2 Chronicles 18:28–19:3 (NIV)✞: Ahab Killed at Ramoth Gilead
For the most part, this is a straightforward relling of the events as written in 1 Kings 22:29–40 (NIV)✞—Jehoshaphat, the King of Judah, is in battle against the Arameans alongside Ahab, the [wicked] King of Israel, and during the course of the battle Ahab is killed but Jehoshaphat is miraculously saved—except that the author(s) of Chronicles add this footnote to the end of the story that the author(s) of Kings didn’t include:
19:1 When Jehoshaphat king of Judah returned safely to his palace in Jerusalem, 2 Jehu the seer, the son of Hanani, went out to meet him and said to the king, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD? Because of this, the wrath of the LORD is on you. 3 There is, however, some good in you, for you have rid the land of the Asherah poles and have set your heart on seeking God.”
After the fall of Israel to the Assyrians, followed by the fall of Judah to the Babylonians, God’s people were exiled from the land for hundreds of years. Long enough that even the conquerers were conquered – the Babylonians fell to the Persians, who then fell to Alexander the Great (i.e. the Greeks), who were eventually defeated by the Romans.
But I’m getting ahead of myself! During the reign of the Persians, many of the exiled Jews1 were allowed to return to their original land, as we read about in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. My understanding is that the book of Chronicles was written to these people, to remind them of who God is, what He has done for His people in the past, and how the people should follow Him. For this reason, I sometimes think of Chronicles as focusing on some things and not on others – which then leads me to overcorrect and “defend” the book by saying it’s not whitewashing history. This brief section is an example of why that overcorrection is unnecessary: here the author(s) of Chronicles are criticising a king of Judah where the author(s) of Kings didn’t.
The point of the book of Chronicles is to remind God’s people of their relationship with Him; sometimes that means emphasising how good He has been to them, but sometimes it means reminding them not to abandon him – as, apparently, Jehoshaphat did, when he aligned himself with a wicked king!
Footnotes
- I’m not actually 100% sure if the term “Jews” was yet being used; I’m just using it generically to refer to God’s people. I just learned recently that the term “Jews” might have been shorthand for people from “Judah,” which, if true, complicates my nomenclature all the more… ↩
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