Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on 2 Kings 14:1
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
Reign of Amaziah of Judah (cf. 2 Chron 25). - Kg2 14:1-7. Length and spirit of his reign, and his victory over the Edomites. - Kg2 14:1. Amaziah began to reign in the second year of Joash of Israel. Now as Joash of Israel ascended the throne, according to Kg2 13:10, in the thirty-seventh year of Joash of Judah, the latter cannot have reigned thirty-nine full years, which might be reckoned as forty ( Kg2 12:1), according to the principle of reckoning the current years as complete years, if the commencement of his reign took place a month or two before Nisan, and his death occurred a month or two after, without its being necessary to assume a regency. Kg2 14:2-4 Amaziah reigned twenty-nine years in the same theocratical spirit as his father Joash, only not like his ancestor David, i.e., according to the correct explanation in Ch2 25:2, not with שׁלם לבב (see at Kg1 11:4), since Amaziah, like his father Joash (see at Kg2 12:3), fell into idolatry in the closing years of his reign (cf. Ch2 25:14.). \- Only the high places were not taken away, etc. Kg2 14:5-6 After establishing his own government, he punished the murderers of his father with death; but, according to the law in Deu 24:16, he did not slay their children also, as was commonly the custom in the East in ancient times, and may very frequently have been done in Israel as well. The Chethb ימוּת is correct, and the Keri ימת is an unnecessary alteration made after Deuteronomy. Kg2 14:7 The brief account of the defeat of the Edomites in the Salt Valley and of the taking of the city of Sela is completed by Ch2 25:6-16. According to the latter, Amaziah sought to strengthen his own considerable army by the addition of 100,000 Israelitish mercenaries; but at the exhortation of a prophet he sent the hired Israelites away again, at which they were so enraged, that on their way home they plundered several of the cities of Judah and put many men to death. The Edomites had revolted from Judah in the reign of Joram ( Kg2 8:20.); Amaziah now sought to re-establish his rule over them, in which he was so far successful, that he completely defeated them, slaying 10,000 in the battle and then taking their capital, so that his successor Uzziah was also able to incorporate the Edomitish port of Elath in his own kingdom once more ( Kg2 14:22). On the Salt Valley (גּי־המּלח for גּיא־המּלח in the Chronicles), a marshy salt plain in the south of the Dead Sea, see at Sa2 8:13. According to Ch2 25:12 of the Chronicles, in addition to the 10,000 who were slain in battle, 10,000 Edomites were taken prisoners and cast headlong alive from the top of a rock. הסּלע (the rock) with the article, because the epithet is founded upon the peculiar nature of the city, was probably the capital of the Edomites, called by the Greeks ἡ Πέτρα, and bore this name from its situation and the mode in which it was built, since it was erected in a valley surrounded by rocks, and that in such a manner that the houses were partly hewn in the natural rock. Of this commercial city, which was still flourishing in the first centuries of the Christian era, splendid ruins have been preserved in a valley on the eastern side of the ghor which runs down to the Elanitic Gulf, about two days' journey from the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, on the east of Mount Hor, to which the Crusaders gave the name of vallis Moysi, and which the Arabs still call Wady Musa (see Robinson, Pal. ii. pp. 512ff., and for the history of this city, pp. 574…
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