Resource Advice

Jerry, 

I have WBC and next to NIC it is among my most used commentaries.  It is however, technical in nature meaning that it relies upon the original languages to a fair extent.  

Perhaps if you're working on a current pericope I can post a bit of the content so you can get a feel for it?

What are you working on right now?

 I've turned off page numbering but the passage spans pp188-191.....

[quote]

The
Reign of Asa (15:9-24)

Bibliography

Barrick,
W. B.
“On the ‘Removal of the “High-Places” ’ in 1–2 Kings.”
Bib
55 (1974) 257–59. Malamat,
A.
The Aramaeans in
Aram Naharaim and the Rise of their States
(Heb). Diss. Hebrew University, 1952. Melin,
G.
“Die
Stellung der G^ebira
im Staate Juda (1 K 15:13).”
TZ
10 (1954) 161–75. Unger,
M. F.
Israel and the
Aramaeans of Damascus.
London: J. Clarke & Co., 1957.

Translation

⁹Now
in the twentieth^a
year of Jeroboam king of Israel ^bAsa
king of Judah began to reign,^b
10and for
forty-one years he reigned in Jerusalem. And the name of his mother
was Maacah^a
daughter of Abishalom. ¹¹And
Asa performed what was right in the eyes of Yahweh, like David his
father. ¹²And
he dismissed the ^acult
prostitutes^a
from the land, and removed all the idols which his fathers,^b
13even
Maacah his mother, had made, so that he deposed her from the office
of queen mother. She had made a detestable cult object for Asherah,
so that Asa had to cut down her cult object and burn it in ¹⁴the
wadi Kidron. But they^a
did not remove the country shrines; nevertheless, Asa’s own heart
was continually loyal toward Yahweh.

¹⁵And
^ahe
brought^a
the sacral booty^b
of his father, with the sacral booty ^cof
his own,^c
into the temple of Yahweh, silver and gold and artifacts.

¹⁶And
hostility existed between Asa and Baasha^a
throughout all their days.

¹⁷Now
Baasha king of Israel came up against Judah. And he constructed Ramah
^aso as to
prevent anyone wishing to depart from or enter in^a
to Asa king of Judah. ¹⁸Then
Asa took^a
the silver and the gold that ^bwere
still left^b
in the treasure-rooms ^cof
Yahweh’s temple ^dand
in^d the
treasure-rooms^c
of ^ethe
king’s^e
house, and entrusted them into the hand^f
of his servants. And King Asa sent them to Ben-Hadad, the son of
Tabrimmon, son of Hezion, the king of Syria who was dwelling in
Damascus, with the following message: ^19a“There
is^a a
treaty between me ^band
you,^b
between^c my
father and your father. Behold, I have sent you a gift of silver and
gold; come, break your treaty with Baasha king of Israel so that he
will withdraw from me.” ²⁰And
Ben-Hadad hearkened to King Asa, dispatching whatever officers of
^athe armed
forces^a
were available to him against the cities of Israel. And he^b
attacked lyyon, Dan, and Abel-beth-maacah;^c
also all of Kinneroth ^d
adjoining the entire territory of Naphtali. ²¹So
when Baasha heard of it, he left off building Ramah, and ^astayed
in^a Tirzah.
²²Then King
Asa made a proclamation to entire Judah, leaving nobody free, that
they should carry away the stones of Ramah, with its timbers, with
which Baasha had been building. And ^aKing
Asa^a built
Geba of Benjamin and Mizpah with them.^b
23Now the
remainder of^a
Asa’s acts, including all his works of greatness^b
which he did ^cand
the cities that he built,^c
are these not written in the Book ^dof
the Chronicles of the Judahite Kings?^d
However, at the time of his old age^e
he suffered with his feet. ²⁴And
Asa slept ^awith
his fathers^a
and was buried with his fathers in the city of David his father. And
Jehoshaphat his son reigned in his place.

Notes

9.a.
MT. G^BL
“twenty-fourth”; cf. v 8
LXX

9.b-b. MT. G^BL “Asa became king over
Judah.”

10.a. MT. G^BL
“Hannah”; cf. v 13.

12.a-a. MT (הקדשים,
translated σύνδεσμος
in 14:24).
Here G^B
renders τελετὰς
“priests,” while G^L
renders στήλας
= Heb מַצֵבוֹת
“standing stones.”
Since the problem of translation cannot have been linguistic, these
variations can only be ideological and apologetic.

12.b. Chr inserts a long passage.

14.a. MT. G^BL, Syr., Vg have “he,” making
Asa the antecedent.

15.a-a. MT, G^B. G^L has
paraphrastic “Asa brought into Yahweh’s temple.”

15.b. MT (קדשי
“holy things”; cf.
7:51).
Not understanding the word, the Gr. translators offer κίονας
“pillars,” which does not appear to have a regular Heb
equivalent.

15.c-c. K, G, Syr., Tg., Chr Q makes the pious correction, “of
Yahweh’s temple.”

16.a. MT, G^L
G^B
adds explicative “king of Israel”; cf. v 17.

17.a-a. MT (לבלתי
תת יעא וכא “to
prevent departing from or entering in.” G^BLτοῦ
μὴ εἶναι = לבּלתי
היות “so it is not.”

18.a. G^BL. MT adds pleonastic “all.”

18.b-b. MT. G^BL “was found” (sing.).

18.c-c. MT, G^L. G^B omits
(homoioteleuton).

18.d-d. G^L, Syr. MT “and the”; G^B
corr.

18.e-e. mss, Q K corr.

18.f. MT. G^BL pl..

19.a-a. MT, noun-clause. The Gr. translators are puzzled
by this unusual construction: G^B offers διαθήκη
for Heb בְּוִית
“covenant,” “treaty,” preceded by
the impv. of διατιθημι “arrange,”
as though the two were from the same root, but there is no reason to
suppose that the Heb Vorlage had a verb. G^LΔιαθήκη
ἔστω “let there be a treaty” might be a legitimate
paraphrase except for the tact that a subjunctive is not suitable
when referring to something that occurred in the past—the
foretathers’ treaty.

19.b-b. MT, G^L. G^B omits (haplography?).

19.c. MT. G^BL “and between” is syndetic,
giving better Gr. style.

20.a-a. MT (pl.). G^BL have sing. with pl. gen
and the possessive pronoun.

20.b. MT, Par (sing., referring to Ben-hadad). Chr, G
pl., choosing “armed forces” as the subject.

20.c. MT. G^BL corr; cf. Chr

20.d. MT. G^BL corr. Chr מסכנות
“storage places”; Par reads Heb ככרות
“surroundings.”

21.a-a. MT. G^BL “returned to.” MT uses root ישׁב
“dwell,” G reads root שׁוּב
“return.” MT is lectio difficilior, but makes good
sense when understood with reference to Baasha’s behavior
subsequent to the Syrian invasion.

22.a-a. MT, G^B. G^L “Asa”; Chr omits. A
mention of Asa’s regal office is to be expected here.

22.b. Chr inserts a long passage.

23.a. G^BL. MT “of all” is not only
pleonastuc, but clearly enters the text from the two occurrences of
וכל
“and all” in the immediate sequel.

23.b. G^BL. MT adds “and all” (see above).

23.c-c. MT. G^L “and cities …”; G^B
omits (haplography?).

23.d-d. Chr “of the kings of Judah and Israel.”

23.e. MT and G^B. G^L has
interpretive gloss “Asa did what was evil.”

24.a-a. MT, G^L. G^B omits
(haplography).

Form/Structure/Setting

[Dtr: The reign of Asa

1. Introductory summary, vv 9–10

2. Cult reforms and theological
assessment, vv 11–14]

Memorandum from the temple
archives, v 15

Extract from the Book of the
Chronicles of the Judahite Kings 16

Narrative of Asa’s alliance with Ben-Hadad

1. The proposal

a. Baasha’s threat: a fort at
Ramah, v 17

b. Asa’s embassage to Damascus

(1). The gift, v 18

(2). Bribery to betrayal, v 19

2. The compliance

a. Preparations for Syrian
aggression, v 20a

b. The campaign, v 20b

3. The result: favorable conditions for Asa

a. Baasha withdraws, v 21

b. Asa builds counterfortresses, v 22

[Dtr: Closing summary for Asa, vv
23–24]

The account of Asa’s reign begins with an unusually
expansive summary from Dtr, picking up from the archives a detail of
how idolatry affected the king’s own household. Following brief
extracts from the temple archives and the Judahite chronicle, Dtr
inserts a detailed political narrative from Asa’s court, telling of
his treaty with Syria and of his border defenses. At the conclusion,
the Asa account receives a somewhat expanded closing summary in the
usual Dtr format.

Comment

9–15
Jeroboam was still king in Israel when Asa began to reign, but it
would be with Baasha, the leader of a new dynasty, that Asa would
have serious trouble. According to our chronology, Asa appointed
Jehoshaphat to serve as coregent with him during his final three
years (his foot trouble reported in v 23
may have been the cause of this). On the identity of his “mother,”
see above on v 2.
Dtr finds him to be the first Judahite king to deserve high praise:
he did “what was right in the eyes of Yahweh, like David his
father” (11),
and his “heart was continually loyal toward Yahweh” (14).
In particular, he exiled the cult prostitutes, הקים,
a masc. pl., but functioning as common gender to include both sexes.
He also “removed” (i.e., destroyed) all the idols (הגללים,
vocalized for the word “filth,” which synagogue-readers were
supposed to pronounce) made by his fathers, i.e., “ancestors,”
meaning primarily Solomon. He had to depose Maacah (his grandmother),
from being גביוה
because
she had installed a cult object, probably a wooden plaque, of Asherah
(see the pl. in 14:23),
Canaanite goddess of fertility (the Earth Mother). He did not
suppress the country-shrines, but Dtr is in no mood to blame him for
that. The temple extract in v 15
mentions without comment that Asa also deposited sacral booty in the
temple treasury (cf. 7:51b),
something which Abijam had evidently neglected.

16–22
A summary statement from the Book of the Chronicles of the Judahite
Kings introduces the political narrative of vv 16–22.
Baasha “came up,” i.e., attacked Judah, apparently without
encountering effective resistance. Most of Benjamin’s ancestral
territory had been under Jerusalem’s control (See 12:21),
but now Baasha fortified Ramah (Samuel’s residence, 1
Sam 7:17), about three miles
south of the traditional border. As the narrator sees it, this was to
prevent northerners from having contact with Asa (that the title,
“King Asa,” predominates in these verses suggests that the writer
is a loyal partisan of this king), though Baasha’s true purpose may
have been to defend against Judahite aggression. Shishak had pretty
well cleaned out the temple’s and the palace’s treasuries
(14:26),
but Asa sent what was left to bribe Ben-Hadad to attack Baasha. Since
this Syrian king’s father and grandfather are mentioned, his
relationship to the Rezon of 11:23–25
is problematical. Upon arriving in Damascus, Asa’s emissaries
(“servants”) present a message which (1) calls attention to a
treaty between Asa’s and Ben-Hadad’s respective “fathers”
(otherwise unmentioned; there is no solid basis for Noth’s proposal
[339] to read the noun-clause as a wish); (2) calls attention to the
gift; and (3) requests Ben-Hadad to break his treaty with Baasha
(also unmentioned elsewhere).

V
20
reads as if the bulk of Ben-Hadad’s army may have been occupied
elsewhere, but he sent the forces that were available into a raid of
three towns in the upper Jordan valley, together with the fertile
plain adjacent to the Sea of Galilee and the Galilean uplands as far
inland as the border of Naphtali. As our narrator tells it, Baasha
left off building Ramah when he heard of this raid and returned to
Tirzah, but he is probably ignorant of what probably did happen,
viz., that Baasha sent a strong force to drive BenHadad away. In any
case, Asa’s design was met. Since there were no more Israelite
soldiers to defend Ramah, Asa was able to effectuate a universal
conscription for taking Ramah down and using its timbers to build his
own forts at Geba and Mizpah.

23-24
In Asa’s closing summary, Dtr is moved to make special mention of
unnamed “works of greatness” and certain cities that were built
(or rebuilt). Asa did become old; subsisting on a rich diet, he
probably contracted gout, “the ailment of kings.” With his
approving attitude toward Asa, Dtr is not inclined to judge this
illness as some kind of punishment sent from Yahweh.

OK, this made me curious. For a long time I thought my googling skills were failing me, but finally I found something. Thomas, are we talking roughly the same deal as was posted on your blog-forum in March? Or are we talking about something else?

Praiser said:

Use the link there and see the price.

Ah! Didn't try that, since it was "too old". That's $9 less than what I found.

Great deal if you want it all, or at least most of it. Unfortunately I only want Word and the New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, and I'm not sure I can justify the cost at this time. How long does it last?

Justin Mayo said:

I assume that I would get a CD Rom for these resources. A con would be the lack of being able to re-download the files later if I loose the disc, correct?

You would get a CDRom and an activation code or product key, but you can can actually download the resources initially and re-download them later.  The con is the extra work getting the licenses in Logos4.  See the section entitled "Resources purchased through other retailers" on this page:

http://wiki.logos.com/Adding_new_resources_to_Logos_4

Once you've got the licenses in Logos4, you don't need to keep track of any media.  That's one of the benefits of Logos 4.

Justin Mayo said:

if typos are fixed in the future, they get updated as well?

Yes.

fgh said:

The con would also be the shipping cost. And for someone outside of the US the risk of having to pay VAT.

If you specify in your order that you only need the serial number, they will send you only the serial number.

Worked for me when I purchased Luther's Collection of Works.

What is this collection being discussed here called?