Asa removes many idolatrous shrines and even deposes his own grandmother for making an Asherah pole, but later in his reign pays the Arameans to attack Israel rather than trusting God, a decision the prophet Hanani condemns.
Further context
3 min readForty-one years on the throne of Judah, and the verdict is the first favourable one since Solomon: he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father David had done.
The reforms are itemised and they are aimed at the family as much as at the country. He expels the male shrine prostitutes and removes the idols his predecessors had made. Then he deposes his own grandmother Maakah from her position as queen mother, because she had made a repulsive image for Asherah, and he cuts the thing down and burns it in the Kidron valley. The queen mother held a formal position at court with real influence, and removing her is a constitutional act rather than a family quarrel.
One qualification is attached and it recurs through the whole southern line: the high places were not removed. Local hilltop shrines, some of them dedicated to the LORD and some not, stay in use for another two centuries and defeat nearly every reformer who tries to close them.
The episode that defines his reign is a piece of foreign policy. Baasha of Israel fortifies Ramah, a few kilometres north of Jerusalem, to control the road and stop anyone travelling south. Asa's response is to empty the treasuries of the temple and the palace and send the silver and gold to Ben-Hadad of Damascus, asking him to break his treaty with Israel and attack from the north. It works. Aram invades Galilee, Baasha abandons Ramah, and Asa carries off its stones and timber and uses them to fortify two towns of his own.
A prophet called Hanani then confronts him with the cost of the manoeuvre. Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand. He reminds him of an earlier occasion when a vastly larger force was defeated, and adds the sentence the episode is remembered for: the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.
Asa is enraged and puts the prophet in prison, and brutally oppresses some of the people at the same time.
The closing note is a small and pointed one. In the thirty-ninth year of his reign he is afflicted with a disease in his feet, and though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the LORD, but only from the physicians. The first ten years of the reign are described as peaceful, and a substantial victory over an invading force is recorded, along with a national assembly at which the whole country entered into a covenant to seek the LORD with all their heart and soul. What follows the prophet's rebuke is a different man: a king who imprisons the man who confronted him, oppresses some of his own people, and refuses to consult anyone but physicians when he is dying.
Two years later he dies.
Asa reigns forty-one years, which is one of the longest in Judah, and the reforms recorded are specific: he expels the male shrine prostitutes, removes the idols his ancestors had made, and deposes his own grandmother from her position as queen mother because she had made a repulsive image for Asherah.
The queen mother held a formal office in Judah, which is why almost every regnal summary in these books names the king's mother, and removing one was a political act as much as a religious one.
The alliance with Aram that a prophet condemns was paid for with silver and gold taken from the temple treasury, and it worked: Baasha abandoned his fortification of Ramah and Asa carried off the building materials.