Jehoshaphat

Jehoshaphat, called Josaphat in some translations and in the Greek form used in the New Testament, was the fourth king of the southern kingdom of Judah after the division of the united monarchy, the son of Asa, whose name in Hebrew means "Yahweh has judged." The narrative books give his reign as twenty-five years (1 Kings 22:42), and historians generally place him in the ninth century BCE. He appears chiefly in 1 Kings 22 and in 2 Chronicles 17–20, where he is one of the few kings of Judah assessed at length and in mixed terms.

The text says he made peace with the northern kingdom and joined Ahab of Israel by marriage and by arms, going up with him to Ramoth-gilead (1 Kings 22:2–4). Before that campaign he asked for a prophet of Yahweh, and Ahab's reply — "There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of Yahweh, Micaiah the son of Imlah; but I hate him, for he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil" — draws from Jehoshaphat the mild protest, "Don't let the king say so" (1 Kings 22:8). A later partnership with Ahaziah of Israel ended in shipwreck (1 Kings 22:48–49; 2 Chronicles 20:35–37). The Chronicler records a prophetic rebuke for the northern alliance — "Should you help the wicked, and love those who hate Yahweh?" — immediately followed by the concession, "Nevertheless there are good things found in you, in that you have put away the Asheroth out of the land, and have set your heart to seek God" (2 Chronicles 19:2–3).

In 2 Chronicles he is above all a reforming and teaching king: he sent officials and Levites through the towns of Judah with the book of the law (2 Chronicles 17:7–9), appointed judges with the charge to act without partiality or bribes (2 Chronicles 19:5–7), and when a coalition of Moabites, Ammonites, and others came against him he "set himself to seek Yahweh" and proclaimed a fast throughout Judah (2 Chronicles 20:3). His prayer appeals to God's rule over all kingdoms and ends, "We don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you" (2 Chronicles 20:6, 12); the answer given through Jahaziel is that "the battle is not yours, but God's" (2 Chronicles 20:15), and the deliverance is remembered in the name the assembly gave the place, the Valley of Beracah, "Valley of Blessing" (2 Chronicles 20:26).

The name also attaches to a place. In Joel, Yahweh says he will gather all nations "into the valley of Jehoshaphat" and judge them there for Israel (Joel 3:2), and the same chapter speaks of multitudes in "the valley of decision" because the day of Yahweh is near (Joel 3:14). No narrative links Jehoshaphat's own battles to that valley, and the identification is disputed: some read it as the Kidron Valley east of Jerusalem, others as a symbolic name playing on the meaning "Yahweh judges." He also appears in the genealogy of Jesus as Josaphat (Matthew 1:8).

How traditions weigh him differs. Jewish and Christian reading has often taken the Chronicler's portrait as the settled one, a pious king whose reforms and prayer are exemplary, while historical-critical scholarship tends to read Kings as the older and more critical account, in which the Ahab alliance is the defining and near-fatal mistake. On the valley of Jehoshaphat, some Christian interpreters expect a literal future gathering and judgment in that place, while others treat the name as a figure for divine judgment generally; the text itself does not settle which.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.