Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we open in the Southern Kingdom of Judah with the new King Amaziah on the throne.

You may recall from yesterday that his dad, Joash, who had become king at age seven,

was killed by some of his servants, and that's when Amaziah ascended the throne. And one of

his first acts was to avenge his father's death by killing the men who killed him. One thing that

was really popular back then, even though it wasn't sanctioned by God, was to kill the families of those who

threatened the king's reign. But Amaziah doesn't. He obeys God's commands and refuses to punish

the children for the sins of the father. God commanded his people not to carry out justice

generationally, even though he sometimes does. He's the decider of what's just. He can be trusted with that kind of thing.

In general, Amaziah was a pretty good king, especially at first. But 252 tells us that even his

good actions weren't done with a fully yielded heart. And this shows up in how he handles a few of the

things God commands, initially that he left

the high places of idol worship intact.

It's starting to seem like the high places are like the last five pounds.

If you've ever been on a diet, you know what I mean.

Amaziah decides to go to war against their long-standing enemy of the Edomites, and he

hires 100,000 soldiers from Israel to join his army in

Judah. He pays more than 1.5 million in today's U.S. dollars for these soldiers. But then,

a man of God calls him on his lack of faith for hiring the enemy army, so he sends the Israeli

soldiers home. They get angry about it and raid the cities of Judah in retaliation, killing

3,000 people. It also cost Amaziah the $1.5 million in silver because he didn't get that

money back. We can look at this in one of two ways. We can either say obedience is costly,

...