Asa אסא
king of Judah for forty-one years; he removed the idols and deposed the queen mother
Asa reigned forty-one years—longer than any king of Judah before Uzziah. He drove out of the land the idols set up under his father and grandfather, and spared not even his own family: he deposed Maacah the queen mother because she had made an image of Asherah, and burned the image by the brook Kidron (1 Kings 15:13).
In his days Zerah the Cushite came against Judah with a vast army, and Asa cried out: "Lord, it is nothing for You to help the many or the powerless; help us, for on You we rely" (2 Chronicles 14:10). The army was broken. The end of his reign was darker than its beginning: in war with Baasha king of Israel he took silver and gold from the Temple and bought the alliance of Ben-Hadad of Aram, for which the seer Hanani rebuked him—and in his thirty-ninth year he fell ill in his feet and "in his illness sought not the Lord but the physicians". AM 2982–3023 traditionally, 911–870 BCE academically.
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Tanakh
- Melachim I (1 Kings) 15:9–24 — the forty-one-year reign, the deposing of Maacah, and the alliance with Ben-Hadad
- 2 Chronicles 14–16 — the war with Zerah the Cushite, Hanani's rebuke, and the illness in his feet
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.