1 Kings 15:9-24

Living Bible

⁹ Asa became king of Judah, in Jerusalem, in the twentieth year of the reign of Jeroboam over Israel, ¹⁰ and reigned forty-one years. (His grandmother was Maacah, the daughter of Abishalom.) ¹¹ He pleased the Lord like his ancestor King David. ¹² He executed the male prostitutes and removed all the idols his father had made. ¹³ He deposed his grandmother Maacah as queen mother because she had made an idol—which he cut down and burned at Kidron Brook. ¹⁴ However, the shrines on the hills were not removed, for Asa did not realize that these were wrong.^{[a] 15} He made permanent exhibits in the Temple of the bronze shields his grandfather had dedicated,^[b] along with the silver and gold vessels he himself had donated.

¹⁶ There was lifelong war between King Asa of Judah and King Baasha of Israel. ¹⁷ King Baasha built the fortress city of Ramah in an attempt to cut off all trade with Jerusalem. ¹⁸ Then Asa took all the silver and gold left in the Temple treasury and all the treasures of the palace, and gave them to his officials to take to Damascus, to King Ben-hadad of Syria, with this message:

¹⁹ “Let us be allies just as our fathers were. I am sending you a present of gold and silver. Now break your alliance with King Baasha of Israel so that he will leave me alone.”

²⁰ Ben-hadad agreed and sent his armies against some of the cities of Israel; and he destroyed Ijon, Dan, Abel-beth-maacah, all of Chinneroth, and all the cities in the land of Naphtali. ²¹ When Baasha received word of the attack, he discontinued building the city of Ramah and returned to Tirzah. ²² Then King Asa made a proclamation to all Judah, asking every able-bodied man to help demolish Ramah and haul away its stones and timbers. And King Asa used these materials to build the city of Geba in Benjamin and the city of Mizpah.

²³ The rest of Asa’s biography—his conquests and deeds and the names of the cities he built—is found in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. In his old age his feet became diseased, ²⁴ and when he died, he was buried in the royal cemetery in Jerusalem. Then his son Jehoshaphat became the new king of Judah.