Commentaria in II Paralipomenon
Chapter 15
The prophet Azarias foretells that Israel will for a long time be deprived of the worship of the true God, of law, and of priesthood. Moved by his oracle, king Asa utterly roots out the idols, and deprives his mother of the priesthood of Priapus.
1. And Azarias the son of Oded, the spirit of God coming upon him, 2. went out to meet Asa, and said to him: Hear me, Asa, and all Juda and Benjamin: The Lord is with you, because you have been with him. If you seek him, you shall find him; but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. 3. Now many days shall pass in Israel without the true God, and without a priest, and teacher, and without the law. 4. And when they shall return in their distress to the Lord the God of Israel, and shall seek him, they shall find him. 5. In those times there shall be no peace to him that goeth out and cometh in, but fears on every side among all the inhabitants of the lands; 6. for nation shall fight against nation, and city against city, because the Lord shall trouble them with all distress. 7. Do you therefore take courage, and let not your hands be weakened: for there shall be a reward for your work. 8. And when Asa heard this, the words, namely, and the prophecy of Azarias the son of Oded the prophet, he took courage, and took away the idols out of all the land of Juda, and of Benjamin, and out of the cities which he had taken of mount Ephraim, and he dedicated the altar of the Lord, which was before the porch of the Lord. 9. And he gathered together all Juda and Benjamin, and the strangers with them out of Ephraim, and Manasses, and Simeon: for many had fled over to him out of Israel, seeing that the Lord his God was with him. 10. And when they were come to Jerusalem in the third month, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Asa, 11. they sacrificed to the Lord on that day of the spoils and of the prey which they had brought, seven hundred oxen, and seven thousand rams. 12. And he went in, according to custom, to confirm the covenant, that they would seek the Lord the God of their fathers with all their heart, and with all their soul. 13. And if any one, saith he, seek not the Lord the God of Israel, let him die, from the least to the greatest, from man to woman. 14. And they swore to the Lord with a loud voice in joy, and with the sound of the trumpet, and the sound of cornets, 15. all that were in Juda with a curse: for they swore with all their heart, and with their whole will they sought him, and found him; and the Lord gave them rest round about. 16. Moreover he deposed Maacha also his mother from her royal authority, because she had made an idol of Priapus in a grove: all which he broke in pieces, and reducing it to dust burnt it in the torrent Cedron. 17. But the high places were left in Israel: nevertheless the heart of Asa was perfect all his days. 18. And what his father had vowed, and he himself, he brought into the house of the Lord, silver, and gold, and divers kinds of vessels. 19. And there was no war until the thirty-fifth year of the reign of Asa.
Verse 3. Many days shall pass in Israel without the true God without a teacher and the law—that is, without care and worship of the true God, of a teacher and of the divine law. He touches the time, in which Jeroboam brought the worship of the golden calves into Israel; for in this worship of calves all his posterity followed him, and all the kings of Israel to a man, whom of the kings of Juda Joram, Ochozias, Athalia, Achaz, Manasses, Joakim, and Sedecias imitated, worshipping idols instead of the ancestral and true God (a).
(a) The prophet could also look forward to the time when a captivity of several years awaited the Israelites, the exercise of religion being extinguished, until at last by Cyrus or another of his successors among the kings their former liberty should be restored. Others understand these words also of the present state of the Jews, in which, the temple and city having been overthrown by the arms of the Romans, they are scattered. The prophecy of Osee III, 4, 5, in almost the same words as the present, may be referred to here. Interpreters generally prefer, however, to take it of the captivity of the tribes of Juda, Levi, and Benjamin, which Nabuchodonosor led into Babylon.
Verse 4. And when they shall return in their distress to the Lord of Israel, etc., they shall find him.—So the penitent Achab found God, and Joas, to whom Eliseus foretold a threefold victory over the Syrians, and the penitent Manasses, likewise the pious Ezechias, Josias, and the like.
Verse 10. In the third month—Sivan, in which they celebrated the present Pentecost, to show that by invoking God on this feast they had obtained so great a victory by his help, and therefore, in thanksgiving to him, offered the spoils as victims. So, on the contrary, Constantinople was stormed by the Turk on Pentecost, because the Greeks thought impiously of the Holy Ghost, whose feast this is, and taught that he does not proceed from the Father and the Son.
Verse 17. But the heart of Asa was perfect with the Lord all his days—as to the true worship of God; as if to say: Asa throughout his whole life worshipped the true God; he never turned aside to idols, as others turned aside. For otherwise Asa sinned in other things, and grievously offended God, as will appear in the following chapter, verses 7, 10, and 12.
Verse 19. Until the thirty-fifth (so it is to be read, with the Hebrews and the Roman Septuagint; not “until the thirtieth,” as some read) year of the reign of Asa—that is, of the kingdom of Juda, which began properly at the death of Solomon, when it was torn from the kingdom of Israel by the schism of Jeroboam, so that the first year of Roboam was the first year of the kingdom of Juda, inasmuch as the kingdom of Juda was proper and distinct from the kingdom of Israel, which likewise then began under its first king Jeroboam. So the Hebrews, Sanchez, Salianus, Tornielli and others; this will appear more clearly in the following chapter.
King Asa, terrified by the army of Baasa king of Israel, asks help of Benadad king of Syria. For which cause being rebuked by the prophet Hanani, he imprisons him: he dies of gout in the forty-first year of his reign.