Where we are
Asa is buried, and the Chronicler turns the page to a son who will get one of the warmest reports in the book. The kings of Judah come to us in this record graded by a single question — did the man seek the LORD, or did he not? — and Jehoshaphat gets an answer most of them never earn: "the LORD was with Jehoshaphat" (v. 3). Four verses in, we already know the verdict. What follows is the Chronicler showing his work, laying out exactly what a God-sought reign looks like from the inside: not first a battle, not first a building program, but a king who walked in the old right ways, whose heart was lifted up in the ways of the LORD, and who then did the thing almost no other king in the Old Testament thought to do — he sent teachers.
That is the chapter's crown jewel, and it is worth naming up front because it is easy to skate past. In his third year, before the wars of chapter 18 and the great deliverance of chapter 20, Jehoshaphat commissions princes, Levites, and priests, hands them "the book of the law of the LORD," and sends them circuit-riding "throughout all the cities of Judah" to "teach the people" (vv. 7–9). A national teaching program. The word carried to the people, not kept in the capital. Before he strengthens his borders in earnest, he strengthens his people in the law — and the Chronicler is telling us which order actually holds a kingdom together.
Here is what to watch as the chapter unfolds:
- Seeking is the hinge of the whole reign. Twice in two verses the verb darash — to seek, to inquire, to resort to — draws the line: Jehoshaphat "sought not unto Baalim; but sought to the LORD God of his father" (vv. 3–4). Everything good that comes to him in this chapter hangs on the direction of that verb.
- A heart lifted up — and for once it is a good thing. "His heart was lifted up in the ways of the LORD" (v. 6). The same phrase will destroy Uzziah nine chapters later. The difference is not the height of the heart but the road it is lifted up in.
- The word goes to the people. The teaching program (vv. 7–9) is the reform's centerpiece — priests and Levites are supposed to teach, but here the king organizes it, funds it, and makes it reach every city. Instruction is treated as national infrastructure.
- Peace is the fruit, not the goal. "The fear of the LORD fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands that were round about Judah" (v. 10), and the wars simply stopped. Jehoshaphat's security grows out of his righteousness; the tribute, the armies, the greatness in the back half of the chapter are all downstream of verses 3–9.
Canonically we are around 873–849 BC, in the southern kingdom of Judah, while to the north Ahab and Jezebel are provoking the LORD to anger — the very kings Elijah is confronting. Two kingdoms, one era, and the Chronicler wants us to feel the contrast in our bones: while Israel chases Baal, Judah's king sends the law to school every town he governs.
The LORD was with him, because he sought (verses 1–5)
And the LORD was with Jehoshaphat, because he walked in the first ways of his father David, and sought not unto Baalim; But sought to the LORD God of his father, and walked in his commandments, and not after the doings of Israel. — 2 Chronicles 17:3–4
Read the reason clause slowly, because the Chronicler almost never gives a blessing without one. The LORD was with Jehoshaphat — and then because. Not because he was clever, not because Judah was strong, but because of where he walked and where he sought. And notice the phrase "the first ways of his father David." Not David's whole record — David's later ways included Bathsheba and the census — but his first ways, the ways of the shepherd-king who inquired of the LORD before every move and danced before the ark. The word here is rishon (H7223), the same root behind "firstfruits" and "in the beginning": the head things, the original ways, the ways a man walks in before compromise teaches him shortcuts. Jehoshaphat reaches back past his own father Asa's troubled end to the founding pattern and starts there.
Then the double verb that governs the reign: he "sought not unto Baalim; but sought to the LORD." Both times the word is darash — to seek, to consult, to make your resort. It is a verb of direction and of habit; it asks not whether you believe in God abstractly but where you actually go with your questions. Baal was the northern kingdom's answer, the storm-god you inquired of for rain and increase. Jehoshaphat inquires elsewhere. And the result is stated as cause and effect: "Therefore the LORD stablished the kingdom in his hand" (v. 5). The Hebrew is blunt about the sequence — the seeking comes first, the establishing comes after. It is the same order the risen Christ presses on the Nephites and the same order Alma builds a church on: seek, and then be established. "Seek, and ye shall find" (Matt. 7:7) is not a slogan here; it is a policy of state, and Judah's stability is its dividend.
A heart lifted up — rightly (verse 6)
And his heart was lifted up in the ways of the LORD: moreover he took away the high places and groves out of Judah. — 2 Chronicles 17:6
Stop on this verse, because it contains one of the most instructive phrases in the whole record of the kings. "His heart was lifted up." Anywhere else in scripture that phrase is an obituary. It is what is said of the proud king of Tyre, of Hezekiah in his dangerous moment, and most pointedly of Uzziah just nine chapters ahead: "when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction" (2 Chr. 26:16). Same Chronicler, same phrase, same verb — gabahh, to be high, to be exalted, to rise. Uzziah's lifted heart drove him into the temple to burn incense he had no right to touch, and he came out a leper. So why does Jehoshaphat's lifted heart end not in leprosy but in reform?
The answer is in the three words the verse refuses to leave out: in the ways of the LORD. The height of the heart is identical in both kings. The difference is entirely the road. A heart lifted up in its own ways swells toward the altar it was forbidden and toward the destruction that waits there. A heart lifted up in the ways of the LORD rises toward courage — and the very next word is "moreover," and the very next act is tearing down the high places and the groves. Jehoshaphat's exalted heart does not reach for privilege; it reaches for a crowbar. This is the Old Testament's quiet correction to our nervousness about zeal: the problem was never that his heart was too high. Boldness in the Lord's cause is not pride; it is what pride counterfeits. "Be strong and of a good courage" (Josh. 1:9) is a lifted heart pointed down the right road — and the same Spirit gives us "not the spirit of fear; but of power" (2 Tim. 1:7). The question scripture keeps asking is never how high is your heart but in whose ways is it lifted.
The book of the law in every city (verses 7–9)
Also in the third year of his reign he sent to his princes, even to Ben-hail, and to Obadiah, and to Zechariah, and to Nethaneel, and to Michaiah, to teach in the cities of Judah. — 2 Chronicles 17:7
Now comes the act that sets Jehoshaphat apart from nearly every reformer in the Old Testament. Good kings tear down high places; the Chronicler has already credited him with that in verse 6. But tearing down is only half a reform — it clears the ground without planting anything. What Jehoshaphat does next is the rarer, harder, more lasting thing: he builds a teaching program. And look at the care in the list. Five princes named, then eight Levites, then two priests (vv. 7–8) — royal authority, Levitical instruction, and priestly office all sent out together. This is not a memo. It is a commissioned delegation with the crown's weight behind it, dispatched with one assignment: to teach.
And they taught in Judah, and had the book of the law of the LORD with them, and went about throughout all the cities of Judah, and taught the people. — 2 Chronicles 17:9
Read that verse as the mission statement it is. "They taught... and had the book of the law of the LORD with them... and went about throughout all the cities of Judah, and taught the people." The verb lamad — to teach — brackets the sentence, and between the two occurrences sits the whole method: the book with them (not their opinions, not the king's decrees, but the law itself), motion through every city (the word does not sit in the capital waiting to be sought — it travels), and the people as the object (not the priests, not the elite, but the whole populace). Every reform in Judah's history that lasted rested on this: getting the word into the hands and ears of ordinary people. When Josiah's men later find the book of the law and the nation weeps because it had been lost (2 Kgs. 22), you feel by contrast how extraordinary Jehoshaphat's instinct was — he made sure it was never lost, because he sent it circuit-riding to every town while he still had it.
This is the Old Testament anticipating the pattern the Restoration would make the heartbeat of a covenant people. "Teach one another the doctrine of the kingdom... that ye may be instructed more perfectly" (D&C 88:77–78) is Jehoshaphat's program written as commandment. When King Benjamin gathers all his people to teach them (Mosiah 2), when Alma "consecrated all their priests and their teachers" so that "they should teach nothing save it were the things which he had taught" (Mosiah 18:18–20), when Alma the Younger leaves the judgment-seat to go teach because "the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just" (Alma 31:5) — every one of them is walking in Jehoshaphat's third-year footsteps. The word, carried to the people, in every city, with the book in hand. It is why the Church is a teaching church and the home a teaching home. A king who could have hoarded the law in Jerusalem instead put it on the road, and the road ran to everyone.
The fear of the LORD round about (verses 10–19)
And the fear of the LORD fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands that were round about Judah, so that they made no war against Jehoshaphat. — 2 Chronicles 17:10
Here is the payoff, and the Chronicler's ordering is the sermon. Jehoshaphat did not first secure his borders and then, safe behind them, get around to religion. He sought the LORD, was established, tore down the idols, and sent the law to every city — and then the fear of the LORD fell on the surrounding nations and the wars simply ceased. The peace is the fruit of the seeking, not a precondition for it. "The fear of the LORD" here is pachad — not the reverent awe of the worshipper but the dread that falls on outsiders when they sense that the God of a people is real and awake. It is the same fear that fell on the Canaanites when Israel crossed the Jordan (Ex. 15:16; Josh. 2:9). A kingdom that seeks God rightly develops a kind of gravity; its neighbors feel the weight of it and step back.
And the blessings pile up in the telling. The Philistines — Judah's oldest tormentors — bring tribute; the Arabians bring flocks by the thousands (v. 11); Jehoshaphat "waxed great exceedingly" and builds castles and store-cities (v. 12). Then the muster rolls: the mighty men of valour, captains commanding hundreds of thousands, and among them a name the Chronicler cannot resist singling out — Amasiah, "who willingly offered himself unto the LORD" (v. 16). In a long list of conscripted armies, one man is remembered not for his numbers but for his consecration, the same Hebrew instinct behind every freewill offering: he gave himself. It is a small window onto what the teaching program was producing — not just soldiers, but a people some of whom willingly offered themselves to God.
But do not let the armies mislead you about where the chapter's power lies. The men of war are listed after the teachers, and they never fight in this chapter. Judah's real defense was laid in verses 7–9, when the book went out to the cities; the standing armies of verses 13–19 are the visible surplus of an invisible security. When the crisis finally comes, in chapter 20, Jehoshaphat will not trust these numbers — he will proclaim a fast, gather the people, and seek the LORD again (2 Chr. 20:3–4), and the battle will be won by a choir. The armies were real, but the Chronicler has already told us what actually kept the peace: a king who sought God, and a people who were taught. "Except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain" (Ps. 127:1). Jehoshaphat built the walls and mustered the men — and then leaned on the only thing that ever held them.
The chapter's architecture
The chapter is built as a single descending line of cause, and it pays to see it whole. It opens with a verdict — "the LORD was with Jehoshaphat" (v. 3) — and then spends nineteen verses showing the machinery behind that sentence. First the root: he sought the LORD and not Baal, and walked in the first ways of David (vv. 3–4). Then the establishing: "therefore the LORD stablished the kingdom in his hand" (v. 5), with riches and honour. Then the heart: lifted up in the ways of the LORD, tearing down the high places (v. 6). Then the reform's centerpiece: the teachers sent with the book to every city (vv. 7–9). Then the fruit: the fear of the LORD on the nations, tribute, greatness, armies (vv. 10–19). Root, establishing, heart, teaching, fruit — a straight causal chain, not a chiasm, and I will not pretend it is symmetrical. The artistry here is sequence, and the sequence is the argument: everything downstream of verse 9 grows out of everything upstream of it.
And the deliberate placement of the teaching program is the whole point. The Chronicler could have opened with the armies — a lesser historian would have. Instead he buries the muster rolls at the back and puts the schoolteachers at the center, in the third year, before the wars. He is telling us where a kingdom's strength actually lives. Not in its fenced cities, though Jehoshaphat had them; not in its three hundred thousand mighty men, though he mustered them; but in whether the word of the LORD is in the hands of the people in every town. Take away the teaching and the armies become Uzziah's — strength that lifts the heart to destruction. Keep the teaching and the same strength becomes a shield. The chapter is a lesson in what to build first, and Jehoshaphat, for one bright reign, built it in the right order.
How this chapter changes the reader
Start with the verb, because the whole chapter turns on it: seek. Jehoshaphat's reign is one long demonstration that we become what we habitually inquire of. He "sought not unto Baalim; but sought to the LORD" — and the direction of that seeking, repeated until it was a reign, is what "the LORD was with him" was measuring. The Baalim have new names now — the forecasts we consult first, the metrics we resort to when we are afraid, the counsel we reach for before we reach for prayer — but the verb has not changed and neither has its consequence. Where you go with your real questions is where your heart is being established. Seek early, in the first ways, before compromise teaches you the shortcuts.
Then take the boldest permission in the chapter: your heart is allowed to be lifted up, if it is lifted up in the ways of the LORD. We have been so trained to fear pride that we sometimes shrink from courage itself, as if a high heart were always a sin. Jehoshaphat's was not. His heart rose — and reached for a crowbar, not a crown. The test was never the height; it was the road. Let your heart be lifted up toward the hard right thing, the idol that needs tearing down in your own life, the calling accepted with more zeal than the world thinks decent — just make sure it rises in his ways and not your own.
And last, learn from the teachers he sent. This is a chapter for anyone who has ever been handed a class of restless children, a home evening that no one seems to want, a lesson to prepare when the week left nothing over. Jehoshaphat's reform was not won by the armies at the back of the chapter; it was won by nameless Levites walking dusty roads to towns you will never hear of, carrying the book of the law to people who had no other way to get it. The great public deliverance is coming in chapter 20 — but chapter 20 is only possible because chapter 17 sent teachers. The word carried to the people, in every city, with the book in hand: that is how a kingdom is kept, and it is still, quietly, how one is. If you are the one carrying the book to the next town, you are not doing the small part of the Lord's work. You are doing the part that holds.