2 Chronicles21chapter 21

revolted from under the dominion of Judah: Edom throws off Judah's rule and crowns its own king, and Jehoram's night attack on the chariots that had compassed him in does not recover the loss: the Edomites revolted from under the hand of Judah unto this day, the writer's own words for a break that outlived his page. Libnah revolts the same season, and verse 10 gives the reason Kings leaves out, because he had forsaken the Lord God of his fathers. The political unraveling is read here as the direct fruit of the religious one.

caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit fornication: Kings tells the idolatry in general terms, that he walked in the way of the house of Ahab; Chronicles alone gives the particulars, high places built in the mountains of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem made to commit spiritual fornication, compelled to it rather than merely permitted. The verb compelled marks Jehoram's idolatry as settled policy, imposed on a people who had known Jehoshaphat's reform within living memory.

a writing to him from Elijah the prophet: A writing comes to Jehoram from Elijah the prophet, the only piece of writing from Elijah anywhere in Scripture. It names the Lord God of David thy father and sets Jehoram against his own line, not the ways of Jehoshaphat or Asa but the way of the kings of Israel, the whoredoms of the house of Ahab, and the slaying of brethren better than himself. The letter's timing raises a real question: 2 Kings 2:11 places Elijah's translation in Jehoshaphat's reign, seemingly before Jehoram's accession, and the commentators divide between an earlier writing delivered later, a later placement of the translation, and simply leaving the text as Scripture gives it.

with a great plague will the Lord smite: Elijah's letter turns from indictment to sentence: a great plague on the people, the children, the wives and all the goods, and on Jehoram himself a disease of the bowels that will grow day by day until the bowels themselves fall out. The two clauses are not separate threats but one unfolding judgment, and the chapter will report both fulfilled in order, the household first and the king's own body last.

stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines: The first half of Elijah's sentence lands: the Lord stirs up the spirit of the Philistines and the Arabians near the Ethiopians, peoples Jehoshaphat had kept as tribute-paying neighbors, and they break into Judah and carry off the substance of the king's house along with his sons and his wives. Only Jehoahaz, the youngest, is left him, so that the line the covenant of verse 7 protects survives by one child rather than by Jehoram's own care.

in his bowels with an incurable disease: The second half of the sentence lands in Jehoram's own body: an incurable disease in the bowels that runs two full years before his bowels fall out and he dies of the sickness itself, the very sequence Elijah's letter had named at verse 15. His people make no burning for him, like the burning of his fathers, the aromatic fire Asa was given at his death in 2 Chr 16:14 withheld here as a public verdict on the reign rather than an oversight.

departed without being desired: The chapter closes on the saddest epitaph among the kings of Judah: he reigned eight years and departed without being desired, a phrase the commentators read as the plain opposite of the mourning a beloved king receives. He is buried in the city of David, among his fathers by location, but not in the sepulchres of the kings, a distinction the text draws without explaining it further.