Your own evil will discipline you; your own apostasies will reprimand you. Recognise how evil and bitter it is for you to abandon the Lord your God and to have no fear of me. This is the declaration of the Lord God of Armies.
‘As for you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father, and serve him wholeheartedly and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands the intention of every thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you abandon him, he will reject you for ever.
for the Lord had caused the Aramean camp to hear the sound of chariots, horses, and a large army. The Arameans had said to each other, ‘The king of Israel must have hired the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to attack us.’
which sends envoys by sea, in reed vessels over the water. Go, swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth-skinned, to a people feared far and near, a powerful nation with a strange language, whose land is divided by rivers.
Asa had an army of three hundred thousand from Judah bearing large shields and spears, and two hundred and eighty thousand from Benjamin bearing shields and drawing the bow. All these were valiant warriors.
and they abandoned the temple of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, and served the Asherah poles and the idols. So there was wrath against Judah and Jerusalem for this guilt of theirs.