Asa אסא
king of Judah for forty-one years; he removed the idols and deposed the queen mother
Asa reigned forty-one years — longer than any king of Judah before Uzziah. He drove out of the land the idols set up under his father and grandfather, and spared not even his own family: he deposed Maacah the queen mother because she had made an image of Asherah, and burned the image by the brook Kidron (1 Kings 15:13).
In his days Zerah the Cushite came against Judah with a vast army, and Asa cried out: «Lord, it is nothing for You to help the many or the powerless; help us, for on You we rely» (2 Chronicles 14:10). The army was broken. The end of his reign was darker than its beginning: in war with Baasha king of Israel he took silver and gold from the Temple and bought the alliance of Ben-Hadad of Aram, for which the seer Hanani rebuked him — and in his thirty-ninth year he fell ill in his feet and «in his illness sought not the Lord but the physicians». AM 2982–3023 traditionally, 911–870 BCE academically.
Sources
Tanakh
- Melachim I (1 Kings) 15:9–24 — the forty-one-year reign, the deposing of Maacah, and the alliance with Ben-Hadad
- 2 Chronicles 14–16 — the war with Zerah the Cushite, Hanani's rebuke, and the illness in his feet
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.