And he did what was right in the sight of Jehovah, yet not like David his father he did according to all that Joash his father had done.
Amaziah's reign opens with a verdict that sounds like approval but holds something back. He did right — yet not like David. He copied his own father Joash instead. So how much is "right" worth when the heart behind it is only half in it?
Joash, Amaziah's father, ended badly. So a son who did right was no small thing. One writer reads it as evidence that God stepped in:
When an evil-doing son follows a righteous father, it proves that good example or teaching does not make an evil nature good... But when a righteous son follows a wicked father, and that son does what is right in the sight of the Lord, that is proof that God has stepped in with the power of His grace. So in this case Amaziah, who did right, follows Joash his father, who at the last did wickedly. It was a little brightness for Judah, but only for a short time. The reason: "he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, but not with a perfect heart."
The account names his mother. One writer links her to the good start, and then to what God saw underneath:
His mother's name, Jehoaddan, means "Jehovah is pleased." It may have been through her influence, since her name shows godliness, that her son began his reign well. He did what was right in the sight of the LORD. But the Lord looks deeper and knows the heart of man. He knew that it was "not with a perfect heart."
The verse names two models and says which one Amaziah copied. He reached back one generation, when he should have reached back to the beginning:
To govern his conduct, Amaziah should have gone back to the origin of the kingship and to the conduct of David, king according to God's heart. No doubt David had failed in serious ways, and he had to undergo severe discipline for it. But David's heart had always been upright in the Lord's service and about the throne of God among His people.
Why is David the standard? Another writer points to how completely God had hold of his heart:
This great thing is said of David, that he followed Jehovah with all his heart. There was power in Jehovah to engage His people's hearts completely. This became the standard for later unfaithful kings: "his heart was not perfect with Jehovah his God, as was the heart of David his father." Jehovah had the whole heart of David, and the immediate result was worship.
A good start is not the same as a whole heart. Rossier names the one thing Amaziah let stand:
Still, this beginning by itself does not show a heart fully given to the service of the Lord. A straw inside a piece of cast iron is enough to make it break when the right moment comes. This straw was the keeping of the high places.
Another writer draws the line straight to believers today:
"And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, but not with a perfect heart." Just like this is the lack of heart-devotedness in the children of God.
His obedience was real as far as it went. What came next shows where it stopped:
So Amaziah shows a measure of righteousness. But in the end his heart is lifted up within him, and he challenges the king of Israel. Then this solemn fact appears: God will never approve the presumption of a righteous man. God will take the part of the bad man who is challenged out of presumption rather than the part of the righteous man who challenges him out of presumption.
- Grace starts it. A son doing right after a father who ended badly is not inherited character. It is God stepping in. Good example alone does not make a bad nature good.
- The heart qualifies it. The record says "right." God adds "not with a perfect heart." He reads deeper than the public account.
- The model decides it. Amaziah copied Joash, one generation back. The standard was David, whose heart God held completely.
- A small thing undoes it. Like a straw hidden in cast iron, one compromise left standing breaks the whole thing under pressure.
- Presumption ends it. Real but partial righteousness ended in a lifted-up heart. God will not back presumption, even in a man who was doing right.
Only, the high places were not removed the people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places.
Amaziah did what was right, yet he left the hilltop shrines standing. That one word "but" separates doing right from being wholly devoted. Why would God keep recording a practice that was not, on its face, idol worship?
These hilltop sites did not begin as idol worship.
The high place was, we might say, a kind of necessity brought in by the failure and disordered state of the people at large... They were not, in themselves, connected with idolatry. At the beginning they were devoted to the true worship of God. To some extent they were even places where He Himself in grace recognised the need and met with His people. But it was not in the order He Himself had provided. Later on, however, He established His centre, placed His name at Jerusalem, and the temple of His glory was there. From then on, worship at the high places was direct disobedience to His will. So it was bound to become more and more tied to the idolatry to which the people were always prone.
Not every high place held an idol. The problem was who chose the place.
The Word must alone govern them in all matters relating to divine worship, as indeed in everything else. God would choose His own centre, and there His people must come with their burnt offerings and sacrifices... The time soon came, sadly, when Israel chose high places for themselves. Some of these were for idolatrous worship, and some for the worship of God. But all the high places were offensive in His sight, whatever the motives of those who set them up. They were the expression of self-will, of hearts not subject to His commandments.
Amaziah did not invent this failure. He took over a pattern that earlier kings had set. The older translation quoted below opens this verse with "Only" instead of "But".
This beginning by itself does not show a heart given without reserve to the service of the Lord. A single flaw in a piece of cast iron is enough to make it break when the right occasion comes. That flaw was the keeping of the high places... this word "Only, the high places were not removed" is like a refrain running through the history of the faithful kings of Judah... The kings of Judah did not take David their father as their rule. They were generally content to start from the reign of Solomon, who had not abolished the high places. A system may boast of great age. But it is always very dangerous to settle into one that does not look to the mind of God as its source.
God blessed men who kept the high places. Did that mean He approved?
Bear in mind, it is not idol worship but the worship of God in high places that I speak of. God met these good men, honoured and blessed them, as He does thousands in human religious systems now... These godly men had grown up in the evil and been taught it. The question of whether it was right had never been raised in their consciences. So God blessed and owned their faithfulness up to the light they had... Did He therefore approve, sanction, or even overlook the direct breaking of His own word? He has answered this Himself with unmistakable clearness. "But the high places were not taken away," or the like, again and again qualifies the approval given to the otherwise faithful acts of His servants. It shows that He never lost sight of the sin, however much they had grown up unaware of it.
Rossier applies the same test to Joash. A king's own hands may be clean of the incense and still not clear him.
Joash tolerated the people's incense burning on the high places; he himself, no doubt, did not take part in these idolatrous customs, but he was no less guilty. To tolerate evil among the people whom God had entrusted to him was the same as committing it himself.
The verse is not a museum piece. Where God has already shown His people a gathering centre, choosing another one repeats Amaziah's "only."
In His Word and by His Spirit, God has provided a true Centre of gathering for His people. To ignore that Centre, and to choose places and ways of worship that the word of God does not provide for, is really to worship in the high places. No doubt much of this is done in all sincerity, and God, as we were saying, meets His people in grace according to the measure of their faith.
- Centre. God chose His own centre for worship. Once the temple stood, the hilltops were no longer a concession but plain disobedience.
- Self-will. The offence was not foreign gods but human choosing — hearts that worshipped the true God on their own terms.
- Refrain. "But the high places were not removed" returns again and again over Judah's better kings. One small flaw breaks the whole casting under pressure.
- Toleration. A king need not burn the incense himself. Leaving it standing among the people God entrusted to him counted as his own act.
- Grace. God honours sincere faith up to the light it has, yet still records the sin. His blessing is never His permission.