2 Chronicles 24–35

24TH CHAPTER

King Joash of Judah—2 Kings 11:21–12:14

¹Joash^awas 7 years old when he began to rule, and he ruled for 40 years in Jerusalem. His mother was Zibiah from Beersheba. ²Joash did what the Lord considered right, as long as the priest Jehoiada lived. 

³Jehoiada got Joash two wives, and Joash had sons and daughters. 

⁴After this, Joash wanted to renovate the Lord’s temple. ⁵He gathered the priests and the Levites and said to them, “Go to the cities of Judah, and collect money throughout Israel to repair the temple of your God every year. Do it immediately!” But the Levites didn’t do it immediately. 

⁶So the king called for the chief priest Jehoiada and asked him, “Why didn’t you require the Levites to bring the contributions from Judah and Jerusalem? The Lord’s servant Moses and the assembly had required Israel to give contributions for the use of the tent containing the words of God’s promise.” ⁷(The sons of that wicked woman Athaliah had broken into God’s temple and used all the holy things of the Lord’s temple ⸤to worship⸥ other gods—the Baals.) 

⁸The king issued an order, and they made a box and placed it outside the gate of the Lord’s temple. ⁹Then they issued a proclamation in Judah and Jerusalem that the contributions should be brought to the Lord. (In the desert the Lord’s servant Moses had required Israel to make contributions.) ¹⁰All the officials and all the people were overjoyed. They brought the money and dropped it into the box until it was full. ¹¹Whenever the Levites brought the box to the king’s officers and they saw a lot of money, the king’s scribe and the chief priest’s officer would empty the box and put it back in its place. They would do this every day, so they collected a lot of money. ¹²The king and Jehoiada would give the money to the foremen who were working on the Lord’s temple, and they hired masons and carpenters to renovate the Lord’s temple. They also hired men who worked with iron and bronze to repair the Lord’s temple. ¹³As the men worked, the project progressed under the foremen’s guidance. They restored God’s temple to its proper condition and reinforced it. 

¹⁴When they finished, they brought the rest of the money to the king and Jehoiada, who used it to make utensils for the Lord’s temple. They made dishes and gold and silver utensils for the service and for the offerings. As long as Jehoiada lived, they sacrificed burnt offerings in the Lord’s temple. 

Joash’s Sin Leads to His Assassination—2 Kings 12:17–21

¹⁵When Jehoiada was old and had lived out his years, he died. He was 130 years old when he died. ¹⁶He was buried in the City of David with the kings because of the good he had done in Israel for God and the temple. 

¹⁷After he died, the officials of Judah bowed in front of the king with their faces touching the ground. Then the king listened to their advice. ¹⁸They abandoned the temple of the Lord God of their ancestors and worshiped idols and the poles dedicated to the goddess Asherah. This offense of theirs brought God’s anger upon Judah and Jerusalem. 

¹⁹The Lord sent them prophets to bring them back to himself. The prophets warned them, but they wouldn’t listen. ²⁰God’s Spirit gave Zechariah, son of the priest Jehoiada, strength. Zechariah stood in front of the people and said to them, “This is what God says: Why are you breaking the Lord’s commands? You won’t prosper that way! The Lord has abandoned you because you have abandoned him.” ²¹But they plotted against Zechariah, and by the king’s order they stoned him to death in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple. ²²King Joash did not remember how kind Zechariah’s father, Jehoiada, had been to him. Instead, he killed Jehoiada’s son. As Zechariah died, he said, “May the Lord see ⸤this⸥ and get revenge!” 

²³At the end of the year, the Aramean army attacked Joash. They came to Judah and Jerusalem and destroyed all the people’s leaders. The Arameans sent all the loot they took from Judah and Jerusalem to the king of Damascus. ²⁴The Aramean army had come with a small number of men, but the Lord handed Joash’s large army over to them because Joash’s soldiers had abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors. So the Arameans carried out ⸤the Lord’s⸥ judgment on Joash. ²⁵When the Arameans withdrew, they left him suffering from many wounds. His own officials plotted against him for murdering the son of the priest Jehoiada. They killed Joash in his bed. When he died, they buried him in the City of David, but they didn’t bury him in the tombs of the kings. ²⁶These were the men who conspired against him: Zabad, son of an Ammonite woman named Shimeath, and Jehozabad, son of a Moabite woman named Shimrith. ²⁷The record about his sons, the many divine revelations against him, and the rebuilding of God’s temple is in the notes made in the Book of the Kings. His son Amaziah succeeded him as king. 

25TH CHAPTER

King Amaziah of Judah—2 Kings 14:1–7

¹Amaziah was 25 years old when he began to rule, and he ruled for 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother was Jehoaddan from Jerusalem. ²He did what the Lord considered right, but he did not do it wholeheartedly. ³As soon as he had firm control over the kingdom, he executed the officials who killed his father, the former king. ⁴But he didn’t execute their children. He obeyed the Lord’s command written in the Book of Moses’ Teachings: “Parents must never be put to death for the crimes of their children, and children must never be put to death for the crimes of their parents. Each person must be put to death for his own crime.” 

⁵Amaziah called the people of Judah together and assigned them by families to regiment and battalion commanders for all of Judah and Benjamin. He organized those who were at least 20 years old and found that he had 300,000 of the best men for the army, those who could handle a spear and a shield. ⁶He also hired 100,000 soldiers from Israel for 7,500 pounds of silver. 

⁷But a man of God came to him and said, “Your Majesty, Israel’s army must not go with you, because the Lord isn’t with Israel. He’s not with these men from Ephraim. ⁸If you go into battle with them, no matter how courageous you are, God will use the enemy to defeat you, because God has the power to help you or to defeat you.” 

⁹Amaziah asked the man of God, “What should I do about the 7,500 pounds of silver I gave the troops from Israel?” 

The man of God answered, “The Lord can give you much more than that.” 

¹⁰Then Amaziah dismissed the troops that had come to him from Ephraim. But they became furious with Judah and returned home. 

¹¹Amaziah courageously led his troops. When he came to the Dead Sea region, he killed 10,000 men from Seir.^a12The Judeans captured another 10,000 alive, took them to the top of a cliff, and threw them off the top of the cliff so that they were dismembered. 

¹³The troops that Amaziah sent back so that they couldn’t go with him into battle raided the towns in Judah from Samaria to Beth Horon. They killed 3,000 people and took a lot of goods. 

King Amaziah’s Sin Leads to His Defeat—2 Kings 14:8–20

¹⁴After Amaziah came back from defeating the Edomites, he brought the gods of the people of Seir, set them up as his gods, bowed down to them, and burned sacrifices to them. ¹⁵The Lord became angry with Amaziah. He sent him a prophet who asked him, “Why do you dedicate your life to serving the gods of those people? Those gods couldn’t save their own people from you.” 

¹⁶As he was talking, the king asked him, “Did we make you an adviser to the king? Stop! Do you want me to have you killed?” 

The prophet stopped. He said, “I know that God has decided to destroy you because you did this, but you refuse to listen to my advice.” 

¹⁷After getting advice ⸤from his advisers⸥, King Amaziah of Judah sent messengers to King Jehoash,^bson of Jehoahaz and grandson of Jehu of Israel, to declare war on Israel. 

¹⁸King Jehoash of Israel sent this message to King Amaziah of Judah: “A thistle in Lebanon sent a message to a cedar in Lebanon. It said, ‘Let your daughter marry my son,’ but a wild animal from Lebanon came along and trampled the thistle. ¹⁹You say you defeated Edom, and now you’ve become arrogant enough to look for more fame. Stay home! Why must you invite disaster and your own defeat and take Judah with you?” 

²⁰But Amaziah wouldn’t listen. (God made this happen because he wanted to hand over the Judeans to Jehoash because they had sought help from Edom’s gods.) ²¹So King Jehoash of Israel attacked, and King Amaziah of Judah met him in battle at Beth Shemesh in Judah. ²²Israel defeated the army of Judah, and the Judeans fled to their homes. ²³King Jehoash of Israel captured King Amaziah, son of Joash and grandson of Ahaziah of Judah, at Beth Shemesh and brought him to Jerusalem. He tore down a 600-foot section of the wall around Jerusalem from Ephraim Gate to Corner Gate. ²⁴⸤He took⸥ all the gold, silver, and all the utensils he found in God’s temple with Obed Edom and in the royal palace treasury. He also took hostages. Then he returned to Samaria. 

²⁵Joash’s son King Amaziah of Judah lived 15 years after the death of Jehoahaz’s son King Jehoash of Israel. ²⁶Isn’t everything else about Amaziah, from beginning to end, written in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel? ²⁷After Amaziah turned away from the Lord, conspirators in Jerusalem plotted against him. Amaziah fled to Lachish, but they sent men to Lachish after him and killed him there. ²⁸They brought him back by horse and buried him in the city of Judah with his ancestors. 

26TH CHAPTER

King Uzziah of Judah—2 Kings 14:21–15:3

¹All the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was 16 years old, and made him king in place of his father Amaziah. ²Uzziah rebuilt Elath and returned it to Judah after King Amaziah lay down in death with his ancestors. ³Uzziah was 16 years old when he began to rule, and he ruled for 52 years in Jerusalem. His mother was Jecoliah from Jerusalem. ⁴He did what the Lord considered right, as his father…