Amaziah, Edom and the War with Israel

Amaziah executes his father's murderers but not their children, "as it is written in the law in the book of Moses." He hires 100,000 men of Israel for a hundred talents. A man of God: "O king, let not the army of Israel go with thee; for the LORD is not with Israel." "But what shall we do for the hundred talents?" "The LORD is able to give thee much more than this."

Judah kills 10,000 of Seir in the Valley of Salt. "And other ten thousand left alive did the children of Judah carry away captive, and brought them unto the top of the rock, and cast them down from the top of the rock." The dismissed Israelite soldiers raid Judah's towns.

Amaziah "brought the gods of the children of Seir, and set them up to be his gods." A prophet asks: "Why hast thou sought after the gods of the people, which could not deliver their own people out of thine hand?" Joash of Israel defeats him at Beth-shemesh, breaks Jerusalem's wall and takes the treasures. Fifteen years later conspirators kill Amaziah at Lachish.

"The rock"

Hebrew ha-sela, "the rock," may be the place Sela (2 Kings 14:7), sometimes identified with Umm el-Biyara above Petra or with es-Sela near Bozrah. The identification is uncertain.

Captives thrown from a cliff

The massacre is reported without comment; the text then shows Amaziah turning to the defeated people's gods, which leads to his fall.