2 Kings 14 - NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
14:7 defeated ten thousand Edomites. Edom had revolted against Judahite rule during the reign of Jehoram (8:20–22). Amaziah, established on the throne of Judah in the wake of his father Joash’s assassination (12:19–21), is not noted as reestablishing Judahite control over Edom, but he did win an important battle that had implications for Judah’s ability to trade (cf. v. 22). Valley of Salt. Best identified with Wadi el-Milh, east of Beersheba (cf. 2Sa 8:13). Sela. Meaning “rock,” it has commonly been identified with the famous rock-city Petra, halfway between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba, although archaeological evidence does not suggest settlement there earlier than the seventh century BC. It may more plausibly be identified with Khirbet Sil‘, a couple of miles/kilometers north of Buseira (Biblical Bozrah), which was a fortified city from the ninth to the seventh centuries BC.
14:13 Ephraim Gate . . . Corner Gate. The assault on Jerusalem that followed the battle of Beth Shemesh resulted in the destruction of about 600 feet (183 meters) of city wall on the northern side of the city between these two gates. Ephraim Gate. As its name suggests, it was the main gate in the center of the northern wall and exited to the road that led to the mountains of Ephraim via the central Benjamin plateau. Corner Gate. Its location is uncertain (as indeed the precise location of the city walls more generally in this period is uncertain), but it is assumed to have been at the northwestern corner of the city.
14:19 Lachish. Identified with Tell ed-Duweir, now called Tel Lachish, situated near the Wadi Ghafr—a main route from the coastal plain to the Hebron hills. Archaeological excavations there have revealed (level IV) a large fortified city in this period, which we may assume was constructed during the reign of Rehoboam (2Ch 11:5–12, 23). Among the finds were an impressive city-gate complex in the southwestern wall (the city’s only gate), and a palace-fort in the center of the city attached to a storehouse and a stable. It was to this city, then—the most important fortified city in Judah after Jerusalem—that Amaziah fled when Jerusalem was lost.
14:22 Elath. Elath was a port town on the northern coast of the Gulf of Aqaba (the Red Sea), closely associated with Ezion Geber and the trade of the Solomonic era with the wider world (1Ki 9:26). It stood at the southern end of the great King’s Highway, which ran all the way north through the Transjordan to Damascus and facilitated trade connections especially with southern Arabia (see note on Nu 20:17). Presumably Elath was lost to Judah when Edom revolted during Jehoram’s reign (2Ki 8:20–22), just as both Israelite and Judahite control of the highway was challenged as a result of both that revolt and also the earlier Moabite uprising (1:1; 3:4–5) and the constant pressure from Damascus. It was only in the aftermath of Amaziah’s victory over the Edomites (v. 7) and with the decline of Damascus that Azariah, Amaziah’s son, was able once again to reassert control of Elath.
14:25 restored the boundaries of Israel. In the aftermath of Assyria’s assault on Syria, which had evidently seriously weakened the kingdoms of that region, and in a period of relative Assyrian quiescence in Syria and Palestine, Jeroboam II was able to further the Israelite recovery begun by his father. Assyria did not apparently trouble Syria or Palestine much in the period between Adadnirari III (811–783 BC) and Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BC). Assyria’s kings—Shalmaneser IV (783–773 BC), Ashur-Dan III (773–755 BC) and Ashurnirari V (755–745 BC)—were beset by other troubles and only infrequently ventured out on military campaigns in the west. Lebo Hamath. Hamath was situated in central Syria at the place where the main road from the north crossed the Orontes River, about 133 miles (214 kilometers) north of Damascus (v. 28), and Lebo Hamath (“entrance to Hamath”) was presumably a closely associated city or geographic feature. As we can see from 1Ki 8:65, Jeroboam II restored the territory of northern Israel to its previous greatest extent under Solomon. He not only recovered all the territory in Transjordan captured by Hazael in 2Ki 10:32–33, but in fact now claimed dominion over Aram and the Syrian kingdoms beyond Damascus, to the ideal boundaries of the promised land described elsewhere as including territory “from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines, as far as the border of Egypt” and “from Tiphsah to Gaza” (1Ki 4:21, 24; cf. 2Ki 15:16). Whatever Lebo Hamath is, therefore, it cannot be (as many have suggested) a city to the south of Hamath itself (e.g., modern Lebweh in the Lebanon Valley). It must be looked for to the north. Gath Hepher. Jos 19:13 suggests that it was a town on the eastern border of the territory of Zebulun, and traditionally it has been identified with Khirbet el-Zurra‘a near the modern settlement of Mashhad, a couple of miles/kilometers east of Sepphoris, which, in fact, contains a tomb opportunistically attributed to Jonah.
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