Wednesday, July 30, 2014

More royal deaths

Would you like to read James McNaught’s novel Sinking Sand”? click here: Sinking Sand
(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
2 Kings 14:15–22, “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. And Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah lived after the death of Jehoash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel fifteen years. And the rest of the acts of Amaziah, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? Now 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 on horses: and he was buried at Jerusalem with his fathers in the city of David. And all the people of Judah took Azariah, which was sixteen years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah. He built Elath, and restored it to Judah, after that the king slept with his fathers.

Jehoash defeated Judah and plundered the Jerusalem and the Temple, however, he died before Amaziah died. It is interesting to note that a record of his reign was kept in the national archives at the time, a book called the chronicles of the kings of Israel. It is important to remember this as we read through the history of the kingdom period. We know that when the books of these histories were collected later the archives were available to the authors of the collections and the historical records were as accurate as when they were written. Amaziah came to the end of his reign and was assassinated by some of his servants. His reign ended in exactly the same as his father’s had. It seems as though Athaliah had given Judah a legacy of regicide and that kind of degenerate behaviour, which had so troubled king David (see 1 Sam 24: 6), became an acceptable practice in Judah. After Amaziah was assassinated and his body brought back to Jerusalem his son Azariah was anointed king in his place. Azariah was also known as Uzziah.

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