Year 3, Day 324: 2 Chronicles 25

Amaziah as King

After Joash’s assassination, we have an opportunity to see Amaziah.  Amaziah walked in the ways of the Lord, but not wholeheartedly.  I wonder: can this epitaph not be used for any follower of God when we get down to brass tacks?  Do any of us follow the ways of the Lord with our whole heart?  Do we not all stray?  Do not each of us have our own idols and sacred cows that we do not let God touch?  Oh, how I long for the day when the Lord remakes us and we no longer have the sinful nature at war within us.

The chronicler uses the killing of his father’s assassins as a case for why Amaziah walked in the ways of the Lord.  We see Amaziah kill those who killed his father.  Clearly this is an act of vengeance.  Amaziah does not let God handle these men.  Instead, Amaziah takes matters into his own hands.

However, Amaziah allows the children of the assassins to live.  In the culture of that day, Amaziah could have killed the children and nobody would have thought anything about it.  However, Amaziah is familiar with Deuteronomy 24:16.  Amaziah allows the children to be spared in spite of their fathers’ sins.

Amaziah’s Stumble

Amaziah prepares for battle.  When he musters his force, he finds that he has 300,000 men of battle age.  However, Amaziah makes two mistakes as he prepares for battle.

First, Amaziah hires troops from Israel.  He pays the mercenaries in silver.  A prophet of the Lord comes before Amaziah and tells Amaziah to release these men.  After all, God does not want His people relying upon foreign alliances.  God can protect His people.  God can lead His people forth into victory.  God does not need foreign alliances – particularly foreign alliances with people who worship false gods!

Amaziah hears the advice and sees the wisdom in it.  Naturally, Amaziah wonders about the silver that he had already paid the mercenaries.  The prophet tells Amaziah to let it go, for God can provide more than what he will lose if Amaziah just trusts God.  In an unusual stroke of brilliance, Amaziah lets the silver go and releases the mercenaries.  Amaziah chooses God over the silver!

However, the soldiers of Israel go home in a rage.  You might wonder why it is that they are angry about going home after receiving silver and not really having to do anything about it.  The reason is because the mercenaries would have likely been able to keep the plunder from the battle in addition to the silver that Amaziah paid them.  In fact, the plunder would likely have been far greater than their share of silver.  So while they receive silver for nothing, they are missing out on the plunder from war.  They go home back to Israel angry.

This leads us back to Amaziah’s second mistake.  Amaziah takes his force out to war.  He doesn’t leave a force back home to protect anything.  He leaves his land open for attack and the disgruntled mercenaries return to Judah and plunder the land.  God allowed Amaziah to experience a great victory against the people of Mount Seir; but his own foolishness caused him to experience defeat in his own land.

Amaziah’s Third Stumble

When Amaziah returns from battle, he brings back the foreign gods of the people of Mount Seir.  Had he melted them down, that might have been okay.  But Amaziah doesn’t do this.  Amaziah takes these foreign gods and sets them up in his own household and worships them.

As modern and monotheistic people, this practice seems weird.  Why would you as a conqueror willingly worship the gods of a people that you just conquered?  After all, if you were victorious, would it not mean that your God was stronger than their gods?

However, from an ancient mindset the picture is vastly different.  The ancient people believed that there were many gods.  The more gods you could successfully appease and not draw the ire from the others the more successful you could be.   Furthermore, ancient people believed that each god had an arena of influence, but no god had omnipotent power over everything.  So Amaziah likely brings these false gods home with him believing that it will cause him to benefit from greater protection and greater influence.

This point shows a significant flaw in Amaziah’s understanding of God.  If Amaziah saw God as omnipotent and omniscient, he would have seen the error of his way.  But by bringing in these false gods, Amaziah demonstrates that he does not believe God is all-powerful and capable of seeing everything.

Believing his influence to have increased, Amaziah turns to Israel and looks to repay them for their raids upon Judah while he was in battle with the people of Mount Seir.  The king of Israel comes out to battle Amaziah and is victorious.  The people of Israel scatter the army of Judah and chase Amaziah all the way back to Jerusalem.  The city and the temple are once more plundered.

Humiliated, he is forced to flee his own people and go to Lachish.  However, even in Lachish he is not safe.  Assassins find him, kill him, and bring him back to Jerusalem.  Once more we see a king who starts off on a good foot and in obedience to the Lord.  However, once more we find a king who gets sucked into the trappings of the world and falls away from God’s grace.  It is scary to see how easy it is for people to turn from God, especially when they are given prosperity and success.

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