Righteous act number 1: Approved
Think back to verse 3. Recall how it said that he executed those who had murdered the king? The execution of the king’s murderers was justice. Do you suppose he was indifferent to his king’s murder? His dad was gone, killed by two half-Jewish assassins who could not abide one of Joash’s most despicable deeds. See Joash orchestrated an unconscionable injustice in the stoning of his benefactor’s son: Zechariah.
While vigilante justice by rogue actors brought a modicum of justice it was improper, dishonorable. Amaziah repaired a semblance of balance by arranging for the execution of the murderers. That, though, was not the piece that should be considered Amaziah’s righteous act.
Notice, though, how he did not go after the murderer’s children. He did not prescribe widespread vengeance. We don’t know any more about those circumstances, but taking this on face value he did well. Could it be that Jehoiada taught even this prince in the ways of Jehovah and those lessons stuck? Could Amaziah have been astounded at his father’s disregard for Zechariah?
Righteous act number 2: Approved
Ezra jumped quickly from the history of national judgment to the posture of a war camp. Don’t get whiplash here, but come with me to another nation, to Edom. This conglomerate of Esau’s descendants made their home south of the Dead Sea. Over the centuries they were Judah’s vassals, but when Amaziah’s great-grandfather1had been king this vassal kingdom successfully revolted (2 Kings 8:16 and following). Ezra does not tell us why Amaziah decided to bring them to heal, but something triggered it. Amaziah was going after the Edomites, the Kingdom of Seir as it is sometimes called.
5 Amaziah called the people of Judah together and assigned them according to their families to commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds for all Judah and Benjamin. He then mustered those twenty years old or more and found that there were three hundred thousand men fit for military service, able to handle the spear and shield. 6 He also hired a hundred thousand fighting men from Israel for a hundred talents of silver. (2 Chronicles 25:5-6–ESV)
Step 1: Inspect the forces. The commanders divvied up men more than 19 years old into what we would call companies (100 to 250 men) and battalions (400 to 1,200 men). It seems that some sort of war-trials were held to determine which of the men were capable of wielding spear and shield. At the conclusion of the pre-campaign planning, Amaziah found 300,000 capable (although maybe not yet trained) men at Amaziah’s disposal. This is not the righteous act. We will come to that in a second.
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