2 Chronicles 16:5

ng any intercourse with the Jews, 2Chr 16:1 . Asa hires Ben-hadad, king of Syria, against him; and obliges him to leave off building Ramah, 2Chr 16:2-5 . Asa and his men carry the stones and timbers of Ramah away, and build therewith Geba and Mizpah, 2Chr 16:6 . Asa is reproved by Hanani, the seer, for his union with the king of Syria: he is offended with the seer, and puts him in prison, 2Chr 16:7-10 . Of his acts, 2Chr 16:11 . He is diseased in his feet, and seeks to physicians and not to God, and dies, 2Chr 16:12 , 2Chr 16:13 . His sumptuous funeral, 2Chr 16:14 . Verse 1 The six and thirtieth year - After the division of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah; according to Usher. This opinion is followed in our margin; see the note on 1Kgs 15:16 , where this subject is farther considered. Concerning Baasha's building of Ramah, see the note on 1Kgs 15:17 . Verse 3 There is a league - Let there be a treaty, offensive and defensive, between me and thee: see on 1Kgs 15:22 (note). Verse 6 Took all Judah - See on 1Kgs 15:22 (note). Verse 7 Escaped out of thine hand - It is difficult to know what is here intended. Perhaps the Divine providence had intended to give Asa a grand victory over the Syrians, who had always been the inveterate enemies of the Jews; but by this unnecessary and very improper alliance between Asa and Ben-hadad, this purpose of the Divine providence was prevented, and thus the Syrians escaped out of his hands. Verse 9 Therefore - thou shalt have wars - And so he had with Israel during the rest of his reign, 1Kgs 15:32 . Verse 10 Asa was wroth with the seer - Instead of humbling himself, and deprecating the displeasure of the Lord, he persecuted his messenger: and having thus laid his impious hands upon the prophet, he appears to have got his heart hardened through the deceitfulness of sin; and then he began to oppress the people, either by unjust imprisonments, or excessive taxations. Verse 12 Diseased in his feet - He had a strong and long fit of the gout; this is most likely. He sought not to the Lord - "He did not seek discipline from the face of the Lord, but from the physicians." - Targum. Are we not taught by this to make prayer and supplication to the Lord in our afflictions, with the expectation that he will heal us when he finds us duly humbled, i.e., when the end is answered for which he sends the affliction? Verse 14 And laid him in the bed - It is very likely that the body of Asa was burnt; that the bed spoken of here was a funeral pyre, on which much spices and odoriferous woods had been placed; and then they set fire to the whole and consumed the body with the aromatics. Some think the body was not burned, but the aromatics only, in honor of the king. How the ancients treated the bodies of the illustrious dead we learn from Virgil, in the funeral rites paid to Misenus. Nec minus interea Misenum in littore Teucri Flebant, et cineri ingrato suprema ferebant. Principio pinguem taedis et robore secto Ingentem struxere pyram: cui frondibus atris Intexunt latera, et ferales ante cupressas Constituunt, decorantque super fulgentibus armis, etc. Aen. vi. 214. "Meanwhile the Trojan troops, with weeping eyes, To dead Misenus pay their obsequies. First from the ground a lofty pile they rear Of pitch trees, oaks, and pines, and unctuous fir. The fabric's front with cypress twigs they strew, And stick the sides with boughs of baleful yew. The topmost part his glittering arms adorn: Warm waters, then, in brazen caldrons borne Are poured to wash his body joint by joint, And fragrant oils the stiffen'd limbs anoint. With groans and cries Misenus they deplore: Then on a bier, with purple cover'd o'er, The breathless body thus bewail'd they lay, And fire the pile (their faces turn'd away). Such reverend rites their fathers used to pay. Pure oil and incense on the fire they throw, And fat of victims which their friends bestow. These gifts the greedy flames to dust devour, Then on the living coals red wine they pour. And last the relics by themselves dispose, Which in a brazen urn the priests enclose. Old Corineus compass'd thrice the crew, And dipp'd an olive branch in holy dew; Which thrice he sprinkled round, and thrice aloud Invoked the dead, and then dismiss'd the crowd." Dryden. All these rites are of Asiatic extraction. Virgil borrows almost every circumstance from Homer; (see Iliad, xxiii., ver. 164, etc.); and we well know that Homer ever describes Asiatic manners. Sometimes, especially in war, several captives were sacrificed to the manes of the departed hero. So, in the place above, the mean-souled, ferocious demon, Achilles, is represented sacrificing twelve Trojan captives to the ghost of his friend Patroclus. Urns containing the ashes and half-calcined bones of the dead occur frequently in barrows or tumuli in this country; most of them, no doubt, the work of the Romans. But all ancient nations, in funeral matters, have nearly the same rites. Introduction

Asa's League with Benhadad. ( b. c. 929.) 1 In the six and thirtieth year of the reign of Asa Baasha king of Israel came up against Judah, and built Ramah, to the intent that he might let none go out or come in to Asa king of Judah. 2 Then Asa brought out silver and gold out of the treasures of the house of the Lord and of the king's house, and sent to Ben-hadad king of Syria, that dwelt at Damascus, saying, 3 There is a league between me and thee, as there was between my father and thy father: behold, I have sent thee silver and gold; go, break thy league with Baasha king of Israel, that he may depart from me. 4 And Ben-hadad hearkened unto king Asa, and sent the captains of his armies against the cities of Israel; and they smote Ijon, and Dan, and Abel-maim, and all the store cities of Naphtali. 5 And it came to pass, when Baasha heard it, that he left off building of Ramah, and let his work cease. 6 Then Asa the king took all Judah; and they carried away the stones of Ramah, and the timber thereof, wherewith Baasha was building; and he built therewith Geba and Mizpah. How to reconcile the date of this event with the history of the kings I am quite at a loss. Baasha died in the twenty-sixth year of Asa, 1 Kings xvi. 8 . How then could this be done in his thirty-sixth year, when Baasha's family was quite cut off, and Omri was upon the throne? It is generally said to be meant of the thirty-sixth year of the kingdom of Asa, namely, that of Judah, beginning from the first of Rehoboam, and so it coincides with the sixteenth of Asa's reign; but then ( ch. xv. 19 must be so understood; and how could it be spoken of as a great thing that there was no more war till the fifteenth year of Asa, when that passage immediately before was in his fifteenth year? ( ch. xv. 10 ), and after this miscarriage of his, here recorded, he had wars, v. 9 . Josephus places it in his twenty-sixth year, and then we must suppose a mistake in the transcriber here and ( ch. xv. 19 , the admission of which renders the computation easy. This passage we had before ( 1 Kings xv. 17 , &c.) and Asa was in several ways faulty in it. 1. He did not do well to make a league with Benhadad, a heathen king, and to value himself so much upon it as he seems to have done, v. 3 . Had he relied more upon his covenant, and his father's, with God, he would not have boasted so much of his league, and his father's, with the royal family of Syria. 2. If he had had a due regard to the honour of Israel in general, he would have found some other expedient to give Baasha a diversion than by calling in a foreign force, and inviting into the country a common enemy, who, in process of time, might be a plague to Judah too. 3. It was doubtless a sin in Benhadad to break his league with Baasha upon no provocation, but merely through the influence of a bribe; and, if so, certainly it was a sin in Asa to move him to it, especially to hire him to do it. The public faith of kings and kingdoms must not be made so cheap a thing. 4. To take silver and gold out of the house of the Lord for this purpose was a great aggravation of the sin, v. 2 . Must the temple be plundered to serve his carnal politics? He had better have brought gifts and offerings with prayers and supplications, to the house of the Lord, that he might have engaged God on his side and made him his friend; then he would not have needed to be at this expense to make Benhadad his friend. 5. It was well if Asa had not to answer for all the mischief that the army of Benhadad did unjustly to the cities of Israel, all the blood they shed and all the spoil they made, v. 4 . Perhaps Asa intended not that they should carry the matter so far. But those that draw others to sin know not what they do, nor where it will end. The beginning of sin is as the letting forth of water. However the project succeeded. Benhadad gave Baasha a powerful diversion, obliged him to leave off building Ramah and betake himself to the defence of his own country northward, which gave Asa an opportunity, not only to demolish his fortifications, but to seize the materials and convert them to his own use.