17. stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord] This saying magnificently expresses the very essence of this story of deliverance won by faith. And further it reveals the deepest aspect of the Chronicler’s attitude to life. It is the living heart of the whole history as he tells it. We are impatient of the mechanical and grandiose elements in his work, because the taste for such exaggeration has passed away and the necessity for laying stress on the ritual of religion has little relevance for our times. But all criticism of the books of Chronicles is superficial which fails to see that the writer is inspired by a splendid faith in God and a grand determination to maintain the religious attitude as the one ultimate key to life’s meaning. The present story is intended to assert the value of reliance upon God, in the midst of overwhelming peril still “trust in God and do the right”; and to assert this in the strongest conceivable terms. Thus it is related that the victory was gained without any need for Jehoshaphat’s grande armée of 1,160,000 men! Turn from the tale to the circumstances of the post-exilic Jewish community, and the heroism of such teaching leaps to light. It is when we are surrounded by unscrupulous and powerful foes and have not 1000 soldiers, far less 1,000,000, that the reality of our trust in God and goodness is put to the test. “Aye,” says the Chronicler, “but, if like Jehoshaphat you had 1,000,000, it is still the supreme duty of man to rely on God.” Great teaching, and greatly followed by the enfeebled yet indomitable Jews. While they were thus helpless, Jehovah wrought for Israel, even as the Chronicler relates that He destroyed the enemies of Jehoshaphat in the wilderness of Jeruel. “The Jews stood still and saw the working out of their deliverance; great Empires wrestled together—Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman—like Moab, Ammon, and Edom, in the agony of the death struggle: and over all the tumult of battle Israel heard the voice of Jehovah, ‘The battle is not yours, but God’s; ... set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the deliverance of Jehovah with you, O Judah and Jerusalem’” (Bennett, Chronicles, p. 387). Certainly the post-exilic Jews were so weak that trust in their own armed power was at almost all times manifestly absurd, yet this does not mean that they were thereby driven to the policy of quiet faith. There was an alternative ever before them—despair and unbelief: that they resolutely refused. Such were the stern realities which ought to be weighed when we seek to realise the moral and spiritual worth of the Chronicler and his doctrines.
¹⁹And the Levites, of the children of the Kohathites and of the children of the Korahites, stood up to praise the Lord, the God of Israel, with an exceeding loud voice.
19. the Korahites] The Korahites were a branch of the Kohathites (1 Chronicles vi. 22 [7, Hebrew], 37, 38 [22, 23, Hebrew]); the Chronicler simply defines his first statement; those who stood up to praise were Kohathites by clan, Korahites by family.
20–25 (no parallel in Kings).
The Deliverance.
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,
20. Tekoa] The modern Teḳu‘a, a ruin on a hill 2790 feet above the sea, about six miles south of Beth-lehem. It was an ancient place; xi. 6; 1 Chronicles ii. 24; 2 Samuel xiv. 2; Amos i. 1. The “wilderness of Tekoa” means that part of the “wilderness of Judah” which was near Tekoa.
believe ... so shall ye be established] Compare Isaiah vii. 9, “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.” In both places there is a play on the words in the Hebrew; “believe” and “be established” representing two voices of the same verb ha’amīnū ... tē’āmēnū.
²¹so shall ye prosper. And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed them that should sing unto the Lord, and praise the beauty[¹] of holiness, as they went out before the army, and say, Give thanks unto the Lord; for his mercy endureth for ever.
[¹] Or, in the beauty of holiness.
21. them that should sing unto the Lord, and praise] Compare the preliminaries of the Battle of the Standard fought between the Scots and English in 1138.