Commentaries:
This evaluation of Amaziah's character provides a key to understanding his character. In II Chronicles 25:11-12, a battle between Judah and Edom occurs, and Amaziah wins a great victory. Then he does something that defies logic:
Now it was so, after Amaziah came from the slaughter of the Edomites, that he brought the gods of the people of Seir, set them up to be his gods, and bowed down before them, and burned incense to them. (II Chronicles 25:14)
This reaction is hard to comprehend! God gave him a great victory over the Edomites and their gods, and instead of praising and worshipping the God of Israel, he decides to adopt the idols of Edom as his gods. What was he thinking? God responds as we might expect:
Therefore the anger of the LORD was aroused against Amaziah, and He sent him a prophet who said to him, “Why have you sought the gods of the people, which could not rescue their own people from your hand?” So it was, as he talked with him, that the king said to him, “Have we made you the king's counselor? Cease! Why should you be killed?” Then the prophet ceased and said, “I know that God has determined to destroy you because you have done this and have not heeded my advice.” (II Chronicles 25:15-16)
Amaziah would not take correction and threatened to kill God's prophet if he continued to criticize him for his actions. Though he had followed the prophet's advice earlier, the king is now beginning to expose his disloyal heart.
Feeling strong, Amaziah decides to challenge Israel, whose angry mercenaries had killed three thousand Judahites after being dismissed from Judah's service—not a very smart move. For one thing, it pitted Judah with two tribes against Israel with its ten tribes. Joash, king of Israel, was justifiably contemptuous of Amaziah's challenge, warning him of defeat in the form of a parable (II Chronicles 25:18).
Amaziah, in his pride, refuses to listen. The chronicler interjects that God inspired his refusal because He needed to punish the king for taking Edomite gods as his own (verse 20). Amaziah takes his forces into battle against Israel at Beth Shemesh, and he and his army are smashed just as the king of Israel had predicted.
Like his father Joash, Amaziah comes to a violent end years later:
After the time that Amaziah turned away from following the LORD, they [likely a group of nobles] made a conspiracy against him in Jerusalem, and he fled to Lachish; but they sent after him to Lachish and killed him there. Then they brought him on horses and buried him with his fathers in the City of Judah. (II Chronicles 25:27-28)
So, for the second time in as many generations, the king of Judah is assassinated. The conspirators held Amaziah in such contempt that they killed him, tied him over the back of a horse, and sent his body back to Jerusalem for burial. Another king suffers an ignominious end, although he at least had the honor of burial among the former kings of Judah.
In terms of character, Amaziah was unstable, reversing his early loyalty to God on a dime. He wanted victory and glory, and when God gave it to him, he failed to see that God was its source and absurdly chose to worship Edomite gods. Instead of listening to God's prophet, he threatened him with death. He foolishly challenged a far stronger Israelite army, expecting the same results he had had against the Edomites, not realizing the Source of his power had become his adversary. And apparently, he never learned his lesson, disenchanting his nobles until they decided to rid themselves of him.
We could compare him to the man in Jesus' parable (Luke 14:28-30), who began to build, seemingly well. However, his early success went to his head, and like a piece of overripe fruit, he began to turn rotten. He dropped the true God for idols. Like the man in the parable, he did not have what it took to finish what he had started.
Unsteady in character and conduct, he was a semi-religious man who only wanted what faithfulness could get him. He was sufficiently pious early in life, but that early piety did not justify his later pride and self-indulgence.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Three Missing Kings (Part Two)
Jehoash (Joash), Amaziah, and Uzziah (Azariah) all "did what was right in the sight of the LORD" (II Chronicles 24:2; 25:2; 26:4), yet during their reigns "the high places were not removed" (II Kings 12:3; 14:4; 15:4). All three are also in the lineage of Jesus Christ, but they are conspicuously absent in His genealogy given in Matthew 1. To compound this peculiarity, some of the very worst kings of Judah—such as Ahaz and Manasseh—are included.
One possible reason for this has already been alluded to, and it may relate to the negligence of these three kings to remove the high places from the kingdom entrusted to them by God. That is, they all had strong and righteous beginnings, but over the course of their reigns, they regressed spiritually. Rather than becoming better over time, these three monarchs squandered the position and opportunities given to them. In contrast, Judah's particularly bad rulers had a semblance of repentance later in their lives.
In his youth, Jehoash had a strong and moral priest to guide him, but once the priest died, it became apparent that Jehoash lacked the character to stand on his own. He gave in to idolatry and died without honor. Amaziah began his reign with righteous mercy, but upon tasting military victory, he became proud and started worshipping the gods of the people he had conquered. Like his father, he was assassinated. Uzziah also became militarily strong, and in his hubris, he rashly entered the Temple and burned incense to God—something reserved for the sons of Aaron alone. He ended his days in isolation as a leper. The lives of these kings are records of neglect that culminated in their downfalls—to the detriment of those under them and after them.
David C. Grabbe
The High Places (Part Five)
Joash, Amaziah, and Uzziah all started out well but later hardened their hearts. They all rejected God's Word and refused to repent. God wanted them to return to Him, but their intransigence forced His hand.
Is God hard? Is He austere and unmerciful? Does God owe us salvation and eternal life? Is He bound to give us blessings regardless of our conduct, despite the direction of our lives? No, our choices decide our fate (see Ezekiel 18:23-28).
God demands individual responsibility. He never condones sin nor grants license for anyone to disobey His commands. The subject here is not about transgressions done out of weakness or ignorance but those committed as a way of life with knowledge of wrongdoing. He judges such sins seriously. Yet, even for such sins, God always desires and allows the sinner to repent.
As we see in the examples of these kings, He will always chase after the sinner with His Word and allow him time to repent. He always leaves the door open for a sinner who will return to Him. But eventually, the mind becomes set (Ecclesiastes 8:11), the conscience becomes seared (I Timothy 4:2), and repentance becomes impossible.
At some point, a sinner will no longer change, and God says that He then makes a final judgment. He tells Moses after he had offered his own life for the sins of Israel, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book” (Exodus 32:33). God enters names into the Book of Life, and He has the prerogative to erase names from it as well—a sobering thought indeed.
Essentially, Joash, Amaziah, and Uzziah all quoted Deuteronomy 29:19: “I shall have peace, even though I walk in the imagination [dictates] of my heart.” At a certain point, confronted with their sins, they said, “I will not repent, I will not listen to God's prophets. I will continue in the direction I am going, and despite that, I will live in peace and prosperity.” God says that is the kind of thinking He expects from a drunk: “I can continue to drink and not get become impaired.”
In verse 20, Moses reaches a scary conclusion about how God would deal with such a person at that point:
The LORD would not spare him; for then the anger of the LORD and His jealousy would burn against that man, and every curse that is written in this book would settle on him, and the LORD would blot out his name from under heaven.
Through Moses, God is saying, “Do not kid yourself. You cannot live in violation of My ways and expect Me not to respond.” Most of us have come out of a Protestant society that teaches that God is essentially obligated to give us salvation because of the depth of His grace. Protestant theology proclaims that His mercy is so great that, as long as we have accepted the blood of Jesus Christ, salvation is assured. This claim is not true. While this teaching tickles people's ears, they forget that God's justice perfectly balances His mercy, and His love tempers both.
He knows that anybody who desires to live in a way opposed to His way of life would be miserable for all eternity should he inherit the Kingdom of God. God's sense of justice will not allow Him to give eternal life to such a person. He will not commit a person to that depth of misery, nor will He allow him to cause suffering for others. Like Satan, he would be a thorn in the side of the godly. If God determines that it would not be good for someone to live in His Kingdom, because he refuses to live as God requires, he will not be there.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Three Missing Kings (Part Two)
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing 2 Chronicles 25:2:
2 Kings 14:3-4
2 Chronicles 24:2
