1 Now Azariah, the son of Oded, had the Spirit of God within him.
2 And he went out to meet Asa, and he said to him: “Listen to me, Asa and all of Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you, because you have been with him. If you seek him, you will find him. But if you abandon him, he will abandon you.
3 Then many days will pass in Israel, apart from the true God, and apart from a learned priest, and apart from the law.
4 And when, in their anguish, they will have returned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and will have sought him, they shall find him.
5 In that time, there will be no peace for those who depart and those who enter. Instead, there will be terror on every side, among all the inhabitants of the lands.
6 For nation will fight against nation, and city against city. For the Lord will disturb them with every anguish.
7 But as for you, be strengthened, and do not let your hands be weakened. For there will be a reward for your work.”
8 And when Asa had heard these particular words, and the prophecy of the prophet Azariah, the son of Oded, he was strengthened, and he took away the idols from the entire land of Judah, and from Benjamin, and from the cities that he had seized of mount Ephraim, and he dedicated the altar of the Lord, which was before the portico of the Lord.
9 And he gathered together all of Judah and Benjamin, and with them the new arrivals from Ephraim and Manasseh and Simeon. For many had fled to him from Israel, seeing that the Lord his God was with him.
10 And when they had arrived in Jerusalem, in the third month, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Asa,
11 they immolated to the Lord on that day, from the best of the spoils and from the plunder that they had brought: seven hundred oxen and seven thousand rams.
12 And he entered, according to custom, in order to confirm the covenant, so that they would seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with their whole heart and with their whole soul.
13 “But if anyone,” he said, “will not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, let him die, from the least even to the greatest, from man even to woman.”
14 And they swore to the Lord, with a great voice, in jubilation, and with the blare of trumpets, and with the sound of horns,
15 all who were in Judah swore with a curse. For with all their heart they swore, and with all their will they sought and found him. And the Lord granted rest on all sides to them.
16 Then too, Maacah, the mother of king Asa, he deposed from the august authority, because she had made an idol of Priapus within a sacred grove. And he entirely crushed it, breaking it into pieces, and he burned it at the torrent Kidron.
17 But some high places were left in Israel. Even so, the heart of Asa was perfect during all his days.
18 And whatever his father or he himself had vowed, he brought into the house of the Lord: silver and gold, and vessels for various uses.
19 Truly, there was no war, until the thirty-fifth year of the kingdom of Asa. |
