Study Desk

Jeroboam did not recover his power in the days of Abijah. And the Lord struck him down, and he died.

The rest of the acts of Abijah, his ways and his sayings, are written in the story of the prophet Iddo.

Abijah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David. And Asa his son reigned in his place. In his days the land had rest for ten years.

And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God.

And Asa cried to the Lord his God, "O Lord , there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord , you are our God; let not man prevail against you."

Asa and the people who were with him pursued them as far as Gerar, and the Ethiopians fell until none remained alive, for they were broken before the Lord and his army. The men of Judah carried away very much spoil.

And he gathered all Judah and Benjamin, and those from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who were residing with them, for great numbers had deserted to him from Israel when they saw that the Lord his God was with him.

Even Maacah, his mother, King Asa removed from being queen mother because she had made a detestable image for Asherah. Asa cut down her image, crushed it, and burned it at the brook Kidron.

But the high places were not taken out of Israel. Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true all his days.

And he brought into the house of God the sacred gifts of his father and his own sacred gifts, silver, and gold, and vessels.

And Ben-hadad listened to King Asa and sent the commanders of his armies against the cities of Israel, and they conquered Ijon, Dan, Abel-maim, and all the store cities of Naphtali.

And when Baasha heard of it, he stopped building Ramah and let his work cease.

In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord , but sought help from physicians.

And Asa slept with his fathers, dying in the forty-first year of his reign.

They buried him in the tomb that he had cut for himself in the city of David. They laid him on a bier that had been filled with various kinds of spices prepared by the perfumer's art, and they made a very great fire in his honor.

Jehoshaphat his son reigned in his place and strengthened himself against Israel.

He placed forces in all the fortified cities of Judah and set garrisons in the land of Judah, and in the cities of Ephraim that Asa his father had captured.

The Lord was with Jehoshaphat, because he walked in the earlier ways of his father David. He did not seek the Baals,

but sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments, and not according to the practices of Israel.

Therefore the Lord established the kingdom in his hand. And all Judah brought tribute to Jehoshaphat, and he had great riches and honor.