2 Chronicles 19:2 - Exposition

And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him . For Hanani, the faithful father of a faithful son, see 2 Chronicles 16:7-10 , where we read that he "came to Asa King of Judah," etc. Also for Jehu, see 1 Kings 16:1-4 , where we read of his commission at the word of the Lord to rebuke Baasha the King of Israel, at a date upwards of thirty years before the present; and see 2 Chronicles 20:34 , which would lead us to infer, though not with certainty, that he outlived Jehoshaphat. The book called by his name, however, was not necessarily finished by him. It is evident that neither the word of the Lord nor the messengers and prophets of the Lord were bound by the orthodox limits of the divided kingdom. The powerful character and the moral force of the true prophet is again seen in the way in which he was wont to go out to meet the evil-doer, though he were a king. We are accustomed to set the whole of this down to the account of the special inspiration of the prophet of old; yet that was but typical of the intrinsic force that truth faithfully spoken should wield in its own right in later times. Religion is established in the nation and people that know and do this, by the accredited teachers of it, vie. the plain rebuke of the wrong. Shouldest thou … love them that hate the Lord ? Strong suspicion must attend upon Jehoshaphat, that he had been not a little misled by answering to some personal fascination in Ahab. The prophet's rebuke is not that Jehoshaphat helped both Israel and therein Judah also against a common foe, but that he helped the ungodly, etc. Therefore wrath upon thee , etc. The significance of this sentence was probably not merely retrospective, glancing at the fact that Jehoshaphat returned to Jerusalem minus the victory for which he had bid, but was probably an intimation of troubles that should ripen, were already ripening for Jehoshaphat, in the coming invasion of his own kingdom ( 2 Chronicles 20:1-3 ).