This chapter can be very confusing because too many major characters are introduced and dispatched quickly. It’s a very unstable period, for the Northern Kingdom in particular. Try not to get too tightly twisted around the names and how they overlap.
Rehoboam was succeeded by Abijam (AKA Abijah) on the throne of Judah. Keeping the custom established by Solomon, he placed his mother in charge of palace domestic management. Her name was Maacah, the granddaughter of Absalom (AKA Abishalom), the rebellious son of David. The passage notes he also carried on the skirmishes with Israel to the north. Abijah was no wiser than his father, and had a short reign of three years. However, for the sake of David’s faithfulness, the Lord ensured that Abijah’s heir could take up the royal reins.
The Lord raised up a worthy heir named Asa. We aren’t told why, but he left his grandmother Maacah in place as Queen Mother of the Palace. A literal translation would not differentiate between mother and grandmother, because Hebrew language doesn’t nit-pick over family relational roles the way Westerners do. This is why we don’t take the genealogy tables as literal lineal descent of father to son. It’s not uncommon to see several previous generations of ancestor called “mother” or “father.” The reader is expected to keep track if it matters.
So Asa was faithful to Jehovah and cleaned up most of the pagan shrines within his domain. His performance was imperfect, but it’s clear he loved the Lord and tried to please Him. He eventually deposed his grandmother from her position because of her refusal to get right with God. She had built an obscene pagan shrine to some Asherah, so Asa had it burned publicly right outside the gate of Jerusalem, next to the Kidron Brook. He never got around to all the various hilltop shrines, but the Lord was still impressed.
Sometime during his long reign, there arose a new king of Israel named Baasha. This new guy kept up the hostilities between north and south. He started fortifying a hilltop town just a few miles north of Jerusalem on the ancient ridge top highway, and deep inside Benjamin tribal territory. It would have placed a significant armed force that could blockade most land traffic from the north, and this was about the only reasonable trade route from Mesopotamia into Judah.
Asa hired Ben-hadad of Damascus to attack Baasha from the rear and distract him. It wasn’t a good precedent, but it worked. The Syrian forces attacked the border towns of Israel up near the Sea of Galilee, and Baasha had to hurry and move his troops and workforce up that way. Seeing this, Asa mobilized the entire kingdom to quickly seize the building materials and move them to two other sites. Then those materials were promptly used to fortify a couple of towns up on the northern border of Benjamin. Given the nature of the situation, we can safely say that this was not an abuse of the corvee labor system.
Then the narrative switched back to Israel in the north. It backs up to the end of Jeroboam’s reign and the rise of his heir, Nadab. Because he was no better than his father, his reign was just two years. He brought a military campaign against the old Philistine kingdom at Gibbethon, and during the fighting, Baasha led a revolt against Nadab during the siege. We find out that Baasha was from the Tribe of Issachar.
And true to the prophet’s word, Baasha went about slaughtering the entire household of Jeroboam. There was not a single male alive with Jeroboam’s DNA. Of course, Baasha was no better than Jeroboam’s dynasty, but the Lord had plans for him, so he reigned 24 years. It took a little time to raise up the man God wanted to replace him.
The point here is that, barring specific plans God might have, royal longevity typically reflects whether the king in question was in any degree faithful to the Covenant. There’s no need to pick over each and every king from both kingdoms. At some point the Lord allows Israel to have wise and capable kings, though nonetheless evil pagans, to stabilize things just long enough to raise up an empire to destroy them. Judah has a couple of fine servants of God on the throne, so things go better for them.
