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Amaziah of Judah
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Amaziah of Judah was the king of Judah, and son and successor of Joash (2 Kings 14:1-4). He took the throne at the age of 25 (2 Chronicles 25:1). The meaning of his name has been expressed as "the strength of the Lord" or "strengthened by Jehovah" or "Yahweh is mighty". He reigned for 29 years (2 Kings 14:2) from 797/796 to 768/767 BC.
Amaziah began his reign by punishing the murderers of his father (2 Kings 14:5; 2 Chronicles 25:3).
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Amaziah of Judah was the king of Judah, and son and successor of Joash (2 Kings 14:1-4). He took the throne at the age of 25 (2 Chronicles 25:1). The meaning of his name has been expressed as "the strength of the Lord" or "strengthened by Jehovah" or "Yahweh is mighty". He reigned for 29 years (2 Kings 14:2) from 797/796 to 768/767 BC.
Amaziah began his reign by punishing the murderers of his father (2 Kings 14:5; 2 Chronicles 25:3). He was the first to employ a mercenary army of 100,000 Israelite soldiers, which he did in his attempt to bring the Edomites again under the yoke of Judah (2 Chr. 25:5, 6). He was commanded by an unnamed prophet to send back the mercenaries, to whom he acquiesced (2 Chr. 25:7-10, 13), much to the annoyance of the mercenaries. His obedience to this command was followed by a decisive victory over the Edomites (2 Chr. 25:14-16). Amaziah began to worship some of the idols he took from the Edomites, which the author of Chronicles believes led to his ruin and his defeat by Jehoash, king of Israel whom he had challenged to battle. His defeat was followed by a conspiracy that took his life (2 Kings 14:8-14, 19). He was slain at Lachish, to which he had fled, and his body was brought upon horses to Jerusalem, where it was buried in the royal sepulchre (2 Kings 14:19, 20; 2 Chr. 25:27, 28).
Chronological notes
The calendars for reckoning the years of kings in Judah and Israel were offset by six months, that of Judah starting in Tishri (in the fall) and that of Israel in Nisan (in the spring). Cross-synchronizations between the two kingdoms therefore often allow narrowing of the beginning and/or ending dates of a king to within a six-month range. For Amaziah, the Scriptural data allow the narrowing of his accession to some time between Nisan 1 of 796 BC and the day before Tishri 1 of the same BC year. For calculation purposes, this should be taken as the Judean year beginning in Tishri of 797/796 BC, or more simply 797 BC. His death occurred at some time between Nisan 1 and Tishri 1 of 767 BC, i.e. in 768/767 by Judean reckoning, or more simply 768 BC.
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