They were gathered in Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign.

There was no war until the thirty-fifth year of Asa’s reign.

Note that the events of Asa’s reign, from beginning to end, are written in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel.

In the thirty-sixth year of Asa, Israel’s King Baasha went to war against Judah. He built Ramah in order to deny access to anyone—going or coming—to Judah’s King Asa.

So he went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Asa and all Judah and Benjamin, hear me. The Lord is with you when you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you abandon Him, He will abandon you.

King Asa also removed Maacah, his grandmother, from being queen mother because she had made an obscene image of Asherah. Asa chopped down her obscene image, then crushed it and burned it in the Kidron Valley.

Asa was angry with the seer and put him in prison because of his anger over this. And Asa mistreated some of the people at that time.

So Asa brought out the silver and gold from the treasuries of the Lord’s temple and the royal palace and sent it to Aram’s King Ben-hadad, who lived in Damascus, saying,

When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Azariah son of Oded the prophet, he took courage and removed the detestable idols from the whole land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities he had captured in the hill country of Ephraim. He renovated the altar of the Lord that was in front of the portico of the Lord’s temple.

He walked in the way of Asa his father; he did not turn away from it but did what was right in the Lord’s sight.

Abijah rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of David. His son Asa became king in his place. During his reign the land experienced peace for 10 years.

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

Because the land experienced peace, Asa built fortified cities in Judah. No one made war with him in those days because the Lord gave him rest.

Asa had an army of 300,000 from Judah bearing large shields and spears, and 280,000 from Benjamin bearing regular shields and drawing the bow. All these were brave warriors.

So Asa marched out against him and lined up in battle formation in the Valley of Zephathah at Mareshah.

Then Asa cried out to the Lord his God: “Lord, there is no one besides You to help the mighty and those without strength. Help us, Lord our God, for we depend on You, and in Your name we have come against this large army. Yahweh, You are our God. Do not let a mere mortal hinder You.”

So the Lord routed the Cushites before Asa and before Judah, and the Cushites fled.

Then Asa and the people who were with him pursued them as far as Gerar. The Cushites fell until they had no survivors, for they were crushed before Yahweh and His army. So the people of Judah carried off a great supply of loot.

The high places were not taken away from Israel; nevertheless, Asa was wholehearted his entire life.

Ben-hadad listened to King Asa and sent the commanders of his armies to the cities of Israel. They attacked Ijon, Dan, Abel-maim, and all the storage cities of Naphtali.

Then King Asa brought all Judah, and they carried away the stones of Ramah and the timbers Baasha had built it with. Then he built Geba and Mizpah with them.

At that time, Hanani the seer came to King Asa of Judah and said to him, “Because you depended on the king of Aram and have not depended on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand.

In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa developed a disease in his feet, and his disease became increasingly severe. Yet even in his disease he didn’t seek the Lord but only the physicians.

Asa died in the forty-first year of his reign and rested with his fathers.

He stationed troops in every fortified city of Judah and set garrisons in the land of Judah and in the cities of Ephraim that his father Asa had captured.

Then a letter came to Jehoram from Elijah the prophet, saying:

This is what Yahweh, the God of your ancestor David says: “Because you have not walked in the ways of your father Jehoshaphat or in the ways of Asa king of Judah

So Solomon finished the Lord’s temple and the royal palace. Everything that had entered Solomon’s heart to do for the Lord’s temple and for his own palace succeeded.

All of Solomon’s work was carried out from the day the foundation was laid for the Lord’s temple until it was finished. So the Lord’s temple was completed.

Jehoshabeath, the king’s daughter, rescued Joash son of Ahaziah from the king’s sons who were being killed and put him and the one who nursed him in a bedroom. Now Jehoshabeath was the daughter of King Jehoram and the wife of Jehoiada the priest. Since she was Ahaziah’s sister, she hid Joash from Athaliah so that she did not kill him.

Then the whole assembly made a covenant with the king in God’s temple. Jehoiada said to them, “Here is the king’s son! He must reign, just as the Lord promised concerning David’s sons.

Whenever the chest was brought by the Levites to the king’s overseers, and when they saw that there was a large amount of money, the king’s secretary and the high priest’s deputy came and emptied the chest, picked it up, and returned it to its place. They did this daily and gathered the money in abundance.

Then the king and Jehoiada gave it to those in charge of the labor on the Lord’s temple, who were hiring stonecutters and carpenters to renovate the Lord’s temple, also blacksmiths and coppersmiths to repair the Lord’s temple.

When they finished, they presented the rest of the money to the king and Jehoiada, who made articles for the Lord’s temple with it—articles for ministry and for making burnt offerings, and ladles and articles of gold and silver. They regularly offered burnt offerings in the Lord’s temple throughout Jehoiada’s life.

The priests went to the entrance of the Lord’s temple to cleanse it. They took all the unclean things they found in the Lord’s sanctuary to the courtyard of the Lord’s temple. Then the Levites received them and took them outside to the Kidron Valley.

Solomon and the whole assembly with him went to the high place that was in Gibeon because God’s tent of meeting, which the Lord’s servant Moses had made in the wilderness, was there.