2 Chronicles 14 (NIV)✞: Asa King of Judah
As I’m looking at this chapter, I realise I should have made the previous passage span 31:1–14:1, instead of just Chapter 13, if I’d been properly following the NIV section headings (which I usually do). But oh well; it doesn’t change anything I wrote for that passage, nor what I write for this one.
Passage
After the reign of Abijah in the last chapter, the next king of Judah is Asa. I wrote a lot about how mixed Abijah’s reign was, but there’s no such confusion for Asa: he was a good king, who followed God wholeheartedly.
As is often the case with such good kings, specific mention is made of Asa removing the “high places:”
3 He removed the foreign altars and the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. 4 He commanded Judah to seek the LORD, the God of their ancestors, and to obey his laws and commands. 5 He removed the high places and incense altars in every town in Judah, and the kingdom was at peace under him.
In addition to this Asa built up some of the cities in Judah. Mention is made in verse 6✞ that he wasn’t at war with anyone “during those years,” which gave him the opportunity to spend some time and resources on these fortifications.
“During those years” doesn’t mean for his entire reign, however, because he did end up at war with the Cushites. (1 Kings 15:9–24✞, which also covers Asa’s reign, mentions that he was also at war with Baasha king of Israel throughout his reign, so the period of peace must have been somewhat short.)
Like his father before him, Asa trusted in God:
11 Then Asa called to the LORD his God and said, “LORD, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, LORD our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. LORD, you are our God; do not let mere mortals prevail against you.”
12 The LORD struck down the Cushites before Asa and Judah. The Cushites fled, 13 and Asa and his army pursued them as far as Gerar. Such a great number of Cushites fell that they could not recover; they were crushed before the LORD and his forces. The men of Judah carried off a large amount of plunder. 14 They destroyed all the villages around Gerar, for the terror of the LORD had fallen on them. They looted all these villages, since there was much plunder there. 15 They also attacked the camps of the herders and carried off droves of sheep and goats and camels. Then they returned to Jerusalem.
Thoughts
“High places” are places where the people worshipped gods; usually false gods, but I believe they also worshipped the God in those places – at least some of the time. (They weren’t supposed to, that’s what the Temple was for, but they sometimes did.) I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before—probably many times—but the fact that every single time Judah got a good king he had to remove “high places” from the land is an indication that every single chance they got, God’s people kept creating them!
In a way, this is kind of a minor thing. Compared to, say, sacrificing their children in fire to false gods, having high places is a lower “crime.” On the other hand, it was much, much more insidious. The very fact that it’s not that big of a deal compared to other forms of false worship means that it got entrenched in the culture of God’s people. “What’s the big deal?” they thought (if they thought about it at all). “We’re just treating the LORD like any other ‘god’ – we worship Him, and we worship them! Every ‘god’ gets his due!” Which is exactly the problem: He isn’t like any other “god,” and making Him “just one more god, among many” is exactly what He wanted His people to avoid!
There are modern-day equivalents of this which are just as insidious, and therefore we don’t always think in those terms. When God’s people went to a high place and made sacrifices to Him and to other gods, He might very well have questioned them: “Why are you trusting in ‘gods’ that are not gods, instead of trusting in Me?” If I think to myself, “what’s the big deal, I go to church on Sundays but I also follow my horoscopes,” then God might very well question me: “Why are you trusting in predictions that are no predictions, instead of trusting in Me?” If I lie or cheat or steal in order to make more money, then God might very well question me: “Why are you trusting in money, which cannot save, instead of trusting in Me?”
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