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 25-2 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

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, and it is, or we can say disobedience is costly,

because it was his mistrust of God that got him

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