2 Chronicles 20: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

An army from Moab, Ammon, and Mount Seir marches against Judah, and King Jehoshaphat calls the whole nation to fast and pray at the temple. A Levite named Jahaziel tells them the battle belongs to God and that they will not need to fight; the next day Judah goes out singing, and the invading armies destroy one another. Judah collects the plunder for three days, returns to Jerusalem with music, and the surrounding kingdoms fear God. The chapter closes with a summary of Jehoshaphat's reign, including his failed shipbuilding partnership with King Ahaziah of Israel.

Claim by Claim

1. 20:1
   • After this, the Moabites came against Jehoshaphat to battle.
   • The Ammonites also came against Jehoshaphat to battle.
   • Others came with them besides the Ammonites.
2. 20:2
   • Some men came and reported to Jehoshaphat.
   • They said a great multitude was coming against Jehoshaphat.
   • They said the multitude came from beyond the sea.
   • They said the multitude came from Syria.
   • They said the multitude was already at Hazazon-tamar.
   • They said Hazazon-tamar is En-gedi.
3. 20:3
   • Jehoshaphat was afraid.
   • Jehoshaphat set his face to seek the LORD.
   • Jehoshaphat proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.
4. 20:4
   • Judah gathered themselves together to seek help from the LORD.
   • They came out of all the cities of Judah to seek the LORD.
5. 20:5
   • Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem.
   • He stood in the house of the LORD.
   • He stood before the new court.
6. 20:6
   • Jehoshaphat spoke.
   • He addressed the LORD as the God of their fathers.
   • He asked whether God is not the God in heaven.
   • He asked whether God does not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations.
   • He said power and might are in God's hand.
   • He said no one is able to stand against God.
7. 20:7
   • Jehoshaphat asked whether God is not their God.
   • He said God drove out the inhabitants of this land before his people Israel.
   • He said God gave the land to the offspring of Abraham forever.
   • He called Abraham God's friend.
8. 20:8
   • Jehoshaphat said they dwelt in the land.
   • He said they built a sanctuary in it for God's name.
   • He said they spoke the following words.
9. 20:9
   • The condition stated is that evil comes upon them.
   • The evil is specified as sword, judgment, pestilence, or famine.
   • They said they would stand before this house and before God.
   • They said God's name is in this house.
   • They said they would cry out to God in their distress.
   • They said God would hear.
   • They said God would save.
10. 20:10
    • Jehoshaphat pointed to the Ammonites, the Moabites, and Mount Seir.
    • He said God did not let Israel invade them when Israel came out of the land of Egypt.
    • He said Israel turned away from them.
    • He said Israel did not destroy them.
11. 20:11
    • Jehoshaphat said these peoples are repaying Israel.
    • He said they are coming to drive Israel out of God's possession.
    • He said God gave that possession to Israel as an inheritance.
12. 20:12
    • Jehoshaphat addressed God as their God.
    • He asked whether God will not judge them.
    • He said they have no strength against this great multitude coming against them.
    • He said they do not know what to do.
    • He said their eyes are upon God.
13. 20:13
    • All Judah stood before the LORD.
    • Their little ones stood there.
    • Their wives stood there.
    • Their children stood there.
14. 20:14
    • The Spirit of the LORD came upon Jahaziel.
    • Jahaziel was the son of Zechariah.
    • Zechariah was the son of Benaiah.
    • Benaiah was the son of Jeiel.
    • Jeiel was the son of Mattaniah.
    • Jahaziel was a Levite of the sons of Asaph.
    • This happened in the midst of the assembly.
15. 20:15
    • Jahaziel spoke.
    • He called all Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and King Jehoshaphat to listen.
    • He said this is what the LORD says to them.
    • He told them not to be afraid because of this great multitude.
    • He told them not to be dismayed because of this great multitude.
    • He said the battle is not theirs but God's.
16. 20:16
    • He told them to go down against the enemy tomorrow.
    • He said the enemy is coming up by the ascent of Ziz.
    • He said they would find the enemy at the end of the valley.
    • He said that place is before the wilderness of Jeruel.
17. 20:17
    • He said it would not be for them to fight in this battle.
    • He told them to take their positions and stand still.
    • He told them to see the salvation of the LORD with them.
    • He addressed Judah and Jerusalem.
    • He told them not to fear.
    • He told them not to be dismayed.
    • He told them to go out against the enemy tomorrow.
    • He said the LORD would be with them.
18. 20:18
    • Jehoshaphat bowed with his face to the ground.
    • All Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the LORD.
    • They worshipped the LORD.
19. 20:19
    • The Levites stood up.
    • These Levites were of the Kohathites and of the Korahites.
    • They stood up to praise the LORD, the God of Israel.
    • They praised with a very loud voice.
20. 20:20
    • They rose early in the morning.
    • They went out to the wilderness of Tekoa.
    • As they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and spoke.
    • He called Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to hear him.
    • He told them to believe in the LORD their God.
    • He said that if they believe they will be established.
    • He told them to believe his prophets.
    • He said that if they believe the prophets they will succeed.
21. 20:21
    • Jehoshaphat consulted with the people.
    • He appointed singers to the LORD.
    • He appointed men to praise in holy splendor.
    • They went out before the armed men.
    • They said: Give thanks to the LORD.
    • They said his steadfast love endures forever.
22. 20:22
    • When they began to sing and praise, the LORD set ambushes against the Ammonites, the Moabites, and Mount Seir.
    • Those peoples had come against Judah.
    • They were struck down.
23. 20:23
    • The Ammonites and Moabites stood up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir.
    • They did so to devote them to destruction and annihilate them.
    • When they had finished with the inhabitants of Seir, each helped to destroy his neighbor.
24. 20:24
    • Judah came to the lookout point over the wilderness.
    • They turned toward the multitude.
    • The multitude were corpses fallen to the ground.
    • No one had escaped.
25. 20:25
    • Jehoshaphat and his people came to take the spoil.
    • They found among them an abundance of goods.
    • They found dead bodies among them.
    • They found precious articles.
    • They stripped off for themselves more than they could carry.
    • They spent three days taking the spoil.
    • The spoil was so much.
26. 20:26
    • On the fourth day they assembled in the Valley of Berachah.
    • They blessed the LORD there.
    • For that reason they called the name of that place the Valley of Berachah.
    • The place bears that name to this day.
27. 20:27
    • Every man of Judah and Jerusalem returned.
    • Jehoshaphat was at their head.
    • They returned to Jerusalem with joy.
    • The LORD had made them rejoice over their enemies.
28. 20:28
    • They came to Jerusalem with lutes, harps, and trumpets.
    • They came to the house of the LORD.
29. 20:29
    • The fear of God came upon all the kingdoms of those lands.
    • This happened when they heard that the LORD had fought against the enemies of Israel.
30. 20:30
    • The kingdom of Jehoshaphat was quiet.
    • His God gave him rest on every side.
31. 20:31
    • Jehoshaphat reigned over Judah.
    • He was thirty-five years old when he began to reign.
    • He reigned twenty-five years in Jerusalem.
    • His mother's name was Azubah.
    • Azubah was the daughter of Shilhi.
32. 20:32
    • He walked in the way of Asa his father.
    • He did not turn away from it.
    • He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD.
33. 20:33
    • The high places were not removed.
    • The people had not yet set their hearts on the God of their fathers.
34. 20:34
    • The rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, first and last, are written in the records of Jehu son of Hanani.
    • Those records were entered into the book of the kings of Israel.
35. 20:35
    • After this, Jehoshaphat king of Judah joined himself with Ahaziah king of Israel.
    • Ahaziah acted wickedly.
36. 20:36
    • Jehoshaphat joined with him to build ships to go to Tarshish.
    • They built the ships at Ezion-geber.
37. 20:37
    • Eliezer son of Dodavahu of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat.
    • He said that because Jehoshaphat joined himself with Ahaziah, the LORD had broken his works.
    • The ships were wrecked.
    • The ships were not able to go to Tarshish.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

20:1

Moab and Ammon were long-standing neighbors east of the Dead Sea; Israelite tradition traced both peoples back to Lot, Abraham's nephew, so they counted as distant kin. The phrase behind "others besides the Ammonites" is unclear in the Hebrew; ancient Greek copies and many modern translations read it as "Meunites," a people associated with the region south of the Dead Sea.

20:2

"The Sea" here is the Dead Sea, so the army is approaching from its far (eastern and southern) side. The Hebrew says the attack comes from "Aram" (Syria), but Syria lies far to the north and makes little sense of the route; the words for Aram and Edom differ by one easily confused letter, and Edom, the territory south of the Dead Sea, fits the march described. En-gedi is a spring-fed oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea, about twenty-five miles from Jerusalem.

20:3

"To seek the LORD" is a set phrase meaning to inquire of God for a decision or answer, usually through a prophet or at the temple, not simply to feel devout. A publicly proclaimed fast was an emergency measure: going without food marked the whole nation as being in crisis and put the ordinary business of life on hold.

20:5

The temple had open courtyards around the building itself, where ordinary people gathered; only priests entered the building. "The new court" suggests an addition or renovation known to the original readers but not described elsewhere.

20:6

The King James "heathen" simply meant the nations, that is, all the peoples outside Israel. In 1611 it was a plain descriptive word and did not carry the sneering tone it has picked up since.

20:7

Calling Abraham God's "friend" was a recognized title of honor, still used of him in Isaiah 41:8 and later Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition.

20:8

"For your name" is a standard Hebrew way of saying the building belongs to God and is where he has agreed to be found; the "name" stands for the presence and reputation of the one named.

20:9

Jehoshaphat is quoting back the prayer Solomon prayed when the temple was dedicated (2 Chronicles 6:28–30), in which Solomon asked that God hear anyone who prayed toward this building in time of war, plague or famine. The list (sword, judgment, plague, famine) is a stock catalogue of national disasters.

20:10

Mount Seir is the mountainous country of Edom, south-east of the Dead Sea. The reference is to Deuteronomy 2, where Israel on the way from Egypt was forbidden to attack Edom, Moab or Ammon because their lands had been assigned to them; Israel detoured around them instead. The complaint is that these nations are now attacking people who once spared them.

20:13

Hebrew distinguishes "little ones" (dependants, the very young) from grown sons and daughters; listing all of them stresses that entire households, not just fighting men, turned out for the assembly.

20:14

Levites were the tribe assigned to service at the temple rather than to a territory of their own. The descendants of Asaph were the temple's singers and musicians (1 Chronicles 25), so the message here comes from a member of the choir, not from a professional prophet.

20:15

"Thus saith the LORD" was how a prophet showed that the message came from God and not from himself.

20:16

The "slope" or "ascent" of Ziz is a pass climbing west from the Dead Sea shore toward the Judean hills. The word rendered "valley" is a wadi, a ravine that carries water only after rain and serves as a natural road the rest of the year.

20:17

"Salvation" in the King James normally means rescue from a physical danger. Here it means being saved from an invading army, not an inward or spiritual condition.

20:19

Kohath and Korah were family lines within the tribe of Levi; the Korahites were a branch of the Kohathites, and several psalms carry their name as temple singers.

20:20

Tekoa was a town about ten miles south of Jerusalem; the "wilderness of Tekoa" is the barren land dropping east from it toward the Dead Sea. Jehoshaphat's sentence is a play on words: the Hebrew for "believe" and the Hebrew for "be established, stand firm" are forms of the same root, roughly "trust and you will be trusty."

20:21

"The beauty of holiness" translates a phrase whose sense is disputed: it may mean the splendor of God's holiness, or the sacred garments the singers wore for worship. The words they sing are the standing refrain of Israel's temple worship, repeated throughout Psalm 136; the word behind "faithful love" (hesed) means loyalty to an agreement, not simply affection. Sending unarmed singers ahead of the troops reverses normal battle order.

20:22

The Hebrew does not say who the "ambushes" were, and readers have understood it either as human raiders or as an unexplained force; the account that follows describes only the invaders turning on each other.

20:23

The Hebrew phrase behind "wiped them out completely" is the technical term for devoting an enemy to destruction, killing rather than capturing, and taking no share of them as property. It is the same term used of Israel's own conquest wars.

20:24

The King James "watch tower" may be a place name, but the Hebrew word means a lookout, a high point from which you could see anyone crossing the open country below.

20:25

The Hebrew here is uncertain: the word read as "among them" is very close to the word for "cattle," and some ancient copies describe livestock among the plunder rather than goods on the bodies.

20:26

Berachah is the Hebrew word for "blessing," so the place-name records what happened there. "To this day" is the writer's own time, centuries after the events, and is a standard way of noting that a name or custom was still current when the book was compiled.

20:28

Two different stringed instruments are meant, one smaller and one larger; the trumpets are the straight silver ones blown by priests on state and religious occasions, not the curved ram's horn.

20:29

"The fear of God" here means dread of what Judah's God had just done. It describes the practical effect on neighboring states, who decided not to risk attacking.

20:31

The books of Kings and Chronicles record the mother's name for each king of Judah as a matter of course: the queen mother held a recognized position at court, outranking the king's wives. Jehoshaphat's stated age and reign length overlap with his father's final years, which is usually explained as a period of joint rule.

20:33

High places were open-air worship sites on hilltops, with an altar and often a standing stone or wooden pole. They were the normal way to worship locally, sometimes directed at the LORD and sometimes at other gods; the writers of Kings and Chronicles judge each king by whether he shut them down in favor of the Jerusalem temple alone.

20:34

These are royal and prophetic archives that no longer survive; they are not the biblical books of Kings. Chronicles regularly signs off a reign by pointing readers to fuller records it assumes they can consult.

20:35

Israel here means the separate northern kingdom, split from Judah after Solomon's death; Chronicles consistently treats alliances between the two royal houses as a mistake on Judah's part.

20:36

Tarshish was a distant port, probably in the western Mediterranean, and "ships of Tarshish" had become a term for large ocean-going vessels regardless of destination. Ezion-geber sat at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, on the Red Sea, from which no ship could reach the Mediterranean; the parallel account in 1 Kings 22:48 says the ships were bound for Ophir.

20:37

The Hebrew uses one verb for both halves of the sentence: what God does to Jehoshaphat's enterprise is exactly what happens to the ships: they are broken.