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2Ki_14:1-20; 2 Chronicles 25
Under a young king of warlike tastes, the kingdom was soon astir with military movements and preparations. Amaziah was anxious to ascertain the military resources at his command; and caused a general muster to be taken of all the males fit to bear arms, from twenty years old and upwards; and the number was found to be three hundred thousand. Some have thought this number incredible. But why so? It is expressly said to be the number of all fit to carry arms—that is, all the adult male population from twenty to sixty—such as it was usual in ancient warfare to call out on great occasions, all Orientals being more or less familiar with the use of arms. The numbers given in Scripture are only high with reference to modern European circumstances, in which warfare is a distinct profession, which can never as such be followed by such large proportions of the population. Having this in view, and recollecting that the present is expressly stated to be the number of those qualified to bear arms, it seems to us small rather than large; for as the number of such is generally about one fourth of the population—it would make the entire population of the kingdom of Judah only one million two hundred thousand—which we take to be much too little. Josephus, who copies these numbers, was aware of this inference from the number stated, and little suspected that it would ever be doubted from its largeness, and he therefore states that this three hundred thousand was only a selection from the whole number fit to bear arms. This we do not believe; for not only is it contrary to the plain meaning of the text, but it is plain that Amaziah would tax the powers of his own kingdom to the utmost before he thought of hiring, as he did, one hundred thousand men out of Israel for a hundred talents of silver, if he could have got more than three hundred thousand in his own kingdom, he would not have gone to this great expense for another hundred thousand.
The object he had in view was the reduction of the Edomites, who had, in the time of his father, shaken off the yoke of Judah. But when about to march, a prophet demanded, in the name of the Lord, that the mercenaries from the northern kingdom should be sent away, for that no success would be granted to an expedition in which they took part. Amaziah objected, naturally enough, that it was hard to throw away all the money he had expended, to procure their assistance; but when the man of God answered, “The Lord is able to give thee much more than these,” he submitted, and sent the army of Israel away—thus affording a splendid example of faith, which makes our hearts warm towards him, and which it is lamentable to find unsustained by the later incidents of his career. The Israelites, however, regarded it as a slur cast upon them, and were highly exasperated, as the inhabitants of the towns and villages were made to feel on their homeward march. The campaign against Edom was quite successful. Amaziah was victorious in a battle fought in the Valley of Salt, at the south end of the Dead Sea; and pursued his march to Selah, the metropolis of the Edomites, and acquired possession of it. This Selah was afterwards known to the. Greeks as Petra (both names meaning a rock), the same city which had been shut up for ages in a ravine of Mount Seir; and the recent restoration of which to our knowledge, with its singular remains, and the innumerable excavations, many of them with richly sculptured facades, which line the cliffs of this deep enclosed valley, have excited the wonder and admiration of the present generation. But all these things were the work of a later age than that of Amaziah—though certainly the valley was even then the metropolis of Edom, and many of the excavations were probably of as old or even older date. The place is mentioned in the prophets as “the strong city;” and its inhabitants as, “building their nests on high among the munitions of the rocks”—an expression which would suggest that the excavated caves in the cliffs were not originally designed for tombs, but for human habitations.
When a man stands upon the brink of a precipice, he usually feels a strong inclination to cast himself or others down. It was probably the experience of this strange sensation, when he looked down from the edge of some tall cliff into this or some other of the deep valleys of Edom, that put into the mind of the king of Judah the atrocious idea of inflicting upon the defeated Edomites a memorable punishment for their revolt, by casting them down from the cliffs of their own mountains. No fewer than ten thousand were thus destroyed; and the king, whose head was plainly turned by the intoxication of success, doubtless thought he had in this done a great deed.
By all the rules of ancient reasoning, Jewish or pagan, Amaziah should have considered that this victory over the Edomites demonstrated the impotence of their idols, and the greatness of Jehovah, to whose worship, he should therefore have been the more attached—the rather as this victory had been promised to him by the prophet as the reward of his faith. But instead of this, the king, by a monstrous perversity of spirit, took a foolish and wicked fancy to the gods of a defeated people, and thereby forfeited the favor of Him to whom he owed all his greatness. Henceforth he acted as a man whose judgment had been taken from him.
He was admonished by a prophet—whom he repelled by the stern rebuke—“Who made thee of the king’s counsel?” and by the threat of punishment. So the prophet ceased, with the fearless remark—“I know that God hath determined to destroy thee!”
Exalted in his own esteem by his victory over Edom, Amaziah seems to have entertained the notion of reviving the obsolete claims of the house of David to reign over all Israel; and it may be that the long unbroken line of kings in Judah, descended from David, gave them a great superiority in their own esteem, and in that of the nation, over the kings of the short and rapidly succeeding dynasties in Israel. The king of Israel must have been greatly surprised to receive a declaration of war, in the shape of a challenge from Amaziah, in the words, “Come, and let us look one another in the face”—words that have a friendly appearance enough, but which had a most unfriendly meaning. To this challenge the other returned a most significant and sarcastic answer in the shape of a parable—“The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle.” The sovereign contempt so neatly conveyed in this message, smote the proud spirit of Amaziah, and made him more eager for the conflict. So he marched; and not long after was seen marching back again—a prisoner in the hands of the victorious Israelites, whose king entered Jerusalem in triumph.
The conqueror did not, however, attempt to annex the territory, or any part of it, to his own. He was content to seize all he could lay hands on—not sparing the precious things of the temple. He then departed, leaving Amaziah on the throne—but not until he had cast down a large piece of the wall of the city as a memorial of his triumph. How a memorial, when it was without doubt speedily built up again? But the freshness of the masonry, and the recollection of the people from age to age that this was the part of the wall which the king of Israel threw down, would for a long time render it a monument of the transaction; for none but a conqueror could thus deal with the wall of a great city.
As this incident brings the history of Judah and of Israel into connection, we may here note that the conqueror in this case was Jehoash, son of Jehoahaz, son of Jehu. During the reigns of Jehu and his son, Israel had been brought very low by Hazaed, king of Syria. But after that king’s death, his realm became so weakened under his son Benhadad, that Jehoash was enabled to recover most of the advantages which had been lost by his predecessors, and to restore the kingdom to a comparatively prosperous condition. It was, however, left to his successor, Jeroboam II, not only to drive the Syrians from all their acquisitions beyond the Jordan, but actually to enter Damascus as a conqueror.
As for Amaziah, his folly, and the disgrace he had brought upon the holy city—more intolerable than its conquest by a foreigner, rendered him odious to the people. A conspiracy was formed against him, and he fled from Jerusalem to the fortress of Lachish; but the conspirators sent after him, and slew him there.