Asa: Idols Cleared Out, an Army of a Million, and the Seer's Rebuke

Asa son of Abijah reigned forty-one years, longer than any king of Judah except Manasseh and Uzziah. The first thing said of him is that he did what was good and right. He removed the altars of foreign gods and the high places, broke the pillars, cut down the asherahs — and even deposed his own grandmother Maacah from the rank of queen mother over an idol she had made; the idol he burned at the Kidron brook.

The second thing is war. Zerah the Cushite came against Judah with an army of a thousand thousand and three hundred chariots. Asa met him in the valley at Mareshah and prayed in words that stayed in the language: "LORD, there is none besides You to help between the mighty and the powerless. Help us, for on You we lean, and in Your name we have come against this multitude." The Cushites were broken.

The third thing is old age. When Baasha king of Israel began fortifying Ramah to seal the road to Jerusalem, Asa took silver and gold from the treasuries of the Temple and the palace and sent to Ben-hadad king of Aram: break your alliance with Baasha. The plan worked; Aram struck the north and Baasha abandoned the building.

Then Hanani the seer came: you leaned on the king of Aram and not on the LORD your God; were not the Cushites and the Libyans a huge army — and they were given into your hand when you leaned on Him. "For the eyes of the LORD range over the whole earth to give strength to those whose heart is whole with Him." Asa was enraged and put the seer in the stocks.

The last line about him: in the thirty-ninth year of his reign he became diseased in his feet, and the disease was severe; "and in his illness he sought not the LORD but the physicians." The same man who prayed at Mareshah.