2 Chronicles 25:5

5 King Amaziah organized all the men of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin into army units, according to the clans they belonged to, and placed officers in command of units of a thousand and units of a hundred. This included all men twenty years of age or older, 300,000 in all. They were picked troops, ready for battle, skilled in using spears and shields.

2 Chronicles 25:5 Meaning and Commentary

2 Chronicles 25:5

Moreover Amaziah gathered Judah together
The inhabitants thereof:

and made them captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds,
according to the houses of their fathers, throughout all Judah and
Benjamin;
he divided the people, according to their families throughout his kingdom, into thousands and hundreds, and out of their respective families appointed captains over them:

and he numbered them from twenty years old and above;
the usual age men were numbered at for war, to the fiftieth, according to Josephus; the Roman law ^F1 obliged none to be soldiers after fifty, nor might any be dismissed before ^F2; the age of military men with the Romans was from seventeen to forty six, or, as some, forty five; but with the Persians from twenty as here to fifty ^F3:

and found them three hundred thousand choice men, able to go forth to
war, that could handle spear and shield;
which shows that their number was greatly decreased since the times of Jehoshaphat, ( 2 Chronicles 17:14-18 ) , occasioned by the wars under Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Joash; some copies of the Vulgate Latin ^F4 have only 30,000.

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FOOTNOTES:

F1 Seneca de Brevitate Vitae, c. 20.
F2 Liv. Hist. l. 42. c. 33.
F3 Alex. ab. Alex. Genial. Dier. l. 1. c. 20.
F4 Ed. of Sixtus V. the Lovain and MSS. in James's Corruption of the Fathers, p. 295.

2 Chronicles 25:5 In-Context

3 As soon as he was firmly in power, he executed the officials who had murdered his father.

4 He did not, however, execute their children, but followed what the Lord had commanded in the Law of Moses: "Parents are not to be put to death for crimes committed by their children, and children are not to be put to death for crimes committed by their parents; people are to be put to death only for crimes they themselves have committed."

5 King Amaziah organized all the men of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin into army units, according to the clans they belonged to, and placed officers in command of units of a thousand and units of a hundred. This included all men twenty years of age or older, 300,000 in all. They were picked troops, ready for battle, skilled in using spears and shields.

6 In addition, he hired 100,000 soldiers from Israel at a cost of about four tons of silver.

7 But a prophet went to the king and said to him, "Don't take these Israelite soldiers with you. The Lord is not with these people from the Northern Kingdom.