Scripture Daily

Context No. 4022 of 4322 · 2 Kings

Context · Reflection

2 Kings 14:1-6: in context

1In the second year of Joash, son of Joahaz, king of Israel, Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah began to reign. 2He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jehoaddin of Jerusalem. 3He did that which was right in the LORD’s eyes, yet not like David his father. He did according to all that Joash his father had done. 4However the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense in the high places. 5As soon as the kingdom was established in his hand, he killed his servants who had slain the king his father, 6but the children of the murderers he didn’t put to death, according to that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, as the LORD commanded, saying, “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man shall die for his own sin.”

When Amaziah becomes king and secures his throne, he executes the officials who had murdered his father the previous king, an act of justice against the assassins. But then the passage notes something significant: he did not put the children of the murderers to death, obeying the command written in the law of Moses that fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their fathers, but each shall die for his own sin.

In an age when it was common for a new king to wipe out the entire families of his enemies, Amaziah restrained himself, because God's law forbade punishing children for their parents' crimes. Here is a mark of justice shaped by God's word. He could have destroyed the whole families of the murderers, as other kings did, but he submitted his justice to God's law, which insists on individual responsibility: each person answers for their own sin, not for another's. There is an enduring principle here. Justice, when it is God's kind of justice, holds each person accountable for their own wrongdoing and refuses to punish the innocent for the guilty.

Do I reflect God's kind of justice, holding each person accountable for their own actions rather than blaming or punishing the innocent for the sins of others, restraining the impulse toward sweeping revenge?

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