Iddo] See note on ix. 29.
Chapter XIV.
1–5 (compare 1 Kings xv. 9–15).
The Religious Policy of Asa.
In Kings the reign of Asa is reviewed with entire approval, according to Chronicles his conduct was marred only by the lack of faith manifested in his reliance on the king of Syria (see xvi. 1–10), and in his recourse to physicians at the close of his reign (xvi. 12).
¹So Abijah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David, and Asa his son reigned in his stead: in his days the land was quiet ten years. ²And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God:
1. ten years] These ten years of rest are naturally to be assigned to the beginning of Asa’s reign; later on there was a rest of twenty years (compare xv. 10 with xv. 19). The number ten here makes a discrepancy with 1 Kings, for Baasha became king of Israel in the third year of Asa (1 Kings xv. 28, 33), and “there was war between Asa and Baasha all their days” (1 Kings xv. verse 32). If, however, we allow some latitude to the language both of 1 Kings and of Chronicles, the discrepancy becomes unimportant.
³for he took away the strange altars, and the high places, and brake down the pillars[¹], and hewed down the Asherim; ⁴and commanded Judah to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, and to do the law and the commandment.
[¹] Or, obelisks.
3. he took away] In 1 Kings xv. 12, 13 he is said to have put away the sodomites, and all the idols that his fathers had made; and also “the abominable image” which Maacah, his mother, had made. These remarks are here ignored by the Chronicler, probably because they would be out of harmony with the comparatively pious character he has ascribed to Asa’s predecessors, Rehoboam and Abijah. They are given, however, in xv. 16, 17, where see note.