Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Chronicles 19-22.

Whenever I read a passage like today’s about Jehoshaphat I am torn between writing about how we should be inspired to imitate his faithfulness to God and about how he fell short and brought disaster upon his sons and grandsons by allying with idol worshipers.  Today’s passage begins with the seer Jehu calling out Jehoshaphat for his alliance with Ahab and his family.  Then later in the passage, Eliezer prophesied against Jehoshaphat for allying with Ahab’s son Ahaziah to build a trade fleet.  In particular, Ahaziah prophesied that Jehoshaphat’s trade fleet would be destroyed because of that alliance.  To follow up on this, Jehoshaphat’s eldest son, Jehoram, who had married a member of Ahab’s family, killed the rest of Jehoshaphat’s son, his brothers, when he succeeded his father.

In between the two prophets I mentioned in the previous paragraph Jehoshaphat does things which should inspire us to emulate his love for God.  First, he appoints judges over the land whom he instructs to give their judgements, not for mortals, but for God.  Further, in every case they were to warn the people not to sin against the Lord.  Later, when an enemy army marched against Jerusalem, Jehoshaphat called the people to an assembly to call on God for deliverance.  In response God sent a prophet who told them, “Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged.”  Further, the prophet told them to go out to face the enemy because God would be with them.  Jehoshaphat ordered the people, an order which they gladly followed, to march out singing praises to God.  Let us follow their example and go out to face our enemies singing praise to God because of our confidence that He will deliver us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.