1. Amaziah was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jehoaddan, from Jerusalem.
2. He did what was right in the Lord’s sight, though not wholeheartedly.
3. When he had the kingdom firmly in hand, he struck down the officials who had struck down the king, his father.
4. But their children he did not put to death, for he acted according to what is written in the law, in the Book of Moses, which the Lord commanded: “Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents; they shall each die for their own sin.”
5. Amaziah gathered Judah and placed them, out of all Judah and Benjamin according to their ancestral houses, under leaders of thousands and of hundreds. When he made a count of those twenty years old and over, he found that there were three hundred thousand picked men fit for war, capable of handling lance and shield.
6. He also hired a hundred thousand valiant warriors from Israel for a hundred talents of silver.
7. But a man of God came to him and said: “O king, let not the army of Israel go with you, for the Lord is not with Israel—with any Ephraimite.
8. Instead, go on your own, strongly prepared for the battle; why should the Lord hinder you in the face of the enemy: for with God is power to help or to hinder.”
9. Amaziah answered the man of God, “But what is to be done about the hundred talents that I paid for the troops of Israel?” The man of God replied, “The Lord can give you much more than that.”
10. Amaziah then disbanded the troops that had come to him from Ephraim, and sent them home. But they became furiously angry with Judah, and returned home blazing with anger.