Jehoshaphat - Reign

Reign

Jehoshaphat took the throne at the age of thirty-five and reigned for twenty-five years. William F. Albright has dated the reign of Jehoshaphat to 873 – 849 BC. E. R. Thiele held that he became coregent with his father Asa in Asa's thirty-ninth year, 872/871 BC, the year Asa was afflicted with a severe disease in his feet, and then became sole regent when Asa died of the disease in 870/869 BC, his own death occurring in 848/847 BC. Thiele's chronology for the first kings of Judah contained an internal inconsistency that later scholars corrected by dating these kings one year earlier, so that Jehoshaphat's dates are taken as one year earlier in the present article: coregency beginning in 873/871, sole reign commencing in 871/870, and death in 849/848 BC.

Jehoshaphat spent the first years of his reign fortifying his kingdom against Israel (2 Chronicles 17:1-2). The Bible lauds the king for overcoming sexual corruption (1 Kings 22:47), and for destroying the cult images or "idols" of Baal in the land. In the third year of his reign Jehoshaphat sent out priests and Levites over the land to instruct the people in the Law (2 Chronicles 17:7-9), an activity that was commanded for a Sabbatical year in Deuteronomy 31:10-13. The author of 2 Chronicles generally praises his reign, stating that the kingdom enjoyed a great measure of peace and prosperity, the blessing of God resting on the people "in their basket and their store."