1 Kings 15

Reform and Rivalry: Judah’s Struggle for Covenant Faithfulness

1 Kings 15 reads as a compact psychological drama in which states of consciousness rise, clash, reform, and either harden into habit or dissolve into transformation. The chapter names kings, mothers, cities, treaties, and wars, but when read as interior events these persons and places become personifications of feelings, beliefs, and imaginative acts. Each reign marks a prevailing state; each battle records the contest of one imagining against another; each reform or relapse tracks the attention and assumption that either stabilizes a new state or allows the old one to regain dominion.

Abijam and Asa represent two consecutive states of the same center of consciousness. Abijam's short, troubled reign is the fragile state that imitates a former pattern without full conviction. He 'walks in the sins of his father' because he has not assumed a new inner orientation; he repeats old imaginal acts that produced the ancestral condition. His heart is 'not perfect' with the LORD, meaning the center of awareness has not fully adopted the created ideal. The divine lamp that continues in Jerusalem despite his imperfection signals that the deeper, original imaginative identity remains available. This lamp is the subconscious continuity of the true self — an unbroken capacity for creative imagining that promises stabilization if attention turns to it.

Asa, in contrast, embodies the deliberate assumption that constitutes reform. His long reign of forty-one years describes the occupation of a new state. He 'does that which was right' by removing idols and instituting what the text calls righteous acts. Psychologically this is the conscious will's decision to assume inner loyalty to a chosen image. Removing his mother Maachah's idol is especially telling: the mother-figure is not merely a person but a formative principle — the inherited, formative belief-system that gave rise to the idol. The idol in the grove is an externalized, ritualized image of a private, internal allegiance. Asa's destruction and burning of it by the brook Kidron is the imaginal act of unmaking a false representation close to the stream of awareness (Kidron implies the flow where memories wash past). He does not merely denounce the old belief; he physically transfers inner tribute — silver, gold, vessels — into the house of the LORD, symbolizing the movement of stored impressions and energies from supporting the old state into the living image now occupied.

Yet even Asa's reforms are partial. The high places remain, which shows how some tendencies persist because they are not confronted in the imagination where they dwell. High places are elevated states that still exist in the terrain of awareness: old vantage points that recall former triumphs or comforts. Asa's heart is 'perfect' with the LORD 'all his days,' indicating that the prevailing center has achieved continuity in the new state, yet the unremoved high places reveal that not every transient form has been reshaped. The lesson is precise: occupying a state is primary; removing every residue takes further attention. A rooted inner conviction steady enough to sustain a reign is different from absolute purging; the imagination can hold a ruling ideal while still accommodating relics of prior states until they are steadily reimagined.

The geo-political events — Ramah, Geba, Mizpah, Tirzah — are internal landmarks. Ramah is a constructed barrier by Baasha, a belief set intended to restrict freedom of movement; it represents mental blocks that aim to keep the mind confined to a defensive posture. Asa's creative response is telling: he sends outward offerings of silver and gold to Benhadad, the Syrian king, to break Baasha's league. This is an act of reorientation in imagination: rather than confronting the obstructive thought-head-on, Asa shifts his focus, resources, and attention to form a new alliance — a new imaginal support — that undermines the limiting belief. Sending treasure is the intentional investment of cherished inner resources into an alternative assumption. When Benhadad acts, those inner resources manifest as counter-impressions — symbolic victories in the form of cities regained — showing that when attention is redirected creatively, inner allies appear and old barriers fall away.

The wars between Asa and Baasha, and between Rehoboam and Jeroboam, are not historical clashes but the recurrent struggle between different states vying for central occupancy. Jeroboam represents a centrifugal tendency: a belief system that splinters the self, drawing attention outward into separate loyalties and lesser imaginations. Rehoboam represents a centripetal pull back toward unity. Where conflict persists, habitual patterns maintain themselves because energy is still supplied to them by continual imagining. The chronic wars are the inner warfare we maintain when we keep rehearsing both the old complaint and the hoped-for remedy. Lasting change follows when one imagination is assumed and felt until it becomes the ruling state.

The chronicle references are reminders that every state leaves a record within consciousness. The rest of the acts being 'written in the chronicles' suggests that impressions, whether acknowledged or not, are recorded and propagate future states. Biblical chronicle language here is psychological memory: the archive of assumptions and the evidence they produce. Often the text reports the removal of treasures from the temple only to redirect them in service of a strategy; this is a portrait of how internal treasure — attention, expectation, conviction — can be redeployed. The possibilities you hold in private are powerful materials your conscious will can use to rewrite destiny; the inner temple is neither empty nor inert.

The swift violence against Nadab and the house of Jeroboam by Baasha dramatizes the ruthless logic of imagination: where a particular state has been identified as causative for a chain of miscreation, the psyche may enact an internal purge that feels severe. Baasha's extermination of Jeroboam's line is the act of cutting off an identification so completely that it cannot recover. The text frames it as fulfillment of a prophetic word — the inevitable consequence of a formerly assumed state becoming mature and then being exposed as untenable. Psychologically, it is both warning and possibility: unwholesome imaginal systems generate consequences, and decisive reorientation can stop that cycle.

The motif of disease in Asa's old age — pain in his feet — has an emblematic meaning. Feet are the basis of movement and progression; disease here symbolizes the eventual relapse that can occur when the imagination relaxes. Even a heart that was steady can suffer from neglect in maintenance. The disease is not punishment so much as the natural result of inattention to the sustaining practice of assumption. Sleep, rest, or complacency allow regression toward previously inhabited states. The narrative is gentle and realistic: inner victories must be continually confirmed by imagination; otherwise the body-mind will show the consequences.

Finally, the cyclical rises and falls of the kings teach a fundamental truth: consciousness is state-bound, and states are created and dissolved by imagination. The chapter's repeated refrain that certain kings did 'evil' or 'right' in the sight of the LORD is shorthand for whether they accorded with the true central identity. The LORD in these verses functions as the awareness of the ideal self — the living creative presence within whose sight our imaginal acts are either consonant or dissonant. When attention aligns with that presence, 'right' states come into being and yield order; when attention diverges, fragmentation and conflict arise.

Practically, 1 Kings 15 instructs on the method of imaginative living. To transform habit into new destiny, one must first identify the ruling state and then occupy the desired state with feeling until it becomes natural. Remove the idol by imaginative destruction where it exists; gather the treasures of attention and redirect them to the inner temple of the chosen identity; form alliances in imagination that reinforce the new center; persist so the state hardens into habit; expect that remnants will remain but will steadily dissolve under continued occupancy. The chapter is not merely a catalogue of kings and wars; it is a manual of inner governance, a map of how the theater of consciousness stages kingdoms and how the imagination, when assumed with feeling and right persistence, creates the peace and order of a well-ruled inner realm.