The kings of Israel and Judah

King Asa

The kingdom of Judah (the south) · Reigned forty-one years (1 Kings 15:10) · Right before God · 1 Kings 15:9 to 24; 2 Chronicles 14 to 16

Asa was the third king of Judah and one of its good kings. He did right in the eyes of the LORD, tore down idols and altars, removed even his own grandmother from being queen for her idolatry, and led Judah in a great covenant to seek God. When a vast army came against him he cried to the LORD and was delivered. Yet in his later years he trusted in a foreign alliance and in physicians rather than God, and Scripture records the flaw honestly.

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.2 Chronicles 16:9 (KJV)

A reformer with a whole heart

Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God. He took away the altars of the strange gods and the high places, broke down the images, and commanded Judah to seek the LORD God of their fathers and to do the law. He even removed Maachah, his own grandmother, from being queen because she had made an idol, and he cut it down and burned it. For a long stretch the land was quiet, and he built and prospered because he sought God.

Chronicles records a great assembly in which Asa and the people entered into a covenant to seek the LORD with all their heart and all their soul, and they sware unto the LORD with a loud voice. They sought him with their whole desire, and he was found of them, and God gave them rest round about.

The victory over a vast army

When Zerah came against Judah with an enormous host, Asa cried out to the LORD in one of the great prayers of the Chronicler: LORD, it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power; help us, O LORD our God, for we rest on thee. God struck the invaders, and Judah won a total victory. The prophet Azariah then met Asa with a word of encouragement: The LORD is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you.

That word, promise and warning together, framed Asa's whole reign. As long as he leaned on God he was strong; the danger would come when he leaned on something else.

The failure of his later years

In his old age Asa stumbled. When Baasha of Israel threatened Judah, Asa took silver and gold from the house of the LORD and hired the king of Syria to break the alliance, trusting a pagan king rather than the God who had delivered him from a far greater army. The seer Hanani rebuked him: Because thou hast relied on the king of Syria, and not on the LORD thy God, the host of Syria is escaped out of thine hand. Then came the famous word: For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.

Asa, once so ready to cry to God, was angry at the rebuke and put the seer in prison. Later, diseased in his feet, he sought not the LORD but the physicians, and after a long reign he died. The Bible neither erases his goodness nor hides his fall.

The biblical verdict

The verdict of Kings is clear: Asa's heart was perfect with the LORD all his days, counting the long reforming work of his reign, even though the high places were not entirely taken away and his final years were clouded. Chronicles adds the honest detail of his late failures, and lets both the reform and the decline stand together.

Asa is one of the good kings, a man who genuinely sought God and led a nation back to him, whose greatest weakness was learning to trust his own strategies once he was strong and old. He reminds us that a good beginning must be carried through to the end.

Where it points

Hanani's word to Asa is one of the clearest statements in the Old Testament of what God is looking for: a heart perfect toward him, on which he delights to show himself strong. Asa had that heart for most of his life and lost sight of it at the last, and his story invites every believer to lean on God to the end and not only at the beginning.

The line of David went on through Asa toward the one King whose heart would be perfect toward God through every trial, who in his own hour of crisis would not hire a foreign sword or trust in chariots, but pray, Not my will, but thine, be done, and so save his people not by alliances but by trusting his Father to the death.

A note on the record: everything here is drawn from the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Kings and Chronicles sometimes tell a reign differently, Chronicles often adding a king's repentance or building works, and where they differ this is said plainly rather than smoothed over. The exact lengths and overlaps of the reigns are genuinely complex, because kings often shared the throne with a son for a time, so the totals in Scripture do not always add up in a simple line. The verdict good or evil is the Bible's own assessment, whether a king did right or evil in the sight of the LORD.

Related: Abijah · Jehoshaphat · All the kings of Israel and Judah