Jehoshaphat Sends Out Teachers and Appoints Judges

Jehoshaphat son of Asa reigned twenty-five years. It is said of him that he walked in the ways of David and did not seek the Baals—but that is not what he is remembered for.

In his third year he sent his officials through the towns of Judah, and with them Levites and priests, "and they had the Book of the Law of the LORD with them; they went round all the towns of Judah and taught the people." This is the first description in Scripture of what today would be called a state programme of instruction: not to build, not to conquer, but to travel the country and teach.

His second act was justice. He appointed judges in every fortified city and told them: consider what you are doing, for you judge not for man but for the LORD, and He is with you in the matter of judgement; let the fear of the LORD be upon you, for with the LORD our God there is no injustice, no partiality and no taking of bribes. In Jerusalem he set Levites, priests and heads of families over disputed cases.

The third was the war with Moab, Ammon and the men of Mount Seir. Jehoshaphat proclaimed a fast, stood before the people and prayed: "We have no strength against this great multitude, and we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You." In the morning he set singers before the army to praise the LORD—and as they began to sing, the LORD set ambushes against the invaders, and they destroyed one another.

He had one weakness: the alliance with the house of Ahab. He went up with Ahab to Ramoth-gilead and barely survived, and he married his son to Ahab's daughter—a marriage that two generations later came close to wiping out the house of David.

Academic history dates this event differently. In the age of the kings the divergence is not the one familiar from the Persian period, where Seder Olam runs about a hundred and sixty-five years short. Here academic chronology reckons some reigns as overlapping — father and son on the throne together — so its span from the division of the kingdom to the destruction of the Temple comes out nearly three decades shorter. The gap therefore grows: a hundred and thirty-five years at the division, a hundred and fifty-four at Sennacherib, a hundred and sixty-four at the destruction. The anchors of the academic count are external documents: the battle of Qarqar (853), Jehu's tribute on the Black Obelisk (841), the fall of Samaria (722), Sennacherib's campaign (701), Megiddo and Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns in the Babylonian Chronicles (609, 605, 597). Both dates appear on the timeline when the divergence layer is on.