The heat in Jerusalem was a thick, woolen cloak that summer. It settled over the city, over the palace, and seemed to press particularly close to King Abijam as he reviewed the latest reports from the border. The scent of hot stone and dust from the ongoing repairs to the Millo filled his chambers. He was a man caught between two truths, a tension that lined his face more deeply than his forty-one years should have allowed.

His father was Rehoboam, son of Solomon, a legacy of both glorious heights and staggering folly. His mother was Maacah, granddaughter of the old rebel Absalom—a name that still carried the whisper of beautiful treachery. And in his heart, Abijam knew the dichotomy. He maintained the outward form of the worship of Yahweh. The sacrifices at the temple continued on their appointed days; the incense rose, a sweet smoke against the bleached-blue sky. He even carried on his father’s war against Jeroboam in the north, that persistent, festering split in the body of Israel.

But the high places were not removed. They stood on the hills around Judah, and in the valleys, their pagan stones warmed by the same sun that lit the altar in Jerusalem. Asherah poles, like skeletal fingers, pointed accusingly at the heavens from the groves. The people, and Abijam with them, moved between the two, a people of divided loyalty. The chronicler in the royal scribe’s scroll would later put it plainly: *his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his forefather had been.* It was not a seething apostasy, but a lukewarm inheritance, a compromise with the land and its ways.

The court prophet, a gaunt man named Jehu who smelled of olive wood and myrrh, would sometimes speak into the stifling air of the throne room. His words were of a covenant of salt, of a lamp in Jerusalem for David’s sake. Abijam would listen, his expression unreadable, and then turn to matters of granary yields or the fortifications at Geba. The divine promise was a background hum, a foundation stone he took for granted, not a living fire.

He reigned only three years. His death was not dramatic—a fever that came with the late summer rains and did not break. They buried him in the City of David, with the quiet respect due a king who had, at least, not led them into outright idolatry. The smell of damp earth and mourning spices hung in the tombs.

And then came Asa.

They anointed him in the same hall where his father’s body had lain in state. The difference was palpable, not in the ceremony, but in the set of the young king’s jaw. Asa, from the beginning, saw the kingdom not as an heirloom to be preserved, but as a garden overgrown with poison ivy, in desperate need of clearing.

He began with the cultic filth. It was not a distant decree. In his second year, he walked out himself, his robes kirtled up, into the groves and onto the high places. He did not just command; he wrenched an Asherah pole from the soft earth of a valley near the Kidron with his own hands. The splintering wood was a sound more powerful than a royal edict. The foreign cult statues were hauled away, their stone eyes blank to the sun that now shone on their disgrace. The male cult prostitutes were swept from the land, a quiet, shameful purge. He even removed Maacah, his own grandmother, from her position as Queen Mother, for she had made an abominable image for Asherah. Asa cut the thing down himself, in the wadi east of the city, and burned it. The smoke was foul, unlike the temple incense.

For a space of years, there was a cleanness. The land, though not perfect, had rest. Asa fortified cities, raised armies of mighty men from Judah and Benjamin. His heart, the scribes noted with a rare flourish, *was wholly true to the Lord all his days.* It was a time of drawing a clear, hard line.

But kingdoms do not run on piety alone. There is always the pressure of stone and sword. When Baasha, king of Israel, built Ramah to blockade Judah, the old, cold calculus of power reasserted itself. Asa’s faith, so robust in the spiritual purge, wavered before the geopolitical threat. He did not consult the prophet. He did not seek a word from the Lord. He went to the treasury of the House of the Lord and the royal palace, emptied them of silver and gold, and sent it all to Ben-hadad, king of Aram in Damascus, with a plea: break your covenant with Israel. Attack from the north.

It worked. Brilliantly, from a tactical view. Ben-hadad invaded, and Baasha fled from Ramah. Asa conscripted every last man in Judah to haul away the stones of Ramah and build up Geba and Mizpah with them. The victory was complete.

Yet, that night, a figure approached the palace. Hanani the seer, his eyes like coals in a face lined with desert wind. His voice was low, but it filled the chamber. “Because you relied on the king of Aram, and did not rely on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped you. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly; from now on you will have wars.”

Asa was enraged. The truth was a blow to his pride. He clapped the seer in stocks, in a dark cell. In that moment, the man who had cleared the high places succumbed to a different kind of idol: the security of his own strategy. He began to rule by force alone, oppressing some of the people in his fury.

The years ground on. His reign was long, forty-one years, a mirror to his father’s brief tenure. But the latter part was shadowed. A disease came into his feet, grievous and lingering. It was a humbling, painful affliction for a king who had marched at the head of armies. And here, the final test of his heart was revealed. The chronicler notes with devastating simplicity: *He did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians.*

It was not the seeking of medicine that was the crime; it was the turning of the heart. He sought a solution only in the realm of human skill, as he had sought one in Aramean gold, forgetting the source of all healing. He died with the pain in his feet, a constant, earthly reminder of a reliance that had shifted, subtly but decisively.

They made a great fire for him, of spices and precious woods, a tribute to a king who had begun in blazing faithfulness. They laid him in the tomb he had hewn for himself in the City of David, on a bed laden with spices, a king of paradox. He had cleansed the land but hardened his own heart; he had won peace but guaranteed war; he had trusted God with the idols of wood, but not with the enemies of flesh, nor the decay of his own body.

And in the north, the lamp of David’s line still flickered in Jerusalem, but in Asa’s passing, one felt not an extinguishing, but a dimming. The story of kings is rarely one of pure light or utter darkness. It is the story of feet that walk toward God, then stumble, of hearts that are true, until they are tested by the very peace they fought to win.