Asa

Asa, son of Abijah, reigned forty-one years and 'did what was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God' (2 Chronicles 14:2). He removed foreign altars and high places, broke down the pillars and Asherim, and commanded Judah to seek the LORD. The land had peace ten years; he built fortified cities and assembled an army of 580,000. When Zerah the Cushite invaded with a million men and 300 chariots, Asa cried to the LORD at Mareshah — 'help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on you' — and the Cushites were routed (2 Chronicles 14:9-15). The prophet Azariah son of Oded then urged thoroughgoing reform; Asa renewed the altar of the LORD, gathered Judah and refugee Israelites for a great covenant, and even removed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother because she had made an abominable image for Asherah (1 Kings 15:13). In the thirty-sixth year of his reign, however, when Baasha of Israel fortified Ramah against him, Asa stripped the temple treasures and hired Ben-hadad of Aram to break the siege. The seer Hanani rebuked him: 'because you relied on the king of Syria, and did not rely on the LORD your God … from now on you will have wars' (2 Chronicles 16:7-9). Asa put Hanani in stocks. Two years later he became diseased in his feet and, even then, sought only physicians, not the LORD. He died and was buried with honour in the city of David.