2 Chronicles17chapter 17

2 Chronicles 17:1-2

strengthened himself against Israel: Jehoshaphat succeeds Asa and strengthens himself against Israel, which the bench reads as defense rather than invasion: he garrisons the fenced cities of Judah and holds the cities of Ephraim his father had taken from the northern kingdom at 15:8. The reign opens on the border his father drew, and Chronicles will measure it by the same verb it measures every reign by, whether the king seeks the Lord.

2 Chronicles 17:3-4

The Lord is with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the first ways of his father David, and the text sets a negative beside a positive: he sought not unto Baalim, but sought to the Lord God of his father and walked in his commandments. Barnes notes that some manuscripts read simply his father without naming David, since David's earlier and later ways are nowhere else contrasted in the text, but either way the standard held up is the founding king's devotion rather than the mixed record Asa left in his own last years. This verse plants the seeking refrain that runs through the whole book at the head of the reign the rest of the chapter bears out.

2 Chronicles 17:5-6

stablished the kingdom in his hand: The Lord stablishes the kingdom in Jehoshaphat's hand and prosperity follows: Judah brings him presents and he has riches and honour in abundance. His heart is lifted up in the ways of the Lord, a phrase Barnes reads as encouraged rather than proud, since the usual bad sense of the idiom does not fit a king praised in the same breath, and he takes away the high places and groves. Chronicles will say at 20:33 that the high places were not taken away, because the people had not prepared their hearts, and both verses stand: the royal reform and the popular relapse are both true of one reign.

2 Chronicles 17:7-9

to teach in the cities of Judah: In the third year Jehoshaphat sends five princes, nine Levites and two priests through all the cities of Judah, and they carry the book of the law of the Lord with them as they go. Nothing in Samuel or Kings parallels this mission; it is Chronicles' own material, an itinerant teaching program built on the written word a century before Josiah's workmen find a forgotten copy of that same law in the temple. Barnes takes the book carried to be the Pentateuch essentially as it stands, brought along because full copies of the law were scarce, and Gill reads the teaching itself as the people's duty toward God and man, taught from the text and confirmed by its own authority.

2 Chronicles 17:10

fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands: The fear of the Lord falls on the surrounding kingdoms and no one makes war on Jehoshaphat, the same shape of protection Chronicles' own tradition finds when the terror of God kept the cities around Shechem from pursuing Jacob's sons after Genesis 35. Henry reads the timing as providence covering the reformers rather than the army: while the princes, priests and Levites are still teaching the country, none of the neighbors moves against the king.

2 Chronicles 17:11

Philistines pay tribute silver and Arabians bring flocks of rams and goats in matched sevens of thousands, a second gift list beside the one Judah itself gave at verse 5. Gill and Barnes both read these as neighboring peoples buying peace rather than risking the fate the Arabians met when Asa defeated them at 14:15.

2 Chronicles 17:12-13

Jehoshaphat waxes great, building castles and store cities and keeping much business running through the cities of Judah, while his standing men of war are held in reserve at Jerusalem. Clarke reads the busy cities as full employment, the kingdom enriched by wages paid for work done, the domestic strength that fills out the military strength verse 1 opened with.

2 Chronicles 17:14-16

The roster opens with Judah's three captains: Adnah over three hundred thousand, Jehohanan over two hundred and eighty thousand, and Amasiah son of Zichri over two hundred thousand, named because he willingly offered himself unto the Lord. Gill reads the phrase either as service given without pay or, following Kimchi, as gold and silver given to the temple treasury, the same freewill spirit David asked of Israel's officers at 1 Chr 29:5. Spurgeon preached from this verse itself, taking a commander who could lead an army and still obey God as the pattern a Christian employer should want in a Christian servant.

2 Chronicles 17:17-19

Benjamin's contingent under Eliada carries bow and shield, the tribe's own weapon since 14:8, and Jehozabad closes the list at a hundred and eighty thousand. Gill sums Judah and Benjamin together at 1,160,000 men, roughly double the 580,000 Asa fielded at 14:8, and credits the growth to a long peace and to Israelites who had come over from the north. These waited on the king in Jerusalem besides the garrisons already posted in the fenced cities, and Henry's own summary of the chapter insists it was not this army that put fear into the neighboring nations but the fear of God that fell when Jehoshaphat reformed his kingdom and set a preaching ministry loose in it.