Short-Term Memory

15 Now the Spirit of God came on Azariah the son of Oded, ² and he went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Listen to me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: the Lord is with you when you are with Him. And if you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you abandon Him, He will abandon you. ³ For many days Israel was without the true God and without a teaching priest and without theLaw. ⁴ But in their distress they turned to the Lord God of Israel, and they sought Him, and He let them find Him. ⁵ In those times there was no peace for him who went out or him who came in, because many disturbances afflicted all the inhabitants of the lands. ⁶ Nation was crushed by nation, and city by city, for God troubled them with every kind of distress. ⁷ But you, be strong and do not lose courage, for there is a reward for your work.”

Asa’s Reforms

⁸ Now when Asa heard these words and the prophecy which Azariah the son of Oded the prophet spoke, he took courage and removed the abominable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and from the cities which he had captured in the hill country of Ephraim. He then restored the altar of the Lord which was in front of the porch of the Lord. ⁹ And he gathered all Judah and Benjamin, and those from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who resided with them, for many defected to him from Israel when they saw that the Lord his God was with him. ¹⁰ So they assembled at Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign. ¹¹ They sacrificed to the Lord on that day seven hundred oxen and seven thousand sheep from the spoils they had brought. ¹² They entered into the covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and soul; ¹³ and whoever would not seek the Lord God of Israel was to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman. ¹⁴ Moreover, they made an oath to the Lord with a loud voice, with shouting, trumpets, and with horns. ¹⁵ All Judah rejoiced concerning the oath, for they had sworn with all their heart and had sought Him earnestly, and He let them find Him. So the Lord gave them rest on every side.

¹⁶ He also removed Maacah, the mother of King Asa, from the position of queen mother, because she had made an abominable image as an Asherah, and Asa cut down her abominable image, crushed it, and burned it at the brook Kidron. ¹⁷ But the high places were not removed from Israel; nevertheless Asa’s heart was blameless all his days. ¹⁸ He brought into the house of God the dedicated things of his father and his own dedicated things: silver, gold, and utensils. ¹⁹ And there was no more war until the thirty-fifth year of Asa’s reign.

16 In the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign, Baasha king of Israel came up against Judah and fortified Ramah in order to prevent anyone from going out or coming in to Asa king of Judah. ² Then Asa brought out silver and gold from the treasuries of the house of the Lord and the king’s house, and sent it to Ben-hadad king of Aram, who lived in Damascus, saying, ³ “A treaty must be made between you and me, as there was between my father and your father. Behold, I have sent you silver and gold; go, break your treaty with Baasha king of Israel so that he will withdraw from me.”⁴ And Ben-hadad listened to King Asa, and he sent the commanders of his armies against the cities of Israel, and they conquered Ijon, Dan, Abel-maim, and all the storage cities of Naphtali. ⁵ When Baasha heard about it, he stopped fortifying Ramah and put an end to his work. ⁶ Then King Asa brought all Judah, and they carried away the stones of Ramah and its timber with which Baasha had been building, and with it he fortified Geba and Mizpah.

Asa Imprisons the Prophet

⁷ At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him, “Because you have relied on the king of Aram and have not relied on the Lord your God, for that reason the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand. ⁸ Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubim an immense army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, He handed them over to you. ⁹ For the eyes of the Lord roam throughout the earth, so that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His. You have acted foolishly in this. Indeed, from now on you will have wars.” ¹⁰ Then Asa was angry with the seer and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him for this. And Asa mistreated some of the people at the same time.

¹¹ Now, the acts of Asa from the first to the last, behold, they are written in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel. ¹² In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa became diseased in his feet. His disease was severe, yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians. ¹³ So Asa lay down with his fathers, and died in the forty-first year of his reign. ¹⁴ They buried him in his own tomb which he had cut out for himself in the city of David, and they laid him in the resting place which he had filled with spices of various kinds blended by the perfumers’ art; and they made a very great fire for him.