Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Chronicles · About this commentary
Teaching the Law Through the Towns
2 Chronicles 17:1-19
1 Jehoshaphat his son reigned in his place, and strengthened himself against Israel. · WEB
A king sends officials and Levites on circuit with the law book, and treats teaching as an instrument of government.
The reign is summed up before it is described, and the summary is about direction rather than achievement. Jehoshaphat didn't seek the Baals, but sought the God of his father 2 Chronicles 17:3–4. The same verb, twice, once negative and once positive.
One phrase in the opening is worth watching, because the book uses it elsewhere as a warning. His heart was lifted up in the ways of Yahweh 2 Chronicles 17:6. Lifting up of the heart destroys Uzziah and nearly destroys Hezekiah; here it is qualified by the direction it took, and produces a demolition of the high places rather than a trespass in the temple.
Then, in his third year, the measure that distinguishes this reign from every other one in the book.
He sends a commission on circuit: five princes, nine Levites and two priests, named individually 2 Chronicles 17:7–8. They taught in Judah, having the book of Yahweh's law with them. They went about throughout all the cities of Judah and taught among the people 2 Chronicles 17:9.
Several things about that are unusual. It is systematic — every town, not the capital. It is mixed — royal officials travel with clergy, so the state's authority is behind the instruction and the content is the priests' business. And it is textual: they carry the book, so what is taught can be checked against something.
No other king in either volume does this. Others repair the house, purge the shrines, or keep a festival; those are acts at a center, and the people come to them. Jehoshaphat's officers go out, and what they bring is not a demand but a text.
The results reported next are unusual in the same way. The surrounding kingdoms make no war on him, Philistines and Arabians bring tribute in remarkable quantities, and he builds 2 Chronicles 17:10–12. Security arrives without a campaign, which is the pattern established two reigns earlier when quiet was called a gift.
The muster that closes the chapter is enormous, and one man in it is described by something other than his numbers. Amasiah commands two hundred thousand, and willingly offered himself to Yahweh 2 Chronicles 17:16.
In a list of five commanders and their divisions, one gets a note about his own consecration. The word is the one the previous volume used of the people giving to the temple 1 Chronicles 29:9, and here it describes a soldier volunteering himself rather than his goods.
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