Amaziah, Jeroboam II and Jonah

Amaziah kills the servants who murdered his father, "But the children of the murderers he slew not: according unto that which is written in the book of the law of Moses… The fathers shall not be put to death for the children." He kills ten thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt and takes Sela.

"Come, let us look one another in the face." Jehoash: "The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar… Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast… and trode down the thistle." They meet at Beth-shemesh; Judah flees. Jehoash breaks down four hundred cubits of Jerusalem's wall and takes the gold, silver and hostages. Amaziah flees from a conspiracy to Lachish and is killed there; Azariah, sixteen, is made king.

Jeroboam II reigns forty-one years in Samaria. "He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher." "For the LORD saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter… And the LORD said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam."

Jonah son of Amittai

This brief notice is the only mention of Jonah outside the book of Jonah. Gath-hepher is in Galilee (Khirbet ez-Zurra' near Mash'had). The book of Jonah's date and genre are debated; the 2 Kings notice places a historical prophet of that name in the 8th century BC.

Jeroboam II's Israel

The Samaria Ostraca, dated to the first half of the 8th century BC, record deliveries of wine and oil to Samaria from clans of Manasseh, some with names containing Baal or YHWH. A seal found at Megiddo reads "(belonging) to Shema, servant of Jeroboam." Amos and Hosea describe wealth, luxury and injustice in this period.