2 Kings 15

Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young,” wrote poet W. H. Auden. Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, defined history as “little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”

The history recorded in these five chapters seems to agree with Auden and Gibbon, for it reeks of selfish intrigue, bloodshed, moral decay, and repeated rebellion against the law of the Lord. Ancient Israel wasn’t much different from society today. Not one king of Israel encouraged his people to repent and seek the Lord, and in Judah, Amaziah and Uzziah both committed acts of arrogant ambition that brought judgment from God. When Jeroboam II became king of Israel in 782 BC, little did the people realize that in sixty years, the kingdom would be no more. As we look at these nine rulers, we can gain some practical insights into the will and ways of God as well as the terrible wages of sin.

Amaziah, a presumptuous king (14:1–20; 2 Chron 25) Amaziah was the ninth king of Judah and the son of Joash (Jehoash), the “boy king,” who in his later years turned away from the Lord, killed God’s prophet, and was himself assassinated (2 Chron. 24:15–26). Amaziah made an excellent beginning, but he later abandoned the Lord and was also assassinated (14:17–20). He saw to it that the men were executed who had killed his father, and he obeyed Deuteronomy 24: by judging only the offenders and not their families. Had he continued to obey God’s Word, his life and reign would have been much different. Consider some of his sins.

Unbelief (14:7; 25:5–13). Amaziah decided to attack Edom and regain territory that had been lost (8:20–22). The venture was a good one, but the way he went about it was definitely wrong. He took a census and found he had 300,000 men, but instead of trusting the Lord to use these men, he hired 100,000 mercenaries from Israel to increase his forces. His faith was in numbers and not in the Lord (Ps. 20:7), but even worse, the soldiers he hired came from apostate Israel where the people worshipped the golden calves. God sent a prophet to rebuke the king and warn him that the Lord was not with the kingdom of Israel, so the hired soldiers would only bring defeat. “But if you go, be gone! Be strong in battle! Even so, God shall make you fall before the enemy; for God has power to help and to overthrow” (25: nkjv). The prophet was a bit sarcastic, but he made his point.

One of the recurring themes in Israel’s history is their sin of forming alliances with the ungodly because they didn’t have faith in the Lord. Solomon married heathen wives and by this entered into treaties with his

neighbors, but his wives influenced him to worship idols (1 Kings 11). King Ahab married Jezebel, a Phoenician princess and a worshipper of Baal (1 Kings 16:30–33), and this brought Baal worship into the kingdom. King Jehoshaphat allied with Ahab to fight the Syrians and was almost killed. Jehoshaphat also entered into a business partnership with King Ahaziah, but the Lord broke it up by destroying Jehoshaphat’s fleet. “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6: nkjv) is an admonition that needs to be heard and heeded by the church today. It’s not by imitating the world and uniting with the world, but by being different from the world that we manifest the power and grace of God and accomplish His will.

According to 2 Chron. 25:2, Amaziah was not wholehearted in his relationship to the Lord (see niv), and this revealed itself in the way he argued with the prophet about the will of God (25:9). The king was unwilling to send the mercenaries home because it would have meant forfeiting the one hundred talents of silver he had paid to the king of Israel. This amounted to nearly four tons of silver. Amaziah was “counting the cost” and adjusting his priorities, hoping he could change God’s mind. The prophet wisely replied that God could give him much more if he would only trust Him and obey His will (Matt. 6:33).

If we would seek the Lord’s will before we rush into disobedience, we would avoid a great deal of trouble, but even after we change our minds and decide to obey the Lord, often there are still painful consequences to endure. The soldiers returned to Israel very angry because of the way they had been treated. Why were they angry? For one thing, they lost an opportunity to profit from the spoils of battle. Furthermore, who was the king of Judah to say that God thought more highly of Judah’s soldiers than He did the army of Samaria? What an embarrassment for these brave mercenaries to be sent home empty-handed, having never fought the battle! How could they explain to the king and their friends back home that the army had been declared unclean and rejected? Their solution was to give vent to their anger by attacking some of the border cities in northern Judah. They killed three thousand people and took the spoils as their compensation (25:13).

Because he finally obeyed the Lord, Amaziah’s army defeated the Edomites. They killed ten thousand men in the Valley of Salt, where David had won a great victory (1 Chron. 18:12). Then they destroyed ten thousand prisoners of war by casting them down from the heights of the city of Sela (Petra) that was cut right out of the mountain (Obad. 1–4). So elated was Amaziah with his achievement that he renamed the city “Joktheel,” which means “God destroys” (14:7).

Idolatry (25:14–16). The saintly Scottish minister Andrew Bonar said, “Let us be as watchful after the victory as before the battle,” an admonition that King Amaziah desperately needed to hear and heed. The Lord Jehovah had given His servant an outstanding victory over a strong enemy in a difficult place, and yet Amaziah took back to Judah the gods of the defeated enemy (2 Chron. 25:14–16)! Surely the king of Judah didn’t think that by taking these idols he would paralyze the Edomites and prevent future wars! Every Jew was taught that the Lord Jehovah was one God and the only true and living God, and therefore the gods of the nations were nothing (Deut. 6:4–5; Ps. 115). Worshipping idols was a direct violation of the law of Moses (Ex. 20:1–6), and worshipping the gods of a defeated enemy was simply unreasonable. After all, what did those gods accomplish for the Edomites? Yet Amaziah began to worship the gods of Edom, offer them sacrifices, and consult them.

When the Lord sent His messenger to the king to warn him, Amaziah interrupted the prophet and threatened to kill him if he continued to speak. But the prophet had one last word: God would destroy the king for his sin. In fact, God would permit the king to destroy himself! The greatest judgment God can send to people is to let them have their own way.

Pride (14:8–14; 25:17–24). Amaziah defeated the Edomites because he obeyed the Lord, but then the Edomites defeated Amaziah when he took their gods home with him. Inflated by his great success and unconcerned about his great sin, Amaziah looked for other worlds to conquer and decided to challenge Joash (Jehoash), king of Israel. He not only ignored the warning of the prophet God sent, but he forgot the words of his ancestor Solomon, “Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honor is humility” (Prov. 18: nkjv). Even King Jehoash warned him that his pride would ruin him (14:10), but Amaziah was bent on defeating Israel and becoming the ruler of a united kingdom.

Jehoash’s reply (14:9; 25:18) reminds us of the parable Jotham spoke (Judg. 9:7–20), and both of them deal with pride and judgment. Amaziah’s problem was pride: he saw himself as a strong cedar, when in reality he was only a weak thistle that could be crushed by a passing wild beast. The truly humble person sees things as God sees them and doesn’t live on illusions. Pride blinds the mind, distorts the vision, and so inflates the ego that the person can’t tell truth from fiction.

Rejecting a second warning from the Lord, Amaziah invaded Israel where his army was soundly defeated. He was taken captive fifteen miles from Jerusalem and went from the palace to the prison. The army of Israel invaded Judah and destroyed six hundred feet of the wall of Jerusalem, leaving the city vulnerable to future attacks. They also took treasures from the palace and from the temple of the Lord, and they even took some of the leaders as hostages. King Amaziah was in exile in Samaria for fifteen years (14:17) and then returned to Jerusalem briefly as coregent with his son (14:21; 26:1, 3). But his idolatry disturbed some of the leaders and they formed a conspiracy to assassinate him. He fled to Lachish where he was captured and killed (14:18–20; 25:27).

Amaziah is a tragic figure in Jewish history. He was presented with great opportunities and experienced great help from the Lord, but he was a double-minded man who didn’t wholeheartedly serve the Lord. He had his own agenda and didn’t take time to seek the mind of the Lord. “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16: nkjv).

From Jeroboam I, the first king of Israel, to Hoshea, the last king of Israel, not one king is called “good.” However, the kingdom of Judah didn’t fare much better, for out of twenty kings who ruled after the kingdom divided, only eight of them could be called “good.” In this section of 2 Kings, we meet with five kings of Israel who were notorious for their godless character and evil deeds. Four of them were assassinated! Shallum reigned only one month, Zechariah six months, and Pekahiah for two years. Menahem, the cruelest of them all, reigned for ten years, and Pekah for twenty years. As the northern kingdom stumbled toward destruction, their rulers hastened the coming of the judgment of God. God often gives a nation just exactly the leaders it deserves.

Zechariah (vv. 8–12). Twenty-nine men in Scripture are named Zechariah; this one was the son of Jeroboam II, the last great king of the northern kingdom of Israel. Zechariah didn’t have the political skills of his father and he chose to imitate the sins of his namesake, Jeroboam I. Zechariah was the great-greatgrandson of Jehu and therefore the last of that dynasty. God promised Jehu that his descendants would occupy the throne of Israel for four generations (2 Kings 10:30), and that promise was fulfilled. Zechariah was a king, not because of his sanctity, ability, or popularity, but because he was providentially born into the royal family. Only two major facts are recorded about him: he did evil in the sight of the Lord, and he was assassinated publicly by Shallum, who then took the throne. Zechariah reigned only six months, and his death ended Jehu’s dynasty.

Shallum (vv. 13–15). We know very little about this man. He organized a conspiracy and murdered Zechariah; he reigned as king of Israel for one short month; and he was the victim of a conspiracy that led to his own death. “Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and he who rolls a stone will have it roll back on him” (Prov. 26: nkjv). Shallum was killed by Menahem, one of his own officers who was military commander at Tirzah, the early capital of Samaria (1 Kings 14:17; 15:21, 33). If Shallum had any descendants, they probably didn’t admit it. What was there about Shallum to be proud of?

Menahem (vv. 6–22). Since he was a man feared by the people and had the army under his control, Menahem was able to rule for ten years and die a natural death. Because the people of Tiphsah (a city we can’t identify) wouldn’t accept his kingship, he broke his way into the city and killed his enemies. He was a brutal man who followed the Syrian custom of ripping up pregnant women (v. 16; see 8:12), something that Hosea the prophet warned would happen (Hos. 13:16). When the Assyrians invaded the land, Menahem taxed all the wealthy citizens over a pound of silver and gave Pul (Tiglath-Pileser) thirty-seven tons of silver as tribute. The Assyrians left, but they came back twenty years later and took over the entire land. King David would have trusted God, fought the Assyrians, and defeated them, but Menahem’s policy was to compromise and conciliate.

Pekahiah (vv. 23–26). Menahem’s son inherited the throne but ruled for only two years. His father had been a military commander and had assassinated King Shallum, and Pekahiah was killed in his own palace by Pekah, a military commander, who then became king. The fact that Pekah was assisted by fifty men from Gilead suggests that he was in charge of the military forces east of the Jordan River. It’s likely that Pekahiah and Pekah disagreed about the right policy Israel should follow regarding Assyria. Pekahiah, like his father Menahem, sought to appease the Assyrians and give them what they wanted, while Pekah, a military man, took a hard line against Assyria and favored Syria.

Pekah (vv. 27–31). Thanks to the protection of his army, Pekah was able to reign twenty years. When a military man takes over, it’s very difficult to get rid of him. In spite of Menahem’s appeasement of the Assyrians, they invaded Israel again and in the course of four campaigns (738, 734, 733, and 732) not only took a number of key cities but also captured much territory from Hamath and Naphtali in the north to Gilead and Galilee. The Assyrians also took Philistia as far south as Gaza, and even captured Damascus in Syria. Many Jews and Philistines were deported to Assyria. Pekah was slain by Hoshea, son of Elah, who was pro-Assyrian in his political views. We will hear more about Hoshea in 2 Kings 17. He reigned for nine years and was probably deported to Assyria where he died (17:1; 18:10–11).

Jotham, a virtuous king (15:32–38; 2 Chron. 27) Jotham, son of Uzziah, began to reign when he was twenty-five years old and ruled for sixteen years (27:1). He was coregent with his father after Uzziah was smitten with leprosy for invading the temple precincts. Jotham would be considered a good king, although his son Ahaz was a bad king. In fact, from Jotham, the eleventh king of Judah, to Zedekiah, the twentieth and last king of Judah, only Jotham, Hezekiah, and Josiah could be called good kings. That’s three kings out of ten. The Lord kept David’s lamp burning in Jerusalem all those years, but there came a time when He had to bring in the nation of Babylon and punish His people for their sins.

Like his father, Uzziah, Jotham was both a builder and a warrior. He repaired the walls of Jerusalem and the Upper Gate of the temple. He also built cities in the Judean mountains and fortresses and towers in the wooded areas. His army confronted the armies of Israel and Syria, and he won a great victory over the Ammonites and put them under a very heavy annual tribute—nearly four tons of silver and 62,000 bushels each of wheat and barley (27:5). “So Jotham became mighty, because he prepared his ways before the Lord his God” (27: nkjv). We wonder how much more good he would have accomplished had he lived longer.

In Hebrew history we frequently find a godly father begetting an ungodly son and an ungodly father raising a godly son. Good king Jehoshaphat begat bad king Jehoram, but godly King Joash gave the nation a godly son (Amaziah), grandson (Uzziah), and great-grandson (Jotham). However, Jotham’s son Ahaz was not a good king or a godly man, yet he begat good King Hezekiah, who in turn was the father of Manasseh, perhaps the most wicked king of the lot—and he had a reign of fifty-five years! Ezekiel the prophet in Babylon dealt with this interesting phenomenon in chapter 18 of his prophecy.

God is sovereign in His gifts to individuals and nations. The Lord was longsuffering toward His people during those difficult and evil days, and He was faithful to keep His promises to David. But time was running out. After Ahaz died, only Hezekiah and Josiah would honor the Word of God and seek to obey His will. Yet, in spite of the sins and failings of the people, the Lord maintained a godly remnant in the nation, and from that godly remnant the Messiah would eventually be born.

“Known to God from eternity are all His works” (Acts 15: nkjv).