2 Chronicles 25:11
And Amaziah strengthened himself, and led forth his people, and went to the valley of salt, and smote of the children of Seir ten thousand. And Amaziah strengthened himself, and led forth his people, and went to the valley of salt, and smote of the children of Seir ten thousand.
Amaziah strengthened himself and gathered his people and army, led them to the Valley of Salt, and struck down ten thousand of the children of Seir, that is the Edomites, subduing Edom by warfare. The victory was won by Judah's army alone without the hired Israelite soldiers. It followed Amaziah's choice to obey God's warning despite the money already spent to hire them, showing God's blessing to be worth more than the financial loss.
The verse belongs to the reign of Amaziah, the disloyal king of Judah who followed Joash and was followed by Azariah, or Uzziah, in the line of Judah's kings running down to the close of the kingdom in B.C. 586. Among those kings he ranks above the average. It illustrates the record of the unstable Amaziah in which doing duty brought blessing and departing from God brought strife, captivity and great loss. In that record God was willing to turn to help His people and work mightily for them when they sought Him with all the heart.
Amaziah's course was the direct opposite of Jehoshaphat's: he served God and accepted the prophet's testimony when it pleased him, but when the prophet reproved the course he was pursuing he resented it, rejected the counsel and threatened the prophet with smiting. So God determined to destroy him because he had done this and had not hearkened to counsel. His history is also the history of many others who follow their own counsel instead of accepting the counsel of the Lord's prophet. Victory over a people does not make their gods worthy of worship, for after defeating the Edomites Amaziah adopted their gods even though they had been unable to save their own people. Although Israel under Amaziah subdued the people of Edom by warfare, this victory did not enable Israel to exert moral influence over Esau's descendants.