Second Book of Chronicles 15

¹ The spirit of God came on Azariah son of Oded;

² he went out to meet Asa and said, ‘Listen to me, Asa, and all you of Judah and of Benjamin. Yahweh is with you so long as you are with him. When you seek him, he lets you find him; when you desert him, he deserts you.

³ Many a day Israel will spend without a faithful God, without priest to teach, without law;

⁴ but in their distress they will return to Yahweh, the God of Israel; they will seek him, and he will let them find him.

⁵ When that time comes no grown man will know peace, for many troubles will afflict all the inhabitants of the country.

⁶ Nation will be shattered by nation, city shattered by city, since God will afflict them with every kind of distress.

⁷ But for your part, take courage, do not let your hands weaken, for your deeds will be rewarded.’

⁸ When Asa heard these words and this prophecy, he was emboldened to remove all the abominable idols throughout the land of Judah and Benjamin, and in the towns he had captured in the highlands of Ephraim; he then repaired the altar of Yahweh that stood in front of the Porch of Yahweh.[*a]

⁹ He gathered all Judah and Benjamin together, and also the Ephraimites, Manassites and Simeonites who had settled with them, since great numbers of Israelites had gone over to Asa when they saw that Yahweh was with him.

¹⁰ In the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa they assembled in Jerusalem;

¹¹ and they sacrificed to Yahweh that day seven hundred oxen and seven thousand sheep out of the spoil they had brought back.

¹² They made a compact to seek Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, with all their heart and soul;

¹³ anyone who would not seek Yahweh the God of Israel was to be put to death, whether of high or low degree, man or woman.

¹⁴ They pledged their oath to Yahweh aloud with shouts to the sound of trumpet and horn;

¹⁵ all Judah rejoiced at the oath they had wholeheartedly taken. They sought Yahweh so earnestly that he let them find him, and granted them peace on every side.

¹⁶ Maacah herself, the mother of King Asa, was deprived by him of the dignity of queen mother for making an obscenity for Asherah; Asa cut down her obscenity and burnt it in the wadi Kidron.

¹⁷ Though the high places were not abolished in Israel,[*b] the heart of Asa was blameless all his life.

¹⁸ He deposited the offerings dedicated by his father and his own offerings too, in the Temple of God, silver and gold and furnishings.

¹⁹ Up to the thirty-fifth year of Asa’s reign there was no war.