CHAPTER 15

¹And the spirit of God was upon Azariah son of Oded. ²And he came out before Asa and said to him, “Hear me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The LORD is with you when you are with Him, and if you seek Him, He will be there for you. But if you abandon Him, He will abandon you. ³And for a long time Israel was without a true God and without priest and teacher and without teaching. ⁴And when it was in straits, it turned back to the LORD God of Israel and sought Him out, and He was there for them. ⁵And in those times it was unsafe for the wayfarer, for there were great upheavals for all the dwellers of the lands. ⁶And nation was ground against nation and town against town, for God had panicked them with every sort of distress. ⁷As for you, be strong and let not your hands slacken, for there are wages for your acts.” ⁸And when Asa heard these words, and the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he summoned strength and took away all the digusting things from all the land of Judah and Benjamin and from the towns that he had captured from the hill country of Ephraim, and he restored the altar of the LORD that was in front of the great hall of the LORD. ⁹And he gathered all Judah and Benjamin and those sojourning with them from Ephraim and from Manasseh and from Simeon, for many of Israel had crossed over to him when they saw that the LORD his God was with him. ¹⁰And they gathered in Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa’s kingship. ¹¹And they sacrificed to the LORD on that day from the plunder. They brought seven hundred oxen and seven thousand sheep. ¹²And they entered into a covenant to seek the LORD God of Israel with all their heart and with all their being. ¹³And whoever did not seek the LORD God of Israel would be put to death, from the least to the greatest, from man to woman. ¹⁴And they vowed to the LORD in a loud voice and with shouting and with trumpets and with ram’s horns. ¹⁵And all Judah rejoiced over the vow, for with all their heart they vowed and with all their will they sought after Him, and He was there for them. And the LORD granted them respite all around. ¹⁶And Maachah, too, King Asa’s mother, he removed from being queen mother, as she had made a horror for Asherah. And Asa cut down her horror and pulverized it and burned it in the Kidron Wadi. ¹⁷But the high places did not disappear from Israel, yet the heart of Asa was whole all his days. ¹⁸And he brought his father’s sacred things and his own sacred things to the house of God—silver and gold and vessels.