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2
Chronicles Chapter Fourteen
2 Chronicles 14
Chapter Contents
Asa's piety, He strengthens his kingdom.
Asa aimed at pleasing God, and studied to approve himself
to him. Happy those that walk by this rule, not to do that which is right in
their own eyes, or in the eye of the world, but which is so in God's sight. We
find by experience that it is good to seek the Lord; it gives us rest; while we
pursue the world, we meet with nothing but vexation. Asa consulted with his
people how to make a good use of the peace they enjoyed; and concluded with
them that they must not be idle, nor secure. A formidable army of Ethiopians
invaded Asa's kingdom. This evil came upon them, that their faith in God might
be tried. Asa's prayer is short, but it is the real language of faith and
expectation from God. When we go forth in God's name, we cannot but prosper,
and all things work together for the good of those whom he favours.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on 2 Chronicles》
2 Chronicles 14
Verse 1
[1] So Abijah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in
the city of David: and Asa his son reigned in his stead. In his days the land
was quiet ten years.
Quiet — There was no open war, but there were private
hostilities between his and Baasha's subjects.
Verse 6
[6] And he built fenced cities in Judah: for the land had
rest, and he had no war in those years; because the LORD had given him rest.
The land had rest — Those have rest
indeed, to whom God gives rest; peace indeed, to whom Christ gives peace. We
find by experience, it is good to seek the Lord. While we pursue the world, we
meet with nothing but vexation.
Verse 7
[7] Therefore he said unto Judah, Let us build these cities,
and make about them walls, and towers, gates, and bars, while the land is yet
before us; because we have sought the LORD our God, we have sought him, and he
hath given us rest on every side. So they built and prospered.
Before us — In our power.
Verse 9
[9] And there came out against them Zerah the Ethiopian with
an host of a thousand thousand, and three hundred chariots; and came unto
Mareshah.
Ethiopian — Or, the Arabian, as the Hebrew
word Cush is commonly used: these being much nearer to Asa than the Ethiopians.
Verse 11
[11] And Asa cried unto the LORD his God, and said, LORD, it
is nothing with thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no
power: help us, O LORD our God; for we rest on thee, and in thy name we go
against this multitude. O LORD, thou art our God; let not man prevail against
thee.
Let not man prevail — If he prevails
against us, he prevails, as it were, against thee; because thou art our God.
And we rest on thee, and go forth in thy name, which thou hast encouraged us to
do.
Verse 12
[12] So the LORD smote the Ethiopians before Asa, and before
Judah; and the Ethiopians fled.
Smote — With terror, and an unaccountable consternation.
Verse 14
[14] And they smote all the cities round about Gerar; for the
fear of the LORD came upon them: and they spoiled all the cities; for there was
exceeding much spoil in them.
Smote the cities — because they had
joined, with Zerah in this war.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on 2 Chronicles》
14 Chapter 14
Verses 1-15
Verses 1-4
And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord
his God.
Asa faithful to his God
We have watched the steady fall of the kingdom of Israel Judah
also began in shame and ended in disaster, but its shame was not so unmixed nor its
disaster so complete. The reason for this better fate is suggested in our text:
the saving influence of good men interposed to hold the people to God and
prosperity. Our lesson presents Asa as the righteous leader of his people.
1. Asa reformed the religion of Judah. Like Gideon, he began his rule
with a bold attack upon the popular idolatry. The worship of Baal and Ashtoreth
had clung to the people ever since they met it when entering Canaan, in spite
of God’s warning that for this very sin the inhabitants were cast out before
them. In recent years Solomon had patronised it, Rehoboam encouraged and Abijah
confirmed it; and under these royal leaders Judah had become fascinated with
its worship and debauched with its hideous vice. But the reformer’s axe went
crashing through the groves. He was well named Asa(“Physician,” “Cure”), for he
healed the hurt of his people. We hear of no resistance to his vigorous
measures. The conscience of the nation yet answered to the conscience of the
king: “the land was quiet before him.”
2. Asa advanced the material prosperity of Judah. In the ten years of
rest which God gave him “he built fenced cities, with walls and towers, gates
and bars,” to protect them from Israel on the north and Egypt on the south.
3. Passing now to determine the nature and the extent of Asa’s
influence, we find the cause of his success in his piety. He was a sound
reformer, an able king, and a successful soldier, because he was faithful to
his God. “He did that which was right, and commanded the people to serve the
Lord.” So, too, his best work for his subjects was upon their characters. Asa’s
influence was most important and enduring. He ascended the throne at a crisis
in the nation’s history. Israel was already twenty years along in its fatal
transgression, and Judah was hastening after it. His father and grandfather had
forsaken the righteousness of David and perpetuated the iniquity of Solomon,
rather than his splendour or his wisdom. Had the succeeding reign of forty-one
years followed the same course, we must believe that the current toward
wickedness would have been set past turning. Had Asa been like Jeroboam, Judah
would have gone down like Israel. Through Asa’s faithfulness the old man’s
dying blessing has come to pass: “Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall
praise: thy father’s children shall bow down before thee, and unto him shall
the gathering of the people be.” For Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of
him came the chief ruler. The Jewish monarchy fell at last, but the real cause
for which Asa struggled shall never perish. He who reads the story of Israel and
Judah will mark with wonder the controlling power exercised by the king upon
the religious faith of the nation. If it is written of one, “He did evil in the
sight of the Lord,” it is always true that “he made Israel to sin.” If he
worshipped Jehovah, his subjects worshipped with him. The character of the king
decided the character of the people. The saving influence of righteous leaders.
The power to lead others may come either from external circumstances or from
personal qualities.
1. The influence given by external circumstances.
2. Besides the control given by external circumstances, we may notice
the influence of personal qualities. Not what the man has, but what the man is,
makes him a leader. Jeroboam is an instance in point. Beginning life as a common
labourer, he died king of Israel. How continually have gifted, accomplished,
and learned men brought saving help to the Church of God throughout her
history. There is a subtle, mighty influence which should always be consecrated
to holy uses--popularity, power to win the favour of others. Disciplined
character has a peculiar mastery over others for good. Its control is quieter
and deeper than any we have marked; it is the atmosphere of a soul refined to
its highest uses. “All high beauty has a moral element in it. Gross and obscure
natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendour
to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and grey hairs.” God has been at great pains
to fit souls for this service. (Monday Club Sermon.)
Verse 7
Therefore said he unto Judah, Let us build these cities . . . while
the land is yet before us
The duty of improving present opportunity
(a Sunday-school sermon):--Consider--
I.
The
opportunity for labour with which we are blessed. “The land is yet before us.”
1. We have liberty to labour.
2. The facilities are great: multiplication of elementary books,
circulation of Bibles, etc.
3. The encouragements are numerous. The prejudices of society are in
our favour. God’s command, etc.
II. The importance
of labouring while we have this opportunity.
1. What is the work to which we are called? That of teaching the
young the Word of God (Deuteronomy 6:6-7; Psalms 78:5; Psalms 78:7; Proverbs 22:6).
2. The duty of improving existing opportunities. Conclusion: Address
children. If you had to pass through a long and dark passage where there were
many deep pits, how anxious,
at the beginning, would you feel for light. Such is the Word of God given to
you at your entrance into life (Psalms 119:105). (J. G.
Breay, B.A.)
Verse 11-12
And Asa, cried unto the Lord his God.
Victories over superior numbers
These victories over superior numbers may easily be paralleled or
surpassed by numerous striking examples from secular history. The odds were
greater at Agincourt, where at least sixty thousand French were defeated by not
more than twenty
thousand Englishmen; at Marathon the Greeks routed a Persian army ten times as
numerous as their own; in India English generals have defeated innumerable hordes
of native warriors. For the most part victorious generals have been ready to
acknowledge the succouring arm of the God of battles. Shakespeare’s Henry V,
after Agincourt, speaks altogether in the spirit of Asa’s prayer: “O God, Thy
arm was here; and not to us, but to Thy arm alone, ascribe we all.” When
Elizabeth’s fleet defeated the Spanish Armada, the grateful piety of Protestant
England felt that its foes had been destroyed by the breath of the Lord:
“Afflavit Deus et dissipantur.” (W. H. Bennett, M.A.)
The superiority of moral to material force
Characteristic instances are to be found in the wider movements of
international polities. Italy in the eighteenth century seemed as hopelessly
divided as Israel under the judges, and Greece as completely enslaved to the
“unspeakable Turk” as the Jews to Nebuchadnezzar; and yet, destitute as they
were of any material resources, these nations had at their disposal great moral
forces: the memory of ancient greatness and the sentiment of nationality; and
to-day Italy can count hundreds of thousands like the chronicler’s Jewish
kings, and Greece builds her fortresses by land and her ironclads to command
the sea. The Lord has fought for Israel. But the principle has a wider
application. The English and American pioneers of the movements for the
abolition of slavery had to face what seemed an impenetrable phalanx of
powerful interests and influences. It may be objected that if victory were to
be secured by Divine intervention, there was no need to muster five hundred and
eighty thousand men, or indeed any army at all. We have no right to look for
Divine co-operation till we have done our best; we are to work out our own
salvation, for it is God that worketh in us. (W. H. Bennett, M. A.)
King Asa’s prayer on the eve of battle
I. Our text is a
prater--the surest weapon in war as in all other emergencies.
II. It is the
prayer of a king on the eve of battle, and therefore partakes of a national
character.
III. It is a prayer
of faith, exhibiting reliance on the Divine arm for help, and therefore
implying humiliation, together with a distinct conviction that no human force,
however vast, can prevail, except under the recognised championship of the
Almighty. (The Penny Pulpit.)
The all-sufficiency of God’s help
I. Asa acted promptly
and energetically as the occasion required. Only one purpose moved him, and
that was to bring out all the military strength of his kingdom, and at once,
with no unnecessary delay, strike the foe, every soldier realising that the
crown of victory was the prize to be won or lost, according as he should be
faithful or unfaithful in his particular duty. Having acted thus promptly and
energetically, then--
II. Asa called on
God for help. He did not ask God to work a miracle on his behalf. Whoever calls
upon God for help without first helping himself, without first putting forth
his own efforts to secure that for which he invokes the Divine aid, will call
upon God in vain. There are other elements of strength in war besides those
which are merely physical. God is a moral and spiritual force which will make
an army of inferior numbers more than adequate to encounter and overcome the
mere physical force which inheres in superiority of numbers. Hence the wisdom
and virtue of prayer.
III. What was the
issue? “The Lord smote the Ethiopians before Asa, etc. (W. T.
Tindley, D.D.)
Asa’s prayer
This King Asa, Rehoboam’s grandson, had had a long reign of peace,
which the writer of the Book of Chronicles traces to the fact that he had
rooted out idolatry from Judah. “The land had rest, and he had no war . . .
because the Lord had given him rest.” But their came a time when the war-cloud
began to roll threateningly over the land, and a great army came up against
him. Like a wise man he made his military dispositions first, and prayed next.
This prayer contains the very essence of what ought to be the Christian
attitude in reference to all the conditions and threatening dangers and
conflicts of life.
I. The wholesome
consciousness of our own impotence. It did not take much to convince Asa that
he had “no power.” His army, according to the numbers given of the two hosts,
was outnumbered two to one. If we look fairly in the face our duties, our
tasks, our dangers, the possibilities of life and its certainties, the more
humbly we think of our own capacity, the more wisely we shall think about God,
and the more truly we shall estimate ourselves. The world says “Self-reliance
is the conquering virtue.” Jesus says to us, “Self-distrust is the condition of
all victory.” And that does not mean any mere shuffling off of responsibility
from our own shoulders, but it means looking the facts of our lives, and of our
own characters, in the face. And if we will do that, however apparently easy
may be our course, and however richly endowed in mind, body, or estate we may
be, we shall find that we each are like “the man with ten thousand” that has to
meet “the King that comes against him with twenty thousand”; and we shaft not
“desire conditions of peace” with our enemy, for that is not what in this ease
we have to do, but we shall look about us, and not keep our eyes on the
horizon, and on the levels of earth, but look up to see if there is not there
an ally that we can bring into the field to redress the balance, and to make
our ten as strong as the opposing twenty. Now all that is true about the
disproportion between the foes we have to face and fight and our own strength.
It is eminently true about us Christian people, if we are doing any work for
our Master. You hear people say, “Look at the small number of professing
Christians in this country, as compared with the numbers on the other side.
What is the use of their trying to convert the world?” If the Christian Church
had to undertake the task of Christianising the world with its own strength, we
might well threw up the sponge and stop altogether. “We have no might.” But we
are not only numerically weak. A multitude of non-effectives, mere
camp-followers, loosely attached, nominal Christians have to be deducted from
the muster-roll. So a profound self-distrust is our wisdom. But it is not to
paralyse us, but to lead to something better, as it led Asa.
II. Summoning God
into the world should follow wholesome self-distrust. Asa uses a remarkable
expression, which is, perhaps, scarcely reproduced adequately in another verse,
“It is nothing with Thee to help, whether with many or with them that have no
power.” It is a strange phrase, but it seems most probable that the suggested
rendering in the Revised Version is nearer the writer’s meaning, which says,
“Lord! there is none beside Thee to help between the mighty and them that have
no power,” which to our ears is a somewhat cumbrous way of saying that God, and
God only, can adjust the difference between the mighty and the weak. Asa turns
to God and says, “Thou only canst trim the scales and make the heavy one the
lighter of the two by casting Thy might into it. So help us, O Lord, our God.”
One man with God at his back is always in the majority. There is encouragement
for people who have to fight unpopular causes in the world. The consciousness
of weakness may unnerve a man; and that is why people in the world are always
patting each other on the back and saying, “Be of good cheer, and rely upon
yourself.” But the self-distrust that turns to God becomes the parent of a far
more reliable self-reliance than that which trusts to men. My consciousness of
need is my opening the door for God to come in. Just as you always find the
lakes in the hollows, so you will always find the grace of God coming into men’s
hearts to strengthen them and make them victorious, when there has been the
preparation of the lowered estimate of one’s self. Hollow out your heart by
self-distrust, and God will fill it with the flashing waters of His strength
bestowed. The way by which we summon God into the field: Asa prays, “Help us, O
Lord, our God, for we rest on Thee”; and the word that he employs for “rest” is
not a very frequent one. It carries with it a very striking picture. It is used
in that tragical story of the death of Saul, when the man that saw the last of
him came to David and drew in a sentence the pathetic picture of the wearied,
wounded, broken-hearted, discrowned, desperate monarch leaning on his spear.
You can understand how hard he leaned, with what a grip he held it, and how
heavily his whole, languid, powerless weight pressed upon it. And that is the
word that is used here. “We lean on Thee” as the wounded Saul leaned upon his
spear. Is that a picture of your faith?
III. Courageous
advance should follow self-distrust and summoning god by faith. It is well when
self-distrust leads to confidence. But that is not enough. It is better when
self-distrust and confidence in God lead to courage. And as Asa goes on, “Help
us, for we rely on Thee, and in Thy name we go against this multitude.” Never
mind though it is two to one. What does that matter? Prudence and calculation
are well enough, but there is a great deal of very rank cowardice and want of
faith in Christian people, both in regard to their own lives and in regard to
Christian work in the world, which goes masquerading under much too respectable
a name, and calls itself “judicious caution” and “prudence.” If we have God
with us, let us be bold in fronting the dangers and difficulties that beset us,
and be sure that He will help us.
IV. The
all-powerful plea which God will answer. “Thou art my God, let not man prevail
against Thee.” That prayer covers two things. You may be quite sure that if God
is your God you will not be beaten; and you may be quite sure that if you have
made God’s cause yours He will make your cause His, and again you will not be beaten. “Thou art our
God.” “It takes two to make a bargain,” and God and we have both to act before
He is truly ours. He gives Himself to us, but there is an act of ours required,
too, and you must take the God that is given to you, and make Him yours because you make yourselves
His. And when I have taken Him for mine, and not unless I have, He is mine, to
all intents of strength-giving and blessedness. (A. Maclaren, D.D.)
The name of God written in life
Our whole life ought to be filled with His name. You can write it
anywhere. It does not need a gold plate to carve His name upon. It does not
need to be set in jewels and diamonds. The poorest scrap of brown paper, and
the bluntest little bit of pencil, and the shakiest hand will do to write the
name of Christ; and all life, the trivialities as well as the crises, may be
flashing and bright with the sacred syllables. Mohammedans decorate their
palaces and mosques with no pictures, but with the name of Allah in gilded
arabesques. Everywhere, on walls and roof, and windows and cornices, and
pillars and furniture, the name is written. There is no such decoration for a
life as that Christ’s name should be inscribed thereon. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》