1 Kings15chapter 15

1 Kings 15:9-10

twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel: Asa's accession is dated to Jeroboam's twentieth year, the chronology moving forward two synchronisms in eleven verses, and his reign of forty and one years is the longest so far recorded for either kingdom. Verse 10 repeats the exact maternal formula already given for Abijam at verse 2, Maachah the daughter of Abishalom, though Asa is Abijam's son; the bench reads Maachah here as the queen mother continuing in that office under her grandson rather than as Asa's own mother, which is what makes it possible for Asa himself to remove her from being queen three verses later. The puzzle is not solved by inventing detail beyond the text, only by naming what the office of queen mother explains.

John Gill notes that forty-one years passes the forty of David and the forty of Solomon. Matthew Henry observes that the good kings of Judah tended to reign long and the bad ones briefly. Maacah is named again, as at verse 2.

1 Kings 15:11-13

did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord: Asa is measured by the same standard just applied to his father, as did David his father, and this time the verdict is positive: the sodomites, the cult prostitutes the law names at Deuteronomy 23:17-18, are put out of the land, and the idols his fathers made are removed. His own mother is not spared; he takes away her standing as queen for the idol she had made in a grove, and burns it at the brook Kidron, the same valley Judah's later reformers will use for the same purpose.

removed all the idols that his fathers: John Gill notes that some shrine prostitutes remained, and Jehoshaphat banishes the rest at 22:46. Matthew Henry reads the removal of idols his own fathers made as an effort to cut off the curse on his line. Asa began with his father's work.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that the queen mother held rank and great influence at court, and Asa stripped her of both. John Wesley reads the burning at the Kidron as a way to put the ashes into the water. Josiah burns an Asherah pole in the same valley at 2 Kings 23:6.

the high places were not removed: Howbeit qualifies a reign the text has just called right: the high places, the local shrines Israel never fully surrendered even for the Lord's own worship, stay standing through the whole reign, and the book will repeat this exact qualification of nearly every king it otherwise commends. Nevertheless answers howbeit in the same verse; the imperfection is named honestly and the heart is called perfect all the same, one verse holding a real king's real mixture without collapsing either word into the other.

he brought in the things which his father had dedicated: Asa restores to the house of the Lord the silver, gold and vessels both Abijam and he himself had set apart, rebuilding a treasury the book will show him spending three verses later on a foreign king rather than on the Lord who filled it. The dedication itself is never criticized; what follows it is.

1 Kings 15:16-19

war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel: Baasha's fortification of Ramah, a few miles from Jerusalem, is meant to seal Judah's northern border and choke its traffic, and Asa answers not with the Lord he has just honored but with the very silver and gold verse 15 named as dedicated, sent to buy off Ben-hadad of Damascus and break a standing treaty with Israel. 2 Chronicles 16:7-9 records the prophet Hanani's rebuke for exactly this choice, trusting a Syrian king rather than the Lord who had already given Asa victory over a far larger army; Kings itself states the deed without the rebuke and lets the treasury's history from verse 15 make the point.

Albert Barnes places Ramah halfway between Bethel and Jerusalem, no more than five miles from the capital. He also notes that Baasha must first have won back the towns Abijam took, Bethel among them, at 2 Chronicles 13:19. The war had turned.

Adam Clarke identifies Hezion with Rezon, who took Damascus in the days of Solomon at 11:23 and 24. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown mark the silver and gold taken from the house of the LORD as the point where the faith of Asa declines. Hanani the seer rebukes him at 2 Chronicles 16:7.

Matthew Henry names two wrongs here: Asa urged Ben-hadad to break his sworn word, and he trusted silver in place of God. Adam Clarke doubts that Judah stood in real danger at all. Asa buys a foreign king against his own kin.

1 Kings 15:20-22

sent the captains of the hosts: Ben-hadad's strike against Naphtali and its cities buys Asa exactly what his silver purchased, forcing Baasha to abandon Ramah and withdraw to Tirzah, the town that will serve as Israel's capital until Omri builds Samaria. Asa turns the abandoned stone and timber into two fortresses of his own, Geba and Mizpah, so the very materials meant to besiege Judah end by defending it. The chapter records the tactical success without recording whether it changed the king's later trust; Chronicles supplies the rest.

John Wesley notes that Baasha stayed in Tirzah to guard against a second invasion from Aram. The ungodly plan of Asa succeeded, and Wesley warns against judging a cause by its outcome. Adam Clarke takes Tirzah for the royal city.

Adam Clarke reads with no exceptions as a call for every man, the kind of levy a state makes when it stands in danger. The stones meant to shut Judah in became its own forts. Matthew Henry notes that Hanani called the whole policy foolish at 2 Chronicles 16:9.

1 Kings 15:23-24

diseased in his feet: The closing formula for Asa's forty-one years notes his acts, his might and his building, then adds one clinical detail: in old age he is diseased in his feet. 2 Chronicles 16:12 completes the picture Kings only opens, that even in his disease he sought not the Lord but physicians, the same pattern of leaning on the nearest strength rather than the Lord that already appeared in the Syrian treaty. Jehoshaphat succeeds him, and the line the lamp promise protects continues one generation further.

Albert Barnes and John Gill note from 2 Chronicles 16:14 that Asa cut his own tomb in Jerusalem and was laid on a bier full of spices. Gill calls his son Jehoshaphat a pious and worthy king. His reign over Judah is told at 22:41 to 50.

1 Kings 15:25-26

Nadab the son of Jeroboam began to reign: Nadab's two years are measured by his father's record rather than by any standard of his own, walked in the way of his father, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin, the formula 14:16 first applies to Jeroboam and that the book will repeat of nearly every king the north produces. No northern king is ever measured against David; the north's own founder supplies its whole standard of comparison, and every heir is judged only by how closely he keeps it.

walked in the way of his father: John Gill names the evil as idolatry, the worship of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan. Nadab held to them for two years. The sentence Ahijah spoke at 14:10 falls on his house at verse 29.

1 Kings 15:27-28

Baasha the son of Ahijah: Baasha's conspiracy against Nadab happens at Gibbethon, a Philistine town under siege by Israel's own army, so the coup takes the king in the field rather than on his throne; the same site returns at 16:15-17 when Zimri kills Elah amid another siege there, a coincidence of place the book records without comment twice over. Nadab's death ends Jeroboam's dynasty after a single generation, the shortest reign of any king recorded so far in either kingdom.

Nadab reigned from the second year of Asa into the third, as verses 25 and 28 show. Matthew Henry calls Baasha barbarous in the slaughter that follows and God righteous in it. Baasha came from the house of Issachar.

1 Kings 15:29-30

he smote all the house of Jeroboam: Baasha's extermination of Jeroboam's whole house executes a sentence already passed at 14:10-14, according unto the saying of the Lord, which he spake by his servant Ahijah the Shilonite, naming the very prophet who anointed Jeroboam in the first place. The book states the fulfilment as plainly as it stated the oracle, leaving no space between promise and completion for the reader to doubt either. Verse 30 names the ground again in case the reader missed it at verse 26: the sin, and the sin Israel was made to share in, provoking the Lord God of Israel to anger.

John Gill notes that Baasha struck down the house of Jeroboam for his own ends, for he walked in the same sins at verse 34. God used him to carry out the word of 14:10. The word against Baasha at 16:7 names this slaughter among his sins.

1 Kings 15:31-32

the rest of the acts of Nadab: The closing formula for Nadab is brief because his reign was brief, and verse 32 returns to the exact sentence already given at verse 16, war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all their days, a resumptive repetition that closes the excursus into Israel's throne and hands the narrative back to where it left Judah. Hebrew narrative uses this device often, a phrase repeated to signal a return to the main line after a digression, and the book will use it again.

war between Asa and Baasha king: Albert Barnes notes that the sentence repeats verse 16 word for word, taken from the book of the kings of Israel. Baasha reigned twenty-four years, at verse 33, so this war ran through much of the reign of Asa. Ramah was its main field.

1 Kings 15:33-34

to reign over all Israel in Tirzah: Baasha's own accession formula measures him by the identical standard just used of Nadab, walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin, so the man who has just executed the Lord's sentence on Jeroboam's house stands condemned by the same words before his reign properly begins. Chapter 16 will apply Ahijah's own pattern to Baasha's house in turn, a second prophetic sentence answering a second dynasty's identical sin. The refrain that opened at 14:16 has now fallen on every king the north has produced.

walked in the way of Jeroboam: The man who wiped out the house of Jeroboam at verse 29 walks in the same way. Adam Clarke notes that the line of sin is broken only by a heart turned to God. Jehu son of Hanani condemns Baasha at 16:1 to 4.