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height") and Mizpah ("the outlook") (comp. Joshua 18:24, 26; also Jeremiah 41:5-9).
Both these cities lay within the territory of Benjamin, about three miles to the north of
Ramah, in very strong positions, and commanded the two roads to Jerusalem.
But with the retreat of Baasha from Ramah, the troubles of Asa did not end; rather did
they only then begin. When, alone and unaided, he had, in the might of Jehovah,
encountered the hosts of Egypt, signal success had been his; peace and prosperity had
followed; and God's prophet had been specially sent to meet the returning army with
good and encouraging tidings. It was all otherwise now. Hanani the prophet was
directed to meet Asa with a message of reproof and judgment; instead of, as formerly,
peace, there would henceforth be continual warfare (2 Chronicles 16:9); and the
alliance with Syria would prove neither to honor nor profit. On the other hand, even
had his fears been realized, and the combined armies of Israel and Syria invaded Judah,
yet if, instead of buying the alliance of Ben-Hadad, he had gone forward in the name of
the LORD, victory such as that over the Ethiopians would again have been his (2
Chronicles 16:7). As it was, Asa had chosen a worldly policy, and by its issue he must
abide. Henceforth it was no more Jehovah Who was arrayed against the might of man,
but the contest would be simply one of cunning and strength, as between man and man
(2 Chronicles 16:9).
Hanani had spoken, as all the prophets of Jehovah, fearlessly, faithfully, and only too
truly. It was probably conviction of this which, in the unhumbled state of the king,
kindled his anger against "the seer." Once more it might seem to Asa as not implying
rebellion against God, only a necessary precaution against disunion and dissatisfaction
among his own subjects, threatening to upset his political calculations and
combinations, to use measures of severity against the prophet from which he would
have shrunk at a former period of his reign. All the more requisite might these appear,
since his unwelcome monitor evidently commanded the sympathies of an influential
part of the community. But it was an unheard-of proceeding, which happily found
imitation only in the worst times of Israel (1 Kings 22:,6-29; Jeremiah 20:2; 29:26;
Acts 16:24), to put the prophet of the Load "in the house of stocks"^267 on account of
his faithfulness, and by a series of persecutions to oppress, and, if possible, crush^268
those who sympathized with him.
Nor was this all. The fatal tendency which had showed itself in the Syrian alliance, and
still more in the measures against Hanani and his sympathizers, continued and
increased with the lapse of years. Two years before his death, Asa was attacked by
some disease^269 in his feet. In this "also"^270 "he sought not Jehovah but in (by) the
physicians."^271
It is not necessary to explain the blame which Holy Scripture evidently attaches to this,
on the ground that these physicians were so called "medicine-men" (as among the
(^)