2 Chronicles 25

¹In the second year of the reign of Jehoash son of Jehoahaz over Israel, Amaziah son of Joash became king of Judah.

²He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother’s name was Jehoaddan; she was from Jerusalem.

¹⁴When Amaziah returned from the slaughter of the Edomites, he brought back the gods of the Seirites, set them up as his own gods, bowed before them, and burned sacrifices to them.

⁸Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

²¹You have no part or share in our ministry, because your heart is not right before God.

²And Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest.

¹³Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men.

⁴And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father Amaziah had done.

²⁵And when the Arameans had withdrawn, they left Joash severely wounded. His own servants conspired against him for shedding the blood of the son of Jehoiada the priest, and they killed him on his bed. So he died and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.

²⁶Those who conspired against Joash were Zabad son of Shimeath the Ammonitess and Jehozabad son of Shimrith the Moabitess.

⁵As soon as the kingdom was firmly in his grasp, Amaziah executed the servants who had murdered his father the king.

⁶Yet he did not put the sons of the murderers to death, but acted according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, where the Lord commanded: “Fathers must not be put to death for their children, and children must not be put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.”

³¹You are not to accept a ransom for the life of a murderer who deserves to die; he must surely be put to death.

³²Nor should you accept a ransom for the person who flees to a city of refuge and allow him to return and live on his own land before the death of the high priest.

⁵And surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed. I will demand an accounting from anyone who takes the life of his fellow man:

⁶Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind.

¹⁴But if a man schemes and acts willfully against his neighbor to kill him, you must take him away from My altar to be put to death.

¹⁶Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.

²⁰The soul who sins is the one who will die. A son will not bear the iniquity of his father, and a father will not bear the iniquity of his son. The righteousness of the righteous man will fall upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked man will fall upon him.

²⁹“In those days, it will no longer be said: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge.’

³⁰Instead, each will die for his own iniquity. If anyone eats the sour grapes, his own teeth will be set on edge.

⁵As soon as the kingdom was firmly in his grasp, Amaziah executed the servants who had murdered his father the king.

⁶Yet he did not put the sons of the murderers to death, but acted according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, where the Lord commanded: “Fathers must not be put to death for their children, and children must not be put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.”

⁴Behold, every soul belongs to Me; both father and son are Mine. The soul who sins is the one who will die.

³You and Aaron are to number those who are twenty years of age or older by their divisions—everyone who can serve in Israel’s army.

¹⁴These are their numbers according to the houses of their fathers: From Judah, the commanders of thousands: Adnah the commander, and with him 300,000 mighty men of valor;

¹⁵next to him, Jehohanan the commander, and with him 280,000;

¹When Rehoboam arrived in Jerusalem, he mobilized the house of Judah and Benjamin—180,000 chosen warriors—to fight against Israel and restore the kingdom to Rehoboam.

¹This is the list of the Israelites—the heads of families, the commanders of thousands and of hundreds, and their officers who served the king in every matter concerning the divisions on rotating military duty each month throughout the year. There were 24,000 men in each division:

¹³Under their authority was an army of 307,500 trained for war, a powerful force to support the king against his enemies.

¹²He will appoint some for himself as commanders of thousands and of fifties, and others to plow his ground, to reap his harvest, and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.

²Jehu son of Hanani the seer went out to confront him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? Because of this, the wrath of the Lord is upon you.

¹¹But you, O man of God, flee from these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.

¹²Now behold, God Himself is with us as our head, and His priests with their trumpets sound the battle call against you. O children of Israel, do not fight against the Lord, the God of your fathers, for you will not succeed.”

¹Then the Lord sent Nathan to David, and when he arrived, he said, “There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor.

²⁸After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves and said to the people, “Going up to Jerusalem is too much for you. Here, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

¹Suddenly, as Jeroboam was standing beside the altar to burn incense, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord.

¹¹Then Asa cried out to the Lord his God: “O Lord, there is no one besides You to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on You, and in Your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord, You are our God. Do not let a mere mortal prevail against You.”

⁶and said, “O Lord, God of our fathers, are You not the God who is in heaven, and do You not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in Your hand, and no one can stand against You.

¹⁹And my God will supply all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

²⁹“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God

³⁰will fail to receive many times more in this age—and in the age to come, eternal life.”

¹¹I saw something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; neither is the bread to the wise, nor the wealth to the intelligent, nor the favor to the skillful. For time and chance happen to all.

¹⁴When Micaiah arrived, the king asked him, “Micaiah, should we go to war against Ramoth-gilead, or should we refrain?” “Go up and triumph,” Micaiah replied, “for they will be delivered into your hand.”

¹⁸But remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to gain wealth, in order to confirm His covenant that He swore to your fathers even to this day.

²²The blessing of the Lord enriches, and He adds no sorrow to it.

⁴³“We have ten shares in the king,” answered the men of Israel, “so we have more claim to David than you. Why then do you despise us? Were we not the first to speak of restoring our king?” But the men of Judah spoke more fiercely than the men of Israel.

²⁴that this is what the Lord says: ‘You are not to go up and fight against your brothers, the Israelites. Each of you must return home, for this is My doing.’” So they listened to the word of the Lord and turned back according to the word of the Lord.

²²An angry man stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered man abounds in transgression.

⁷Amaziah 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.

¹For the choirmaster. To the tune of “The Lily of the Covenant.” A Miktam of David for instruction. When he fought Aram-naharaim and Aram-zobah, and Joab returned and struck down 12,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt. You have rejected us, O God; You have broken us; You have been angry; restore us!

¹³And David made a name for himself when he returned from striking down eighteen thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt.

¹⁰And now, here are the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, whom You did not let Israel invade when they came out of the land of Egypt. So Israel turned away from them and did not destroy them.

⁸In the days of Jehoram, Edom rebelled against the hand of Judah and appointed their own king.

⁹So Jehoram crossed into Edom with his officers and all his chariots. When the Edomites surrounded him and his chariot commanders, he rose up and attacked by night.

³¹David brought out the people who were there and put them to work with saws, iron picks, and axes, and he made them work at the brick kilns. He did the same to all the Ammonite cities. Then David and all his troops returned to Jerusalem.

³David brought out the people who were there and put them to work with saws, iron picks, and axes. And he did the same to all the Ammonite cities. Then David and all his troops returned to Jerusalem.

⁵He rebuilt Upper and Lower Beth-horon as fortified cities with walls, gates, and bars,

²⁴He bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer for two talents of silver and built a city there, calling it Samaria after the name of Shemer, who had owned the hill.

¹⁷So Solomon rebuilt Gezer, Lower Beth-horon,

²⁹In the thirty-eighth year of Asa’s reign over Judah, Ahab son of Omri became king of Israel, and he reigned in Samaria twenty-two years.

²³He sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, who had defeated him, and he said, “Because the gods of the kings of Aram have helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.” But these gods were the downfall of Ahaz and of all Israel.

²¹There the Philistines abandoned their idols, and David and his men carried them away.

¹⁹And no one considers in his heart, no one has the knowledge or insight to say, “I burned half of it in the fire, and I baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make something detestable with the rest of it? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”

²⁵You must burn up the images of their gods; do not covet the silver and gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it; for it is detestable to the Lord your God.

³You shall have no other gods before Me.

⁴You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath.

⁵Instead, this is what you are to do to them: tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire.

⁵For all the gods of the nations are idols, but it is the Lord who made the heavens.

¹¹Amaziah, however, summoned his strength and led his troops to the Valley of Salt, where he struck down 10,000 men of Seir,

¹²and the army of Judah also captured 10,000 men alive. They took them to the top of a cliff and threw them down so that all were dashed to pieces.

⁷At that time Hanani the seer came to King Asa of Judah and told him, “Because you have relied on the king of Aram and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand.

⁸Were not the Cushites and Libyans a vast army with many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand.

²and you are not to make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall tear down their altars.’ Yet you have not obeyed My voice. What is this you have done?

²⁰No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons.

⁴So about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world, and that there is no God but one.

³⁰But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass through, for the Lord your God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate, that He might deliver him into your hand, as is the case this day.

³For the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires.

¹⁰And those who dwell on the earth will gloat over them and celebrate and send one another gifts, because these two prophets had tormented them.

²²What if God, intending to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the vessels of His wrath, prepared for destruction?

²⁸They carried out what Your hand and will had decided beforehand would happen.

²¹But they conspired against Zechariah, and by order of the king, they stoned him in the courtyard of the house of the Lord.

⁸Then Amaziah sent messengers to the king of Israel Jehoash son of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu. “Come, let us meet face to face,” he said.

⁹But Jehoash king of Israel replied to Amaziah king of Judah: “A thistle in Lebanon sent a message to a cedar in Lebanon, saying, ‘Give your daughter to my son in marriage.’ Then a wild beast in Lebanon came along and trampled the thistle.

¹⁴Then Abner said to Joab, “Let us have the young men get up and compete before us.” “Let them get up,” Joab replied.

¹³Meanwhile the troops that Amaziah had dismissed from battle raided the cities of Judah, from Samaria to Beth-horon. They struck down 3,000 people and carried off a great deal of plunder.

³It is honorable for a man to resolve a dispute, but any fool will quarrel.

⁸One day the trees set out to anoint a king for themselves. They said to the olive tree, ‘Reign over us.’

⁹But the olive tree replied, ‘Should I stop giving my oil that honors both God and man, to hold sway over the trees?’

¹³The boar from the forest ravages it, and the creatures of the field feed upon it.

³³He spoke of trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop growing in the wall, and he taught about animals, birds, reptiles, and fish.

¹⁶But when Uzziah became powerful, his arrogance led to his own destruction. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God, for he entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.

²⁵But because his heart was proud, Hezekiah did not repay the favor shown to him. Therefore wrath came upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem.

⁶But He gives us more grace. This is why it says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

¹⁸Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

¹⁷Like one who grabs a dog by the ears is a passerby who meddles in a quarrel not his own.

¹⁴then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

⁷Ahaziah’s downfall came from God when he went to visit Joram. When Ahaziah arrived, he went out with Joram to meet Jehu son of Nimshi, whom the Lord had anointed to destroy the house of Ahab.

¹⁵So the king did not listen to the people, and indeed this turn of events was from the Lord, to fulfill the word He had spoken to Jeroboam son of Nebat through Ahijah the Shilonite.

²⁵They disagreed among themselves and began to leave after Paul had made this final statement: “The Holy Spirit was right when He spoke to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet:

²⁶‘Go to this people and say, “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.”

¹⁶While he was still speaking, the king asked, “Have we made you the counselor to the king? Stop! Why be struck down?” So the prophet stopped, but he said, “I know that God has determined to destroy you, because you have done this and have not heeded my advice.”

¹¹But My people would not listen to Me, and Israel would not obey Me.

¹²So I gave them up to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.

⁸and, “A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word—and to this they were appointed.

¹⁶Ain, Juttah, and Beth-shemesh—nine cities from these two tribes, together with their pasturelands.

¹⁹But God struck down some of the people of Beth-shemesh because they looked inside the ark of the Lord. He struck down seventy men, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck them with a great slaughter.

²⁰The men of Beth-shemesh asked, “Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God? To whom should the ark go up from here?”

⁹but keep watching it. If it goes up the road to its homeland, toward Beth-shemesh, it is the Lord who has brought on us this great disaster. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not His hand that punished us and that it happened by chance.”

¹⁰So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and each man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great—thirty thousand foot soldiers of Israel fell.

⁵So the Lord his God delivered Ahaz into the hand of the king of Aram, who attacked him and took many captives to Damascus. Ahaz was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with great force.

⁶For in one day Pekah son of Remaliah killed 120,000 valiant men in Judah. This happened because they had forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers.

³⁶As the sun was setting, the cry rang out in the army: “Every man to his own city, and every man to his own land!”

¹⁶And the people went out, brought back branches, and made booths on their own rooftops, in their courtyards, in the courts of the house of God, and in the squares by the Water Gate and by the Gate of Ephraim.

¹⁷So they went to war against Judah, invaded it, and carried off all the possessions found in the king’s palace, along with his sons and wives; not a son was left to him except Jehoahaz, his youngest.

³⁹over the Gate of Ephraim, the Jeshanah Gate, the Fish Gate, the Tower of Hananel, and the Tower of the Hundred, as far as the Sheep Gate. And they stopped at the Gate of the Guard.

³⁸“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when this city will be rebuilt for Me, from the tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate.

⁹Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem at the Corner Gate, the Valley Gate, and the angle in the wall, and he fortified them.

¹Then the people of Jerusalem made Ahaziah, the youngest son of Jehoram, king in his place, since the raiders who had come into the camp with the Arabs had killed all the older sons. So Ahaziah son of Jehoram became king of Judah.

¹⁵The lot for the South Gate fell to Obed-edom, and the lot for the storehouses to his sons.

⁹So King Shishak of Egypt attacked Jerusalem and seized the treasures of the house of the Lord and of the royal palace. He took everything, including the gold shields that Solomon had made.

¹⁴He took all the gold and silver and all the articles found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the royal palace, as well as some hostages. Then he returned to Samaria.

¹⁷Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah lived for fifteen years after the death of Jehoash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel.

¹⁸As for the rest of the acts of Amaziah, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

¹⁵As for the rest of the acts of Jehoash, along with his accomplishments, his might, and how he waged war against Amaziah king of Judah, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

³⁴As for the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, from beginning to end, they are indeed written in the Chronicles of Jehu son of Hanani, which are recorded in the Book of the Kings of Israel.

³¹And Joshua and all Israel with him moved on from Libnah to Lachish. They laid siege to it and fought against it.

²So he went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.

²⁵And when the Arameans had withdrawn, they left Joash severely wounded. His own servants conspired against him for shedding the blood of the son of Jehoiada the priest, and they killed him on his bed. So he died and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.

¹⁹And conspirators plotted against Amaziah in Jerusalem, and he fled to Lachish. But men were sent after him to Lachish, and they killed him there.

²⁰They carried him back on horses and buried him in Jerusalem with his fathers in the City of David.