◄ 2 Kings 14:7 ►
Amaziah struck down 10,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt. He took Sela in battle and called it Joktheel, which is its name to this very day.
Sermons
Amaziah Doing RightJ. Orr 2 Kings 14:1-7
Significant Facts in God's GovernmentD. Thomas 2 Kings 14:1-29














Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
Significant Facts In God's Government
2 Kings 14:1-29
D. Thomas
In the second year of Joash, etc. In this chapter we have a sketch of a succession of kings both of Judah and Israel. Here are two kings of Judah - Amaziah and Azariah; and Joash, Jeroboam, and his son Zachariah, kings of Israel. The whole chapter suggests certain significant facts in God's government of mankind.

I. THE ENORMOUS FREEDOM OF ACTION WHICH HE ALLOWS WICKED MEN. Here we learn:

1. That God allows wicked men to form wrong conceptions of himself. All these kings, although descendants of Abraham, who was a monotheist, became idolaters. "The high places were not taken away: as yet the people did sacrifice and burnt incense on the high places." Golden calves, symbols of Egyptian worship, still stood in Dan and Bethel, at the extremities of the dominions. Terribly strange it seems to us that the Almighty Author of the human mind should permit it to think of him as some material object in nature, or as some production of the human hand. What human father, had he the power, would permit his children to form not only wrong but wicked impressions of himself? For what reason this is permitted I know not, Albeit it shows God's practical respect for that freedom of action with which he has endowed us.

2. That God allows wicked men to obtain despotic dominion over others. All these kings were wicked - Amaziah, Azariah, Joash, Jeroboam, and Zachariah, and yet they enjoyed an almost autocratic dominion over the rights, possessions, and lives of millions. Here we read of Amaziah slaying ten thousand men, capturing ten thousand prisoners, and taking Selah, the capital of the Edomites, and of Joash King of Israel using harshly the rights of the conqueror. "He came to Jerusalem, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim unto the corner gate." It is said of Jeroboam, who reigned forty-one years, that he "did evil in the sight of the Lord, and departed not from the sins of his father." Antecedently one might have concluded that, if a wicked man was allowed to live amongst his fellows, he would be doomed to obscurity and to social and political impotence; but it is not so. Why? Who shall answer?

II. GOD PUNISHES WICKED MEN BY THEIR OWN WICKEDNESS.

1. A wicked man is punished by his own wickedness. Amaziah's conduct is an example. Elated with his triumph over the Edomites, he sought occasion of war with the King of Israel. "He sent messengers to Joash, the son of Jehoahaz son of Jehu, King of Israel, saying, Come, let us look one another in the face," etc. About fifteen years after his defeat he fled from Jerusalem to Laehish to escape assassination, but the assassin pursued him, and struck him dead. It is ever so. Wickedness is its own punishment. The wicked passions of a corrupt man are his tormenting devils. Sin is suicidal.

2. A wicked man is punished by the wickedness of others. The thousands whom these despotic kings reduced to anguish, destitution, and death, were idolaters and rebels against Heaven, and by the hand of wicked men they were punished. Thus it ever is. Devils are their own tormentors. Sin converts a community of men into tormenting fiends; man becomes the avenging fate of man.

CONCLUSION. Learn:

1. Humanity in this world is obviously in a morally abnormal condition. It can never be that he whose power is immeasurable, whose wisdom and goodness are infinite and radiant everywhere above us and below us, could create such a state of things as we have here. He originates the good alone, permits the evil, and will ultimately overrule it for good.

2. Faith in a future that shall rectify the evils of the present seems essential to true religion. Genuine religion is a supreme love for the Supreme Existence. But who could love a Supreme Existence, which could permit forever such a state of existence as we have here? There must come a day of rectification: "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him," etc. (Matthew 25:31-46). - D.T.

Biblical Illustrator
Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam.
2 Kings 14:28
Life -- Re-lived
F. W. Robertson.
There is a moment when a man's life is re-lived on earth. It is in that hour in which the coffin lid is shut down, just before the funeral, when earth has seen the last of him for ever. Then the whole life is, as it were, lived over again in the conversation which turns upon the memory of the departed. The history of threescore years and ten is soon recapitulated; not, of course, the innumerable incidents and acts which they contained, but the central governing principle of the whole.

(F. W. Robertson.)

Record of sin
It is said that the Bank of France has an invisible studio in a gallery behind the cashiers, so that at a signal from one of them a suspected customer can instantly have his picture taken without his own knowledge. So our sins and evil deeds may be registered against us, and we ourselves altogether unconscious of the fact.

People
Ahaziah, Amaziah, Amittai, Azariah, David, Edomites, Hepher, Jehoaddan, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jehu, Jeroboam, Joahaz, Joash, Jonah, Nebat, Zachariah, Zechariah
Places
Beth-shemesh, Corner Gate, Damascus, Edom, Elath, Ephraim Gate, Gath-hepher, Hamath, Israel, Jerusalem, Joktheel, Lachish, Lebanon, Lebo-hamath, Samaria, Sea of the Arabah, Sela, Syria, Valley of Salt
Topics
Battle, Calleth, Calling, Captured, Edom, Edomites, E'domites, Joktheel, Jok'the-el, Killed, Named, Naming, Salt, Seized, Sela, Selah, Slew, Smitten, Smote, Storm, Sword, Ten, Thousand, Twelve, Valley, War
Outline
1. Amaziah's good reign
5. His justice on the murderers of his father
7. His victory over Edom
8. Amaziah, provoking Jehoash, is overcome
15. Jeroboam succeeds Jehoash
17. Amaziah slain by a conspiracy
21. Azariah succeeds him
23. Jeroboam's wicked reign
28. Zachariah succeeds him

Dictionary of Bible Themes
2 Kings 14:7

     4290   valleys
     4357   salt

2 Kings 14:1-22

     5366   king

2 Kings 14:7-14

     7245   Judah, kingdom of

Library
The Prophet Amos.
GENERAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS. It will not be necessary to extend our preliminary remarks on the prophet Amos, since on the main point--viz., the circumstances under which he appeared as a prophet--the introduction to the prophecies of Hosea may be regarded as having been written for those of Amos also. For, according to the inscription, they belong to the same period at which Hosea's prophetic ministry began, viz., the latter part of the reign of Jeroboam II., and after Uzziah had ascended the …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

The Prophet Jonah.
It has been asserted without any sufficient reason, that Jonah is older than Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah,--that he is the oldest among the prophets whose written monuments have been preserved to us. The passage in 2 Kings xiv. 25, where it is said, that Jonah, the son of Amittai the prophet, prophesied to Jeroboam the happy success of his arms, and the restoration of the ancient boundaries of Israel, and that this prophecy was confirmed by the event, cannot decide in favour of this assertion, …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

The Twelve Minor Prophets.
1. By the Jewish arrangement, which places together the twelve minor prophets in a single volume, the chronological order of the prophets as a whole is broken up. The three greater prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, stand in the true order of time. Daniel began to prophesy before Ezekiel, but continued, many years after him. The Jewish arrangement of the twelve minor prophets is in a sense chronological; that is, they put the earlier prophets at the beginning, and the later at the end of the …
E. P. Barrows—Companion to the Bible

The Prophet Hosea.
GENERAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS. That the kingdom of Israel was the object of the prophet's ministry is so evident, that upon this point all are, and cannot but be, agreed. But there is a difference of opinion as to whether the prophet was a fellow-countryman of those to whom he preached, or was called by God out of the kingdom of Judah. The latter has been asserted with great confidence by Maurer, among others, in his Observ. in Hos., in the Commentat. Theol. ii. i. p. 293. But the arguments …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Tiglath-Pileser iii. And the Organisation of the Assyrian Empire from 745 to 722 B. C.
TIGLATH-PILESER III. AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE FROM 745 to 722 B.C. FAILURE OF URARTU AND RE-CONQUEST Of SYRIA--EGYPT AGAIN UNITED UNDER ETHIOPIAN AUSPICES--PIONKHI--THE DOWNFALL OF DAMASCUS, OF BABYLON, AND OF ISRAEL. Assyria and its neighbours at the accession of Tiglath-pileser III.: progress of the Aramaeans in the basin of the Middle Tigris--Urartu and its expansion into the north of Syria--Damascus and Israel--Vengeance of Israel on Damascus--Jeroboam II.--Civilisation …
G. Maspero—History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, V 7

The Girdle of the City. Nehemiah 3
The beginning of the circumference was from 'the sheep-gate.' That, we suppose, was seated on the south part, yet but little removed from that corner, which looks south-east. Within was the pool of Bethesda, famous for healings. Going forward, on the south part, was the tower Meah: and beyond that, "the tower of Hananeel": in the Chaldee paraphrast it is, 'The tower Piccus,' Zechariah 14:10; Piccus, Jeremiah 31:38.--I should suspect that to be, the Hippic tower, were not that placed on the north …
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

The Figurative Language of Scripture.
1. When the psalmist says: "The Lord God is a sun and shield" (Psa. 84:11), he means that God is to all his creatures the source of life and blessedness, and their almighty protector; but this meaning he conveys under the figure of a sun and a shield. When, again, the apostle James says that Moses is read in the synagogues every Sabbath-day (Acts 15:21), he signifies the writings of Moses under the figure of his name. In these examples the figure lies in particular words. But it may be embodied …
E. P. Barrows—Companion to the Bible

Kings
The book[1] of Kings is strikingly unlike any modern historical narrative. Its comparative brevity, its curious perspective, and-with some brilliant exceptions--its relative monotony, are obvious to the most cursory perusal, and to understand these things is, in large measure, to understand the book. It covers a period of no less than four centuries. Beginning with the death of David and the accession of Solomon (1 Kings i., ii.) it traverses his reign with considerable fulness (1 Kings iii.-xi.), …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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