For a long time Israel was without the one true God, and without a teaching priest and without law. But in their distress, they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and sought him, and he was found by them.
At that time there was no peace, for great disturbances afflicted the inhabitants of the lands. They were broken in pieces. Nation was crushed by nation and city by city.
As soon as Asa heard these words, he took courage and put away all the idols, and he repaired the altar of the Lord that was in front of the vestibule of the house of the Lord. They sacrificed to the Lord and made a total reform.
Then it went on to discuss Asa’s last years. Baasha the king of Israel went up against Judah, but Asa had made a covenant with Ben-hadad king of Syria so Baasha would leave them alone.
A seer went to Asa and explained that since he had relied on the king of Syria and not on the Lord, the army of Syria had escaped him. As a result of this, they would have wars. Asa was angry with the seer that told him this and locked him up.
In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet, and it became severe. Yet, even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians.
When Asa died, he was in the forty-first year of his reign. They buried him in the tomb that he had cut for himself in the city of David. They laid him on a bier that had been filled with various kinds of spices prepared by the perfumer’s art, and they made a very great fire in his honor.
The rest of today’s reading was a review of Jehoshaphat’s reign in Judah, his ally with Ahab, and the defeat and death of Ahab. All of this was previously studied and summarized on Day 113, 1 Kings 20-22.