2 Chronicles 15:3

Now for a long season Israel hath been without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law. Now for a long season Israel hath been ... Some think that Azariah was referring to the sad and disastrous condition to which superstition and idolatry had brought the neighbouring kingdom of Israel. His words should rather be taken in a wider sense, because it seems manifest that the prophet had his eye upon many periods. in the national history, when the peoples were in the state described-a state of spiritual destitution and ignorance-and exhibited its natural result as widespread anarchy, mutual dissension among the tribes, and general suffering (Judges 9:23; Judges 12:4; Judges 20:21; 2 Chronicles 13:17). These calamities God permitted to befall them as the punishment of their apostasy. Azariah's object in these remarks was to establish the truth of his counsel (2 Chronicles 15:2), and threatening in case of neglecting it, by describing the uniform course of the divine procedure toward Israel, as shown in all periods of their history; and then, after this appeal to national experience, he concluded with an earnest exhortation to the king to prosecute the work of reformation so well begun.