2 Chronicles 16 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~880-869 BC, the last years of King Asa of Judah, from his thirty-sixth year to his death
Location
Judah and its northern border, especially Ramah, a town about five miles north of Jerusalem that controlled the main road into the capital, and Geba and Mizpah where Asa rebuilt with the salvaged materials
Audience
Post-exile Jewish readers weighing whether to trust foreign powers or God, a live question for a small province surrounded by empires
Situation
When the northern king Baasha fortifies Ramah to choke off traffic to Jerusalem, Asa empties the temple treasury to hire the king of Aram in Damascus to attack the north instead. A prophet condemns the deal, Asa jails him, and Asa later dies of a diseased foot after seeking only physicians.
Key Background
Paying a stronger neighbour to open a second front was ordinary ancient statecraft, and Aram sat directly north of Israel, so an attack from Damascus forced Baasha to abandon his southern building project. Ramah stood on the ridge route that carried nearly all traffic between the two kingdoms, so fortifying it was economic strangulation rather than a simple border raid. The comment about Asa consulting physicians is not a rejection of medicine as such, since healers were part of ordinary life, but a note that a king who had once prayed under invasion now turned nowhere but to human help. The great fire at his burial was a royal honour, a bonfire of spices rather than cremation, which Israelites did not practise.
In the thirty-sixth year of Asa's reign, Baasha king of Israel marched against Judah and Ramah to anyone from going to or coming from Asa king of Judah.
So Asa took silver and gold from the of and the royal palace and sent them to Ben-Hadad king of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus. He said,
"There's a between me and you, just as there was between my father and your father. Look — I'm sending you silver and gold. Go break your with Baasha king of Israel so he'll pull back from me."
Ben-Hadad agreed with King Asa and sent his army commanders against the towns of Israel. They attacked Ijon, Dan, Abel-Maim, and all the of Naphtali.
When Baasha heard about it, he stopped fortifying Ramah and abandoned his project.
Then King Asa brought all of Judah, and they hauled away the stones and timber Baasha had been using to fortify Ramah. With those materials he fortified and
At that time Hanani the came to King Asa of Judah and said to him, "Because you on the king of Aram instead of relying on Yahweh your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your grasp.
Weren't the and Libyans a massive army with huge numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on Yahweh, he them to you.
For Yahweh's eyes the whole earth to strengthen those whose hearts are to him. You've in this. From now on, you'll be at war."
Asa was at the seer and threw him in — he was enraged over this. Asa also some of the people at the same time.
The events of Asa's reign, from beginning to end, are written in the of the of and
In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa developed a severe disease in his feet. Even in his illness, he didn't for Yahweh but only for
Asa died in the forty-first year of his reign.
They buried him in the he had out for himself in the City of David. They laid him on a bed filled with and And they lit a in his honor.