2 Chronicles 18:1 - Exposition

The purport of the verse is to let us into the secret that the riches and honour in abundance of Jehoshaphat were, in fact, the snare by which he was led to entangle himself with one who, probably only on that account, was willing to be entangled by affinity with him ( 2 Chronicles 21:6 ; 2 Chronicles 22:2-4 ; 2 Kings 8:25-29 ). It is not hard to see how they would both lead him, if not always out of big and patronizing thoughts, to seek and also lay him open to be sought. When this verse says Jehoshaphat joined affinity, etc; it means that he had done so. to wit, not fewer than nine years before, in promoting or allowing, whichever it was, the marriage of his son Jehoram with Ahab's and Jezebel's daughter Athaliah. For the issue of this marriage, Ahaziah, took the throne at the age of twenty-two years, thirteen years hence from this seventeenth year of his grandfather Jehoshaphat's reign, the year of Ahab's death. But as we are told that Ahaziah was the youngest son of Jehoram and Athaliah (for explanation of which see 2 Chronicles 21:17 ), the "joining affinity" must have been something earlier than nine years, and very probably came yet nearer the prosperity of the earlier years of Jehoshaphat's reign, with which would agree well the keynote touched again significantly here from our 2 Chronicles 17:5 . Comp. 2 Kings 8:17 , 2 Kings 8:26 ; 2 Chronicles 21:20 ; 2 Chronicles 22:2 (which needs the correction of twenty-two to forty-two ) . Although it is certain that the act of Jehoshaphat was wrong in principle, disastrous in practice ( 2 Chronicles 19:2 , 2 Chronicles 19:3 ), and threatened fatal consequences to himself ( 2 Chronicles 18:31 , 2 Chronicles 18:32 ), yet it is not impossible to suppose his motives were for the most part good, and he may naturally have thought that the sunshine of his own peace and abundance might be the set time to win influence in and over Israel, rather than strengthen Israel in its ungodly independence. On the other hand, nothing could justify Jehoshaphat risking such intimacy of relationship with such a family, heedless of consequences, looking towards idolatry, which he should have known were overwhelmingly probable.