Chapter Nineteen

1–3. Rebuking of Jehoshaphat by the seer Jehu for his allied participation with the king of Israel. 4–7. The appointment of judges by Jehoshaphat in the provincial cities of Judah. 8–10. Organization of the court in Jerusalem.

2 Chronicles 19:2. And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat: Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? For this, wrath has come upon you from the face of the Lord. Concerning the prophet Jehu the son of Hanani (perhaps this Hanani is the same as the prophet of this name who rebuked Asa (2 Chr 16:7-10)), he is mentioned in (1 Kgs 16:1) as a contemporary of the king of Israel Baasha. See “Explanatory Bible,” vol. II, pp. 442–443.

2 Chronicles 19:4. And Jehoshaphat lived in Jerusalem. And again he went out among the people from Beersheba to the hill country of Ephraim, and brought them back to the Lord, the God of their fathers. 2 Chronicles 19:5. He appointed judges in the land in all the fortified cities of Judah, in each city, 2 Chronicles 19:6. and said to the judges: Consider what you do, for you judge not for man but for the Lord; he is with you in the matter of judgment. 2 Chronicles 19:7. Now let the fear of the Lord be upon you. Act carefully, for with the Lord our God there is no injustice, no partiality, and no bribery. Instead of the usual designation of the boundaries of all Palestine from north to south: “from Dan to Beersheba” (2 Sam 17:11; Judg 20:1), here (v. 4) for the territory of the southern kingdom of Judah alone a different expression is used: “from Beersheba (in the south) to the hill country of Ephraim” (in the north). According to the law of Deuteronomy (Deut 16:18) (see “Explanatory Bible,” vol. I, p. 620) the appointment of judges in provincial cities pertained to the sphere of local self-government: judges were elected by the local population itself. Jehoshaphat apparently replaced the elective principle with a system of judge appointments by royal authority (cf. Prof. Gulyaev, “Historical Books of the Sacred Scripture of the Old Testament,” p. 539). In this the king’s exhortations to the newly appointed judges were drawn up in phrases borrowed from the same book of Deuteronomy (cf. vv. 6–7 with (Deut 1:17)). The pious king laid at the foundation of the undertaken reform the beginning of the law of God. The bureaucratic system of managing the country had already been introduced by David ((2 Sam 8:13-18); “Explanatory Bible,” vol. II, pp. 317–318) and under Solomon received very complex development ((1 Kgs 4:2) and further; “Explanatory Bible,” vol. II, pp. 378 and further). Jehoshaphat’s reform was probably called forth partly by the major changes in the life of the ancient Hebrew people which were connected with the fact that at the time of his great-grandfather Rehoboam there occurred the division of the heretofore united Hebrew kingdom into two: the kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of Israel; it could also be conditioned by the internal development of the people and country; the Mosaic laws respecting the civil organization of the Hebrew people in no way intended to determine once and for all the entire order of national life; rather, the lawgiver gave full and broad opportunity for life itself to work out, as needed, new forms. Therefore there is nothing more natural than the religious-legal reform of King Jehoshaphat, and the doubts of some Western biblical scholars (Graf, Wellhausen, Stade, see at the latter in his History of the People Israel, Vol. I, pp. 18, 81–83; cf. W. Nowack, Textbook of Biblical Archaeology, Vol. I, p. 323) about the historical reliability of this account in 2 Chronicles chapters 17 and 19, as well as other reports of Chronicles which are not confirmed by parallel accounts in the books of Kings, are entirely without foundation.

2 Chronicles 19:8. And in Jerusalem Jehoshaphat appointed some of the Levites and priests and heads of the families of Israel for the judgment of the Lord and for disputes. And they returned to Jerusalem. 2 Chronicles 19:9. He commanded them, saying: You shall do so in the fear of the Lord, in faithfulness, and with a whole heart: 2 Chronicles 19:10. and in every case that comes to you from your brothers who live in their cities concerning bloodshed, law, commandment, statutes, and ordinances, you shall instruct them, that they may not incur guilt before the Lord, and wrath may not come upon you and your brothers; so you shall do, and you will not incur guilt. 2 Chronicles 19:11. And behold, Amariah the chief priest is over you in all matters of the Lord, and Zebadiah the son of Ishmael, the leader of the house of Judah, is over you in all the king’s matters. The Levite officers shall serve before you. Act with courage, and the Lord will be with the good. In the same principles Jehoshaphat organized a national tribunal in Jerusalem, perhaps subordinating to it the provincial courts as lower instances. The rabbis in the Jerusalem tribunal (cf. Deut 17:8-13) saw the prototype of the later great Jerusalem Sanhedrin, and in the provincial courts (cf. Deut 16:18) the foreimage of the so-called Lesser Sanhedrins of a later time (see Prof. Gulyaev, pp. 539–540; cf. “Explanatory Bible,” vol. I, p. 630). Verse 8 at the end is read differently in the Russian Bible as “and they returned to Jerusalem,” otherwise in the Slavonic: “let them judge those who live in Jerusalem.” The latter is the precise translation of the LXX κρίνειν τοὺς οἰκοῦντας ἐν Ιερουσαλημ, and the Vulgate translation agrees with the LXX: judicerent habitatoribus ejus. Evidently the LXX read instead of the Hebrew verb schuw (to return) the verb jaschaw—to dwell, to remain. The latter reading is also quite acceptable, but the Hebrew-Russian is better supported by the context (in verse 4 it is said that Jehoshaphat went among the people, consequently, he left Jerusalem, and according to verse 8 he returned to it). In favor of the Hebrew-Russian reading the testimony of Josephus, “Antiquities of the Jews,” Book IX, 1, 1 also speaks.