Study Desk

If Your people Israel are defeated before an enemy, because they have sinned against You, and they return to You and praise Your name, and they pray and plead for mercy before You in this temple,

When the skies are shut and there is no rain because they have sinned against You, and they pray toward this place and praise Your name, and they turn from their sins because You are afflicting them,

Even for the foreigner who is not of Your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of Your great name and Your mighty hand and outstretched arm: when he comes and prays toward this temple,

The priests were not able to enter the Lord 's temple because the glory of the Lord filled the temple of the Lord .

Then they will say: Because they abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors who brought them out of the land of Egypt. They clung to other gods and worshiped and served them. Because of this, He brought all this ruin on them.

Solomon brought the daughter of Pharaoh from the city of David to the house he had built for her, for he said, "My wife must not live in the house of David king of Israel because the places the ark of the Lord has come into are holy."

May the Lord your God be praised! He delighted in you and put you on His throne as king for the Lord your God. Because Your God loved Israel enough to establish them forever, He has set you over them as king to carry out justice and righteousness."

The king did not listen to the people because the turn of events came from God, in order that the Lord might carry out His word that He had spoken through Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam son of Nebat.

for the Levites left their pasturelands and their possessions and went to Judah and Jerusalem, because Jeroboam and his sons refused to let them serve as priests of Yahweh.

So they strengthened the kingdom of Judah and supported Rehoboam son of Solomon for three years, because they walked in the way of David and Solomon for three years.

Because they were unfaithful to the Lord , in the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt went to war against Jerusalem

Then Shemaiah the prophet went to Rehoboam and the leaders of Judah who were gathered at Jerusalem because of Shishak. He said to them: "This is what the Lord says: ‘You have abandoned Me; therefore, I have abandoned you into the hand of Shishak.'"

Rehoboam did what was evil, because he did not determine in his heart to seek the Lord .

The Israelites were subdued at that time. The Judahites succeeded because they depended on the Lord , the God of their ancestors.

Because the land experienced peace, Asa built fortified cities in Judah. No one made war with him in those days because the Lord gave him rest.

So he said to the people of Judah, "Let's build these cities and surround them with walls and towers, with doors and bars. The land is still ours because we sought the Lord our God. We sought Him and He gave us rest on every side." So they built and succeeded.

Then they attacked all the cities around Gerar because the terror of the Lord was on them. They also plundered all the cities, since there was a great deal of plunder in them.

In those times there was no peace for those who went about their daily activities because the residents of the lands had many conflicts.

King Asa also removed Maacah, his grandmother, from being queen mother because she had made an obscene image of Asherah. Asa chopped down her obscene image, then crushed it and burned it in the Kidron Valley.

At that time, Hanani the seer came to King Asa of Judah and said to him, "Because you depended on the king of Aram and have not depended on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand.