Amaziah (King)

Depiction of Amazjas in Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum (1553), by Guillaume Rouille (~ 1518–1589)

Amaziah ( Hebrew אמציה, Strong is YHWH ) was King of Judah . His reign is dated to the years 800–783 BC. BC (Albright) or 796–767 BC Chr. ( Thiele ) dated.

Amaziah was the son and successor of Joash , who had been overthrown by a conspiracy. The Old Testament report in 2 Chr 25  EU describes how Amaziah executed his father's murderers. Amaziah later called an army of allegedly 100,000 men, but was reprimanded for this by a prophet who declared that Amaziah should rather rely on the power of YHWH . Amaziah went against the Edomites and defeated them. However, when he worshiped some captured statues of gods from the Edomites, he again provoked the anger of the YHWH priests. This was followed by a war against the northern kingdom of Israel under Joasch , which was catastrophic for Judah and its king, who was captured by Beth Shemesch . Jerusalem was conquered, its walls torn down, the city plundered; for the YHWH prophets a punishment for Amaziah falling away from the old faith. Soon afterwards Amaziah was apparently released again, but, like his father, was the victim of a conspiracy. Although he was still able to flee as far as Lachisch , his adversaries caught up with him and killed him there. His successor as King of Judah was his son Azariah (also called Usia).

literature

• Aaron Schart:  Amaziah. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific biblical lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff., Accessed on February 25, 2009.

predecessor	Office	successor
Joasch	King of Judah 800–783 BC Chr.	Azariah