⁸ When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Azariah son of Oded the prophet, he took courage and removed the abhorrent idols from the whole land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities he had captured in the hill country of Ephraim.^(A) He renovated the altar of the Lord that was in front of the portico of the Lord’s temple.^{(B) 9} Then he gathered all Judah and Benjamin, as well as those from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who were residing among them, for they had defected to him from Israel in great numbers when they saw that the Lord his God was with him.^(C)

¹⁰ They were gathered in Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign. ¹¹ At that time they sacrificed to the Lord seven hundred cattle and seven thousand sheep and goats from all the plunder they had brought.^{(D) 12} Then they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their ancestors with all their heart and all their soul.^{(E) 13} Whoever would not seek the Lord God of Israel would be put to death, young or old,^[a] man or woman.^(F)