In the fifth year of the reign of Asa, king of Judah, there were great portents in the sky and upon the Earth. The priests became blind to the future and the torches outside the temples burnt out, the offerings left upon the altar fell sideways in their death and struggled too much beneath the knife. The wise prophet Azariah, son of Oded, told Asa that there was discontent in the heavens and that the Lord had decreed unto the world that there should be plague and famine, but the cattle remained healthy and the crops did not die, though their yield was only seventy thousand bales that year. Asa ordered that Azariah be stripped of his rank, but the prophet came before him, pulling at his hair, and said unto him that there was strife in heaven and that the signs were not of the Lord's anger b