2 Chronicles 17:3

3 The LORD was with Jehoshaphat because he followed the example of his father’s early years and did not worship the images of Baal.

2 Chronicles 17:3 Meaning and Commentary

2 Chronicles 17:3

And the Lord was with Jehoshaphat
Guiding and directing, prospering and succeeding him in all things; he had, no doubt, his gracious presence in spiritual things, as well as his powerful and directing presence in things civil; the Targum is,

``the Word of the Lord was for his help;''

because he walked in the first ways of his father David;
which were his best; some of his last ways not being good, as in the affair of Uriah and Bathsheba, and his numbering of the people; Jehoshaphat followed him in the one, but not in the other: or, "in the ways of David and his father, the first"; the first of them both; for the latter ways of his father Asa were not so good as his first, as the preceding chapter shows; and the Septuagint version leaves out the word "David", and so restrains it to his own father:

and sought not unto Baalim;
as did Ahab king of Israel, who now reigned there; ( 1 Kings 15:24 ) ( 16:32 ) .

2 Chronicles 17:3 In-Context

1 Then Jehoshaphat, Asa’s son, became the next king. He strengthened Judah to stand against any attack from Israel.

2 He stationed troops in all the fortified towns of Judah, and he assigned additional garrisons to the land of Judah and to the towns of Ephraim that his father, Asa, had captured.

3 The LORD was with Jehoshaphat because he followed the example of his father’s early years and did not worship the images of Baal.

4 He sought his father’s God and obeyed his commands instead of following the evil practices of the kingdom of Israel.

5 So the LORD established Jehoshaphat’s control over the kingdom of Judah. All the people of Judah brought gifts to Jehoshaphat, so he became very wealthy and highly esteemed.

Footnotes

• [a]. Some Hebrew manuscripts read the example of his father, David.