2 Chronicles 16:1 - Meaning and Application

It is hard to fit the date of this event into the kings’ timeline. Baasha died in Asa’s twenty-sixth year (1 Kings 16:8), so how could this happen in Asa’s thirty-sixth year, when Baasha’s family had already been destroyed and Omri was king? Many think the verse means the thirty-sixth year of the kingdom of Judah, counted from Rehoboam’s first year. If so, it would match Asa’s sixteenth year, but then 2 Chronicles 15:19 must be read that way too, and that raises another problem.

How could it be called a great thing that there was no more war until Asa’s fifteenth year if the earlier passage is already in his fifteenth year? Also, after this failure, Asa later had wars again (2 Chronicles 16:9). Josephus places this event in Asa’s twenty-sixth year, and then the easiest solution is to think there was a copying mistake here and in 2 Chronicles 15:19. Whatever the exact date, this story was already told before (1 Kings 15:17, etc.), and Asa was wrong in several ways.

First, he should not have made an alliance with Benhadad, a pagan king, and then seemed to boast so much about it (2 Chronicles 16:3). If he had trusted more in his covenant with God, and in his father’s covenant with God, he would not have spoken so proudly of his treaty with the royal family of Syria. Second, if he had cared properly about the good of Israel as a whole, he would have found some other way to distract Baasha than by bringing in a foreign army. By doing that, he invited a common enemy into the land, and that enemy might later become a trouble for Judah too.

Third, Benhadad surely sinned by breaking his treaty with Baasha without any offense, only because he had been paid. If that was sinful, then Asa also sinned by leading him into it, especially by hiring him to do it. The public trust between kings and kingdoms should not be treated as something cheap. Fourth, it made the sin worse that Asa took silver and gold from the house of the Lord for this purpose (2 Chronicles 16:2). Was the temple to be plundered to support his worldly politics?

He would have done better to bring gifts and offerings, along with prayers and pleas, to the house of the Lord. Then he could have sought God on his side and made the Lord his friend, and he would not have needed to spend this money to make Benhadad his friend. Fifth, if Asa did not have to answer for all the harm Benhadad’s army did to Israel, he was fortunate. That army acted unjustly against Israel’s cities, killing many people and carrying off much spoil (2 Chronicles 16:4).

Perhaps Asa did not mean for it to go that far. But those who lead others into sin often do not know what they are setting in motion, or where it will end. Sin starts small, like water that is let out of a dam. Even so, the plan worked. Benhadad gave Baasha a strong distraction, forcing him to stop building Ramah and turn north to defend his own land. That gave Asa the chance not only to tear down Baasha’s fortifications, but also to take the building materials and use them himself.