Some people seem to make it their ambition to demonstrate how evil the human heart can be.
It’s a good thing Jehoshaphat didn’t live to see the horrendous results of his links with Ahab and Ahaziah, kings of Israel; worse still, the awful consequences of the marriage alliance he allowed between his son Jehoram and Ahab’s daughter. If we didn’t know better, the venomous Athaliah might have been the result of a mad scientist’s experiment, breeding the worst of Israel’s rulers with the toxic daughter of the king-priest of Tyre’s Baal worship. So Jehoram took his cue from the north, “and he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab had done, for he had the daughter of Ahab as a wife; and he did evil in the sight of the Lord” (2 Chron 21:6). Jehoshaphat had passed over his other six sons (“who were better,” v 13) to give Jehoram the crown “because he was the firstborn” (v 3). At age 32, to fortify his position, he “killed all his brothers with the sword, and also others of the princes of Israel” (v 4). The only reason the Lord didn’t destroy him then was “because of the covenant that He had made with David” (v 7). However, the surrounding nations weren’t so gracious! First “Edom revolted against Judah’s authority” (v 8), then “the Philistines and the Arabians” attacked (v 16) and cleaned out his palace, not only of possessions but of all his wives and adult sons. Then, for the first time, we learn that Elijah had sent a warning letter to Jehoram, describing his pathetic future without repenting: defeat, disease, and death (vv 12-15). Sure enough, “the Lord struck him…with an incurable disease” (v 18). When he died at age 40, after two excruciating years of pain, this was his true epitaph: “He reigned in Jerusalem eight years and, to no one’s sorrow, departed” (v 20). Truly, “the way of transgressors is hard” (Prov 13:15, KJV).