25:152 Chronicles 25:15

The verse concerns Amaziah, the disloyal king of Judah who reigned after Joash, who was good as long as Jehoiada the priest lived, and before Azariah, or Uzziah.ST Jul 4, 1911 After gaining glorious victories in war against the Edomites, the people of Seir, he returned from that victory and set up their gods to worship them, though he had just defeated their worshipers.ST May 30, 1911+1 His course involved a choice whether to follow God despite the cost, since God could give him victory without the hired Israelite army and His blessing was worth more than the money invested in them.ST Jul 8, 1889

Because he sought after and trusted the gods of Edom and Seir, seeking help from them, the anger of the Lord was kindled against him and He sent a prophet to rebuke and challenge him for seeking gods that had been unable to deliver and save their own people from his hand.ST Jan 11, 1899+4 Those gods were powerless and did not elevate their worshipers, so the prophet's rebuke exposes the folly and blindness of turning from the principles that gave strength and victory to the failed religion of the defeated foe, and the verse warns against adopting the worship of a conquered people.ST May 30, 1911+1 He was unstable in this, sometimes listening to the prophet but at other times turning to idolatry and departing from God, showing that departing from God brings strife and captivity and great loss while doing duty brings blessing, and how different things might have been if he had remembered God.ST May 7, 1912+1

The same reversal seen in Amaziah is repeated in individual and national life, as when the United States turns from absolute separation of church and state and the Protestant principles that made its worthy progress and its victory over Spain to the Roman Catholic principles that left Spain weak and easily vanquished after more than four centuries of Roman Catholicism.ST May 30, 1911+1 That turning is manifest especially in Sunday laws and in friendliness to Roman Catholics not as private citizens but as religionists, members of a religio-political organization, a blindness shared by many professed Protestants.ST May 30, 1911 Yet God remains willing to turn to help His people and work mightily for them when they seek Him with all the heart.ST May 7, 1912 The verse is also used as an illustration of Scripture personifying things that cannot literally speak or act, like the thistle in Jotham's fable speaking to the cedar, to argue that speech attributed to the dead in a parable does not establish that the dead are conscious.ST Mar 27, 1879