2 Kings 14:17-29
There is nothing said about the last fifteen years of the life of Amaziah. Lost years! Nothing more worth while for God to mention! Are there not such periods in our own lives? Like his father Joash, Amaziah dies a violent death – a sad end for a man who "turned away from following the LORD" (2 Chronicles 25:27)! His son Azariah (elsewhere called Uzziah) succeeded him at the age of sixteen, while in Israel there follows the long reign of the third descendant of Jehu: Jeroboam II. The latter, like his predecessors, retains his connection with the golden calf of the first Jeroboam! Yet, in His mercy, God continues to deliver His people, even by the agency of this bad king. What patience, and how moving these words are: "the LORD said not that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven" (v. 27). God, constrained to act in judgment, is eager to seize every possibility of grace which His righteous covenant allows Him.
He continues to send prophets to the people during this reign: Hosea, Amos, finally Jonah who is mentioned here (v. 25). God multiplies the warnings. He can say later in the epistle to the Hebrews, that He "at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets". But to us now He has spoken in His Son (Hebrews 1:1-2).