Amaziah’s Judean army, however, did not come to the same disaster. He was victorious, and that after dismissing the 100,000 Ephraimite mercenaries upon the counsel of God’s prophet. God fought with Amaziah that day, not against him, and Edom again fell under the foot of Judah. Yet this victory seemed to conclude the recorded righteous deeds of his life. Things may have cracked as threw the 10,000 captives over the cliff, but we know little of those specifics.
Amaziah’s crash
14 After Amaziah came from striking down the Edomites, he brought the gods of the men of Seir and set them up as his gods and worshiped them, making offerings to them. (2 Chronicles 25:14–ESV)
I am going to skip the rampages of the Ephraimites for the time being leapfrogging that 13th verse to the 14th, where my reaction is one of both incredulity and discouragement. See, Amaziah listened to the prophet of God and dismissed the 100,000 soldiers he had purchased as a safeguard. Verse 11 says he took courage and led out his army. He won a great victory reclaiming Edom for Judah. But then he did what?! He took their gods? He worshipped them? Seriously? Ugh. It is almost a read it again moment, and again…and again. At the end of these readings, though, there is no other way to interpret his deeds. He crossed a terrible line with this. Judgment now is in order. The next verse or two shows us that God made a way out, a way away from judgment. That is called grace.
God’s grace
Let us look at God’s response. When I read and re-read it, I initially missed the grace, but eventually, it dawned on me. Here are the beginning words of grace.
15 Therefore the Lord was angry with Amaziah and sent to him a prophet, who said to him, “Why have you sought the gods of a people who did not deliver their own people from your hand?” (2 Chronicles 25:15–ESV)
God was angry. Yep. That makes sense. It is fitting. The first grasp of grace is that God does not immediately bring judgment upon Amaziah. God sent a prophet. The clarity of God’s grace will come in a moment, but let us first look at how God approaches Amaziah.
God does not spout off anger. He does not act like a jilted spouse, like one who has just caught his wife with another man. Adultery might seem like an odd analogy, but the Bible repetitively uses that comparison. That said, move beyond it, think more deeply upon what God poses as the argument of first importance. He uses a human argument.
See, in Amaziah’s era, one’s gods were presumed to provide protection and blessing. One served the gods, and the gods served up advantages. So, God sends his prophet and points out this obvious thing. Did the Edomite’s gods protect the Edomites? Did their gods bless them?
No answer needed to be verbalized its apparent nature making the question rhetorical. The real question posed by the prophet, by God, was what part of your psyche led to this worship? Why did you bow down to those gods? Further implied, of course, was the provision God had made. He had protected and blessed Amaziah. God did not pout. He did not whine about being disregarded. Those reactions are human ones. He just brought out the mindset of the times as a lever that would hopefully work to move the weight of Amaziah’s mind back into the right place.
It was gracious that Amaziah was not up and discarded.
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