2 Chronicles 20
Word reaches Jehoshaphat that a vast army is marching on Judah from beyond the sea. He is afraid. He does not muster troops or count his odds. He proclaims a fast, and all Judah gathers at the house of the Lord. There the king prays the most honest prayer a leader ever prayed: We have no might… neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.
The answer comes through a singer. The battle is not yours, but God's. Stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord. So Judah marches out to a battle it has been told not to fight - and the singers go first, ahead of the army, praising God for a mercy that endures for ever. The moment they begin to sing, the enemy turns on itself. Praise sent ahead of the soldiers is the living center of this chapter.
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2 Chronicles 20:1-4The Great Multitude Comes
1It came to pass after this also, that the children of Moab, and the children of Ammon, and with them other beside the Ammonites, came against Jehoshaphat to battle. 2Then there came some that told Jehoshaphat, saying, There cometh a great multitude against thee from beyond the sea on this side Syria; and, behold, they be in Hazazontamar, which is Engedi. 3And Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the LORD, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. 4And Judah gathered themselves together, to ask help of the LORD: even out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek the LORD.
Jehoshaphat is afraid. His fear is the beginning of wisdom, and it drives him toward God. He proclaims a fast throughout all Judah - a national act of seeking, of turning away from food to turn toward prayer. And the people respond. From all the cities of Judah they gather to seek the Lord. Fear, when it turns a king's heart toward God, becomes the gateway to faith.
The enemies mass at Hazazon-tamar, also called En-gedi, a place of springs near the western shore of the Dead Sea. They are already deep inside the kingdom, a day's march from Jerusalem, and they come in numbers Judah cannot match. This is exactly the moment a king is supposed to scramble. Jehoshaphat does the opposite. The crisis that should have sent him to the armory sends him to his knees.
2 Chronicles 20:5-12The Prayer: "Our Eyes Are Upon Thee"
5And Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the LORD, before the new court, 6And said, O LORD God of our fathers, art not thou God in heaven? and rulest not thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee? 7Art not thou our God, who didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy friend for ever? 8And they dwelt therein, and have built thee a sanctuary therein for thy name, saying,
Jehoshaphat stands before the assembled people in the house of the Lord and opens his prayer by confessing God's rule over every kingdom of the nations. He recalls how God drove out the land's inhabitants before Israel and gave the land to the descendants of Abraham His friend, who built this sanctuary for His name.
9If, when evil cometh upon us, as the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we stand before this house, and in thy presence, (for thy name is in this house,) and cry unto thee in our affliction, then thou wilt hear and help. 10And now, behold, the children of Ammon and Moab and mount Seir, whom thou wouldest not let Israel invade, when they came out of the land of Egypt, but they turned from them, and destroyed them not; 11Behold, I say, how they reward us, to come to cast us out of thy possession, which thou hast given us to inherit. 12O our God, wilt thou not judge them? for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.
Notice where he prays it: in the hearing of all Judah and Jerusalem, women and children standing there with him. Jehoshaphat tells a frightened people the truth. He has no might against this company, and he says so out loud. This is clarity that keeps talking to God - despair stops praying, but clarity presses on. And if you have ever been too ashamed to admit in prayer how little you can actually do, here is a king who built his whole appeal on it.
He admits something harder than weakness. He admits he has no plan. A general without troops might still draw up a clever strategy; Jehoshaphat confesses he cannot even do that. Neither know we what to do. No angle, no alliance, no clever move that human wisdom can devise. He lays the empty hand on the table in front of everyone. That confession is the soil faith grows in - you cannot trust God to act until you have stopped pretending you might handle it yourself.
Everything turns on one small word: but. We have no might, we know not what to do, but our eyes are upon thee. The whole prayer pivots on it. The same eyes that could not find a strategy lift up and find God. Weakness has been redirected. Jehoshaphat stops looking for a way out and starts looking at a Person. That is what the prayer of a cornered believer finally comes down to: a direction of gaze.
2 Chronicles 20:14-15The Spirit Falls: "The Battle Is Not Yours, But God's"
14Then upon Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, came the Spirit of the LORD in the midst of the congregation; 15And he said, Hearken ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king Jehoshaphat, Thus saith the LORD unto you, Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s.
Jahaziel is a Levite, a descendant of Asaph - a singer and a priest, one of the ancient singers of Israel. And upon him, in the midst of the congregation, comes the Spirit of the Lord. In this moment, the word of God comes through the Spirit, falling upon one who stands within the worshiping community. This is the pattern: God's voice breaks through to those gathered in seeking.
Here is the line the whole chapter turns on. God answers Judah's empty hands by taking the fight off them entirely. The battle is not yours, but God's - ownership of the war changes hands, and the thing they had been straining to win was never theirs to win. That is a stranger and kinder thing than rescue. The thing crushing you may not be a thing you were ever meant to carry.
2 Chronicles 20:16-17Stand Still and See the Salvation of the Lord
16To morrow go ye down against them: behold, they come up by the cliff of Ziz; and ye shall find them at the end of the brook, before the wilderness of Jeruel. 17Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem: fear not, nor be dismayed; to morrow go out against them: for the LORD will be with you.
What God asks of them is strange. March out, yes - go down and face the army. But do not lift a sword. Set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord. Show up, stay faithful, and watch. An army is ordered to the front line and then told it will not need to fight. Obedience without exertion, courage without combat. The hardest part will not be the swinging of weapons. It will be standing still while everything in you screams to act.
2 Chronicles 20:18-19Judah Worships Before the Battle
18And Jehoshaphat bowed his head with his face to the ground: and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell before the LORD, worshipping the LORD. 19And the Levites, of the children of the Kohathites, and of the children of the Korhites, stood up to praise the LORD God of Israel with a loud voice on high.
2 Chronicles 20:20-23The Singers Go Forth; God Ambushes
20And they rose early in the morning, and went forth into the wilderness of Tekoa: and as they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem; Believe in the LORD your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper. 21And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the LORD, and that should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army, and to say, Praise the LORD; for his mercy endureth for ever. 22And when they began to sing and to praise, the LORD set ambushments against the children of Ammon, Moab, and mount Seir, which were come against Judah; and they were smitten. 23For the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of mount Seir, utterly to slay and destroy them: and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to destroy another.
Jehoshaphat's last words before the battle are about belief. "Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper." Believe in the Lord and in the word He has spoken through Jahaziel. This is the condition: faith in the word of the Lord.
And then - a choice that seems almost mad from a military perspective. Jehoshaphat appoints singers - men whose role is praise - to go out before the army. They go out singing. The singers are the front line. This is the battle itself.
The singers sing as they go: "Praise the Lord; for his mercy endureth for ever." This is the song of the Temple, the song of praise. It is a song of mercy and endurance, a song of the holy. The singers go before the army singing about the goodness of the Lord.
Watch the timing. The ambush lands the very moment the singing starts, not a beat before. While the harps are still tuning, nothing; the first note of praise, and the Lord moves. And the weapon He uses is the enemy itself. Ammon and Moab turn on Seir, finish them off, then turn on each other until the whole coalition has slaughtered itself. Judah never lifts a blade. The army that came to destroy God's people becomes the instrument of its own destruction, undone by its own swords the instant Judah opened its mouth to sing.
The Hebrew word for these “ambushments” means hidden men lying in wait, an unseen force set in place beforehand. God had His ambush ready while Judah was still on its knees the night before. This is how He so often works - the deliverance is already positioned before you ever see it, planted in the dark while you are still afraid. By the time you sing, the rescue is simply stepping out of hiding.
Jehoshaphat learned in miniature what the cross says forever: the weapons of this warfare are not carnal (2 Corinthians 10:4), and the throne is taken by the One who climbs onto a cross singing of a mercy that endures for ever.
2 Chronicles 20:24-28The Valley of Berachah - A Valley of Blessing
24And when Judah came toward the watch tower in the wilderness, they looked unto the multitude, and, behold, they were dead bodies fallen to the earth, and none escaped. 25And when Jehoshaphat and his people came to take away the spoil of them, they found among them in abundance both riches with the dead bodies, and precious jewels, which they stripped off for themselves, more than they could carry away: and they were three days in gathering of the spoil, it was so much. 26And on the fourth day they assembled themselves in the valley of Berachah; for there they blessed the LORD: therefore the name of the same place was called, The valley of Berachah, unto this day. 27Then they returned, every man of Judah and Jerusalem, and Jehoshaphat in the forefront of them, to go again to Jerusalem with joy; for the LORD had made them to rejoice over their enemies. 28And they came to Jerusalem with psalteries and harps and trumpets unto the house of the LORD.
What Judah finds is not a battle-scarred landscape of their own making. They find the enemies "dead bodies fallen to the earth, and none escaped." The Lord has done this. Completely. None survived. The victory is total, and it came through God's ambushment.
And then comes the abundance. So much wealth - riches, precious jewels - that the people spend three days gathering the spoil and still cannot carry it all away. This is overflow, blessing poured out beyond the mere recovery of what was lost. Judah went to battle with nothing but their eyes fixed on the Lord. They return with abundance.
On the fourth day, they gather in the valley of Berachah - and "there they blessed the Lord." They bless the Lord, because they know the victory came from Him. And the valley is named after this act: the Valley of Berachah, the Valley of Blessing, "unto this day." The place is forever marked as a place of blessing and praise.
The people return to Jerusalem "with joy." And "the Lord had made them to rejoice over their enemies." Notice: the Lord made them rejoice. The joy is God's gift. They return with instruments of praise - "psalteries, harps, and trumpets" - singing their way back to the house of the Lord. The entire journey has become a festival of praise.
2 Chronicles 20:29-37The Fear of God; A Compromise That Breaks
29And the fear of God was on all the kingdoms of those countries, when they had heard that the LORD fought against the enemies of Israel. 30So the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet: for his God gave him rest round about. 31And Jehoshaphat reigned over Judah: he was thirty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Azubah the daughter of Shilhi. 32And he walked in the way of Asa his father, and departed not from it, doing that which was right in the sight of the LORD.
Jehoshaphat's reign closes on a mixed note - his judgment-seat reforms outlasted him; his alliances with Ahab's house did not. The chronicler does not airbrush either.
33Howbeit the high places were not taken away: for as yet the people had not prepared their hearts unto the God of their fathers. 34Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of Jehu the son of Hanani, who is mentioned in the book of the kings of Israel. 35And after this did Jehoshaphat king of Judah join himself with Ahaziah king of Israel, who did very wickedly: 36And he joined himself with him to make ships to go to Tarshish: and they made the ships in Eziongaber. 37Then Eliezer the son of Dodavah of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying, Because thou hast joined thyself with Ahaziah, the LORD hath broken thy works. And the ships were broken, that they were not able to go to Tarshish.
The victory at the Valley of Berachah has a consequence that ripples outward. "The fear of God was on all the kingdoms of those countries, when they heard that the Lord fought against the enemies of Israel." The neighboring nations hear what the Lord has done, and fear seizes them. They do not approach Judah because they have seen God defend His people. The name of the Lord is exalted throughout the region. Jehoshaphat's realm enjoys peace because all the surrounding kingdoms fear the God of Israel.
The text tells us that Jehoshaphat "walked in the way of his father Asa, and departed not from it, doing that which was right in the sight of the Lord." Asa was a king who, for many years, did what was right. But Asa's legacy is mixed - his walk was righteous, yet "the high places were not taken away." Incomplete reformation. And we see the same pattern beginning in Jehoshaphat.
And then comes the text's saddest turn: "And after this did Jehoshaphat king of Judah join himself with Ahaziah king of Israel, who did very wickedly." After the great victory, after the demonstration of God's power, Jehoshaphat makes an unequal alliance with a wicked king. He joins himself with Ahaziah to make ships to go to Tarshish - ships that are meant to bring wealth and power. This is the old temptation: to rely on human alliance, on commercial power, on the methods of the world.
A prophet warns him: "Because thou hast joined thyself with Ahaziah, the Lord hath broken thy works. And the ships were broken, that they were not able to go to Tarshish." The works are broken. The ships sink. When we forget the lesson of the Valley of Berachah and return to trusting in human alliances and human power, we find that even our plans for prosperity break beneath us.