Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things;

For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God.

For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly departed from my God.

For all his judgments were before me, and I did not put away his statutes from me.

ALEPH. Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD.

Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the LORD: for great is the glory of the LORD.

Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the ways of the LORD are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein.

And said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?

For he took away the altars of the strange gods, and the high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves:

But the high places were not taken away out of Israel: nevertheless the heart of Asa was perfect all his days.

Nevertheless there are good things found in thee, in that thou hast taken away the groves out of the land, and hast prepared thine heart to seek God.

Howbeit the high places were not taken away: for as yet the people had not prepared their hearts unto the God of their fathers.

Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all. Then all the children of Israel returned, every man to his possession, into their own cities.

For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images.

And he burnt the bones of the priests upon their altars, and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.

And when he had broken down the altars and the groves, and had beaten the graven images into powder, and cut down all the idols throughout all the land of Israel, he returned to Jerusalem.

And he walked in all the ways of Asa his father; he turned not aside from it, doing that which was right in the eyes of the LORD: nevertheless the high places were not taken away; for the people offered and burnt incense yet in the high places.