In the thirty-sixth year of King Asa’s reign, neighboring Israel began to make threats. The king of Israel “went up against Judah and fortified Ramah to prevent anyone from leaving or entering the territory of Asa king of Judah.”

So, the wars with Israel that had plagued his father and grandfather finally reached Asa’s house.

We have a bit of trouble with the timeline here. The scriptures, both 1st Kings 15 and 2nd Chronicles 16, say Baasha was the king of Israel who fortified Ramah. However, 1st Kings 15:33 reads, “In the third year of Asa king of Judah, Baasha son of Ahijah became king of all Israel in Tirzah, and he reigned twenty-four years.” So, in the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign, Baasha had been dead for nine years! Something is obviously wrong. The commentaries I read suggest that the 36 years should be counted from the division of Judah and Israel. That would put this event half-way through Baasha’s reign. I have another possible solution: It wasn’t Baasha who was king then; it was Omri. He became king in the 31st year of Asa and reigned twelve years. Why would the two Bible books say Baasha when it was Omri? One was source for the other, and the writer of the first simply got it wrong, confused over his kings. Either the year is wrong, or the king is wrong. I suppose it is also possible that a copyist, very early in the history of the original document, may have written “36” when the original said “26”, and that error was perpetuated. We’ll never know.

All that is tangential to the story. The real story is how Asa faced this new threat, only four miles from Jerusalem:

Asa then took the silver and gold out of the treasuries of the LORD’s temple and of his own palace and sent it to Ben-Hadad king of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus. “Let there be a treaty between me and you,” he said, “as there was between my father and your father. See, I am sending you silver and gold. Now break your treaty with Baasha king of Israel so he will withdraw from me.” 2nd Chronicles 16:2-3

Huh? Israel threatens by building a border fort and closing the border, probably as a precursor to renewed open war, and you go to Israel’s treaty partner for help, stripping the public and private wealth to do so? Something is wrong here. Gone are the days, twenty or so years previously, when faced with a graver threat from superior Cushite forces Asa prayed, “LORD, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. O LORD, you are our God; do not let man prevail against you.” God answered those prayers and gave Judah victory. Could not the similar crying out to God bring the same results now?

What motivated Asa to take this course of action? He was now about 55 years old, and had reigned 35 years. He had seen war before, both with the Cushites and probably some other border skirmishes with Israel, but most of his years he had been at peace with his neighbors. Had he lost his nerve for war, perhaps never really having it in the first place? Did he figure he could use worldly wealth to hire someone else to fight for him? In other words, did he buy off Aram because he could?

An interesting question in trying to figure out why a good king would take this route. Or would some people consider this a good move, a smart move by Asa? To save his army from fighting a war was a good thing, no? Perhaps, in twenty years of peace, Asa had disbanded most of his army and he would have to recruit, equip, and train them all over again. Perhaps he felt he didn’t have time for this, that the threat from Israel was more imminent.

Whatever his motives, Asa chose the route of entangling alliances to solve his military problem. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is nothing new in the Middle East. Here we see it employed in antiquity.

Tomorrow we’ll see what God’s prophet said to Asa about this, and how he reacted.

After conducting religious reforms as a young man, after he defeated the Cushites and Libyans with God’s help, after the encouragement from Azariah the prophet, King Asa went back to his religious reforms. 2nd Chronicles has this to say about this second round of reforms.

When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Azariah…he took courage. He removed the detestable idols from the whole land of Judah and Benjamin and from the towns he had captured in the hills of Ephraim. He repaired the altar of the LORD that was in front of the LORD’s temple.
…..…King Asa also deposed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother, because she had made a repulsive Asherah pole. Asa cut the pole down, broke it up and burned it in the Kidron Valley. Although he did not remove the high places from Israel, Asa’s heart was fully committed to the LORD all his life. He brought into the temple of God the silver and gold and the articles that he and his father had dedicated. 2nd Chronicles 15:8, 16-18

Well, quite a bit of reform. Initially, as described in yesterday’s post, Asa had: expelled the male shrine prostitutes, got rid of the idols his fathers had made, removed the foreign altars, removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones, cut down the Asherah poles, commanded Judah to seek the LORD. Now he goes about doing even more–except, he does not remove the high places.

This business of the high places is, I believe, a key to understanding Israel at this point. 2 Chronicles 14:5 says Asa removed the high places. 1 Kings 15:14 and 2nd Chronicles 15:17 say he did not. A careful reading of the text leads me to conclude that these are describing two very different events. At first, as a young man and a new king, Asa removed the high places. However, while he was busy with administering a country, building fortified cities, raising and training and equipping an army, and fighting the Cushites and Libyans, the Jews must have rebuilt the high places. So Asa, having been encouraged by Azariah, begins a second round of reforms. Idols–gone. Altar–repaired. Silver and gold–to the temple. Grandmother Maacah–deposed because she is a bad influence. Her Asherah pole–cut down, broken up, and burned. The high places–oh, not again! I just removed them (was it really a decade or two ago?).

This time he did not remove the high places. Why? He did it once. Why not again? What’s wrong with these Jews? They keep setting up alternate places of worship. Maybe they worship I AM there some of the time, but they also worship the other gods. I can’t keep up with it; I can’t keep removing them. And so Asa did not remove the high places this time around.

I don’t really find fault with Asa for this. Maybe I should, but I don’t. He should have removed them again, and again, and again, as many times at it took for Judah, Benjamin, and remnants of the other tribes to get the message. But he didn’t. Perhaps he thought there was enough worship of I AM going on at those places that they did some good. I don’t think he grew weary of well-doing. As I’ll write about in another post, the assembly he held in Jerusalem showed the extent of his zeal.

The high places exist today, not in Israel, but in America–places where we worship amiss, where we fall short of what I AM wants of us. As this post at The Path of Truth so well explains, the high places do exist. We tear them down and rebuild them, perhaps growing weary in well-doing. We need to keep removing them.

Asa is much on my mind these days. I’m spending much more time on him than is justified by the length of the lesson series I’m going to teach, only two weeks. But I’m finding Asa to be a fascinating story. His time as good king-bad king are perfect for the lessons. And trying to find the reason why he went bad is a good thing. I had planned today to write about something I discovered in the letters of C.S. Lewis, but I shall hold off on that. All the time I’ve had to spend on taxes has made my mind unable to fully appreciate CSL.

Asa was a young man when he became king. The scripture doesn’t tell us how young exactly. Some commentators say perhaps ten or eleven years old. After studying 1st King 15 and 2nd Chronicles 14-16, I think he more likely was 18 or 20. Rehoboam, Asa’s grandfather, was 41 when he became king. The Bible does not tell us how old his son, Abijah, was when he became king, but it was 17 years later. Assuming the successors were the first sons, and assuming these men had their first children at a normal age, say between 20 and 25, the timeline works out like this, setting the year of Rehoboam’s birth as year zero.

Birth…………………….yr of coronation/
Year…..King………….age at coronation…yrs of reign…age at death

0……….Rehoboam…………41/41………………17……………..58
20……..Abijah………………58/38……………….3……………….41
40……..Asa…………………..61/21………………41……………….62

Edited on 16 April 2009: I found, in 2nd Chronicles 11:18-25 the story of Rehoboam’s family. Abijah was the first son of his second wife, Maacah, daughter of Absalom. All together Rehoboam had eighteen wives and sixty concubines who bore him twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters. So this would tend to drive Asa’s age down just a little. If Rehoboam waited a year or two before taking his second wife, this would put Asa’s probable age at ascension at 16-18. Of course, Rehoboam, being crown prince at the time, may have taken wives in rapid succession, and Asa still could have been close to 20 when he became king.

All of this is only for the purpose of figuring out how old Asa was when he became king. Certainly, if Rehoboam and Abijah had their first children at an older age, Asa could have been as young as 10. I go for an older age for Asa because of what the Bible says about Abijah’s family: “He married fourteen wives and had twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters.” [2nd Chronicles 13:21] Clearly he began this polygamy quite a while before he became king. So Asa was a young man when he began his reign.

The scripture tells us something about Asa’s reforms.

Asa did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father David had done. He expelled the male shrine prostitutes from the land and got rid of all the idols his fathers had made. He even deposed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother, because she had made a repulsive Asherah pole. Asa cut the pole down and burned it in the Kidron valley. Although he did not remove the high places, Asa’s heart was fully committed to the LORD all his life. He brought into the temple of the LORD the silver and gold and the articles that he and his father had dedicated. 1st Kings 15:11-15

That is a pretty good report about Asa’s personal piety, and how that became part of his public policy. He followed two kings who were foolish, taking bad advice, and not having any particular religious convictions. Somehow Asa turned it around. The account in 2nd Chronicles has this a little different.

Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God. He removed the foreign altars and the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asharah poles. He commanded Judah to seek the LORD, the God of their fathers, and to obey his laws and commands. He removed the high places and incense altars in every town in Judah and the kingdom was at peace under him. 2nd Chronicles 14:2-5

Although these two accounts differ concerning the high places, and whether Asa removed them or not (although 2nd Chronicles has more information about that later, and about Maacah), it is clear that Asa began well. How does a young man, with bad examples in his father and grandfather (and his great-grandfather Solomon, for that matter), with a grandmother or mother who builds an Asherah pole and worships that foreign god, turn his life around?

We are not told how, but I think it had to be some godly tutors. His father was busy with all those wives and with training to become king when Rehoboam died. That happened somewhat sooner than expected. Asa was likely in the care of his mother, and under the tutelage of someone appointed by Abijah. This unknown, unsung person seems to have done his job exceedingly well. Asa, 20 years old at the most, proves to have more wisdom and fortitude than his two immediate predecessors.

This leads me to think of the many unsung heroes in the Christian community, in the church down through the ages. We hear about a few of these, such as in the oft told story of the chain of conversions from Dwight L. Moody to Billy Graham. But most remain unsung.

Today, I sing their praises.