Thursday, July 11, 2024

2 Chronicles 25

2 Chronicles 25 (NIV)✞: Amaziah King of Judah

Passage

Here we have another of the kings of Judah with a very mixed record: Amaziah. Verse 2 kind of sums it up:

He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, but not wholeheartedly.

2 Chronicles 25:2 (NIV)✞

The first thing he does upon taking the throne is to execute the officials who had murdered his father, though the author(s) make a point of pointing out that he only executes the ones who committed the murders, not their children, in accordance with God’s Law.

We are then told about a battle that Amaziah is preparing for, though the author(s) don’t seem too worried about the actual foes in the battle, they’re more concerned with Amaziah’s behaviour:

  • He musters every available fighter from Judah, which totals 3,000 men
  • He decides that’s not enough so he hires an additional 100,000 from Israel
  • A prophet tells Amaziah that he can’t let the men from Israel march into battle with them because God is not with them.
    • I would think Amaziah’s primary concern would be numbers, since this brings his army from 103,000 back down to 3,000, but he’s actually more concerned about the money: what about the silver he paid Israel to hire these troops? The prophet tells him not to worry about it; God can give him much more.
  • To his credit, Amaziah listens to the prophet and dismisses the troops from Israel.
    • The troops from Israel aren’t happy about this. We’re told later that they take out their anger on Judah by raiding a bunch of towns, carrying off plunder and killing 3,000 people.
      • I don’t know how much (if any) weight to put on the fact that the men of Israel kill the same number of people as Amaziah staffed in his army from the people of Judah. Given the way ancient writers used numbers in their texts, I could easily believe it’s a meaningless coincidence and I could just as easily believe it’s a significant number the author(s) included on purpose.
  • Amaziah then takes his 3,000 men into battle (we’re told it’s with the people of Seir, which are sometimes also referred to as the nation of Edom), and defeats their much larger army, killing 20,000 of the men of Seir.

So in all of this Amaziah is mostly faithful to his God, but then it falls apart:

14 When Amaziah returned from slaughtering the Edomites, he brought back the gods of the people of Seir. He set them up as his own gods, bowed down to them and burned sacrifices to them. 15 The anger of the LORD burned against Amaziah, and he sent a prophet to him, who said, “Why do you consult this people’s gods, which could not save their own people from your hand?”

 

16 While he was still speaking, the king said to him, “Have we appointed you an adviser to the king? Stop! Why be struck down?”

 

So the prophet stopped but said, “I know that God has determined to destroy you, because you have done this and have not listened to my counsel.”

2 Chronicles 25:14–16 (NIV)✞

It’s a valid point! (Obviously…) Amaziah attempts to go to battle with Seir with 100,000 men (sorry, 103,000), God tells him it’s too many, so he instead goes up against at least 20,000 men with just 3,000. He defeats this army, six times the size of his own, clearly the work of God – and yet his response is to then bow down to the “gods” who were defeated?!?

As if this weren’t enough, however, Amaziah is now feeling pretty good about himself, and decides to declare war on Israel. Which shows that Amaziah hasn’t learned any lessons from all of this; before the previous battle Israel had been able to pull together 33x as many soldiers as Judah had, and Judah was only able to win the battle because of God – the very God that Amaziah has now abandoned!

Actually, let me correct myself: it’s not that Amaziah hasn’t learned any lessons, it’s that he’s learned the wrong lesson! He’s learned that “Amaziah is great,” when he should have learned that “God is great.”

When Amaziah declares war, Jehoash, the king of Israel, actually sends a very reasonable response: Look, he says, I get that you’re feeling pretty good about yourself right now, but quit while you’re ahead.

Maybe I shouldn’t paraphrase, when the text is right there to read for ourselves:

18 But Jehoash king of Israel replied to Amaziah king of Judah: “A thistle in Lebanon sent a message to a cedar in Lebanon, ‘Give your daughter to my son in marriage.’ Then a wild beast in Lebanon came along and trampled the thistle underfoot. 19 You say to yourself that you have defeated Edom, and now you are arrogant and proud. But stay at home! Why ask for trouble and cause your own downfall and that of Judah also?”

2 Chronicles 25:18–19 (NIV)✞

We’re not surprised to see that Amaziah doesn’t listen to Jehoash, of course. In fact, verse 20✞ tells us that he refuses to listen because God wants to punish him for bowing to the gods of Edom. Israel easily defeats Judah, to the point that they march all the way down to Jerusalem, break down the city’s wall, and steal all of the articles of gold and silver from the Temple.

I’d started this post mentioning that Amaziah had a mixed record, but the author(s) of Chronicles are taking more of a view that he started off good, and then turned from God:

27 From 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 after him to Lachish and killed him there. 28 He was brought back by horse and was buried with his ancestors in the City of Judah.

2 Chronicles 25:27–28 (NIV)✞

Thoughts

This passage really hits me over the head with yet another ancient king of God’s people abandoning Him for other “gods,” as well as a very human ego problem.

Bowing to the Defeated Gods

When reading this passage we have, once again, a seemingly inexplicable situation: after experiencing the power of God against these non-gods, why would Amaziah start bowing to them instead of the God who has clearly shown His power? It doesn’t make any sense, logically speaking. That being said, every time I read this passage, as frustrating as it is, it also rings true. We’ve all gone after gods that are not gods, despite all logic and reason.

It feels more blatant when we read about it in the Old Testament, when the gods being chased are quite literally idols—beings that the people around them believed were gods—but, as I’ve pointed out innumerable times, we do exactly the same thing with money and power and love and other things.

We’ve seen with our own eyes that money doesn’t make people happy, we all know that money doesn’t make you happy, and yet the average person—even the average Christian—is quite happy to toss aside the God of the Universe if they think it will get them more money. The Christian might balk at that idea, but I’d argue that it’s just a question of how much money: if I agree to give you a thousand dollars if you’ll stop going to church forever you’ll tell me to get lost; if I agree to give you a billion dollars if you’ll stop going to church forever—an amount of money that the average person doesn’t even know how to comprehend—how strong will your will be? Or will you rather be trying to think of reasons why it’s not really abandoning God, and think of the good you’ll do with that money, and…

And maybe money isn’t the thing that’s going to tempt you, but what about love? My heart goes out to the many, many single Christian women in the Church in North America, being true to God and not marrying a non-Christian, and yet feeling abandoned by Him; everyone is telling them that their whole purpose in life is to get married, so why isn’t God providing a husband?!? (I’d argue strongly that it’s un-Christian and cruel to tell a woman her whole purpose in life is to be a wife and mother, but that’s a topic for another post…) How strong would their willpower be if the “perfect man” shows up in their lives – perfect in every way except the most important, in that he’s not a Christian?

My point is to draw out strong similarities between what we go through and what Amazaiah was going through. He was a man of his time just as we’re people of our time; he had very strong temptations to follow other gods, just as a huge pile of money or the “perfect mate” would be very strong temptations for us. He was wrong to follow other gods – just as we’d be wrong to give in to our temptations. I don’t think he’s more wrong, I think it’s very understandable that he’d have fallen into that temptation, but he was still wrong. Just like a modern Christian being tempted with such huge temptations would be wrong; it would be understandable, but wrong.

I firmly believe this is why these types of temptations don’t come along very often – if ever! I can’t envision a situation in which I’d ever be offered a billion dollars for any reason, let alone with strings attached that I give up Christianity.

Taking the Wrong Lesson from Events

Since I’m drawing strong similarities between Amaziah and modern Christians, let’s not think we’re better than him when it comes to drawing the wrong lesson from events, either. I can easily see myself taking the same lesson from these events that Amaziah did: thinking that I’m amazing for pulling off something seemingly impossible, when the lesson should be that it was impossible, and only God could have accomplished it, not myself.

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