2 Chronicles 25-28

The Voice

25 Amaziah, son of Joash and Jehoaddan of Jerusalem, was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem.

² He followed the Eternal, but was not completely devoted to Him for his entire life.

³ As soon as he took power in the Southern Kingdom, Amaziah solidified his throne by executing his opponents, the servants who had assassinated his father Joash. ⁴ But Amaziah followed Moses’ law, which the Eternal had commanded, and had mercy on their children: “Everyone is responsible for his own sins. Therefore, parents will not be killed for their children’s actions and children will not be killed for their parents’ actions.”^[a]

⁵ Then Amaziah prepared for battle by gathering the Judahites and appointing commanders from each family in Judah and Benjamin. He took a census of the men 20 years old and older, and there were 300,000 ready to fight with spears and shields. ⁶ To enlarge his army, Amaziah also hired 100,000 heroic men from the Northern Kingdom for 7,500 pounds of silver. ⁷ But Amaziah was warned against hiring mercenaries from the Northern Kingdom by a man who followed after the True God.

¹⁰ So Amaziah dismissed the Northern Kingdom’s mercenaries as the man had advised him to do, and they returned home. The mercenaries were furious at Judah because they would lose their portion of the spoils of victory, ¹³ so they raided the cities in Judah (from Samaria in the north to Beth-horon in the south), killing 3,000 and taking spoils.^[b]

¹¹ But Amaziah was rewarded for obeying God’s message. He strengthened himself and led only Judahite soldiers into battle at the valley of Salt. There they killed 10,000 Edomites from the city of Seir and ¹² captured 10,000. The Judahites then threw the prisoners from the top of a cliff, crushing them on the rocks below.

¹⁴ Unfortunately, Amaziah did not remain faithful to God and His messages. When he returned from fighting the Edomites, he brought the gods of Seir back to Jerusalem where they worshiped them—bowing down and burning incense—as he had worshiped God.

¹⁵ Furious with Amaziah, the Eternal sent a message to the king through a prophet.

¹⁷ Then Amaziah, king of Judah, listened to his royal counselors’ advice and decided to address the Northern Kingdom’s invasion of Judah. He sent a message to Joash (son of Jehoahaz, son of Jehu), the king of the Northern Kingdom asking for a face-to-face meeting.

²⁰ But Amaziah would not listen to Joash’s warning because the True God had allowed him to become stubborn. God intended to give Joash a victory over the Southern Kingdom because they worshiped the Edomite gods. ²¹ Then Joash, king of the Northern Kingdom, traveled south to the interior of the Southern Kingdom to face Amaziah, king of the Southern Kingdom, at Beth-shemesh. ²² As predicted, the Northern Kingdom defeated the Southern Kingdom, and the Judahites fled to their homes. ²³ Joash captured Amaziah, son of Joash who was the son of Jehoahaz, at Beth-shemesh and took him to Jerusalem where the Northern forces tore down 600 feet of the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate. ²⁴ Joash took all the gold, silver, and utensils from the True God’s temple from the service of Obed-edom. He then returned to Samaria with the temple treasures, palace treasures, and hostages.

²⁵ Amaziah (son of Joash, king of the Southern Kingdom) lived 15 years longer than Joash (son of Jehoahaz, king of the Northern Kingdom). ²⁶ All the events of Amaziah’s reign are included in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel, from his ascension to his assassination. ²⁷ From the moment Amaziah stopped following the Eternal to follow the Edomite gods, the people of Jerusalem plotted against him. He fled to Lachish, where the people followed and killed him. ²⁸ They brought his body back to Judah on horseback, where they buried him. But Amaziah was not honored in his burial. He was not laid with the former kings, but with just his ancestors in the capital city of Judah, Jerusalem.

26 ^1-3 After Amaziah’s death, the Judahites chose Uzziah, who was 16 years old, as their next king. During his reign he recaptured the port city of Eloth for Judah, bringing economic growth to the nation. Uzziah, son of Amaziah and Jechiliah of Jerusalem, reigned 52 years in Jerusalem. ⁴ He acted just as his father Amaziah and his grandfather Joash had—following the Eternal initially, then turning away from Him.

⁵ While Zechariah the seer was alive, Uzziah followed the True God, listening to Zechariah’s messages from God as Joash had listened to Jehoiada’s counsel, and the True God blessed the king in battles, in building, and in wealth as long as he was obedient. ⁶ He attacked the Philistines and tore down the walls of Gath, Jabneh, and Ashdod. To further weaken their nation, Uzziah built cities around Ashdod, the Philistine capital city, and elsewhere among the Philistines. ⁷ Just as the True God helped him against the Philistines, He gave Uzziah victory over the Arabians in Gur-baal and the Meunites. ⁸ Then the Ammonites paid tribute to Uzziah, and his political strength was infamous all the way to Egypt’s border.

⁹ In Jerusalem, Uzziah commissioned the building of towers at the corner gate, the valley gate, and in the wall’s corners to further fortify the city. ¹⁰ In the wilderness, he commissioned more towers and the digging of cisterns for his many livestock in the lowland and plain. And because he so cared for the land, he employed plowmen in the fertile fields and vinedressers in the hills to make the ground productive.

¹¹ Uzziah maintained a standing army ready for battle with numbered divisions and weapon specialties. Jeiel the scribe and Maaseiah the official (supervised by Hananiah, a royal officer) maintained the records of the divisions. ¹² Each division was led by a tribal leader who was also a heroic soldier. The 2,600 heroic soldiers ¹³ controlled a talented army of 307,500 soldiers who helped the king battle his enemies. ¹⁴ Uzziah provided shields, spears, helmets, body armor, bows, and sling stones to the army. ¹⁵ In Jerusalem, he positioned catapults to shoot arrows and great stones, a new invention by ingenious men, in the towers and on the corners of the city wall. Because of his impressive army, many of the surrounding nations knew about Uzziah and how God helped him win battles.

¹⁶ But when Uzziah had built his army and he no longer thought he needed God’s help in battles, he became prideful and corrupt. He was unfaithful to the Eternal One, his True God, entering the Eternal’s temple to burn incense on the altar.

¹⁷ Azariah the priest and 80 other brave priests of the Eternal followed the king into the temple to stop him.

¹⁹ Uzziah was furious at the priests for forbidding him, the king, to do something. As he stood next to the incense altar in the Eternal’s temple holding the censer, the king’s forehead erupted with leprosy, an inflamed skin disease. ²⁰ Azariah the chief priest and all the priests saw how the Eternal struck the king with leprosy on his forehead. As Uzziah rushed for the door, the priests hurried him out because the disease made him ritually unclean and unable to approach the temple. ²¹ For the rest of his life, King Uzziah was cursed with leprosy, so he was banned from the Eternal’s temple and lived away from society. During his absence, his son Jotham was in charge and judged the Southern Kingdom.

²² The prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz, wrote about the rest of Uzziah’s actions. ²³ When Uzziah died, the people with his family buried him near his ancestors in a field that belonged to them. He was not buried in the same tomb as his ancestors because his skin disease made him unclean. Then his son, Jotham, succeeded him as king.

27 Jotham, son of Uzziah and Jerushah (daughter of Zadok), was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. ² He followed the Eternal as his father had at the beginning of his reign, but he did not enter the Eternal’s temple. In spite of his devotion, the people continued in corrupt lifestyles. ³ He built the upper gate of the Eternal’s temple and the large wall of Ophel (the southern hill on the temple mount). ⁴ He built cities in Judah’s hill country and fortresses and towers in the forests. ⁵ Jotham conquered the Ammonite king, and the Ammonites gave him 7,500 pounds of silver, 62,000 bushels of wheat, and 10,000 of barley for 3 years. ⁶ Jotham received all this wealth and power for himself and for the country because he followed the Eternal One, his True God.

⁷ All the events of Jotham’s reign, including his battles and other actions, are in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. ⁸ He was 25 when he became king and ruled for 16 years.^{[c] 9} Jotham died, and his bones were gathered and buried along with his ancestors in the city of David, Jerusalem. His son, Ahaz, succeeded him as king.

28 Ahaz was 20 years old when he became king, and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. But he did not follow the Eternal as his ancestor David had done. ^2-4 Instead, he acted like the kings of the Northern Kingdom and worshiped their gods. He polluted all the land with his idolatry, cast idols of the Baals, burned incense in the valley of Ben-hinnom (Jerusalem’s refuse pit), and sacrificed his own children. Such evil things had not happened throughout the land, on high places, hills, and under trees, since the Eternal conquered the previous inhabitants and gave the land to the Israelites. ⁵ The Eternal One, his True God, was furious with Ahaz for his apostasy, so He empowered the king of Aram to defeat the Southern Kingdom and take Judean prisoners of war to Damascus, the capital of Aram. But this wasn’t enough to satisfy God’s anger. He also empowered the Northern Kingdom to kill many of the Judeans: ⁶ Pekah (son of Remaliah) in one day killed 120,000 valiant warriors who had abandoned the Eternal One, the True God of their ancestors; ⁷ and Zichri (a Ephraimite warrior) killed Maaseiah (Ahaz’s son), Azrikam (leader of the palace), and Elkanah (vice-regent). ⁸ Then the Northern soldiers took 200,000 Judean women and children and their possessions to Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom.

⁹ As the Northern army approached Samaria, Oded, a prophet of the Eternal ran out to meet them.

¹² Then some Ephraimite chiefs—Azariah (son of Johanan), Berechiah (son of Meshillemoth), Jehizkiah (son of Shallum), and Amasa (son of Hadlai)—stopped the soldiers.

¹⁴ The soldiers obeyed. They left the prisoners and the spoils for the chiefs and the assembly to decide what to do. ¹⁵ The chiefs dressed the naked prisoners with clothes and shoes from the spoils, fed them, anointed their heads with oil to refresh them after the journey, and returned them to the southern city of Jericho (the city of palm trees) with an envoy of Northerners and the feeble riding on donkeys. Then the Northerners returned to Samaria.

^16-19 The Eternal humbled Judah with continued attacks against them because of Ahaz’s wicked rebellion against Him, which had infected the entire nation. The Edomites attacked Judah and took prisoners; the Philistines invaded the lowland and the Negev, capturing and settling in the cities and surrounding villages of Beth-shemesh, Aijalon, Gederoth, Soco, Timnah, and Gimzo.

King Ahaz asked the Assyrians for help, ²⁰ but Tilgath-pilneser, king of Assyria, recognized an opportunity to expand his empire and attacked Judah instead of helping Ahaz. ²¹ To save his kingdom from complete destruction by the Assyrian army, Ahaz gave a tribute from his own palace and from the Eternal’s temple to Tilgath-pilneser. But the tribute did not work.

²² During these disasters, King Ahaz did not return to the Eternal. Instead he persisted in his unfaithfulness ²³ by sacrificing to the Aramean gods of Damascus, the gods of the first people who had defeated him.

But these gods were the downfall of him and all Israel. ²⁴ He destroyed the vessels from the True God’s temple and stopped all worship in the Eternal’s temple. Then he built his own altars throughout Jerusalem ²⁵ and high places throughout Judah to burn incense to false gods. These actions infuriated the Eternal One, the True God of his ancestors.

²⁶ Ahaz’s remaining actions, from his birth until his death, are contained in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. ²⁷ Ahaz slept with his fathers in Jerusalem, but not in the tombs of the kings of Israel. His son, Hezekiah, succeeded him as king.