capital itself, which is why a king fleeing an assassination plot would run there.

25:28

"The city of Judah" is an unusual phrase; the parallel account in 2 Kings 14:20 and some ancient copies read "the city of David," meaning the oldest quarter of Jerusalem, where the kings were buried.