Canter Bridge

It seems at first odd that a history of Israel that reserves an exalted space for good-hearted monarchs should clear a circle also for the rogue prophet who strides into the king’s courts to denounce his behavior. This scenario represents the narrative version of the more abstract declaration that Israel must not have kings like those of all the other nations.

Israel, and then the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, are summoned to a new kind of kingship whereby the royal figure maintains a respectful subservience to YHWH’s instruction, whether this is delivered in the ‘law of Moses’ or by the words of a prophet. The dynamic this establishes sets up some of the more dramatic moments of the Bible’s twin histories of Israel.

Amaziah belongs to that royal genre in which the king begins well but later loses his grip:

Now after Amaziah came from the slaughter of the Edomites, he brought the gods of the people of Seir, set them up as his gods, and worshiped them, making offerings to them. The LORD was angry with Amaziah and sent to him a prophet, who said to him, ‘Why have you resorted to a people’s gods who could not deliver their own people from your hand?’ But as he was speaking the king said to him, ‘Have we made you a royal counselor? Stop! Why should you be put to death?’ So the prophet stopped, but said, ‘I know that God has determined to destroy you, because you have done this and have not listened to my advice.’

It is important to attend to the exact nature of Amaziah’s error. It is not that he slaughtered the Edomites. There is in theory remedy for the egregious miscalculation of coopting the vanquished Edomites’ gods. To that end, in fact, the nameless prophet of YHWH confronts the king.

The central flaw in Amaziah is not such stumbling but rather that one error for which there is no remedy: to fail to listen to YHWH’s correcting prophet. Amaziah has cut himself off from all recourse to royal sanity. So is he doomed.

The Bible’s wisdom literature aligns nicely with this narrative. In the Proverbs, for example, the fool is that individual who simply will not listen. All others possess some hope, however remote, of becoming wise. The fool does not, for he is already ‘wise in his own eyes’.

Listening, for these diverse biblical literatures, is life. Willful deafness is suicide.