And when Asa heard these words, and the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he took courage, and put away the abominable idols out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and out of the cities which he had taken from mount Ephraim, and renewed the altar of the Lord, that was before the porch of the Lord. (2 Chronicles 15:8)
A similar expression is employed in ch. 24:4 concerning Joash. It would thus appear that the altar had become defiled and was now cleansed and reconsecrated to the Lord.
From mount Ephraim.
Compare ch. 17:2. Although Asa had not engaged in open war with Israel, he was strong enough to take from the northern kingdom a number of frontier cities.
Abominable idols.
Few reformations are ever complete reformations. Asa had put forth earnest efforts to cleanse the land of its abominations, but his work had evidently been only partially successful. Encouraged by the words of Azariah, Asa now renewed his efforts to rid the land of every form of evil.
The prophecy of Oded.
The Hebrew of this phrase cannot correctly be thus translated, the construction being such as not to allow the use of the preposition “of” to show the relationship between the two nouns. However, without the “of” the sentence is lacking in coherence. Evidently something is missing from the Hebrew text. It seems highly likely that the Alexandrian manuscript of the LXX and the Syriac have preserved the correct reading, for they supply the name “Azariah” (v. 1) so as to support the reading, “the prophecy which Azariah the son of Oded spake.”