The comparison with Asa is problematical. In the Deuteronomistic historiography Asa is regarded as a blameless king, with the one reservation that the high places were not removed in his day (I Kings 15.11–14). The comparison of Jehoshaphat with his father (I Kings 22.43) is therefore very positive, over-shadowed only by this one failure. By contrast, in Chronicles, Asa is not as perfect, and there is a clear tension between the great piety which marked most of his reign and the increasing guilt of his old age. Jehoshaphat, on the other hand, is in Chronicles a righteous king throughout; the
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