Amaziah Captures Sela and Renames It Jokteel

After consolidating his throne, King Amaziah of Judah set out to recover the Edomite territory lost during the reign of his great-grandfather Jehoram. 2 Kings 14:7 records the bare military summary: 'He slew of Edom in the valley of salt ten thousand, and took Selah by war, and called the name of it Joktheel unto this day.' The fuller account in 2 Chronicles 25 fills in the moral collapse that followed: Amaziah hired 100,000 Israelite mercenaries for one hundred talents of silver, then dismissed them on a prophet's command, leading them to ravage Judean towns out of resentment. Amaziah's army nonetheless triumphed — they pushed the captives off the cliff-top at Sela and ten thousand more died in the fall (2 Chronicles 25:12). Sela, 'the rock,' was Edom's natural fortress city in the cleft of the mountains south of the Dead Sea — traditionally identified with Umm el-Biyara or with the broader rock-cleft region that later Roman armies knew as Petra. Renaming it Jokteel ('subdued by God') marked the victory in the standard way ancient kings asserted dominion. But the spiritual disaster came next: Amaziah brought home the gods of the Edomites and set them up as his own gods, bowing down before them and burning incense. A prophet rebuked him: 'Why hast thou sought after the gods of the people, which could not deliver their own people out of thine hand?' Amaziah's arrogance grew until he provoked a needless war with Israel that ended in his army's rout at Beth-shemesh, the breach of Jerusalem's wall, and his eventual assassination at Lachish — a textbook biblical case of military victory paired with spiritual ruin.

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