2 Chronicles 15

¹The Spirit of God came on Azariah the son of Oded.

²He went out to meet Asa, and said to him, “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin! The LORD is with you while you are with him; and if you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.

³Now for a long time Israel was without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without law.

⁴But when in their distress they turned to the LORD, the God of Israel, and sought him, he was found by them.

⁵In those times there was no peace to him who went out, nor to him who came in; but great troubles were on all the inhabitants of the lands.

⁶They were broken in pieces, nation against nation, and city against city; for God troubled them with all adversity.

⁷But you be strong! Don’t let your hands be slack, for your work will be rewarded.”

⁸When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he took courage, and put away the abominations out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and out of the cities which he had taken from the hill country of Ephraim; and he renewed the LORD’s altar that was before the LORD’s porch.

⁹He gathered all Judah and Benjamin, and those who lived with them out of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon; for they came to him out of Israel in abundance when they saw that the LORD his God was with him.

¹⁰So they gathered themselves together at Jerusalem in the third month, in the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign.

¹¹They sacrificed to the LORD in that day, from the plunder which they had brought, seven hundred head of cattle and seven thousand sheep.