2 Chronicleschapter 14
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Speaks with:2 Chronicles 34×22 Chronicles 13×21 Kings 15×12 Chronicles 31×1Luke 1×1Deuteronomy 7×1
Summary
Chapter summary
Asa does what is good and right, taking away the foreign altars and high places, breaking the pillars and hewing down the Asherim, and commanding Judah to seek Jehovah. Ten quiet years follow, and he uses them well: fortified cities with walls and towers and gates, 'for the land is yet before us, because we have sought Jehovah our God.' Then Zerah the Ethiopian comes with a thousand thousand and three hundred chariots, and Asa prays: 'Jehovah, there is none besides thee to help, between the mighty and him that hath no strength: help us, O Jehovah our God; for we rely on thee, and in thy name are we come against this multitude.' The Ethiopians are broken.
Context
History · Ezra — 2 Chronicles overview
- A. 1–8 Asa breaks down the altars and the land has rest
- B. 9–15 A million Ethiopians, and a prayer that decides the battle
The outline
A.Asa breaks down the altars and the land has restvv. 1 to 8
Read vv. 1 to 8 →B.A million Ethiopians, and a prayer that decides the battlevv. 9 to 15
Read vv. 9 to 15 →
The world behind this chapter
2 Chronicles 14The history
The reform is a demolition list: foreign altars and high places pulled down, standing stones broken, and the wooden poles of Asherah cut down. Those objects were the ordinary furniture of local worship all over the region, and archaeologists have found them at Israelite sites. Removing them was a physical job with political costs in every village.
The ten quiet years are spent on walls, towers, gates, and bars. The writer explicitly connects the two: the land had rest, so build now. Peace was treated as a construction window.
The army is described by equipment, and the difference between the tribes is real. Judah's men carried the large shield and the spear — close formation fighting. Benjamin's carried a smaller shield and the bow, which fits everything else known about that tribe's fondness for missile weapons.
Zerah is called 'the Cushite,' and his identity is genuinely debated: he may have been a Nubian commander leading an Egyptian force, or the head of a Cushite people settled in the southern desert, since the survivors are pursued toward Gerar rather than toward Egypt. What is not in doubt is the battlefield — Mareshah, a Judean lowland fortress town that has been excavated, guarding the valley route up into the hills.
What it meant to them
Asa's prayer is the sentence the chapter exists for: LORD, it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many or with them that have no power.
That was written down for people who had no power at all — no army, no walls worth the name, no king. The chapter says the arithmetic was never the deciding factor.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on 2 Chronicles 14. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.