2 Chronicles25chapter 25

twenty and five years old when he began to reign: Amaziah's formula matches Kings almost word for word, but Chronicles trades the comparison to David and Joash for a different measure, not with a perfect heart. The phrase reads forward into the chapter rather than backward into his father's record, since the divided heart named here is exactly what breaks out at verse 14 when Amaziah brings home the gods of Seir. Jehoaddan of Jerusalem, his mother, is named in both accounts and nowhere else in Scripture.

when the kingdom was established to him: Amaziah executes his father's murderers but spares their children, and Chronicles keeps the citation Kings already carries, the fathers shall not die for the children, out of the book of Moses. The parallel exposition at 2 Kings 14:5-6 already carries the citation's weight; here the same clause confirms Chronicles is working from a shared source rather than a new legal ground. A king who honors that rule in verse 4 is the same king who, ten verses later, bows before another nation's gods.

three hundred thousand choice men: The muster and the hire belong to Chronicles alone; Kings never mentions the three hundred thousand of Judah or the hundred thousand Israelites bought for a hundred talents of silver. Amaziah's own army is a fourth the size Jehoshaphat once fielded, a shrinkage the numbers themselves record, and his answer to the shortfall is money rather than prayer. Hiring Ephraim for silver is the same alliance with the north that Chronicles keeps flagging as a fault line in Judah's kings.

let not the army of Israel go with thee: The man of God who confronts Amaziah before the campaign even begins has no counterpart in Kings; the whole episode from verse 7 through verse 10 is Chronicles' own addition. His charge is not moral but positional, the Lord is not with Israel, because Ephraim's worship at the calves has cut it off from the Lord's presence regardless of its numbers. Fellowship with an unfaithful ally is treated as a spiritual liability before it is treated as a military one.

The Lord is able to give thee much more than this: Amaziah's objection is practical, the hundred talents already paid to Ephraim, and the prophet's answer becomes the chapter's proverb, the Lord is able to give thee much more than this. The promise never specifies how the loss will be made good, only that it will, and it asks Amaziah to trust a future gain he cannot yet see over a present loss he can count. He obeys this word and loses the money; the rest of the chapter shows what he does when a harder word costs him something dearer.

their anger was greatly kindled against Judah: Amaziah sends the hired men home, and Ephraim's anger at the dismissal is the seed of verse 13's raid on Judah's own cities. Chronicles lets a single obedient decision carry a cost that falls later, on towns between Samaria and Beth-horon that Amaziah's army was not there to defend. Right choices in this book are not shown to be free of consequence, only right.

went to the valley of salt: Kings records the ten thousand slain in the valley of salt and the taking of Selah in a single clause; Chronicles adds a second ten thousand, taken alive and thrown from the top of the rock. The added detail belongs to Chronicles alone, and the commentators do not soften it, reading it as retaliation or as calculated terror against a people already broken. A victory this costly to the losers sets up the irony of verse 14 more sharply than the Kings account by itself would.

fell upon the cities of Judah: The raid on Judah's own cities has no parallel in Kings at all; the whole verse is material only Chronicles preserves. The dismissed Ephraimites, still angry from verse 10, strike the towns between Samaria and Beth-horon and carry off spoil while Amaziah is away fighting Edom, proof that the man of God's warning in verse 7 named a real danger and not a scruple. Obedience to the prophet cost Amaziah nothing here that his own countrymen did not make him pay anyway.