And Jehu the son of Hanani, the seer, went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate Jehovah? Therefore is wrath upon thee from Jehovah.
Jehoshaphat comes home alive from the battle that killed his ally Ahab, and a prophet meets him with a hard question. That raises two problems: what was his sin, since he never bowed to an idol, and why "wrath" falls on a man God had just rescued.
Jehoshaphat never worshipped idols. One writer locates his fault in the company he chose.
Solomon's prayer did not have this kind of sin in view. That prayer assumes a people who are sinful and suffering for it, yet still openly acknowledge the authority and rule of Jehovah. If they cried to Him, He would deliver them. But how could that be when they were allied to the haters of the Lord? … But he did not worship the calf idols. No, but he sought the friendship of a man who did, and so shared in his sin.
One writer sets out the case Jehoshaphat could have made for himself.
He may have reasoned like this. Israel had forsaken the Lord and His temple, but they were as much the children of Abraham as Judah was. So where was the evil of joining with them? Kindness and friendship might win some of them back to the temple in Jerusalem. Avoiding and shunning them would only strengthen their hatred. People make a similar plea today. They claim to have left the world behind, yet they still look with a lingering eye at the things they seemed to condemn. Jehoshaphat condemned idolatry yet joined himself to it.
The people he joined were not pagan outsiders. One writer draws the lesson for anyone who has privilege before God.
Israel were truly descendants of Abraham, yet they were haters of the Lord. Read in the light of the New Testament, this tells us something. The greater our privilege, the greater our responsibility. If Christ is not supreme in our affections, we are so far haters of God.
The word help sounds like kindness. One writer asks where the help is taking the person.
To help a man onward seems kind. And it is kind, if he is on the right road, but not if he is on the wrong one. Imagine a Christian giving a helping hand to unconverted sinners on their way down to the pit! "Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD?" Should you link yourself up with them? Should you join their projects and despise the line God has drawn? No, indeed.
The order of events matters. God delivered him in the battle before He corrected him for being there at all.
If justice alone had acted, Jehoshaphat would have felt the full effect of his folly. But mercy won out. In his danger he cried to the Lord, who delivered him, and he returns to his house in peace. But the Lord's reproof comes after His mercy. The prophet meets him armed with the sword of the Lord, which is His word, and speaks with the tone of indignant surprise.
One writer marks off two kinds of judgment, using a town of two halves as his picture.
Beth-horon, "the house of wrath," is a double town: there is an upper city and a lower one. The lower Beth-horon is judgment as it falls on the impenitent and the unbeliever. The upper is judgment (and so wrath) against sin, though for the believer it takes the form of chastening mercy. "For if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world."
The warning is not just for kings, and not just for the Old Testament.
If believers become involved in wrong associations, they can only expect to incur the anger of the Lord. This is as true in the New Testament as it was in the Old. 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 insists: "Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you."
The message does not end at wrath.
In 2 Chronicles 19:2 we see that God had delivered Jehoshaphat out of compassion and love, yet He spoke to him in words of reproach. Then the Lord encouraged him by adding, "Nevertheless, some good is found in you." This shows us that if God disapproves what is evil, He owns the good which He has put into His own people.
- Friendship — Jehoshaphat never worshipped idols. He befriended the man who did, and shared his sin that way.
- Excuse — shared ancestry made the alliance look generous. But those relatives hated the Lord, and the prophet's question stripped the excuse away.
- Help — helping someone forward is only kindness when the road is right.
- Wrath — for the impenitent, this judgment is condemnation. For the believer, the same wrath against sin comes as chastening mercy, and it came only after God had rescued him.
- Nevertheless — God condemned the alliance and owned the good He had put in the man. The rebuke was meant to recover him, not to discard him.
Nevertheless there are good things found in thee; for thou hast put away the Asherahs out of the land, and hast directed thy heart to seek God.
A prophet meets King Jehoshaphat after his friendship with Ahab. He brings a rebuke — and then, in the same breath, a commendation. The verse raises a question many believers ask: how can God be angry with me and pleased with me at the same time?
One small word turns the whole sentence. It shows that God's disapproval of evil never blinds Him to what He Himself has produced in a person.
We see in 2 Chronicles 19:2 that God had delivered Jehoshaphat in His compassion and love, and yet spoke to him in words of reproach. Then the Lord encouraged him by adding, "Nevertheless, some good is found in you." This shows us that if God disapproves what is evil, He owns the good which He has put into His own people.
The order matters. The rebuke comes first and stands. The commendation follows without cancelling it.
The Lord reproved Jehoshaphat for being friendly with Ahab. At the same time He commended the good things Jehoshaphat had done: he had removed the wooden images from the land and prepared his heart to seek God. For God delights to encourage godly character, even though He must reprove what goes against it.
Grace searches out a man who has gone the wrong way, and fastens on whatever answers to its own character.
When a believer has set out on a wrong path, grace is still pleased to see anything in him that matches its own holiness and righteousness. Grace always takes account of this. It is the comforting thought that keeps coming back in Chronicles.
The same writer shows elsewhere how little it takes for God to acknowledge something, and what that should stir in us.
Few things, perhaps — and that is just what the words "good things" give us to understand — but in the end, something that God could acknowledge. God held back final judgment because of these few small things that pleased Him. Let us each apply ourselves to keep these good things before Him. May those around us see some devotion to Christ in us, some love for Him, some fear in the presence of His holiness, some activity in His service.
The first good thing named is a demolition. The objects removed — called "groves" in older translations — were not trees but idolatrous images.
On the whole it seems most probable that they were wooden symbols of a goddess. They took the form of images or pillars, or simply stems of trees pushed into the earth… The many references to the idols, images, and groves show how far Israel had departed from the living God and fallen into idolatry.
The second good thing cannot be seen: a heart set on seeking God. What was true of the king never became true of his people, and one writer traces that gap back to what the king failed to teach them.
It was said of Jehoshaphat that he had prepared his heart to seek God. The same could not be said of his people. We read… "The high places, however, were not taken away; the people had not yet set their hearts upon the God of their fathers" (2 Chr. 20:32-33). If he had prepared his heart to teach statutes and judgments, as the teacher Ezra did, those who heard him might have prepared their hearts too.
The praise did not settle the issue of the alliance. Good things in a man are no cover for joining himself to evil.
This man had good things in him, and he had prepared his heart to seek God. Even so, he had neglected what the word of God says about separation from evil. It is not enough to be free from evil yourself. Keeping company with the evil of others can defile us.
Correction had a visible result: the king went back to work he had begun earlier.
Jehoshaphat says nothing in reply to the prophet; he accepts the judgment, yet not without having learned his lesson. Instead of answering, he acts. He takes up again the task he had begun in Judah of teaching the people the law… Now he sets himself to stir up an awakening among the people, in every class of the nation, so that they may serve God and return to Him.
- Rebuke. God names the sin first and does not lift the wrath — His "nevertheless" comes on top of the reproof, never instead of it.
- Recognition. What God finds good in a person is what He put there Himself, and He does not forget it while He corrects him.
- Removal. The first good thing is outward — Jehoshaphat cut the idol images out of the land, though the high places still stood.
- Resolve. The second is inward — a heart set to seek God, the one thing Jehoshaphat never passed on to his people.
- Response. The word from God did not leave Jehoshaphat sitting still; it sent him back to the people to bring them to God.