Page 70 - Signs of the End

34 THE SIGNS OF THE END

In the thirty-sixth year of the reign of Asa, Baasha king
of Israel came up against Judah, and built Ramah, in
order to let none go out or come in to Asa king of Judah.
And Asa brought out silver and gold out of the treasures
of the house of Jehovah and of the king's house, and sent
to Benhadad king of Syria, who dwelt at Damascus,
saying, There is a league between me and thee, and
between my father and thy father: behold, I send thee
silver and gold; go, break thy league with Baasha king of
Israel, that he may depart from me (2 Chron. 16:1-2).

There was, from the beginning of the divided kingdom, a
sense of rivalry between Judah and Israel. Israel had the bulk of
the population and land with its ten tribes, but Judah had the
tradition-laden capital city of Jerusalem, with its fabled Temple,
and the divinely established dynasty of King David. At times
during the 300-year history of the two contemporaneous rival
kingdoms, they cooperated with each other against common
enemies; but more often, they found themselves fighting with
one another.

There was always a great temptation for the northern
Israelites to forsake the rival altars of Baal to return to the
worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem, and the northern kings
constantly had to fight this desire by building bigger and better
pagan temples and priesthoods in the north. During the reigns of
King Asa in Judah and King Baasha in Israel, there w as just such
a situation. King Asa and his splendid victory over the invading
Ethiopian army made his kingdom of Judah and its magnificent
Temple irresistible to the northern Israelites desiring to go to the
annual feasts. Baasha became so frustrated with the drain of his
subjects to the south that he finally decided on the military
solution of the construction of Fort Ramah on the border between
the two kingdoms. This would be sort of a "Berlin Wall" to keep
his subjects from crossing the border to Jerusalem and to keep
the Judahites from infecting the Israelites with their doctrine of
Moses and the prophets.

King Asa could not tolerate this barrier, so he devised a
counter-strategy to cause King Baasha to cease and desist his
construction of the "stone curtain" of Ramah. While A sa's only