The highlights of a life can be expressed in a few lines—not what I say but whether I walk with God.
About the time that Jehoshaphat was wonderfully delivered from the Syrian assault, a “man drew a bow at random, and struck the king of Israel between the joints of his armor” (1 Ki 22:34). What’s the possibility of that happening? Somewhere between zero and nil. Although wounded at the height of the battle, his charioteer lingered at the scene as Ahab’s life eked out onto the chariot floor. “So the king died, and was brought to Samaria” (v 37). Later, “someone washed the chariot at a pool in Samaria” (v 38), and dogs did what dogs do, fulfilling the word of the Lord (21:19). What an end for Israel’s seventh king! Now as the book concludes, we’re given three biographical vignettes. “The rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, the ivory house which he built and all the cities that he built, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?” (22:39). Many of these ivory carvings were uncovered during the 1920s and 1930s. They “depict scenes of exotic wildlife and flora, mythological creatures, foreign deities and much more” (Biblical Archaeology Review). They are evidence, not of Ahab’s culture, but of the Bible’s dependability. At the very end of the book is an overview of Ahab’s son, Ahaziah, who “did evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother and in the way of Jeroboam” (v 52), the trifecta of evil. In between is a brief overview of Jehoshaphat’s 25-year reign, marked by his “doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord” (v 43). Evidently he learned from the alliance with Ahab. When his ships were wrecked at Ezion Geber, and Ahaziah offered to help rebuild them to import gold, he flatly refused. Better a shipwrecked navy than a shipwrecked life (1 Tim 1:19)!