LITMIR.BIZ

      Asa

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ASA, the son of Abijah and grandson of Rehoboam, is a king whose reign offers a strong contrast in almost every respect to those of his father and grandfather. In length it exceeded every other Jewish reign excepting two.1 In a military point of view it was distinguished, and in the matter of religion its character and tendency were directly opposite to that of the two reigns immediately preceding it. Asa was brought up under circumstances which seemed à priori most unfavourable to the production of a pious, earnest, and zealous monarch. Having Abijah for father, and Maachah for grandmother, and directress of the Court, he must have been subjected to a host of powerful influences drawing him towards the side of laxity and idolatry, while it is difficult to see what counter-influences could have been brought to bear upon him, or how he could have escaped entanglement in the prevalent latitudinarian vortex. The suggestion has been thrown out that he owed his religious enlightenment to the efforts made by two prophets of the period, Hanani and Azariah, the son of Oded,2 faithful teachers of the true religion then resident at Jerusalem. But very little is known of these prophets; and there is certainly no proof, that, during the impressible years of boyhood, and early manhood, Asa was brought into contact with them. Still, the “Schools of the Prophets” were undoubtedly at work under Solomon, Rehoboam, and Abijah, labouring to counteract the pernicious Court influence, and to impress on all, to whom they could obtain access, the importance of maintaining a strict observance of the ancient faith. Asa, if he did not come into contact with Azariah or Hanani at the court of his father, is almost sure to have come into contact with some persons, to whom the modern laxity and latitudinarianism was detestable, an “accursed thing,” an “abomination.” He had, beyond a doubt, a good natural disposition; and, while evil influences had little effect upon him, such good influences as fell across his path, strongly affected his mind, and moulded his character. When he ascended the throne, probably at about the age of twenty, he was already a determined adherent of the old faith, and a stern opponent of the laxity, the idolatry, and the heathenism, which had been tolerated or promoted by the three preceding sovereigns.

He found the laxity and heathenism rampant. Everywhere the “high places” attracted a worship which sufficed for most men, and caused the Temple service at Jerusalem to be coldly regarded and attended but by few. Jehovah was nominally worshipped at these sites, but rather as a local than as a universal God, and with rites that were unauthorized, and perhaps even tinged with heathenism. On some of the “high hills” the cult of Baal and Astarte was openly practised; “images” or rather pillars, and “groves,” or rather sacred trees, were set up (1 Kings xiv. 23), and the lewd orgies of Phoenicia and Syria were the favourite religious ceremonies of the worshippers. The sacred groves and Temple precincts were the scenes both of ordinary profligacy and of unnatural vices (ibid. ver. 24; comp. ch. XV. 12), men’s natural repugnance to such a degradation being overcome by a supposed religious sanction.3 Asa set himself against all these various forms of moral evil; and if he did not succeed altogether in suppressing the Jehovistic high-place worship (1 Kings xv. 14), which the people would not give up, at any rate he swept away the grosser forms of sensuous religion—the images, the phallic symbols of Baal, the Astarte emblems, the lewd rites, the companies of abandoned men and abandoned women attached to the chief sites of Baal and Astarte worship. His reformation was extensive, sweeping, so far as his intention and his will went, complete. In Ewald’s words, “As far as he could, he removed from the kingdom all traces of the heathenism which had been either tolerated or promoted by the three preceding sovereigns.”4

The first step towards the accomplishment of his designs, and, perhaps, the most difficult one, was the removal and degradation of the Queen-Mother. Maachah, the grand-daughter of Absalom, had been the leading spirit of the Court during two reigns. As his favourite wife, she had directed the religious policy of Rehoboam; and as his mother, she had exercised a complete domination over his successor, her son, Abijah. A devotee of the Syro-Phcenician religion, she had established her own shrine of Astarte-worship in Jerusalem, and had erected in it an idolatrous emblem, probably of a sensuistic character (1 Kings XV. 13). Asa “destroyed this idol and burnt it by the brook Kidron.” Probably he calcined the metal whereof it was made, and reducing the image to powder, cast the powder upon ae waters of the brook Kidron, that the whole might be dispersed and lost.5 Maachah herself he degraded from her lofty position, depriving her of all authority, and, perhaps, removing her from the Court over which she had so long exercised a baleful influence (1 Kings l. s. c.; 2 Chron. xv. 16). He in this way got rid of a centre of religious corruption which, unless removed, would have vitiated all his efforts after reform, and have afforded a rallying point for the heathenizing party, against which it would have been most difficult to struggle.

Having thus set his own house in order, he proceeded, during the first ten years of his reign, which was a time of continuous peace (2 Chron. xiv. 1, 5), gradually to effect his reforms wherever he found it possible, through the length and breadth of the land It is clear that he met with much opposition, but not very clear who were its leaders. The prophetical order must undoubtedly have been on his side;6 and the Levitical priesthood, which had flocked into the southern kingdom from all parts of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam (2 Chron. xi. 14), would also lend him their aid. His chief difficulty must have been in overcoming local associations and prejudices, engrained by long habit into the hearts of the people, who were everywhere attached to their old provincial shrines and sanctuaries, hallowed to them from a remote antiquity, and endeared by a thousand tender memories. New rites were, comparatively speaking, easy to deal with—“he took away the altars of the strange gods, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves” (ibid. chap. xiv. 3)—but the old ancestral rites connected with the high-place worship would not be rooted out, and

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