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And he took away the high places and the sun-images from all the towns of Judah; and the kingdom was quiet under his rule.

And Asa made prayer to the Lord his God and said, Lord, you only are able to give help against the strong to him who has no strength; come to our help, O Lord our God, for our hope is in you, and in your name we have come out against this great army. O Lord, you are our God; let not man's power be greater than yours.

And Asa and the people who were with him went after them as far as Gerar; and so great was the destruction among the Ethiopians that they were not able to get their army together again, for they were broken before the Lord and before his army; and they took away a great amount of their goods.

And he got together all Judah and Benjamin and those of Ephraim and Manasseh and Simeon who were living with them; for numbers of them came to him out of Israel when they saw that the Lord his God was with him.

And Asa would not let Maacah, his mother, be queen, because she had made a disgusting image for Asherah; and Asa had her image cut down and broken up and burned by the stream Kidron.

But the high places were not taken away out of Israel; but still the heart of Asa was true to the Lord all his life.

He took into the house of God all the things which his father had made holy and those which he himself had made holy, silver and gold and vessels.

And Ben-hadad did as King Asa said, and sent the captains of his armies against the towns of Israel, attacking Ijon and Dan and Abel-maim, and all the store-towns of Naphtali.

Then Baasha, hearing of it, put a stop to the building of Ramah, and let his work come to an end.

In the thirty-ninth year of his rule, Asa had a very bad disease of the feet; but he did not go to the Lord for help in his disease, but to medical men.

So Asa went to rest with his fathers, and death came to him in the forty-first year of his rule.

And Jehoshaphat his son became king in his place, and made himself strong against Israel.

He put forces in all the walled towns of Judah, and responsible chiefs in the land of Judah and in the towns of Ephraim, which Asa his father had taken.

And the Lord was with Jehoshaphat, because he went in the early ways of his father, not turning to the Baals,

But turning to the God of his father and keeping his laws, and not doing as Israel did.

So the Lord made his kingdom strong; and all Judah gave offerings to Jehoshaphat, and he had great wealth and honour.

His heart was lifted up in the ways of the Lord; and he went so far as to take away the high places and the wood pillars out of Judah.

In the third year of his rule he sent Benhail and Obadiah and Zechariah and Nethanel and Micaiah, his captains, as teachers into the towns of Judah;

Now Jehoshaphat had great wealth and honour, and his son was married to Ahab's daughter.

Then the king of Israel sent for one of his unsexed servants and said, Go quickly and come back with Micaiah, the son of Imla.