Asa's Reforms and Zerah the Cushite

"And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God: For he took away the altars of the strange gods, and the high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves." "In his days the land was quiet ten years."

"And there came out against them Zerah the Ethiopian with an host of a thousand thousand, and three hundred chariots; and came unto Mareshah." Asa sets the battle in the valley of Zephathah.

"LORD, it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power: help us, O LORD our God; for we rest on thee, and in thy name we go against this multitude." The Cushites are routed; Judah plunders the cities around Gerar and the tents of the herdsmen.

Who was Zerah?

No Egyptian or Kushite king named Zerah is known. Proposals: a commander of Osorkon I (Shoshenq I's successor), sent with Libyan and Kushite troops; a leader of Cushite (or "Cushan") Arab or Bedouin groups near Gerar; or a garbled memory. The million-man army is the biblical figure. See the passage page.

Mareshah

Tel Maresha, in the Shephelah, was later a major Idumean and Hellenistic city with hundreds of caves; its Iron Age levels are less known.

"High places were not removed"

14:3 says Asa removed the high places; 15:17 (and 1 Kings 15:14) says they were not removed from Israel. Chronicles may distinguish foreign shrines from local Yahwistic ones.