2 Chronicles 25:17, commentary and pictures

The verse belongs to the record of Amaziah king of Judah, the unstable and disloyal king who reigned after Joash, who was good only as long as Jehoiada the priest lived. In the larger order it falls in the reading of 2 Chronicles 24-27, in the line of the kings of Judah running from Jehoshaphat through Jehoram, Ahaziah, Athaliah, Joash, Amaziah, Azariah or Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, closing in B.C. 586. It belongs within the history running from the beginning of the reign of Joash to the Babylonian captivity and from 2 Chronicles 25 to Ezra 5.

That history covers ground previously covered in Kings but gives fuller detail on the kings of Judah with interesting items not given in the parallel books. Its meaning is plain and can be understood without detailed explanation, yet it receives fuller information when compared with the parallel account in 2 Kings. It stands as a concrete example by which God shows His dealing with principles.

It shows that departing from God brings strife and great loss, where remembering God would have made things different. It is part of the history of Amaziah that illustrates the cost of continuing on a wrong course because of money already invested. The account shows that a course contrary to God's counsel can be refused with trust that God will provide more than the loss that is feared.

It belongs to the account in which the thistle proposes a marriage alliance to the cedar. That account gives lifeless things the speech and actions of rational beings. This proves that the Spirit of God makes inanimate things speak and act, so the dead in hades being made to speak and act about the facts of their cases as though alive does not mean they are alive or conscious.