2 Chronicles 18:1 - Meaning and Application

Jehoshaphat grew greater. Earlier, we were told that he had great riches and honor (2 Chronicles 17:5), and here we are told again that his wealth and honor kept increasing. God blessed him, and his wise rule helped him prosper.

But he did not grow wiser in every way, because he joined himself to Ahab, that corrupt king of Israel who had given himself over to evil. What good could Jehoshaphat gain from a man so bad? What good could he do for a man so stubbornly wicked, an idolater and a persecutor? He made a family alliance with him by marrying his son Jehoram to Ahab’s daughter Athaliah.

This was the worst marriage ever made by anyone in David’s royal family. It is hard to know what Jehoshaphat hoped to gain from it. Perhaps pride led to the match, as pride leads many people into bad choices, and they get the results they deserve. His faith should have kept him from marrying his son to the daughter of any pagan prince around him. God had said, “Do not take their daughters for your sons.” But since he had riches and honor in abundance, he may have thought it beneath his son to marry a subject. He wanted a king’s daughter, so he chose Ahab’s, without thinking enough about the fact that Jezebel was her mother.

Some think he did it out of political strategy, hoping this would unite the two kingdoms through his son. Perhaps Ahab encouraged that hope by hinting that he would make Jehoshaphat his heir, though he never meant to do so.

This marriage pulled Jehoshaphat into close friendship with Ahab. He visited him in Samaria, and Ahab, proud of Jehoshaphat’s honor, gave him a rich feast for those times, killing many sheep and oxen for him. But Jehoshaphat did not walk as carefully as he should have walked in the way of his father David, who hated the company of evil people and would not sit with the wicked (Psalm 26:5). David also did not want to eat their rich food (Psalm 141:4).

The marriage also led Jehoshaphat into a military alliance with Ahab against the Syrians. Ahab persuaded him to join him in an effort to recover Ramoth-Gilead, a city in the tribe of Gad, east of the Jordan River. Did Ahab not know that this city, and all the other cities of Israel, really belonged to Jehoshaphat as the heir of David’s house? So how could he ask Jehoshaphat to help him recover it for himself, when his own claim to the throne was stolen and uncertain? Yet Jehoshaphat, an easygoing man, agreed to go with him, saying, “I am as you are” (2 Chronicles 18:3).

The kindness of some people is dangerous, and their company spreads harm. A feast can be used as bait, and Ahab’s hospitality was meant only to lure Jehoshaphat into this campaign. The kisses of an enemy are false.