2 Kings 14

14: 1 In the second year of Joash son of Joahaz king of Israel began Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah to reign. He was twenty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem: and his mother’s name was Jehoaddin of Jerusalem. And he did that which was right in the eyes of the his servants which had killed the king his father. But he put not their children to death, but did according to that which is written in the law in the book of Moses, as the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not die for the children, neither shall the children die for the fathers; but every man shall die for his own sin. Moreover Amaziah gathered Judah together, and ordered them according to their fathers’ houses, under captains of thousands and captains of hundreds, even all Judah and Benjamin: and he numbered them from twenty years old and upward, and found them three hundred thousand chosen men, able to go forth to war, that could handle spear and shield. He hired also an hundred thousand mighty men of valour out of Israel for an hundred talents of silver. But there came a man of God to him, saying, O king, let not the army of Israel go with thee; for the LORD is not with Israel, to wit, with all the children of Ephraim. But if thou wilt go, do valiantly, be strong for the battle: God shall cast thee down before the enemy; for God hath power to help, and to cast down. And Amaziah said to the man of God, But what shall we do for the hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel? And the man of God answered, The LORD is able to give thee much more than this. Then Amaziah separated them, to wit, the army that was come to him out of Ephraim, to go home again: wherefore their anger was greatly kindled against Judah, and they returned home in fierce anger. And Amaziah took courage, and led forth his people, and went to the Valley of Salt, and smote of the children of Seir ten thousand. And other ten thousand did the children of Judah carry away alive, and brought them unto the top of the rock, and cast them down from the top of the rock, that they all were broken in pieces. But the men of the army which Amaziah sent back, that they should not go with him to battle, fell upon the cities of Judah, from Samaria even unto Beth-horon, and smote of them three thousand, and took much spoil. Now it came to pass, after that Amaziah was come from the slaughter of the Edomites, that he brought the gods of the children of Seir, and set them up to be his gods, and bowed down himself before them, and burned incense unto them. Wherefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against Amaziah, and he sent unto him a prophet,

LORD, yet not like David his father: he did according to all that Joash his father had done. Howbeit the high places were not taken away: the people still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places. And it came to pass, as soon as the kingdom was established in his hand, that he slew his servants which had slain the king his father: but the children of the murderers he put not to death: according to that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, as the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man shall die for his own sin. He slew of Edom in the Valley of Salt ten thousand, and took Sela by war, and called the name of it Joktheel, unto this day. Then Amaziah sent messengers to Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, Come, let us look one another in the face. And Jehoash the king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, 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. Thou hast indeed smitten Edom, and thine heart hath lifted thee up: glory thereof, and abide at home; for why shouldst thou meddle to thy hurt, that thou shouldst fall, even thou, and Judah with thee? But Amaziah would not hear. So Jehoash king of Israel went up; and he and Amaziah king of Judah looked one another in the face at Beth-shemesh, which belongeth to Judah. And Judah was put to the worse before Israel; and they fled every man to his tent. And Jehoash king of Israel took Amaziah king of Judah, the son of Jehoash the son of Amaziah, at Beth-shemesh, and came to Jerusalem, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim unto the corner gate, four hundred cubits. And he took all the gold and silver, and all the vessels that were found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king’s house, the hostages also, and returned to Samaria. Now the rest of the acts of Jehoash which he did, and his might, and how he fought with Amaziah king of Judah, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? And Jehoash slept with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel; and Jeroboam his son reigned in his stead.

which said unto him, Why hast thou sought after the gods of the people, which have not delivered their own people out of thine hand? And it came to pass, as he talked with him, that the king said unto him, Have we made thee of the king’s counsel? forbear; why shouldst thou be smitten? Then the prophet forbare, and said, I know that God hath determined to destroy thee, because thou hast done this, and hast not hearkened unto my counsel. 17 Then Amaziah king of Judah took advice, and sent to Joash, the son of Jehoahaz the son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, Come, let us look one another in the face. 18 And Joash king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, 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. Thou sayest, Lo, thou hast smitten Edom; and thine heart lifteth thee up to boast: abide now at home; why shouldst thou meddle to thy hurt, that thou shouldst fall, even thou, and Judah with thee? But Amaziah would not hear; for it was of God, that he might deliver them into the hand of their enemies, because they had sought after the gods of Edom. So Joash king of Israel went up; and he and Amaziah king of Judah looked one another in the face at Beth-shemesh, which belongeth to Judah. And Judah was put to the worse before Israel; and they fled every man to his tent. And Joash king of Israel took Amaziah king of Judah, the son of Joash the son of Jehoahaz, at Beth-shemesh, and brought him to Jerusalem, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim unto the corner gate, four hundred cubits. And he took all the gold and silver, and all the vessels that were found in the house of God with Obed-edom, and the treasures of the king’s house, the hostages also, and returned to Samaria. 25 And Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah lived after the death of Joash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel fifteen years. Now the rest of the acts of Amaziah, first and last, behold, are they not written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel? Now from the time that Amaziah did turn away from following the LORD they made a conspiracy against him in Jerusalem; and he fled to Lachish; but they sent after him to Lachish, and slew him there. 28 And they brought him upon horses, and buried him with his fathers in the city of Judah.

2. Chron. 25: 1. Amaziah was twenty and five years old.** Joash died at the age of forty-seven (Chron. 24: 1). Amaziah must therefore have been born when his father was twenty-two; and the marriage of Joash with Jehoaddan must have been, at the latest, when he was just twenty-one. B. C.

2. When he came to the throne he was undoubtedly attached to the worship of Jehovah, and if not of a “perfect heart,” yet at any rate anxious to maintain true religion, and observe the Law in his own person. Like his father, Joash, he seems to have fallen away in later life; and at best the lacked the earnest zeal of a true religious reformer. G. R.

2. A perfect heart.** Religion is something within you, working outward from the centre, and that centre a heart possessed by the grace of God. It is not, as too many imagine

17. And Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah lived after the death of Jehoash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel fifteen years. 18 Now the rest of the acts of Amaziah, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And they made a conspiracy against him in Jerusalem; and he fled to Lachish: but they sent after him to Lachish, and slew him there. And they brought him upon horses: and he was buried at Jerusalem with his fathers in the city of David. And all the people of Judah took Azariah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king in the room of his father Amaziah. He built Elath, and restored it to Judah, after that the king slept with his fathers.

it, a reformation commencing in the outer circumference of one’s life and habits, and then working its way to the core, till the heart is reached and changed; it takes its start in the innermost recesses of our being, and from thence reaches outward, till the whole character and conduct are brought under its blissful sway. J. T. Davidson.

3,4. Though the succession naturally devolved upon Amaziah, the late king’s eldest son, and no one ventured to contest it with him, yet it was some time before his authority was generally acknowledged and his rule “established” (verse 5). When disturbance subsided the first step that he took was to arrest the murderers of his father, and to punish their crime with death. But, while thus vindicating law and right, he exhibited also what was regarded as extraordinary clemency, since he punished only the guilty parties themselves, and did not visit their crime upon their sons, as was, in spite of the Law of Moses (De. 24 : 16), the ordinary Jewish custom.

5-13. His first great undertaking was the reconquest of Edom. Edom, since its revolt from Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat (2 K. 8 : 20), had been a thorn in the side of Judea, causing perpetual trouble and annoyance. Edom “did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath forever” (Amos 1 : 11). Southern Judea was subject to continual ravages. Towns and villages were burned; crops carried off or destroyed; trees cut down; good land marred; prisoners carried into slavery. To subdue Edom, to put an end to these losses, was worth a great and sustained effort, an effort which needed very careful preparation. Amaziah began with his own subjects. Having numbered the men capable of bearing arms through all Judah and Benjamin, from twenty years old and upward, and found them to amount to three hundred thousand, he proceeded to organize and discipline this vast host. An Israelite contingent was hired, and was on the point of setting out in company with the Judean troops to invade Edom, when a prophet, whose name is not given, interfered, and representing to Amaziah the wickedness of making common cause with an idolatrous people, threatened him with God’s anger and the failure of his enterprise unless he sent the army of Israel away (7, 8). “But what,” exclaimed the monarch, “shall we do for the hundred talents”—the amount of their hire—“which I have given to the army of Israel?” How shall I recoup myself for this expenditure? “The man of God answered—The Lord is able to give thee much more than this.” Then, we are told, “Amaziah separated them, to wit, the army that was come to him out of Ephraim, to go home again” (10); and they returned home, while he went on to the Edomite war without them. Naturally they were indignant; and on their way back through Judea to their own country vented their wrath in petty plundering of Jewish towns and villages, which was sometimes resisted, with the result that as many as three thousand Jews fell in the tumults and skirmishes (13). It was now the turn of the Judeans to feel provoked and indignant, and to cherish a grudge which they would be sure to take the first opportunity of venting. Meanwhile, Amaziah had pushed forward through southeastern Judea toward the Edomite country, and passing the border at the southwestern angle of the Dead Sea, found the troops of Edom drawn up to meet him in the “Valley of Salt,” or plain of the Sabkah, an open space between the southern shore of the sea and the high ground that separates between the Jordan depression and the Arabah. Here a decisive battle was fought, in which the Edomites suffered complete defeat, losing ten thousand men, while Amaziah’s victorious host pressed upon the flying columns, and chased them to Selah, or Petra, the strange Idumæan capital amid the mountains. Selah was besieged and taken (2 K. 14 : 7), and its name contemptuously changed to Joktheel, “the subdued of God.” Numerous prisoners were made, roughly reckoned at ten thousand; and these unfortunates were dragged to the brink of the cliffs for which Petra is noted, and precipitated from them into the gulf below. Edom was for the time completely cowed and subdued, while Amaziah was greatly elated at his success. G. R.

14-16. In obedience to the command of God (verses 7-10), Amaziah resigned the hundred talents; yet he lived in calamity and died by violence and treason. Did the Lord God, the God of goodness and truth, forsake His servant? No; the Lord forsook Amaziah because Amaziah drew back from being His servant. Amaziah, when he had destroyed the Edomites, brought with him to Jerusalem their idols; and with the infatuation which belongs to presumptuous wickedness set them up to be his gods, and burned incense to them, and worshipped them: yet the sword of Divine justice paused in its scabbard. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” The Lord, instead of immediately cutting off the king in the midst of his ingratitude and impiety, was mercifully pleased to send a prophet to rebuke him and call him to repentance (verse 15). How did the king receive the message from God? When the former prophet had delivered his message Amaziah obeyed his command. But he now refused to humble himself before his Maker. His heart was obstinately fixed in apostasy. He charged the prophet with insolent obtrusiveness for daring to reprove him, and ordered him to be silent on pain of punishment (verse 16). Then the prophet, perceiving him not to be reclaimed, pronounced his doom: “I know that God hath determined to destroy thee, because thou hast done this, and hast not hearkened unto my counsel.” Hence followed the disastrous residue of his life and his miserable end. And we may learn from his example, that no former acts of righteousness, no former sacrifices of present interest for conscience’ sake, will avail us as an excuse for indulging afterward in sin. Gibborne.

17. Amaziah, flushed with his conquests over Edom, sent a defiance to the king of Israel. Jehoash, who now filled that throne, was a politic and successful prince; after the death of the formidable Hazael, he had reinstated his kingdom in its independence, and reconquered great part of his territory by three victories over the Syrians, which took place according to the prediction of the dying Elisha. Milman.

18,19. Joash perfectly took the measure of his challenger, and answered him according to his folly. First, he replied by a parable. He told how the briar (or thistle) of Lebanon sent to the cedar of Lebanon, demanding that the daughter of the cedar should be given in wife to his son. But a wild beast of the forest passed by, and trode down the briar. It was meant to sting and insult the Jewish king by intimating to him that in Joash’s eyes he was no more than a contemptible briar in comparison with the majestic cedars. Joash cannot be acquitted of overweening arrogance. It is a scornful, haughty spirit which breathes in his parable. From the Israelitish point of view the Ten Tribes were the kingdom of Israel; Judah was the isolated tribe. But the state of Israel at this time, and in the recent past, did not warrant these boastful metaphors. The cedar, as well as the briar, had been pretty well trodden down by the wild beast of the forest. This arrogant spirit, moreover, is apt to lead its possessor into the error of despising things simply because they are outwardly weak. In this case the king of Israel very justly took the boastful Amaziah’s measure. But it does not always follow that the cedar has the right to lord it over the briar. Nevertheless, the parable was just in so far as Amaziah was matching himself against one who, as the event showed, was greatly his superior. Joash was by far the abler soldier, and had larger forces. Amaziah wished to show himself his equal, but lacked the power of taking a just estimate of his own capabilities. This is one of the first conditions of a man’s strength—to know himself. “How many men may you meet in middle life whose career has been marked by bitter disappointments! They began with hopes which have never been realized; and so they blame what they call their adverse fate. But they have never sought to know themselves. They began in a fool’s paradise, and they have never made their escape from it. A more exact and modest estimate of their own powers, a clear and honest apprehension of their own capacity, a readiness to do the work within their limits, the work they were meant to do, and they had been spared many bitter hours.” Following up his parable, Joash gave the king of Judah a piece of advice, scornfully and contemptuously expressed, but such advice as, on the whole, Amaziah would have done well to take. He touched truly enough the motive of his foolish challenge. “Thou hast indeed smitten Edom, and thine heart is lifted up.” A measure of success turns the heads of some people, inflates their ideas of themselves, and incapacitates them for sober calculation of the future. He bids him content himself with what he has achieved and tarry at home. The tone is most insulting, implying the most perfect contempt for Amaziah’s threatened attack; but the advice was wise. Amaziah was a fool to provoke a needless war, and run himself and his kingdom into danger from a mere motive of vain-glory. He predicts to him what will happen if he persists in his foolish course. “Why shouldst thou meddle to thy hurt, that thou shouldst fall, even thou, and Judah with thee?” It perhaps was not to be expected that Amaziah should take advice so unpalatable, so tauntingly conveyed, so wounding to his pride and royal honor. But the result showed that Joash had not overstated his case. Amaziah meddled truly to his hurt, and he fell, even he and Judah with him. It is the fatality of a foolish mind that it is impregnable to considerations which would show it its folly. J. O.

Although he reigned fifteen years afterward, Amaziah never recovered the prestige which he had lost in his war with Joash. At last the long-smothered discontent broke out. A conspiracy formed against him in Jerusalem assumed such dimensions that he was led to regard resistance as hopeless, and to seek safety in flight. His place of refuge was Lachish, now Um-Lakis, on the southwestern border of Judah. This was a city of considerable strength (2 Chron. 11: 9; 2 K. 19: 8), and had the king been accompanied by even a small body of faithful troops, he would probably have been able to maintain himself against his revolted subjects for months, or even years; but Amaziah had made himself generally unpopular and seems not to have had even a knot of adherents. When the conspirators “sent after him to Lachish” (2 K. 14: 19), he succumbed to them without a struggle. Those who seized his person put him to death, but offered him no further indignity. On the contrary, they placed the corpse in the royal chariot in which

Amaziah had reached Lachish, and so honorably conveyed it to Jerusalem and buried it in the royal sepulchres. Amaziah had reigned altogether twenty-nine years, and had reached the fifty-fourth year of his age. G. R.

The great failing of Amaziah seems to have been a weak but restless ambition. He was always aiming to do grand, brilliant things beyond his power, and neglecting to do the simple, ordinary things within his reach, in the faithful performance of which lay his plain duty, his true usefulness, and his real honor; and the measure of success which attended his efforts in this direction led him on to new undertakings which involved him in defeat and disgrace.

The king of Israel warned him of his folly, but he would not listen. Thou hast conquered Edom. Be content. Tarry at home, and mind thine own business. Take care of thy kingdom, and the welfare of thy people. Why wilt thou meddle to thy hurt? It was good counsel, but it was not heeded. The bold, bad spirit that unsanctified success had produced would not be quiet. The fire of revenge and ambition must find fuel to feed upon. This is not Amaziah, it is human nature. There is nought in it peculiar to him, we share it with him. Let a man in whom religion has not its proper ascendancy have his way, and he always grows bold, arrogant, rapacious. His desire rapidly increases. There is nothing that he will not aspire after, nothing that he will not essay to achieve. “He is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied.” Alexander conquers the world, and weeps for other worlds too. Ah, there is nothing that will still conquer and satisfy the heart but God and His service. A restless, insatiable craving, that grows with success, and is hungrier the more it is fed—this is the fruit of ungodly prosperity. Is it not a destruction? Beware! surely the prosperity of fools destroys them. Hallam.

23. In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of 24 Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD : he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam 25 the son of Nebat, wherewith he made Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from the entering in of Hamath unto the sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah the son of Amittal, the 26 prophet, which was of Gath-hepher. For the LORD saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter : for there was none shut up nor left at large, neither was there any helper for 27 Israel. And the LORD said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven : 28 but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash. Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, and all that he did, and his might, how he warred, and how he recovered Damascus, and Hamath, which had belonged to Judah, for Israel, are they not written in the 29 book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel ? And Jeroboam slept with his fathers, even with the kings of Israel ; and Zechariah his son reigned in his stead.

THE long reign of Jeroboam II., the most important of those belonging to the kingdom of Israel since that of Ahab, is treated with great brevity by the writer, whose interest is far more in Judah than in Israel. Seven verses only are devoted to him. The result of his wars is given without any account of the wars themselves. And the great fact of his ruling over Damascus only comes in by a sort of afterthought (verse 28). The usual formulas are followed in introducing his reign and dismissing it. Jeroboam II. was contemporary with Amaziah during fourteen years of his reign. Hammond.

23. Jeroboam. The name is here remarkable. It is the only instance, in the history of either kingdom, of a recurrent royal appellation. We can scarcely doubt that Jeroboam II. was named after the great founder of the Israelite kingdom by a father who trusted that he might prove a sort of second founder. B. C.

Jeroboam II., the thirteenth king of Israel, and the fourth of the house of Jehu, succeeded his father Jehoash in the fifteenth year of Amaziah, and reigned forty-one years at Samaria. His reign is by far the most prosperous in the annals of Israel. To him even more than to his father is the statement applied that, in Israel’s decline, God gave them a saviour, in remembrance of His covenant with their fathers; though he also followed the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. He not only recovered from Syria the whole district east of the Jordan from Hamath to the Dead Sea, and reconquered Ammon and Moab, but he attacked Damascus itself; and if he did not actually take the city, he regained a large part of its territory for Israel. The apparent ease of these conquests may be explained by the sufferings of Syria from the constant attacks of the great Assyrian Empire, now at the height of its power. P. S.

We are not able to lay down on any historical authority the order of Jeroboam’s wars. But taking probability for our guide, we shall not be likely to stray very far from the truth if we put his war with Syria of Damascus first, that for the recovery of Hamath second, and that with Moab and Ammon in the far south third. Syria of Damascus still retained at Jeroboam’s accession the whole territory east of the Jordan—“all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, and the Reubenites, and the Manassites, from Aroer which is by the river Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan” (2 K. 10: 33), all the tract conquered by Hazael from Jehu. Joash had recovered only the cities taken by Benhadad, the son of

Hazael, from Jehoahaz (2 K. 13: 25). It would be natural that Jeroboam should seek first to “recover his border.” Rapid success seems to have attended him. Not only was the entire trans-Jordanic region recovered, but the Damascenic kingdom was itself invaded; the troops of Jeroboam carried all before them; and the capital city, the great and ancient “Damme-shek,” was taken (ibid., verse 28). When we consider the great power of Damascus, how, under Benhadad and Hazael, it had warred on tolerably even terms against Assyria, what a strength of chariots it possessed, and how nearly it had but a little while previously conquered the kingdom of Israel (2 K. 13: 7), the change of fortune does indeed seem remarkable, and the success of Jeroboam extraordinary. Then Jeroboam “recovered Hamath to Israel” (verse 28) after it had enjoyed independence for the space of a hundred and fifty years, regaining thereby the sovereignty over which it had been lost upon the death of Solomon. Thus victorious in the northeast and the north, Jeroboam seems to have turned his arms against the south. He did not indeed attack Judah, which was growing in strength under the judicious rule of Uzziah, the son of Amaziah, but in re-establishing his southeastern border he could not fail to come in contact with the Ammonites and Moabites, and there is reason to believe that he severely chastised both nations, and even conquered them, or at any rate made their kings tributary.

How long it took Jeroboam to effect his numerous and important conquests is uncertain. He had a reign of very unusual length, extending over a space of forty-one years. There is reason, however, to believe that his great victories and successes belong to the earlier rather than to the later portion of his reign, and that after they were completed the people of Israel enjoyed under Jeroboam’s rule a long term of continually increasing material prosperity.

The prosperity exhibited itself in magnificent buildings of various kinds, in a vast number of the most luxurious contrivances for material enjoyment, and in a general expensiveness and softness of living among the upper classes which tended, as time went on, to injure the morals and sap the physical vigor of the nation. “Great houses” were built, “palaces,” as they are called in some places (Amos 3: 11; 6: 8), of hewn stone (ibid., 5: 11), and liberally adorned with ivory (ibid., 3: 15); some were used as winter, others as summer residences (ibid.); they were richly and luxuriously fitted up with ivory beds (ibid., 6 : 4), and soft couches draped with Damascus cloth (ibid., 3 : 12); the harp and the viol resounded in them (ibid., 6 : 5); and their owners indulged in a continuous round of feasting and revelry. As Ewald says: “The comfortable prosperity of the people passed, in the metropolis of Samaria and in many other parts of the country, into debauchery and excess, and then again into such pampered effeminacy of morals that the austere old Israel could hardly be recognized, and the prophets could not pour out their divine wrath, or the moralists their ridicule, abundantly enough. The clearest sign of the degradation of public morality was furnished then, as at all similar times, by the growing effrontery of women and the decline of domestic chastity (Hos. 4 : 13; Amos 2 : 7; 4 : 1-8; 8 : 13). Such a vehement appetite for debauchery and ostentation created an equally powerful tendency to avarice and all kinds of fraudulent oppression of the most defenceless citizens; and the opportunities for these perversions of justice increased in proportion as the king came to be regarded simply as the first among a number of similar potentates and military chiefs (Hos. 5 : 1; Amos 3 : 9, etc.). And now, too, as in the time of Solomon, the freer intercourse of the people with heathen nations, who had either been conquered or were distinguished by commerce and art, together with the general spread of looseness and intemperance of life, caused an extensive introduction of heathen religions. Thus the fair promise with which the reign of Jeroboam opened passed away, and was succeeded by a time of general corruption and depravity. The existing dynasty was declared to lie under the Divine displeasure, and was threatened with speedy extinction (Hos. 1 : 4; Amos 7 : 9). The kingdom itself was declared to be approaching its dissolution (Amos 3 : 12; 5 : 27; 7 : 17). Assyria was not obscurely indicated as the world-power by which the destruction would be accomplished (Hos. 10 : 14). A sad and dismal prospect must have lain before the aged Jeroboam in the later years of his life, when, denounced by the prophets of Jehovah, and at war with one of them (Amos 7 : 12), he must have felt that his dynasty approached its term, and that even his kingdom’s days were probably numbered. At the age of threescore years and ten, or more, he at length “slept with his fathers” (5 : 29), having reigned longer, and probably having lived longer, than any other king of Israel; having also done more than any other king to increase the glory and raise the military

prestige of his kingdom, but having greatly sapped its strength, and brought it into a condition which would naturally make it an easy prey to the first powerful enemy with which it should be brought into contact. G. R.

23. Forty and one years.** Many moderns (Thenius, Bähr, and others) extend the term to fifty-one years. Some suppose that Jeroboam was joint king with his father in Amaziah’s third year, sole king from his fifteenth.

25. Jonah, the son of Amittai** (cf. Jonah 1 : 1). Jonah’s date is determined by this passage. He was contemporary with Hosea and Amos, and earlier than Micah. His prophecy concerning Jeroboam is probably assigned to the early part of that king’s reign.

26. For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter** (cf. chap. 13 : 4, 23). The repetition is perhaps to be accounted for by the desire of the writer to explain how it came to pass that so great a deliverance was granted to Israel under a king who maintained the worship of the calves. He views it as the consequence of God’s infinite compassion, and of the extreme bitterness of Israel’s sufferings under the Syrians (cf. chap. 13 : 7 and Amos 1 : 3).

27. God’s decision under the circumstances was not, as it well might have been, considering Israel’s ill desert, to blot out forthwith the very name of Israel from the earth. On the contrary, He gave the nation a breathing-space, a gleam of light, a second summer before the winter set in—a further opportunity of repenting and turning to Him with all their hearts if they would only have taken advantage of it, a chance of redeeming the past and re-establishing themselves in His favor. He might well have destroyed them at this time if He had looked only to considerations of justice, if in His wrath He had not thought upon mercy. Hammond.—According to the promises of Deut. 32 : 36-43 (which are in the writer’s mind), God “repented Himself for His servants,” and was “merciful unto His land and to His people:” He did not send a prophet to say that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven; but on the contrary sent two to announce that they should be delivered from their present enemies, and obtain triumphs over them. That he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven. This is again a Mosaic phrase found only here and in Deut. 9 : 14; 29 : 20. B. C.—By the hand of Jeroboam, the son of Joash. Joash began the salvation, but it was reserved for Jeroboam to complete it. He was the true “saviour” (chap. 13:5), the true accomplisher of the work, for which his father only paved the way. Thus one Jeroboam founded the kingdom; another refounded it, restored its ancient glories, and gave it its old dimensions. Hammond.

29. Zechariah his son reigned in his stead. By Zechariah’s accession the promise given to Jehu (chap. 10:30), that his “children to the fourth generation should sit on the throne of Israel,” was literally fulfilled. No other royal house occupied the Israelitish throne for more than three generations. Hammond.

With this period a new stage in prophecy begins. Hitherto the prophets had been chiefly God-sent teachers and messengers to their contemporaries—reproving, warning, guiding, encouraging. Henceforth the prophetic horizon enlarges. Beyond their contemporaries who were hardened beyond hope of recovery, their outlook is henceforth on the great hope of the Messianic kingdom. They have despaired of the present; but their thought is of the future. They have despaired of the kingdom of Israel and of Judah; but the Divine thought of preparation that underlay it comes increasingly into prominence and clearer vision. The promises of old acquire a new and deeper meaning; they assume shape and outlines which become ever more definite as the daylight grows. It is the future, with Israel’s Messiah-King to rule a people restored and converted, and an endless, boundless kingdom of righteousness and peace which in its wide embrace includes, reconciles, and unites a ransomed world, obedient to the Lord, which is now the great burden of their message, and the joyous assured hope of their thoughts. For doomed apostate Israel after the flesh, we have Israel after the spirit, and on the ruins of the old rises the new: a Jerusalem, a temple, a kingdom, and a King fulfilling the ideal of which the earthly had been the type.

Without attempting any detailed account, the prophets of that period and the contents of their writings may here be briefly referred to. The earliest of them was probably Joel, “Jehovah is God”—a Judean whose sphere of labor was also in his native country. His “prophecy” consists of two utterances (1:2–2:18; 2:19–3:21), couched in language as pure and beautiful as the sentiments are elevated. From the allusions to contemporary events (3:4–8, 19), as well as from the absence of any mention of Assyria, we infer that his ministry was in the time of Joash, king of Judah, and of the high-priest Jehoiada, with which agree his temple-references, which indicate a time of religious revival. But here also we mark the wider Messianic references in chapters 2 and 3. The prophecies of Joel seem already referred to by Amos, “the burden-bearer” (cf. Amos 1:2; 9:13 with Joel 3:16, 18, 20). Amos himself was also a Judean, originally a “herdman of Tekoa” (Amos 1:1; 7:14). But his ministry was in Israel, and during Jeroboam’s reign, after the accession of Uzziah (Amos 1:1). There in Bethel, where the false worship of Israel was combined with the greatest luxury and dissipation, the prophet was confronted by Amaziah, its chief priest. Although apparently unsuccessful in his accusations of political conspiracy against the prophet, Amos was obliged to withdraw into Judah (Amos 7:10–13). Here he wrote down his prophetic utterances, prefacing them by an announcement of coming judgment (Amos 1, 2) through a nation, evidently that very Assyria on which the confidence of Jeroboam had rested (cf. Amos 5:27; 6:14). Yet, amid all his denunciations, Amos also looked forward to and prophesied of the glorious Messianic kingdom (Amos 9:11–15). A third prophet of that period was Hosea, “help”—the Jeremiah of the northern kingdom, as he has been aptly designated. From certain allusions in his book we infer that he had been a native of the northern kingdom (Hos. 1:3; 6:10; cf. 7:8). His ministry was probably toward the end of the reign of Jeroboam, and extended to the rising of Shallum and of Menahem (cf. Hos. 6:8; 7:7). His prophecies give special insight into the political relations and dangers of the northern kingdom, and into the utter corruption of all classes. Frequent, too, are his references to Judah. Yet here also we mark the persistence of the outlook on the better Davidic kingdom (Hos. 3), with much concerning it scattered throughout his prophecies. Lastly, as yet another prophet of that period, we refer to Jonah, the son of Amittai, a native of Gath-hepher, in the tribal possession of Zebulun, and therefore in the northern part of Israel. Without entering on the critical questions connected with the story which forms the burden of the Book of Jonah, a deep significance surely attaches to its association with the prophet contemporary of Jeroboam II. It is not only that it points to a preaching of repentance to the Gentiles also, and to their ingathering with believing Israel into the family of God, but the circumstances of the time give it a special meaning. From apostate, morally sunken Israel, such as we have learned to know it from the descriptions of the prophets, Jonah, the very messenger who had announced coming deliverance to Jeroboam, turns by Divine commission to the Gentiles, to that great world-empire which was representative of them. And from this comes to us a fresh and deeper meaning in regard to the application of this history by our Lord (Matt. 12:39-41; 16:4; Luke 11:29-32). It had been “a wicked and adulterous generation” of old that had heard the prophecy of Jonah, and understood not the sign; nor was other sign to be given to it. So would it be to those who heard and saw the Christ, yet craved after other “sign” suited to their unbelief. None other than the sign of Jonah would be theirs, yet even this, “a sign” sufficient in itself, a sign also not only of judgment, but of wider mercy (Matt. 12:41). A. E.

Reign of Zechariah, 38th Year of Uzziah, Six Months. Reign of Shallum, 39th Year of Uzziah, One Month. Reign of Menahem, 39th to 50th Year of Uzziah, Ten Years. Reign of Pekahiah, 50th and 51st Years of Uzziah, Two Years.