5. And in those times there was no peace for the one going out and the one coming in, for great tumults were upon all the inhabitants of the lands.
6. Nation was crushed by nation, and city was against city, for God threw them into confusion by all sorts of trouble.
7. But as for you, be strong and let not your hands be weak, for there is reward for your labor.”
8. And when Asa heard these words, the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he took courage and removed the vile idols from all the lands of Judah and Benjamin, and from the cities that he had taken in the hill country of Ephraim, and he repaired the altar of Yahweh that was in front of the portico of Yahweh.
9. And he gathered all Judah and Benjamin and those sojourning with them, from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon, for many had deserted to him from Israel when they saw that Yahweh his God was with him.
10. And they were gathered at Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of the reign of Asa.
11. And they sacrificed to Yahweh on that day from the war booty they brought back: seven hundred oxen and seven thousand sheep.
12. And they entered into a covenant to seek Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, with all their heart and with all their inmost being,