2 Chronicles 15: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The Spirit of God comes on Azariah son of Oded, and he tells King Asa and the people of Judah and Benjamin that the LORD is with them while they are with him, and that he will forsake them if they forsake him. Asa takes courage, clears out idols, repairs the altar of the LORD, and gathers Judah, Benjamin, and people who had come over from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon to Jerusalem in his fifteenth year. They sacrifice from the plunder and enter a covenant to seek God with all their heart, agreeing that anyone who will not seek him is to be put to death. Asa removes his mother from her place as queen mother and destroys her idol; the high places are not removed, and there is no more war until his thirty-fifth year.

Claim by Claim

1. 15:1
   • The Spirit of God came upon Azariah.
   • Azariah was the son of Oded.
2. 15:2
   • Azariah went out before Asa.
   • Azariah said to Asa, Hear me.
   • Azariah addressed Asa and all Judah and Benjamin.
   • Azariah said the LORD is with them while they are with him.
   • Azariah said that if they seek the LORD, he will be found by them.
   • Azariah said that if they forsake the LORD, he will forsake them.
3. 15:3
   • For many days Israel was without the true God.
   • Israel was without a priest who teaches.
   • Israel was without law.
   • The statement about Israel's many days without God, priest, and law carries no verb, so it can be read as past or as future.
4. 15:4
   • In its distress Israel turned to the LORD, the God of Israel.
   • They sought the LORD.
   • The LORD was found by them.
5. 15:5
   • In those times there was no peace for the one going out.
   • There was no peace for the one coming in.
   • Great turmoils were upon all the inhabitants of the lands.
6. 15:6
   • Nation was crushed by nation.
   • City was crushed by city.
   • God confounded them with every kind of distress.
7. 15:7
   • Azariah told them to be strong.
   • Azariah told them not to let their hands go slack.
   • Azariah said there is a reward for their work.
8. 15:8
   • Asa heard these words.
   • Asa heard the prophecy of Oded the prophet.
   • Asa took courage.
   • Asa removed the detestable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin.
   • Asa removed the detestable idols from the cities he had captured in the hill country of Ephraim.
   • Asa renewed the altar of the LORD.
   • The altar of the LORD stood before the porch of the LORD.
9. 15:9
   • Asa gathered all Judah and Benjamin.
   • Asa gathered the resident foreigners with them from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon.
   • Great numbers from Israel had defected to Asa.
   • They defected when they saw that the LORD his God was with him.
10. 15:10
    • They gathered at Jerusalem in the third month.
    • This was in the fifteenth year of Asa's reign.
11. 15:11
    • On that day they sacrificed to the LORD from the spoil they had brought.
    • They sacrificed seven hundred cattle.
    • They sacrificed seven thousand sheep and goats.
12. 15:12
    • They entered into a covenant to seek the LORD, the God of their fathers.
    • They covenanted to seek him with all their heart and with all their soul.
13. 15:13
    • Anyone who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, was to be put to death.
    • This applied from small to great.
    • This applied to man and to woman.
14. 15:14
    • They swore to the LORD with a loud voice.
    • They swore with shouting.
    • They swore with trumpets.
    • They swore with ram's horns.
15. 15:15
    • All Judah rejoiced over the oath.
    • They had sworn with all their heart.
    • They had sought the LORD with all their will.
    • The LORD was found by them.
    • The LORD gave them rest on every side.
16. 15:16
    • Maachah was the mother of Asa the king.
    • Asa removed Maachah from the position of queen mother.
    • He removed her because she had made a horrid image for Asherah.
    • Asa cut down her image.
    • Asa crushed it fine.
    • Asa burned it at the Kidron valley stream.
17. 15:17
    • The high places were not removed from Israel.
    • The heart of Asa was whole all his days.
18. 15:18
    • Asa brought into the house of God the holy things his father had dedicated.
    • Asa brought in his own dedicated holy things.
    • These were silver, gold, and vessels.
19. 15:19
    • There was no war until the thirty-fifth year of Asa's reign.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

15:1

"The Spirit of God came on" someone is a set Hebrew expression for a sudden, temporary seizing that makes a person speak or act as God's messenger. It marks the words that follow as prophecy rather than the speaker's own opinion.

15:2

Judah and Benjamin were the two tribes that made up the southern kingdom, ruled from Jerusalem by David's descendants. After Solomon's death the other ten tribes broke away and formed a separate northern kingdom, which the book usually calls "Israel." Asa is king of the south only.

15:3

"The law" translates *torah*, the body of instruction given through Moses. Teaching it was part of a priest's job, not just performing sacrifices, so "without a priest to teach them" and "without the law" describe one situation: no one passing on the instruction. Which period of Israel's past the prophet has in mind is not stated, and readers have proposed everything from the era of the judges to the recent northern kingdom.

15:5

"No peace to him that went out, nor to him that came in" is an idiom. Going out and coming in covers a person's ordinary daily movement, so the phrase means nobody could travel or go about their business safely.

15:6

In 1611 "vex" was much stronger than it is now. It meant to afflict, torment or batter, not merely to annoy.

15:7

"Do not let your hands go weak" is a Hebrew idiom for losing nerve. Slack, dropping hands are the picture of a person giving up; strong hands mean courage to carry on.

15:8

Verse 1 names the prophet as Azariah son of Oded, and here the Hebrew reads simply "Oded." Ancient translations and most modern ones supply "Azariah son of" at this point, treating the shorter reading as a copying slip. The "covered entrance" is the porch or portico at the front of the temple, a roofed entryway. The altar in front of it was the large altar for burnt offerings, standing in the open courtyard. The hill country of Ephraim lay in the northern kingdom's territory; the towns Asa "captured" there were taken in earlier border fighting.

15:9

These were people from northern tribes who had left the northern kingdom and settled in Judah as resident outsiders. Their arrival is a defection: they are transferring loyalty from the northern king to Asa.

15:10

The third month of the Hebrew year falls in our May–June. It is the month of the Festival of Weeks, the harvest festival that already brought crowds to Jerusalem, which may be why the assembly was called then. Asa's fifteenth year is somewhere around 895 BC.

15:11

The animals came from plunder taken in the battle described in the previous chapter. Sacrificed animals were normally eaten by the worshipers afterwards, so numbers on this scale mean a public feast for a very large gathering.

15:12

A covenant was a binding agreement sworn before God, with stated terms and stated penalties, closer to a treaty or a sworn contract than to a promise. Verse 13 gives this one's penalty clause.

15:13

This applies an existing law: Deuteronomy treats abandoning the LORD for other gods as treason against the nation itself and sets death as the penalty. "Whether small or great" means regardless of age or social rank, and the verse deliberately spells out that women were covered by it too.

15:14

Two different instruments: straight metal trumpets, blown by priests as signals at ceremonies, and the ram's horn, a curved horn with a blaring note used for alarms and public announcements.

15:15

"Rest round about" is a set phrase in these books meaning no enemy on any border was attacking. It describes a break from war, not personal relaxation.

15:16

"Queen mother" was a formal position at court, not just a family relationship; the king's mother held rank and influence of her own, which is why she could be removed from it. Maachah was in fact Asa's grandmother, the mother of his father Abijah; Hebrew uses "mother" for a grandmother as well. The "idol pole" is an Asherah, a wooden pole or carved image representing the goddess Asherah, set up at places of worship. The King James "grove" reflects an old guess at the word's meaning. The Kidron Valley runs along the east side of Jerusalem, just outside the city. It served as the dumping and burning ground for objects removed from the temple.

15:17

"High places" were local open-air shrines, often on hilltops, where people sacrificed outside Jerusalem. Chapter 14 says Asa did remove them, and the two statements have been reconciled in different ways: that "Israel" here means the northern kingdom, outside Asa's control, or that they were removed and crept back.

15:18

"Dedicated" things were objects formally set apart for the temple and no longer available for ordinary use, frequently valuables captured in war. Asa's father was Abijah, whose campaign against the north is described two chapters earlier.

15:19

Chronicles' dates for Asa's reign are hard to fit with the chronology in 1 and 2 Kings, where the northern king said to attack him in the next chapter had already died. One long-standing suggestion is that the numbers are counted from the division of the kingdom rather than from Asa's accession; no explanation has settled the question.