2 Chronicles 21: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jehoram becomes king of Judah after his father Jehoshaphat, kills all his brothers, marries a daughter of Ahab, and leads Judah into worship at hill shrines. Edom and the town of Libnah break away from his rule, and a letter from Elijah the prophet announces a heavy blow against his household and a fatal disease of the bowels. Philistines and Arabs raid Judah and carry off his possessions, his wives, and all his sons except the youngest. After two years of illness Jehoram dies, with no funeral fire, no one sorry, and no grave among the kings.

Claim by Claim

1. 21:1
   • Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers.
   • Jehoshaphat was buried with his fathers in the city of David.
   • Jehoram his son reigned in his place.
2. 21:2
   • Jehoram had brothers who were sons of Jehoshaphat.
   • His brothers were named Azariah, Jehiel, Zechariah, Azariah, Michael, and Shephatiah.
   • All of these were sons of Jehoshaphat king of Israel.
3. 21:3
   • Their father gave them many gifts of silver and gold and precious things.
   • Their father also gave them fortified cities in Judah.
   • Their father gave the kingdom to Jehoram.
   • He gave the kingdom to Jehoram because Jehoram was the firstborn.
4. 21:4
   • Jehoram rose up over his father's kingdom.
   • Jehoram strengthened himself.
   • Jehoram killed all his brothers with the sword.
   • Jehoram also killed some of the princes of Israel.
5. 21:5
   • Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he began to reign.
   • Jehoram reigned eight years in Jerusalem.
6. 21:6
   • Jehoram walked in the way of the kings of Israel.
   • He walked as the house of Ahab had done.
   • A daughter of Ahab was his wife.
   • Jehoram did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD.
7. 21:7
   • The LORD was not willing to destroy the house of David.
   • The reason was the covenant the LORD had made with David.
   • The LORD had said he would give a lamp to David and to his sons for all time.
8. 21:8
   • In Jehoram's days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah.
   • The Edomites made a king to rule over themselves.
9. 21:9
   • Jehoram crossed over with his officers.
   • All his chariots were with him.
   • He rose up by night.
   • He struck Edom, which had surrounded him.
   • He struck the commanders of the chariots.
10. 21:10
    • Edom has been in revolt from under the hand of Judah until this day.
    • At that same time Libnah revolted from under Jehoram's hand.
    • Libnah revolted because Jehoram had forsaken the LORD, the God of his fathers.
11. 21:11
    • Jehoram also made high places in the hill country of Judah.
    • Jehoram caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves.
    • Jehoram led Judah astray.
12. 21:12
    • A writing came to Jehoram from Elijah the prophet.
    • The writing said that this is what the LORD, the God of David his father, says.
    • The LORD said Jehoram had not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat his father.
    • The LORD said Jehoram had not walked in the ways of Asa king of Judah.
13. 21:13
    • The LORD said Jehoram had walked in the way of the kings of Israel.
    • The LORD said Jehoram had made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem prostitute themselves.
    • The LORD said this was like the whoredoms of the house of Ahab.
    • The LORD said Jehoram had killed his brothers, his father's house.
    • The LORD said those brothers were better than Jehoram.
14. 21:14
    • The LORD announced he would strike Jehoram's people with a great plague.
    • The LORD said he would strike Jehoram's children.
    • The LORD said he would strike Jehoram's wives.
    • The LORD said he would strike all Jehoram's goods.
15. 21:15
    • The LORD said Jehoram himself would have great sicknesses.
    • The sickness would be a disease of his bowels.
    • The disease would continue until his bowels came out because of the sickness.
    • This would go on day after day.
16. 21:16
    • The LORD stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines.
    • The LORD stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Arabians.
    • Those Arabians were near the Cushites.
17. 21:17
    • They came up against Judah.
    • They broke into Judah.
    • They carried away all the goods found in the king's house.
    • They carried away his sons and his wives.
    • No son was left to Jehoram except Jehoahaz.
    • Jehoahaz was the youngest of Jehoram's sons.
18. 21:18
    • After all this the LORD struck Jehoram in his bowels with a disease.
    • The disease had no cure.
19. 21:19
    • Time passed until the end of two years.
    • At that time Jehoram's bowels came out because of his sickness.
    • Jehoram died of severe diseases.
    • His people made no burning for him.
    • His fathers had been honored with such a burning.
20. 21:20
    • Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he began to reign.
    • He reigned eight years in Jerusalem.
    • He departed with no one desiring him.
    • They buried him in the city of David.
    • They did not bury him in the tombs of the kings.

Words Worth Explaining

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

21:1

The City of David is the oldest part of Jerusalem, the fortified ridge David captured and made his capital; the kings of the line of David were buried there. "Slept with his fathers" is the standard Hebrew phrase for a peaceful death, used of kings whether or not they were actually laid in the same tomb.

21:2

Calling Jehoshaphat "king of Israel" is unexpected: after the kingdom split in two, "Israel" normally means the ten northern tribes and "Judah" the southern kingdom ruled from Jerusalem by David's line, which is the kingdom Jehoshaphat ruled. Chronicles sometimes uses "Israel" in the older, wider sense of the whole covenant people, whose true representative it takes the southern kings to be. Some ancient copies read "Judah" here. Two of the brothers have the same name, Azariah; this is not a copying slip that anyone can now correct, and the rendering marks it as "another Azariah."

21:3

Walled cities were fortified towns; assigning them to royal sons gave each of them revenue, a garrison and a standing in the kingdom. The kingdom itself went to the oldest son: by Israelite custom the firstborn inherited the position of head of the family and a double portion of the estate, and in a royal family that meant the throne.

21:4

"Princes" here translates a Hebrew word for high officials, army commanders and heads of leading families, not sons of the king. As in verse 2, "Israel" is used of the southern kingdom.

21:6

Ahab was king of the northern kingdom of Israel, and his household promoted the worship of the Canaanite god Baal alongside or instead of the LORD. Jehoram's wife was Athaliah (named in chapter 22); royal marriages of this kind sealed political alliances between the two kingdoms.

21:7

A covenant is a binding, formal agreement, here God's sworn commitment to David that his descendants would rule. "A lamp" is a Hebrew image for a surviving heir: as long as a descendant of David held the throne, the family lamp was still burning and the line had not gone dark.

21:8

Edom was the neighboring territory south-east of Judah, beyond the Dead Sea. It had been subject to Judah since David's conquests and was governed by a deputy rather than its own king; appointing a king of their own was the formal declaration of independence.

21:9

The Hebrew of this verse is compressed and its sense is disputed. It can be read as Jehoram breaking out by night from an Edomite encirclement, or as a night attack that he launched. Verse 10 makes clear that whatever happened, he did not recover control of Edom.

21:10

Libnah was a walled town in the low hill country between Judah and Philistine territory on the coast, on Judah's western frontier, so its defection opened that border. "To this day" reflects the standpoint of the writer or of the older record he is using, not of the reader.

21:11

Worship sites on hills, traditionally "high places", were open-air shrines with an altar and standing stones, often on a hilltop outside the towns. They were used for worship of the LORD as well as of other gods, and the writers of Kings and Chronicles judge every king by whether he removed them, since worship was supposed to be centered on the temple in Jerusalem. "Be unfaithful" translates a Hebrew idiom meaning literally to prostitute oneself. It is the standard prophetic image for worshiping other gods: the bond between God and the people is pictured as a marriage, so turning to other gods is adultery. Some shrines also involved sexual rites, so the language can carry both senses at once.

21:12

A letter from Elijah is surprising, because Elijah prophesied in the northern kingdom in Ahab's reign and 2 Kings 2 describes him being taken up to heaven before this point. The text is not explained here, and ancient readers noticed the difficulty too; possible readings are that the letter was written earlier and delivered later, or that Chronicles is drawing on a separate tradition. "Father" in Hebrew covers any ancestor: David is Jehoram's forefather, Jehoshaphat his actual father, and Asa his great-grandfather.

21:14

The Hebrew word is a blow or stroke, not necessarily an epidemic; the older translation "plague" is misleading. What follows in verse 17 is an invasion.

21:15

"Bowels" means the intestines and the insides generally. What the disease was cannot now be identified from the description.

21:16

"Stirred up the spirit" is an idiom for rousing someone to act, the way one might say a person's blood was up. The Philistines occupied the coastal plain west of Judah, organized around five cities. The Cushites (older translations say "Ethiopians") were the people of Cush, the region on the Nile south of Egypt, not modern Ethiopia; the Arab groups meant here lived along the trade routes on that side of Judah.

21:17

Jehoahaz is the same person called Ahaziah in the next chapter; the two names are built from the same elements in reverse order, and both were in use for him.

21:19

The funeral fire was not cremation, which Israelites did not practice. Large quantities of spices and aromatic wood were burned in honor of a dead king; withholding it was a deliberate public insult to his memory.

21:20

"No one was sorry when he died" renders a phrase meaning he departed unwanted, without anyone desiring him, an epitaph, not a description of the funeral. Burying him inside the City of David but outside the royal tombs was a further mark of disgrace: he was in the right city but excluded from the kings' burial place.