AMON
B.C. 641-639
THE brief reign of Amon is only a sort of unimportant and miserable annex to that of his father. As he was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, he must have witnessed the repentance and reforming zeal of his father, if, in spite of all difficulties, we assume that narrative to be historical. In that case, however, the young man was wholly untouched by the latter phase of Manasseh's life, and flung himself headlong into the career of the king's earlier idolatries. "He walked in all the way that his father walked in, and served the idols that his father served, and worshipped them"-which was the more extraordinary if Manasseh's last acts had been to dethrone and destroy these strange gods. He even "multiplied trespass," so that in his son's reign we find every form of abomination as triumphant as though Manasseh had never attempted to check the tide of evil. We know nothing more of Amon. Apparently he only reigned two years. He is the only Jewish king who bears the name of a foreign-an Egyptian-deity.
For pictures of the state of things in this reign we may look to the prophets Zephaniah and Jeremiah, and they are forced to use the darkest colors.
This is Zephaniah's picture:-
"Woe to her that is rebellious and polluted, to the oppressing city!
She obeyed not the voice: she received not instruction;
She trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God.
Her princes in the midst of her are roaring lions;
Her judges are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones on the morrow
Her prophets are light and treacherous persons:-
Her priests have profaned the sanctuary, they have done violence to the law."
He tells us that Baal and his black-robed chemarim are still prevalent-that men worshipped on their housetops the host of heaven, and swore by "Moloch their king." Therefore would God search Jerusalem with candles, and would visit the men who had sunk, like thick wine on the lees, and who said-in their infidel hearts, "Jehovah will not do good, neither will He do evil" He is an Epicurean God, a cypher, a fainéant. "Men make all kinds of fine calculations," says Luther, "but the Lord God says to them, ‘For whom, then, do you hold Me? For a cypher? Do I sit here in vain, and to no purpose? You shall know that I will turn their accounts about finely, and make them all false reckonings."'
Not less dark is the view of Jeremiah. Like Diogenes in Athens, Jeremiah in vain searches Jerusalem for a faithful man. Among the poor he finds brutish obstinacy, among the rich insolent defiance. They are like fed horses in the morning-lecherous and unruly. They are slanderers, adulterers, corrupters, murderers. They worship Baal and strange gods. "They set a trap, they catch men. As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit. They are waxen fat, they shine; yea, they overpass in deeds of wickedness." "An astonishment and horror is done in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means: and My people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?" Jeremiah 5:30-31 "From the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely. They have treated also the hurt of My people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,' when there is no peace. Were they ashamed- when they had committed abominations? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall." Jeremiah 6:13-15
The wretched reign ended wretchedly. Amon met the fate of Amaziah and of Joash. He was murdered by conspirators-by some of his own courtiers-in his own palace. He was not the victim of any general rebellion. The people of the land were apparently content with the existent idolatry, which left them free for lives of lust and luxury, of greed and gain. They resented the disorder introduced by an intrigue of eunuchs or court officials. They rose and slew the whole band of conspirators. Amon was buried with his father in the new burial-place of the Kings in the garden of Uzza, and the people placed his son Josiah-a child of eight years old-upon the throne.