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2 Chronicles16:11–14

The Death and Burial of Asa

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2 Chronicles 16:11–14 — The Death and Burial of Asa. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

11

Now the acts of Asa, from beginning to end, are indeed written in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

wə·hin·nêh diḇ·rê ’ā·sā hā·ri·šō·w·nîm wə·hā·’a·ḥă·rō·w·nîm hin·nām kə·ṯū·ḇîm ‘al- sê·p̄er ham·mə·lā·ḵîm lî·hū·ḏāh wə·yiś·rā·’êl

Word by word12 · parsed
וְהִנֵּה֙wə·hin·nêhNowH2009
√ hinnêh — lo!Conjunctive wawInterjection
Conjunctive waw plus interjection. The narrator points before he speaks.
דִּבְרֵ֣יdiḇ·rêthe actsH1697
√ dâbâr — a wordNounmasculine plural construct
dâbâr: a word The same noun that names prophetic speech names, here, the royal archive. Chronicles closes each reign by handing the reader off to a written source, and the noun keeps the reign in the register of speech and record rather than achievement. Ellicott glosses it "history"; Gill's entire comment on this verse is a referral to his own note on the Kings parallel, which is itself a measure of how little the verse says.
אָסָ֔א’ā·sāof AsaH609
√ ʼÂçâʼ — Asa, the name of a king and of a LeviteNounpropermasculine singular
הָרִאשׁוֹנִ֖יםhā·ri·šō·w·nîmfrom beginningH7223
√ riʼshôwn — first, in place, time or rank (as adjective or noun)ArticleAdjectivemasculine plural
riʼshôwn: first, in place, time or rank Article plus masculine plural adjective. Paired with ʼachărôwn in the next word it forms a merism: the whole of a life, front to back, with nothing set aside. For Asa that totality is the point, since the front of the reign was reform and the back of it was a league with Syria, a prophet in the stocks, and a disease unprayed over.
וְהָאַחֲרוֹנִ֑יםwə·hā·’a·ḥă·rō·w·nîmto endH314
√ ʼachărôwn — hinderConjunctive waw, ArticleAdjectivemasculine plural
ʼachărôwn: hinder The spatial word for what is behind, used temporally for "last." The merism is neutral about quality: it claims completeness of record, not evenness of conduct.
הִנָּ֤םhin·nāmare indeedH2005
√ hên — lo!Interjectionthird person masculine plural
hên: lo! Interjection with a third person masculine plural suffix, "behold them." The verse's second act of pointing.
כְּתוּבִים֙kə·ṯū·ḇîmwrittenH3789
√ kâthab — to grave, by implication, to write (describe, inscribe, prescribe, subscribe)VerbQalQalPassParticiplemasculine plural
kâthab: to grave, to write Qal passive participle, masculine plural: the acts stand written. The Chronicler's closing formula transfers the burden of proof to a document outside his own scroll, an editorial gesture no synthesis can go behind.
עַל־‘al-inH5921
√ ʻal — above, over, upon, or against (yet always in this last relation with a downward aspect) in a great variety of applicationsPreposition
סֵ֣פֶרsê·p̄erthe BookH5612
√ çêpher — properly, writing (the art or a document)Nounmasculine singular construct
çêpher: writing, a document Construct before "the kings," governed by ʻal, "upon." The lexicon's gloss is "properly, writing (the art or a document)," so the noun is the act or the surface before it is ever a book. Chronicles closes reign after reign by deferring to such writings, and this is the point at which the Chronicler's own authority openly rests on a document he does not reproduce: the title he gives it, "of the kings of Judah and Israel," is not the title 1 Kings 15:23 gives, as both Cambridge and Pulpit observe.
הַמְּלָכִ֔יםham·mə·lā·ḵîmof the KingsH4428
√ melek — a kingArticleNounmasculine plural
melek: a king Article plus plural.
לִיהוּדָ֖הlî·hū·ḏāhof JudahH3063
√ Yᵉhûwdâh — Jehudah (or Judah), the name of five IsraelitesPreposition-lNounpropermasculine singular
וְיִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃wə·yiś·rā·’êland IsraelH3478
√ Yisrâʼêl — Jisrael, a symbolical name of JacobConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
Yisrâʼêl: a symbolical name of Jacob The source title here is "of the kings of Judah and Israel," and Cambridge notes that at 1 Kings 15:23 the appeal is only to the kings of Judah. Pulpit presses the same difference and judges the Kings citation the earlier of the two in point of time. The Chronicler, writing for a post-exilic Judah, still files Asa under both names.
12

In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet, and his disease became increasingly severe. Yet even in his illness he did not seek the LORD, but only the physicians.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

šə·lō·wō·šîm wā·ṯê·ša‘ biš·naṯ lə·mal·ḵū·ṯōw ’ā·sā way·ye·ḥĕ·le bə·raḡ·lāw ‘aḏ- ḥā·lə·yōw lə·ma‘·lāh wə·ḡam- bə·ḥā·lə·yōw lō- ḏā·raš ’eṯ- Yah·weh kî bā·rō·p̄ə·’îm

Word by word18 · parsed
שְׁלוֹשִׁ֨יםšə·lō·wō·šîmIn the thirty-ninthH7970
√ shᵉlôwshîym — thirtyNumbercommon plural
Cardinal "thirty," joined to "nine" in the next word. Chronicles counts regnal years precisely here and at v. 13, two years apart.
וָתֵ֤שַׁעwā·ṯê·ša‘. . .H8672
√ têshaʻ — nine or (ordinal) ninthConjunctive wawNumberfeminine singular
בִּשְׁנַת֩biš·naṯyearH8141
√ shâneh — a year (as a revolution of time)Preposition-bNounfeminine singular construct
Construct "in the year of."
לְמַלְכוּתוֹ֙lə·mal·ḵū·ṯōwof his reignH4438
√ malkûwth — a rulePreposition-lNounfeminine singular constructthird person masculine singular
malkûwth: a rule The abstract noun for kingship. Verse 13 will shift to the infinitive of the verb mâlak for the same idea, a change BSB levels out.
אָסָ֡א’ā·sāAsaH609
√ ʼÂçâʼ — Asa, the name of a king and of a LeviteNounpropermasculine singular
וַיֶּחֱלֶ֣אway·ye·ḥĕ·lebecame diseasedH2456
√ châlâʼ — to be sickConjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
châlâʼ: to be sick Qal consecutive imperfect, third masculine singular, with the aleph spelling in place of the usual châlâh. This is the narrative hinge of the epilogue: the reign that began with reform ends with a body. The verb is bare of any specification, which is why every commentator in the brief is reduced to conjecture about the disease.
בְּרַגְלָ֔יוbə·raḡ·lāwin his feetH7272
√ regel — a foot (as used in walking)Preposition-bNounfeminine dual constructthird person masculine singular
regel: a foot Feminine dual with suffix, "in his feet." It is Gill who supplies the exact symmetry, calling the disease "a just retaliation for putting the prophet's feet into the stocks"; Benson quotes Henry more generally, that he put the prophet in the stocks and now God put him in the stocks, so his punishment answered his sin. The organ struck is the organ that offended. That is a reading of providence offered by the commentators, not a claim 16:12 itself makes, and the text names neither the cause nor the disease.
עַד־‘aḏ-andH5704
√ ʻad — as far (or long, or much) as, whether of space (even unto) or time (during, while, until) or degree (equally with)Preposition
חָלְי֑וֹḥā·lə·yōwhis diseaseH2483
√ chŏlîy — malady, anxiety, calamityNounmasculine singular constructthird person masculine singular
chŏlîy: malady, anxiety, calamity The noun is repeated in the next clause, so "sickness" is said twice in one verse: the fact, then the occasion. The second occurrence is what turns a medical note into a theological one.
לְמַ֖עְלָהlə·ma‘·lāhbecame increasingly severeH4605
√ maʻal — properly, the upper part, used only adverbially with prefix upward, above, overhead, from the top, etcPreposition-lAdverbthird person feminine singular
maʻal: the upper part, upward An adverb of direction pressed into service for severity. Ellicott marks the clause as the Chronicler's own addition; Pulpit renders the emphasis "his disease was great even to excess." The same construction with ʻad recurs in v. 14 for the burning, which binds the two extremities of the epilogue, the sickness and the honours, with one idiom.
וְגַם־wə·ḡam-Yet evenH1571
√ gam — properly, assemblageConjunction
Conjunction, "and also." Barnes and Pulpit both insist on this reading against "yet," because it adds Asa's illness to his war with Baasha as a second instance of the same failure.
בְּחָלְיוֹ֙bə·ḥā·lə·yōwin his illnessH2483
√ chŏlîy — malady, anxiety, calamityPreposition-bNounmasculine singular constructthird person masculine singular
לֹא־lō-he did notH3808
√ lôʼ — not (the simple or absAdverbNegative particle
Negative particle. The most consequential word in the verse.
דָרַ֣שׁḏā·rašseekH1875
√ dârash — properly, to tread or frequentVerbQalPerfectthird person masculine singular
dârash: properly, to tread or frequent Qal perfect, third masculine singular. The root means to tread a path repeatedly, hence to resort to, to consult, to seek. This is the Chronicler's signature verb for the right posture toward God, and the negated perfect here interrupts a run of consecutive imperfects, freezing the omission out of the flow of events into a verdict. K&D's grammatical point is decisive: with the accusative it means to seek God in prayer, with bet to inquire of an oracle. Asa's construction is the second.
אֶת־’eṯ-H853
√ ʼêth — properly, self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely)Direct object marker
Direct object marker; its presence is precisely what K&D's argument turns on.
יְהוָ֔הYah·wehthe LORDH3068
√ Yᵉhôvâh — Jehovah, Jewish national name of GodNounpropermasculine singular
Yᵉhôvâh: Jehovah, Jewish national name of God The object Asa did not seek, marked with ʼêth, the accusative of direct address in prayer.
כִּ֖יkîbutH3588
√ kîy — (by implication) very widely used as a relative conjunction or adverb (as below)Conjunction
Adversative conjunction; the pivot from the object not sought to the object sought.
בָּרֹפְאִֽים׃bā·rō·p̄ə·’îmonly the physiciansH7495
√ râphâʼ — properly, to mend (by stitching), iPreposition-b, ArticleVerbQalParticiplemasculine plural
râphâʼ: properly, to mend by stitching Qal participle, masculine plural, with bet and the article: "the menders." The root's concrete sense is repair, patching, and the participle names a class of practitioners rather than a profession in the modern sense. Ellicott and JFB judge them practitioners of charms and incantations, Cambridge says they are condemned "by implication" for that reason, and Gill notes this is the first appearance of physicians among the Jews. Geneva and K&D both refuse to make medicine itself the sin: the fault is the trust, not the treatment.
13

So in the forty-first year of his reign, Asa died and rested with his fathers.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

’ar·bā·‘îm wə·’a·ḥaṯ biš·naṯ lə·mā·lə·ḵōw ’ā·sā way·yā·māṯ way·yiš·kaḇ ‘im- ’ă·ḇō·ṯāw

Word by word9 · parsed
אַרְבָּעִ֥ים’ar·bā·‘îmSo in the forty-firstH705
√ ʼarbâʻîym — fortyNumbercommon plural
Cardinal "forty," joined to "one."
וְאַחַ֖תwə·’a·ḥaṯ. . .H259
√ ʼechâd — properly, united, iConjunctive wawNumberfeminine singular
בִּשְׁנַ֛תbiš·naṯyearH8141
√ shâneh — a year (as a revolution of time)Preposition-bNounfeminine singular construct
Construct "in the year of."
לְמָלְכֽוֹ׃lə·mā·lə·ḵōwof his reignH4427
√ mâlak — to reignPreposition-lVerbQalInfinitive constructthird person masculine singular
mâlak: to reign Qal infinitive construct with third masculine singular suffix. Not the noun used in v. 12 but the verb itself, so the clock is measured by the act of reigning that is about to cease. Pulpit is glad of the agreement here between Chronicles and 1 Kings 15:10 on the forty-one years, and uses it as one of the few fixed points in a contested chronology.
אָסָ֖א’ā·sāAsaH609
√ ʼÂçâʼ — Asa, the name of a king and of a LeviteNounpropermasculine singular
וַיָּ֕מָתway·yā·māṯdiedH4191
√ mûwth — to die (literally or figuratively)Conjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
mûwth: to die (literally or figuratively) Qal consecutive imperfect. Bare, unadorned, with no verdict formula attached: Chronicles neither says Asa did evil nor repeats that he did right. JFB, reading 2 Chronicles 15:17, presumes from the earlier commendation that Asa was restored to a better state of mind, which is an inference from elsewhere and not from this verse.
וַיִּשְׁכַּ֥בway·yiš·kaḇand restedH7901
√ shâkab — to lie down (for rest, sexual connection, decease or any other purpose)Conjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
shâkab: to lie down Qal consecutive imperfect. The gentler of the two verbs, and the root that governs the whole next verse. Scripture's standard idiom for a king's death doubles here as the first move of a burial scene: he lies down, and then others lay him down.
עִם־‘im-withH5973
√ ʻim — adverb or preposition, with (iPreposition
Preposition "with."
אֲבֹתָ֑יו’ă·ḇō·ṯāwhis fathersH1
√ ʼâb — father, in a literal and immediate, or figurative and remote applicationNounmasculine plural constructthird person masculine singular
ʼâb: father, literal and immediate, or figurative and remote Plural construct with suffix. In the Chronicler's hands "his fathers" is never merely genealogical: it is the line through David to which a king is either faithful or not. Asa, who had sought help from Ben-hadad and then from healers, is nevertheless gathered to that line, and the next verse will spend its whole length saying how generously.
14

And he was buried in the tomb that he had cut out for himself in the City of David. They laid him on a bier that was full of spices and various blended perfumes; then they made a great fire in his honor.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

way·yiq·bə·ru·hū ḇə·qiḇ·rō·ṯāw ’ă·šer kā·rāh- lōw bə·‘îr dā·wîḏ way·yaš·kî·ḇu·hū bam·miš·kāḇ ’ă·šer mil·lê bə·śā·mîm ū·zə·nîm ma·‘ă·śeh mə·ruq·qā·ḥîm bə·mir·qa·ḥaṯ gə·ḏō·w·lāh ‘aḏ- lim·’ōḏ way·yiś·rə·p̄ū- lōw śə·rê·p̄āh

Word by word22 · parsed
וַיִּקְבְּרֻ֣הוּway·yiq·bə·ru·hūAnd he was buriedH6912
√ qâbar — to interConjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine pluralthird person masculine singular
qâbar: to inter Qal consecutive imperfect, third masculine plural, with singular object suffix: "and they buried him." The subject is an unnamed they, and it stays unnamed through the laying, the filling and the burning. Chronicles gives Asa's funeral four plural verbs and no mourner's name.
בְקִבְרֹתָ֗יוḇə·qiḇ·rō·ṯāwin the tombH6913
√ qeber — a sepulchrePreposition-bNounmasculine plural constructthird person masculine singular
qeber: a sepulchre Plural with suffix, "his graves." The plural is the verse's first surprise: Ellicott takes it as a family vault of many cells, deliberately distinguished from the common royal tombs, and Barnes sends the reader to his note at 1 Kings 13:30 for the usage. A king who had dug for himself is buried in a chamber of his own making rather than simply added to the fathers.
אֲשֶׁ֣ר’ă·šerthatH834
√ ʼăsher — who, which, what, thatPronounrelative
כָּֽרָה־kā·rāh-he had cut outH3738
√ kârâh — properly, to digVerbQalPerfectthird person masculine singular
kârâh: properly, to dig Qal perfect with Asa as subject. Ellicott sets the act beside the Pharaohs preparing their own resting places and beside Job 3:14 and Isaiah 22:16. Benson reads it devotionally, as the mark of a man "mindful of his grave." The same verb and the same noun stand together in Jacob's charge at Genesis 50:5, the grave he dug for himself in Canaan.
לוֹ֮lōwfor himself
Prepositionthird person masculine singular
בְּעִ֣ירbə·‘îrin the CityH5892
√ ʻîyr — a city (a place guarded by waking or a watch) in the widest sense (even of a mere encampment or post)Preposition-bNounfeminine singular construct
ʻîyr: a city, a place guarded by a watch Construct before David.
דָּוִיד֒dā·wîḏof DavidH1732
√ Dâvid — David, the youngest son of JesseNounpropermasculine singular
Dâvid: David, the youngest son of Jesse The city of David is where the epilogue puts Asa, and Chronicles will not let a Judahite king be buried anywhere that is not measured against that name.
וַיַּשְׁכִּיבֻ֗הוּway·yaš·kî·ḇu·hūThey laid himH7901
√ shâkab — to lie down (for rest, sexual connection, decease or any other purpose)Conjunctive wawVerbHifilConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine pluralthird person masculine singular
shâkab: to lie down Hiphil consecutive imperfect with suffix: "they caused him to lie down." In v. 13 Asa lay down with his fathers in the Qal; here the same root is made causative and others do the lying-down for him. The passive of death is complete: he dug, and then he was dug in.
בַּמִּשְׁכָּב֙bam·miš·kāḇon a bierH4904
√ mishkâb — a bed (figuratively, a bier)Preposition-b, ArticleNounmasculine singular
mishkâb: a bed, figuratively a bier The noun of the same root again, with article. Pulpit's observation on this word is the sharpest philological note in the whole brief: of its roughly fifty occurrences, the associations are almost entirely those of the bed of nightly rest, and this is the only place it is used to link the grave in kindly analogy with the couch of nightly repose. JFB cannot decide whether the bed is a state couch for public viewing or a bier for embalming, and says so.
אֲשֶׁ֤ר’ă·šerthatH834
√ ʼăsher — who, which, what, thatPronounrelative
מִלֵּא֙mil·lêwas full ofH4390
√ mâlêʼ — to fill or (intransitively) be full of, in a wide application (literally and figuratively)VerbPielPerfectthird person masculine singular
mâlêʼ: to fill, or to be full of Piel perfect, active, third masculine singular, and this is the one grammatical point in the verse that English versions regularly lose. Ellicott insists on it: "Literally, which one had filled." The Hebrew does not say the bier was full; it says somebody filled it, and leaves that somebody unnamed alongside the unnamed plural subjects who bury, lay down and burn. The intensive Piel of this root is also the verb of Israel's consecration idiom, to fill the hand of a priest; here it loads a dead king's bed with the sanctuary's own spices.
בְּשָׂמִ֣יםbə·śā·mîmspicesH1314
√ besem — fragranceNounmasculine plural
besem: fragrance The bᵉśāmîm of the sanctuary. Pulpit counts twenty-nine occurrences and names the determining ones at Exodus 25:6; 30:23; 35:8, 28, the spices of the holy anointing oil and the incense. Ellicott sends the reader to Solomon's spices at 2 Chronicles 9:1, 9. The vocabulary of Asa's bier is temple vocabulary, put to a funeral.
וּזְנִ֔יםū·zə·nîmand variousH2177
√ zan — properly, nourished (or fully developed), iConjunctive wawNounmasculine plural
zan: properly, nourished, hence a kind Ellicott calls zènim an Aramaic word common in the Targums but found in Old Testament Hebrew only here and at Psalm 144:13; Pulpit adds the Chaldee of Daniel 3 and the margin's literal "from kind to kind" in the Psalm. K&D reads it as "et varia quidem," and various indeed. A late, borrowed word, and one of the only two places it stands in the Hebrew Bible.
מַעֲשֶׂ֑הma·‘ă·śehblendedH4639
√ maʻăseh — an action (good or bad)Nounmasculine singular
maʻăseh: an action, a work K&D treats it as a technical abbreviation for the work of the compounder, as at Exodus 30:25 and 30:35.
מְרֻקָּחִ֖יםmə·ruq·qā·ḥîmperfumesH7543
√ râqach — to perfumeVerbPualParticiplemasculine plural
râqach: to perfume Pual participle, masculine plural, and Pulpit notes this is the solitary occurrence of the Pual of this root anywhere; Ellicott says the same of the participle. The root's other appearances are almost all priestly: the holy anointing oil of Exodus 30:25, 33, 35 and 37:29, the Levites who made the spice compounds at 1 Chronicles 9:30, and then, in a very different key, the perfumer's ointment spoiled by dead flies at Ecclesiastes 10:1.
בְּמִרְקַ֣חַתbə·mir·qa·ḥaṯ. . .H4842
√ mirqachath — an aromatic unguentPreposition-bNounfeminine singular construct
mirqachath: an aromatic unguent The cognate noun after the participle, which is what forces the literal "compounded in a compounding." K&D notes that the same noun at 1 Chronicles 9:30 is usually rendered simply "unguent."
גְּדוֹלָ֥הgə·ḏō·w·lāhthen they made a greatH1419
√ gâdôwl — great (in any sense)Adjectivefeminine singular
gâdôwl: great (in any sense) Feminine singular, agreeing with the burning.
עַד־‘aḏ-. . .H5704
√ ʻad — as far (or long, or much) as, whether of space (even unto) or time (during, while, until) or degree (equally with)Preposition
לִמְאֹֽד׃פlim·’ōḏ. . .H3966
√ mᵉʼôd — properly, vehemence, iPreposition-lAdverb
וַיִּשְׂרְפוּ־way·yiś·rə·p̄ū-fireH8313
√ sâraph — to be (causatively, set) on fireConjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine plural
sâraph: to be, or causatively to set, on fire Qal consecutive imperfect, third masculine plural. Whether anything but spices burned is the one genuinely contested question in this pericope. K&D denies cremation outright, since the Israelites buried rather than burned; Gill, Cambridge and Pulpit agree it is spices only; JFB reports that according to some it was "a magnificent pile for the cremation of the corpse." The verb alone does not settle it.
ל֥וֹlōw
Prepositionthird person masculine singular
שְׂרֵפָ֖הśə·rê·p̄āhin his honorH8316
√ sᵉrêphâh — cremationNounfeminine singular
sᵉrêphâh: cremation The cognate accusative: they burned for him a burning. Read with the commentators the noun here means the burning of spices, and the same noun recurs at Jehoram's funeral in 2 Chronicles 21:19, where the point is that his people made him no burning at all. The last word Chronicles spends on Asa is an excess of honour, not a verdict.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. The verse that points at a scroll — 16:11

The epilogue opens by pointing twice and saying almost nothing: וְהִנֵּה֙ ... הִנָּ֤ם כְּתוּבִים֙, behold, behold them written. Ellicott heads the section "CONCLUSION OF THE REIGN" and reads the Kings parallel as corroboration, noting that the mention there of Asa's might and of the cities he built confirms the earlier account of his defensive measures and the invasion of Zerah. Gill's whole comment is a referral to his note on 1 Kings 15:23, and K&D's is a referral to his own Introduction, which tells you honestly how much argument the verse contains. The one live question here is the source title. Cambridge observes that in 1 Kings the appeal is to the chronicles of the kings of Judah alone, while Chronicles says "of Judah and Israel"; Pulpit presses the same difference and judges the Kings citation much the earlier in point of time. ⚙ Whatever the relation of the documents, the rhetorical effect is the same: the Chronicler declines to summarise Asa. He hands the reader a scroll he does not quote, says the record runs from first to last, and then spends three verses on a sickness, a death and a funeral.

ii. Thirty-nine years, and then the feet — 16:12

The indictment turns entirely on two grammatical facts, and the brief's voices agree on both. First, וְגַם־ is "and also," not "yet": Barnes insists on it ("Not only in his war with Baasha, but also when attacked by illness"), and Pulpit builds the whole sentence on it, that as in his fear of Baasha he had not sought the LORD but Ben-hadad, so in his illness he sought not the LORD but the physicians. Second, the preposition. K&D states the rule plainly: דּרשׁ takes the accusative when God is sought in prayer, and bet when an oracle or an idol is consulted, and so here of superstitious trust in the physicians. His conclusion is the hinge of the unit: "it is not the mere inquiring of the physicians which is here censured, but only the godless manner in which Asa trusted in the physicians." Geneva says the same pastorally in its second gloss, that it is useless to seek physicians unless we first seek God, and then use their help as a means by which God works; Benson and Henry, that using physicians was Asa's duty and trusting them his sin; Poole, that he did not humble himself before God but put all his confidence in the skill of physicians "of whom, it seems, he had great experience." Ellicott and JFB go further than the text does, reconstructing the healers as practitioners of amulets, charms and incantations, Egyptian in JFB's guess; Cambridge says only that they are condemned "by implication," and sets against them Ben Sira's praise of the physician. The disease itself nobody knows: Ellicott says its nature is not specified, JFB and Gill guess gout, and Gill also reports a learned physician's proposal of an oedematous swelling that creeps up into the bowels. What the Hebrew does say is לְמַ֖עְלָה, upward, and Benson takes it literally, that it ascended to stomach or head, "and then it became mortal."

iii. He lay down — 16:13

Two years, told in a cardinal pair: forty and one. Pulpit is grateful for the agreement of Chronicles with 1 Kings 15:10 on the number, one of the few fixed points "amid the frequent uncertainties of the chronology," and then immediately raises the difficulty that the parallel equates the forty-first year with Asa's "old age," while the grandson of Rehoboam and son of Abijah can hardly have been more than about fifty. His way out is a very youthful accession, argued from the prominence of Maachah and from the analogy of Josiah at twelve. Ellicott notes what Chronicles withholds: Kings runs straight on with the usual formula, buried with his fathers in the city of David and Jehoshaphat reigning in his stead, while Chronicles stops the verse at וַיִּשְׁכַּ֥ב עִם־אֲבֹתָ֑יו and keeps the burial back for a verse of its own. ⚙ That delay is the Chronicler's craft. For one clause Asa simply lies down, and only afterward do other hands lift him.

iv. A burning great, even unto excess — 16:14

The last verse is the densest in the pericope, and almost every word in it is rare. Ellicott: the plural "sepulchres" indicates a family tomb of many cells, not the ordinary tombs of the kings; the verb is "digged, or hewn out of the rock," as with the Pharaohs who prepared their own resting-places; מִלֵּא֙ is literally "which one had filled"; zènim is Aramaic and occurs in Hebrew Scripture only here and at Psalm 144:13; the participle מְרֻקָּחִ֖ים occurs only here; and ʻad limeʼōd occurs only here. Pulpit confirms the philology independently, calling this the solitary Pual of רָקַח and translating the whole clause "divers kinds compounded by the compounding of art." K&D supplies the technical sense of מעשׂה as the compounder's work, and declines the emendation that would restore a dropped רוקח. Then the burning. K&D, Gill, Cambridge and Pulpit all read it as spices only: the Israelites buried their dead rather than burned them, and cremation happened only in extraordinary cases such as the bodies of Saul and his sons. JFB alone leaves the other possibility open, reporting that according to some it was a magnificent pile for the cremation of the corpse, and calling the omission of such a burning for royal persons a great indignity. On what the excess means, the brief contains a real dispute: Ellicott reports Zöckler's view that the Chronicler blames "the exaggerated splendour and lavish excess" of the custom, as if it were an Egyptian Pharaoh's burial, and rejects it, since the same writer delighted to dwell on Solomon's glory. Poole, Benson and JFB take the burning as the people's own verdict of gratitude: respect for him, in Poole's words, "notwithstanding his miscarriages." Benson turns it into a rule: let their faults be buried in their graves, while their services are remembered over their graves. ⚙ And Pulpit's note on מִשְׁכָּב is the hinge nobody else touches. The word almost always means the bed you sleep in; this is the one place in Scripture it is used to link a grave to that bed in kindly analogy, which is why he reaches for Bishop Ken's couplet about dreading the grave as little as one's bed.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested by Scripture, and the line set apart after it is ours, not a verse. Chronicles buries Asa in his own vocabulary. He dug (כָּרָה) his grave with his own hand, and then others made him lie down (וַיַּשְׁכִּיבֻ֗הוּ, Hiphil of the verb he had used of himself one verse earlier). He would not seek (דָרַשׁ) and so was sought out by nobody who could help. The spices are the point where the ⚙ reading has to be careful, because the temptation is to make them a rebuke. Ellicott has already refuted that reading of Zöckler's, and the text gives no word of censure in v. 14; the plain sense is that a people who had lived well under this king spent extravagantly on his funeral. But the verse before it says he did not seek the LORD, and the verse before that says his sickness climbed upward, and the Chronicler put the three in that order. So the honest reading is not that the spices condemn Asa. It is that they cannot reach him. Every noun in v. 14 comes out of the sanctuary: bᵉśāmîm, the spices of the anointing oil and the incense; râqach and mirqachath, the compounder's art of Exodus 30 and of the Levites at 1 Chronicles 9:30; even the fire, śᵉrêphāh. Asa is laid out in the furniture of worship, by men who loved him, after a chapter in which he asked a Syrian for help, jailed a prophet, and asked healers for what only God gives. What the spices show is how much honour a good reign can buy and how little of it follows a man down. Pulpit is right that mishkâb makes the grave a bed, but a bed is only a kindness if someone is coming to wake you, and no one in this chapter is. ⚙ The one thing we will not say is that Asa is lost: JFB's inference from 2 Chronicles 15:17 that a good man betrayed into sin was restored is an inference, and so is any darker guess. Chronicles closes the account and declines the verdict.

He dug his own grave with his own hands, and his people filled it with the spices of the sanctuary; the grave took both.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

The borrowed word: "divers kinds" and the full barns of Psalm 144 verbal / quotation: confirmed

The word וּזְנִ֔ים (zan, H2177, glossed "properly, nourished (or fully developed)") stands in only two verses of the Hebrew Bible: this one and Psalm 144:13, where the margin renders it literally "from kind to kind." Ellicott names both occurrences and calls the word Aramaic and common in the Targums; Pulpit adds the Chaldee of Daniel 3 and derives it from an unused root meaning to shape. The Verifier confirms the shared lexeme and its frequency. ⚙ The two contexts sit oddly together: in the Psalm, "all manner of store" is the sign of a blessed and living nation; here, "all manner of spices" is the furniture of a king's bier. Same rare word, once for a granary and once for a grave.

Psalm 144:13

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H2177 zan, in 2 verses only, which is the entire Old Testament distribution of the word; Ellicott independently names 2 Chronicles 16:14 and Psalm 144:13 as its only Hebrew occurrences. Rare-lexeme verbal link, not a quotation in either direction.

The compounder's art: a funeral bier made with the recipe of the holy oil verbal / quotation: confirmed

The chain מְרֻקָּחִ֖ים בְּמִרְקַ֣חַת מַעֲשֶׂ֑ה uses râqach (H7543, "to perfume"), mirqachath (H4842, "an aromatic unguent") and maʻăseh (H4639, "a work"). Ellicott points to the full phrase "compound of the work of the compounder" at Exodus 30:25 and 30:35, and K&D reads maʻăseh here as a shortened technical term for exactly that, the manufacture of the ointment-compounder. The other end of the chain is Levitical: 1 Chronicles 9:30 has the sons of the priests making the compound of spices, and K&D notes the same noun there is usually translated "unguent." ⚙ The verse therefore describes Asa's bier in the technical language of the holy anointing oil, whose lay use Exodus 30:33 forbids. We do not think the Chronicler is accusing anyone of sacrilege, and no voice in this unit says so; the effect is rather that the highest craft Israel had, kept for the tabernacle, is spent here on a dead king.

Exodus 30:25 · 1 Chronicles 9:30 · Exodus 30:35

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H7543 râqach (in 8 vv) and H4842 mirqachath (in 3 vv) with Exodus 30:25 and 1 Chronicles 9:30, plus H1314 besem (in 25 vv) with 1 Chronicles 9:30 and H4639 maʻăseh (in 232 vv). The verbal tier rests on mirqachath at 3 verses and râqach at 8, both rare; the common lexeme maʻăseh carries no weight on its own.

Two royal funerals: the burning Asa got and the burning Jehoram did not structural / thematic: confirmed

Asa's epilogue and Jehoram's share two words: chŏlîy (H2483, "malady") and sᵉrêphâh (H8316, "cremation"). Every commentator in this unit who explains the burning sends the reader to 2 Chronicles 21:19: Ellicott, Gill, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D alike, and K&D draws the general rule from the pair, that the burning of odorous spices was customary at the burials of kings. ⚙ The two verses are the same sentence run in opposite directions. Both kings sicken; in both the sickness worsens; and then Asa gets a burning great even to excess, while Jehoram's people make him no burning like the burning of his fathers. Chronicles measures a reign by what its people are willing to spend at the end of it.

2 Chronicles 21:19

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H2483 chŏlîy (in 22 vv) and H8316 sᵉrêphâh (in 12 vv). Neither lexeme is rare enough to carry a verbal claim on its own, and neither verse cites the other, so the link is patterned contrast: five of the brief's commentators name 21:19 as the controlling parallel for the burning.

The grave a man digs for himself: Asa and Jacob structural / thematic: confirmed

Genesis 50:5 puts the same three words together that 2 Chronicles 16:14 does: qâbar (H6912, "to inter"), kârâh (H3738, "properly, to dig") and qeber (H6913, "a sepulchre"). Jacob makes Joseph swear to bury him in the grave he had dug for himself in the land of Canaan; Asa is buried in graves he had dug for himself in the city of David. Ellicott compares Job 3:14 and Isaiah 22:16 for the practice and likens Asa to the Pharaohs preparing their own resting-place; Benson reads it as the mark of a man mindful of his grave. ⚙ The difference is the direction of hope. Jacob digs in Canaan because he believes the promise attaches to that ground and expects his sons to carry him there. Asa digs inside the city of David, in a private vault rather than the common tombs of the kings, and Chronicles reports it without comment.

Genesis 50:5

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6912 qâbar (in 122 vv), H3738 kârâh (in 14 vv) and H6913 qeber (in 62 vv). Downgraded from verbal on purpose: the individual lexemes are common, and while the collocation of kârâh with qeber is distinctive, neither text quotes the other.

The perfumer's ointment spoiled: Qoheleth on a reign that ended badly structural / thematic: confirmed

Ecclesiastes 10:1 shares the root râqach (H7543) with this verse: dead flies make the ointment of the perfumer stink. ⚙ We offer the pairing as commentary, not as a claim that Qoheleth had Asa in view. Geneva's gloss on v. 12 already states the moral in the exact terms the proverb needs: God "declared that it is nothing to begin well, unless we continue to the end." Asa's reign is a compounded ointment of the best art available, long years of reform, and the brief's voices locate the flies at the end of it: Henry names the league with Syria, the displeasure at a faithful reproof, the persecution of a prophet and the crushing of his own subjects, and then this refusal to seek the LORD in his sickness.

Ecclesiastes 10:1

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H7543 râqach (in 8 vv). The lexeme is rare, but the connection we draw is moral and proverbial rather than citational, so the tier is deliberately structural rather than verbal.

Was the burning a cremation? A contested reading, flagged flagged: verify source

JFB reports two views of "a very great burning": according to some it was for consuming the spices, according to others "a magnificent pile for the cremation of the corpse," a usage JFB calls at that time prevalent among the Hebrews, citing 2 Chronicles 21:19, 1 Samuel 31:12, Jeremiah 34:5 and Amos 6:10. K&D flatly denies it: a burning of the corpse, or of the bed or clothes of the dead, is not to be thought of here, since the Israelites buried rather than burned, and burning occurred only in extraordinary circumstances such as the bodies of Saul and his sons at 1 Samuel 31:12. Gill agrees that burning was not used among the Jews, and Cambridge and Pulpit both say what is meant is only a burning of spices. ⚙ We record the disagreement rather than resolve it, and note that both sides appeal to the same verse in 1 Samuel for opposite purposes.

1 Samuel 31:12 · Jeremiah 34:5 · Amos 6:10

basis: No Verifier lexeme row was computed for these pairs; the basis is commentator attestation only, and the attesting voices contradict one another. JFB allows cremation and cites 1 Samuel 31:12, Jeremiah 34:5 and Amos 6:10; K&D, Gill, Cambridge and Pulpit read spices only and cite 1 Samuel 31:12 as the exception that proves Israelite practice was burial. Flagged because the sense of the shared reference is disputed inside the sources themselves.

Spices for a buried king: the same customs at another tomb typological

Cambridge, glossing "divers kinds of spices," sends the reader straight to the Gospels: Mark 16:1, John 12:3, John 12:7, John 19:39-40. ⚙ That is the brief's own cross-reference, and it is worth stating plainly what it can and cannot carry. It cannot be a verbal link: the Greek of John shares no Strong's number with the Hebrew of Chronicles, and neither text quotes the other. What it is, is one continuous burial custom, attested at the funeral of a king of Judah and at the burial of the King the Chronicler's line was leading to. Nicodemus brings myrrh and aloes in quantity; Asa's people burn spices in a quantity Ellicott calls extraordinary. Both are honours paid to a body. Only one of the two tombs is reported empty three days later.

John 19:39-40 · Mark 16:1 · 2 Chronicles 16:14

basis: Cross-Testament, Hebrew to Greek, so no shared Strong's lexeme is possible and the link is never tiered verbal. Basis: the shared burial custom of spices for a royal corpse, and Cambridge's own cross-reference at 2 Chronicles 16:14 to Mark 16:1, John 12:3, John 12:7 and John 19:39-40. The customary parallel is widely held; the figural weight we place on it is the tool's.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The spices that could not keep him ancient/widely-held

✦ Cambridge's note on "divers kinds of spices" cites Mark 16:1 and John 19:39-40 without argument, because the association was obvious to him: Israel honoured a dead king with bᵉśāmîm, and Israel honoured Jesus the same way. ⚙ Read forward, the two scenes are deliberately alike and deliberately unalike. Asa dug his own tomb (כָּרָה) and was laid down in it by other hands; Jesus was laid in a tomb another man had cut, and walked out of it. Asa's bier was filled with compounded spices by the compounder's art, the craft Exodus reserved for the anointing oil; the women brought spices to anoint a body and found they had nothing to anoint. The custom is the same custom. What the New Testament records is the first occasion on which it failed. ⚙ We claim no verbal link here: the Hebrew and Greek share no lexeme, and nothing in Chronicles predicts a resurrection.

Mark 16:1 · John 19:39-40 · 2 Chronicles 16:14

The healers and the Healer novel

✦ K&D's grammatical finding is the doorway: דָרַשׁ with the accusative means to seek God in prayer, with bet to inquire of an oracle, and Asa inquired of the rōphʼîm the second way. The root of that noun, râphâʼ (H7495), is glossed "properly, to mend by stitching." ⚙ Scripture gives a participle of that same root to God himself as a title at Exodus 15:26, where he names himself Israel's healer; that reference is ours and not the brief's. And the Gospels put the corresponding noun into Jesus's own mouth when he says the sick, not the healthy, are the ones who need a physician. So the tragedy of v. 12 is not that Asa wanted mending. It is that he went to menders who could not put a body back together and would not go to the one who owns the verb. Geneva's second gloss sets the order right, and it is the order the Gospel keeps: seek God first about the sin, then use the physician as a means by which God works. ⚙ The identification of Christ as the true physician is ancient; the reading of Asa's specific failure as its photographic negative is ours, and we mark it novel on that account.

Mark 2:17 · Exodus 15:26 · 2 Chronicles 16:12

He lay down, and they made him lie down novel

⚙ The pericope's quietest fact is a single root used three ways in two verses: Asa lay down with his fathers (Qal, v. 13), they made him lie down on the bed (Hiphil, v. 14), and the bed is a mishkâb (v. 14), all from shâkab (H7901). ✦ Pulpit's note is the sourced observation that carries this: of the roughly fifty occurrences of mishkâb, the associations are almost entirely those of the bed of nightly rest, and 2 Chronicles 16:14 is the first and only place it is used to link the grave in kindly analogy with the couch of bodily repose, which is why he quotes Bishop Ken on dreading the grave as little as one's bed. ⚙ But Pulpit also says honestly that the writer was led to the analogy by earthlier considerations, the fragrance and the show. The analogy is therefore a hope the text gestures at and cannot fund. What funds it is later: the New Testament's habit of calling dead believers asleep, said of people who are dead precisely because the one who was laid down did not stay down. ⚙ We mark this novel: no voice in this unit reads the wordplay christologically, and the Hebrew and Greek share no lexeme. What is defensible without any synthesis is the philology itself, which is Pulpit's, not ours.

2 Chronicles 16:13 · 2 Chronicles 16:14 · 1 Corinthians 15:20

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Geneva Study Bible, Marginal Notes (1599)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Joseph Benson, Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1810s)
  • Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1860s)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)
  • Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1685)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Sources and their gaps. Eleven public-domain commentators are present for this pericope, but the coverage is uneven and the source apparatus repeats itself, which we have flagged in the voices rather than hidden. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary treats 16:1-14 as one block, so the identical paragraph is filed under all four verses; we quote it once, on 16:13, and say so. Barnes's note on 16:12 is also reproduced under 16:13, and his entry filed under 16:11 actually comments on the prison house of 16:10; JFB's 16:12 note likewise reappears under 16:13. Poole has no text on 16:11 and 16:13 at all, and Gill's entries on 16:11 and 16:13 are bare cross-references to his notes on 1 Kings. Geneva's entries are the printed marginal letters (e) and (f) plus the running text, and the trailing header "EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)" in several Geneva and Cambridge entries is scraping residue, not commentary; we have not quoted across it.

Interlinear ordering. In 16:14 the Berean interlinear rows are aligned to the English clause order rather than the Hebrew surface order: rows 16 to 18 (gədōwlāh, ʻaḏ, limʼōḏ) carry the BSB gloss "then they made a great," while rows 19 to 21 (wayyiśrəp̄ū, lōw, śərêp̄āh) carry "fire" and "in his honor." The Masoretic paragraph marker sits on row 18, which shows that ʻad limʼōḏ closes the verse in the Hebrew. Our literal rendering follows the Hebrew order, "they burned for him a burning great even unto excess," and the note keys still follow the brief's indices. Rows 4 and 20 (לוֹ) carry no Strong's number in the brief and we have left them unglossed.

What is uncertain. Five things, honestly. (1) The disease is unnamed; Ellicott says so outright, and gout (JFB, Gill, Benson) and oedema (Gill, reporting Scheuchzer) are both conjecture. (2) Whether לְמַ֖עְלָה means "upward in the body" (JFB, Benson, Gill's alternative) or simply "to a high degree" (K&D, Pulpit, Ellicott) is unsettled, and we have kept both. (3) Whether the great burning included the corpse is contested inside the sources: JFB reports the cremation view, K&D, Gill, Cambridge and Pulpit reject it. That thread is tiered "flagged: verify source" for exactly this reason. (4) Ellicott reports and rejects Zöckler's view that the Chronicler blames the lavish excess of the funeral; we have followed Ellicott's rejection but named the dispute, because nothing in v. 14 itself censures anyone. (5) Pulpit's chronological difficulty about Asa's age stands unresolved in the brief; his youthful-accession solution is his proposal, not a datum.

Our own layer. Every ⚙ paragraph here is fallible synthesis, including the three redemptive-historical readings, two of which we mark novel. The Christ readings claim no shared lexeme across Testaments and no predictive intent in Chronicles. The pull-quote in the grand commentary is our sentence, not Scripture, and is labelled as such where it is introduced.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)