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Context No. 772 of 4322 · 1 Kings

Context · Reflection

1 Kings 15:9-15: in context

9In the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Asa began to reign over Judah. 10He reigned forty-one years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Maacah the daughter of Abishalom. 11Asa did that which was right in the LORD’s eyes, as David his father did. 12He put away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. 13He also removed Maacah his mother from being queen, because she had made an abominable image for an Asherah. Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron. 14But the high places were not taken away. Nevertheless the heart of Asa was perfect with the LORD all his days. 15He brought into the LORD’s house the things that his father had dedicated, and the things that he himself had dedicated: silver, gold, and utensils.

Asa becomes king of Judah and sets about a cleanup, and the writer approves: he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, like David his father. He drives out the cult prostitutes and removes the idols his own predecessors had set up. It is the kind of reform a good king is praised for. But one line shows how far he was willing to take it. He also removed Maacah, his own mother, from her position as queen mother, because she had made an obscene image for the goddess Asherah, and he cut the thing down and burned it in the Kidron valley.

That is where most reforms quietly stop. It is one thing to tear down the shrines of strangers and predecessors; it is another to depose your own mother, the highest-ranking woman in the kingdom and the person with the oldest claim on your loyalty, and to burn her idol in public. Asa did not carve out an exception for family. His devotion to God cost him at his own dinner table. The writer is honest that his reform was not complete, the high places were left standing, and yet the verdict is that Asa's heart was wholly true to the LORD all his days. Wholehearted did not mean flawless. It meant he would not spare even his own mother's idol.

Asa carried his reform all the way into his own household and removed his own mother's idol. Where do I clean house everywhere except among the people closest to me, where the cost would actually be felt?

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