Comments on 2 Chronicles 20 While Jehoshaphat does a pretty good job as king of Judah, he makes some mistakes in ch. 18 by allying with Ahab king of Israel and in the process permits a prophet of God to be abused. The result is he is rebuked by the prophet Jehu and in response institutes reforms in ch. 19. However, these reforms come a bit late and apparently aren't enough, so the Lord chooses to further chasten Judah by permitting the Moabites and Ammonites to come up against her in the present chapter. v1-5 Moab and Ammon comes out to war against Judah, and Jehoshaphat is justifiably scared. So he gathers all of Judah together to the Temple in order to importune the Lord. This is precisely the kind of effect the Lord wants out of this situation. When His people go astray, He will use means at his disposal to get them to repent and humble themselves. And this is an excellent case and point, cp. Lev. 26. v6-13 Jehoshaphat pleads with the Lord on behalf of the women and children of Judah to deliver them from their enemies. Notice the way he involves the Lord personally in v. 10-11. This is typical intercessory rhetoric, just like Moses used when he acted as intercessor between Israel and the Lord, and just as Jesus used when he acted as intercessor between his disciples and the Father. v9 He is using the Temple in such a manner as is described in 1 Ki. 8:31-35. v14-19 The prayer is answered when a Levite speaks the word of the Lord. The Lord informs them that He will fight this battle and they need not fear. And the king and the people fall down to worship the Lord while the priestly Levites praise the Lord with a loud voice (one would assume by singing as in v. 21-22). v14 Note the text preserves his genealogy and identifies his tribe as Levite. Remember the books of Chronicles are written by the priestly Levites who use genealogy to establish their authority claims. And notice the geneology given: Jahaziel "beheld of God" Zechariah "the Lord remembers" Benaiah "the Lord has built [up]" Jeiel "God sweeps away" Mattaniah "Gift of the Lord" Levite "joined to" Asaph "gatherer" v20-25 The next day the king gathers them together and tells them to have faith in the word they received the day before. So, they go ahead and start praising the Lord as though it had already been fulfilled (v. 20-21). The Moabites and Ammonites end up fighting with the neighboring Edomites instead, and then turn their swords on each other for some reason (v. 22-23). By the time Judah gets to the scene, the armies are already wiped out, and they go ahead and take the spoil (v. 24-25). v22 The text presents the effect of the Lord setting the ambush to be a result of the faithfulness of Judah. The text definitely suggest that had they not been faithful, then the Lord would not have pitted the Edomites against them. v26-28 Judah returns to Jerusalem after taking up the spoils and rejoices and worships the Lord at the Temple. v29-30 With their repentance, the Lord changes the curse into a blessing and the fear of God spreads to all neighboring nations such that they have peace. v31-37 While he does a pretty good job, Jehoshaphat still doesn't do as well as he might have done. He fails to completely eliminate idolatry from Judah (v. 33), and he goes back to making alliances for gain, for which he ends up being rebuked again (v. 35-37, cp. 19:1-3). Copyright © 2002 by S. Kurt Neumiller . All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form or by any means for commercial gain without the express written consent of the author. Digital or printed copies may be freely made and distributed for personal and public non-commercial use.