Jehoshaphat - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

The king's name in the oath jumping Jehosaphat was likely popularized by the name's utility as a euphemism for Jesus and Jehovah. The phrase is first recorded in the 1866 novel The Headless Horseman by Thomas Mayne Reid. The longer version "By the shaking, jumping ghost of Jehosaphat" is seen in the 1865 novel Paul Peabody by Percy Bolingbroke St. John.

Another theory is that the reference is to Joel 3:11-12, where the prophet Joel says, speaking of the judgment of the dead:

Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O LORD. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.

Jehosaphat is one of the "mighty ones" who has come down to judge the wakened heathens (or he is one of the wakened himself, thus, a "ghost".)

Jehosaphat is used repeatedly as an expletive by Elijah Baley in Isaac Asimov's Robot series.