2 Chronicles19chapter 19

2 Chronicles 19:1

Jehoshaphat comes home from Ramoth-gilead, where he survived the battle that killed Ahab. The alliance itself belongs to chapter 18, already carried in full from the parallel account in 1 Kings 22, and Chronicles adds nothing to that story here. What it adds is what happens the moment the king is home.

2 Chronicles 19:2-3

Jehu son of Hanani meets the king with a question rather than a sentence: shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord? He is the son of the prophet Hanani, whom Asa imprisoned a generation earlier for a warning the king did not want to hear, and now his son confronts Asa's son over the same fault, an alliance with a house that hates the Lord. The rebuke does not stand alone; nevertheless there are good things found in thee balances it, naming the groves Jehoshaphat took away and the heart he prepared to seek God.

2 Chronicles 19:4

Jehoshaphat goes out among the people himself, from Beersheba to mount Ephraim, the kingdom's own two bounds, and brings them back unto the Lord God of their fathers. The verb is the one Chronicles measures every reign by, to seek, and here the king just rebuked answers by turning the land toward the Lord in person rather than by decree alone. The circuit answers his own earlier reform at 17:7-9, when Levites and priests were sent through the cities to teach, now walked by the king himself.

2 Chronicles 19:5-7

The king sets judges in the land, city by city through the fenced cities of Judah, restoring an office David had appointed that had lapsed. His charge to them states the judiciary's charter: ye judge not for man, but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment, and its ground is stated just as plainly, there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts. A court answerable to God rather than to litigants is the reform's whole logic before a single case is heard.

2 Chronicles 19:8-11

In Jerusalem Jehoshaphat sets a second court of Levites, priests and heads of fathers for cases returned there from the district courts, charging them to act in the fear of the Lord, faithfully, and with a perfect heart. Two jurisdictions are named and divided: Amariah the chief priest over all matters of the Lord, and Zebadiah son of Ishmael, ruler of the house of Judah, over the king's matters, the sacred and civil courts each with its own head under one throne. The charge ends on courage rather than technique, deal courageously, and the Lord shall be with the good, the same confidence chapter 20 will need within the year.