⁸When Asa heard the prophet Oded’s words of prophecy, he was encouraged and put away the detestable idols from all of Judah, Benjamin, and the cities he had captured in the mountains of Ephraim. He also repaired the Lord’s altar in front of the Lord’s entrance hall.

⁹Then Asa gathered all the people from Judah and Benjamin and the foreigners who had come from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon. (Many of them had come to him from Israel when they saw that Asa’s God, the Lord, was with him.) ¹⁰In the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign, they gathered in Jerusalem. ¹¹On that day they sacrificed to the Lord a part of the loot they had brought with them: 700 cattle and 7,000 sheep. ¹²They made an agreement with one another to dedicate their lives to serving the Lord God of their ancestors with all their heart and soul. ¹³All people (young or old, male or female) who refused to dedicate their lives to the Lord God of Israel were to be killed. ¹⁴Asa and the people swore their oath to the Lord with shouts, singing, and the blowing of trumpets and rams’ horns. ¹⁵All the people of Judah were overjoyed because of the oath, since they took the oath wholeheartedly. They took great pleasure in looking for the Lord, and he let them find him. So the Lord surrounded them with peace.

Read in Logos