History is piled on top of history in this fabled land, and also “grace upon grace” ( Jn 1:16 NASB).
I’m not sure we could call it a selective memory, but how glad we should be to know the things God does “remember” and the things He doesn’t. “Remember, O Lord, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses…Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions,” says the psalmist (Ps 25:6-7). God always operates with all facts available, but remembering with Him is making something from the past actionable in the present. In the midst of the ongoing mayhem in our story, we read these refreshing words: “the Lord was gracious to them, had compassion on them, and regarded them, because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not yet destroy them or cast them from His presence” (2 Ki 13:23). God’s grace wasn’t for Joash’s sake, or for his father’s, or grandfather’s, or great-grandfather’s sake. No, it was for the sake of men who had died as much as twelve centuries before, like us showing kindness to someone for the sake of their ancestor who lived in the Dark Ages! Now while Joash and Israel received undeserved kindness from God, down south, Amaziah, son of Jehoash, became king of Judah. Ascending the throne at twenty-five, on the murder of his father by the servants, he’s considered a good king, for “he did what was right in the sight of the Lord” (14:3), although those persistent “high places were not taken away” (v 4). He executed his father’s murderers, but spared their families, “according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses” (v 6). He is also remembered for his crushing defeat of the Edomites “in the Valley of Salt, and took Sela by war” (v 7), today known as Petra, in the very region where the Jewish remnant will yet hide and await their promised Messiah!