[1] Some time later, the people of Mo’av and the people of ‘Amon with other ‘Amonim came up to fight Y’hoshafat (Jehoshaphat). [2] Y’hoshafat was told, “A huge army from beyond the [Dead] Sea, from Arim, is on its way to fight you; right now they are in Hatzatzon-Tamar” (that is, ‘Ein-Gedi). [3] Y’hoshafat was frightend, so he determined to seek Adonai. He proclaimed a fast throughout all Y’hudah, [4] and Y’hudah assembled to seek help from Adonai; they came from all the cities of Y’hudah to seek Adonai.
The problem, a horde of armies was coming to fight Jehoshaphat in Jerusalem. The effect, fear set into Jehoshaphat’s heart because he knew that Judah’s army was no match for the nations assembled against him. The solution, He decided to seek Adonai, to fast and pray, but not just by himself. He called a fast across all of Judah, and the people came from across the land to fast and seek the face of Adonai. This was during the time of the divided kingdoms. Israel lay to the north, and Judah to the south. Before we break down Jehoshaphat’s prayer, let us first take a look at two important factors prior to the words he prayed.
This first, is that he decided to seek Adonai, and when he called upon the people, they left their homes, assembled in Jerusalem and together they sought help from Adonai. I think it is an extremely important thing to note that he, Jehoshaphat, determined to seek Adonai, His face, not His hand. Then when everyone was assembled, they collectively sought Adonai’s help.
The word seek in Hebrew is daras (daw-rash) some of its meanings include tread (wheat), study, beat (a path), and search out. When Jehoshaphat determined to seek Adonai, it was in prayer, worship, and reverence. Daras is spelled Dalat, Reysh, and Shin (דרש). A letter-by-letter breakdown could show this: Dalet (humility), Reysh (the highest), and Shin (passion or consume). With a humble heart, Jehoshaphat sought out the highest, Adonai, with a consuming passion. He set his fear aside and “beat a path” straight to the One that was his help. It is the same for us, when we find ourselves beset by fear due to a situation that feels like an army horde on its way to besiege us, we should do as Jehoshaphat did and first seek Adonai’s face. Hebrews 11:6 tells us And without trusting, it is impossible to be well pleasing to God, because whoever approaches him must trust that he does exist and that he becomes a Rewarder to those who seek Him out. Yeshua Himself told us in Matthew 7:7-8, “Keep asking, and it will be given to you; keep seeking, and you will find; keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who keeps asking receives; he who keeps seeking finds; and to him who keeps knocking, the door will be opened.” It was after seeking His face, they collectively sought His help against their enemies.
The second thing we see that not just the king, but all the people fasted. We know that when the word fast is used, it typically is referring to abstaining from food, and it was practiced throughout scripture. Fast or som (tsome) is spelled Sade (צ), Vav (ו), and Mem in its final form (ם). Again, looking letter by letter, Sade shows humility, Vav a connection between heaven and earth, and the Final Mem the hidden knowledge of God. Fasting is not something to take lightly or do on a whim. It is something that should be done with and on purpose when seeking Adonai. Yeshua fasted for forty days and nights, His physical body was hungry, but I have no doubt His spiritual self was filled to the brim and beyond into overflowing. Forty days and nights of denying the flesh in humility, brought heaven to earth, and He communed with His Father seeking knowledge from Him. After submerging Himself spiritually, denying Himself physically, the Adversary came to tempt Him and was sent packing. During the Sermon on the Mount, the same sermon in which He spoke about seeking, He also spoke of fasting. In Chapter 6:16-18, He taught, “Now when you fast, don’t go around looking miserable, like the hypocrites. They make sour faces so that people will know they are fasting. Yes! I tell you, they have their reward already! But you, when you fast, wash your face and groom yourself, so that no one will know you are fasting – except your Father, who is with you in secret. Your Father, who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” There is collective fasting, seeking in unity, and there is individual fasting and seeking. When a church comes together in one mind and one accord, fasting collectively and seeking the fact of Adonai, the windows of heaven are going to open. When an individual fighting their own battle comes before Him in prayer and fasting, keeping it between just them and God, they will be rewarded and draw closer to their Father in heaven.
Jehoshaphat, an earthly king, the one who held the power, emptied and humbled himself before Adonai in prayer and fasting, led his people by example in seeking Adonai, which opened the door for Adonai to do great and mighty things in their lives.
The Prayer
[5] Standing in front of the new courtyard in the house of Adonai, among those assembled from Y’hudah and Yerushalayim, [6] he said: “Adonai, God of our ancestors, you alone are God in heaven. You rule all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and strength, so that no one can withstand you. [7] You, our God, drove out those living in the land ahead of your people Isra’el and gave it forever to the descendants of Avraham your friend. [8] They live in it, built you a sanctuary in it for your name, and said, [9] ‘If calamity strikes us, such as war, judgement, disease or famine, we will stand before this house – that is, before you, since your name is in this house – and cry to you in our distress; and you will hear us and rescue us.’ [10] “So now, see: the people of ‘Amon, Mo’av and Mount Se’ir, whom you would not let Isra’el invade when they came out of the land of Egypt, so that they turned away from them and did not destroy them, [11] are now repaying us [evil]; they have come to throw us out of your possession, which you have us as an inheritance. [12] Our God! Won’t you execute judgement against them? For we haven’t strength enough to defeat this huge horde coming against us, and we don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” [13] All Y’hudah stood before Adonai with their little ones, their wives, and their children.
1. Adonai, God of our ancestors (v6)
As I shared these five words in a discussion with my mother, I told her that what struck me was they sum up remembrance. He was looking back over the course of hundreds of years remembering who his people were, and who Adonai was to them. My mother posed a question that struck hard. What do we really know of our own ancestors, and how far back can most of us even trace them? For me personally, on my mother’s side I can remember my great-grandmother somewhat. She passed away when I was in the fifth grade. My great-grandfather passed away long before I was born, but my mother still tells me stories about him. On my father’s side, I have even more limited memory. I know my Nana lived with us for a time, but I don’t really remember that. My grandfather passed away when my dad was young, and outside of the few things my parents have told me, I have no real knowledge of his family. How sad is that? I cannot even go beyond my grandparents on one side and great-grandparents on the other. We no longer talk about “our people” and pass down who they were, where they come from, and what they believed. Ancestry.com became the “in thing” for a while and everyone was searching out genealogy like a great quest, but it is not the same as coming through your own family line.
The Hebrew people, although time and time again would fall away from Adonai, never lost track of the importance of where they came from, who they were. We see in scripture, no matter which generation, the words, “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”, the patriarchs of their people. Zakar (zaw-kar) is the Hebrew word for remember, which means to recall or call to mind, to remember past experiences and things formerly known. Zakar has a numeric value of 227. Interestingly, another word with this numeric is keraz (ker-az) and is spelled with the exact same Hebrew letters as zakar, in a different order. Its meaning is to proclaim. I find it fascinating those two words, utilizing the same three letters express the first five words of this prayer. Josaphat remembered and proclaimed not just who his people were, but that Adonai was the God of his people.
Deuteronomy 26:5-8 speaks of a firstfruits offering the Children of Israel were to make after entering the land, and they were given specific words they were to say. [5] Then in the presence of Adonai your God, you are to say, ‘My ancestor was a nomad from Aram. He went down into Egypt few in number and stayed. There he became a great, strong, populous nation. [6] But the Egyptians treated us badly; they oppressed us and imposed harsh slavery on us. [7] So we cried out to Adonai, the God of our Ancestors. Adonai heard us and saw our misery, toil, and oppression; [8] and Adonai brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand and a stretched-out arm, with great terror, and with signs and wonders. Josaphat’s first words brought to the forefront that Adonai was the God of his people from generation to generation.
2. You alone are God in heaven (v6)
Some of my favorite praise and worship music comes from www.passionmusic.com. The first time I heard them, was over twenty years ago at a little church in Okeene, Oklahoma, and the first song was The Heart of Worship. As I continued to listen to their music, I came across a song entitled You Alone. The chorus sums up this line of Jehoshaphat’s prayer.
You alone are Father, and You alone are good. You alone are Savior, and You alone are God.
There are situations in my life that I have to remember that He alone is God. The God of the heavens and the earth. The God that spoke everything into creation. The God that knows what I need, even before I ask. Sometimes I lose sight of that and try to fix my problems myself, and that never works out for me. Sometimes I need to recall the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 10:12-15, [12] “So now, Isra’el, all that Adonai your God asks from you is to fear Adonai your God follow all his ways, love him and serve Adonai your God with all your heart and all your being; [13] to obey, for your own good, the mitzvot and regulations of Adonai which I am giving you today. [14] See, the sky, the heaven beyond the sky, the earth and everything on it all belong to Adonai your God. [15] Only Adonai took enough pleasure in your ancestors to love them and choose their descendants after them – yourselves- above all peoples, as he still does today.” Jehoshaphat, while a king and a leader of people, knew that while he had earthly power, it was God alone who held the real power.
3. You rule all the kingdoms of the nations (v6)
One of the things that happens when I do any type of cleaning, it puts my body doing a task, allowing my mind to fix upon God and His Word. While making my bed, I was thinking about this phrase from Jehoshaphat’s prayer and several things came to mind. In Genesis chapter 12 is the Abrahamic covenant. The final line of verse 3 says, “by you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” The CJSB makes a point about this in commentary that, “Initially, there were no Jews until God called Avram, a Hebrew, to be the physical father of the Jewish people and spiritual father to both Jews and Christians”. Romans 1:16 says, For I am not ashamed of the Good News, since it is God’s powerful means of bringing salvation to everyone who keeps on trusting, to the Jew especially, but equally to the Gentile. While He set apart the Hebrew people, it is not His will that anyone perish.
There are three accounts within the Old Testament that came to mine of Gentiles that seem to foreshadow that salvation would be for all of Adonai’s creation. Joshua chapter 2 tells of a prostitute named Rahab who lived in Jericho. In a conversation with the two spies Joshua had sent to Jericho, she told them, “I know that Adonai has given you the land. Fear of you has fallen on us; everyone in the land is terrified at the thought of you. We heard how Adonai dried up the water in the Sea of Suf (the Red Sea) ahead of you, when you left Egypt; and what you did to the two kings of the Emori on the other side of the Yarden (Jordan), Sichon and ‘Og, that you completely destroyed them. As soon as we hard it, our hearts failed us. Because of you, everyone is in a state of depression. For Adonai your God – and He is God in heaven above and on the earth below. So, please, swear to me by Adonai that, since I have been kind to you, you will also be kind to my father’s family. Give me some evidence of your good faith, that you will spare the lives of my father, mother, brothers, and sisters and all who are theirs, so that we won’t be killed.” Joshua 2:9-13 Rahab and her family were not only spared during the attack, but she also became an ancestor in the line of Yeshua for her faith.
In a different Old Testament book, we learn of another Gentile woman who made a bold statement to her mother-in-law, “Don’t press me to leave you and stop following you; for wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried. May Adonai bring terrible curses on me, and worse ones as well, if anything but death separates you and me.” Ruth 1:16-17 Ruth was a Moabite woman who married a Jewish man and was married to him for about ten years before he died. The CJSB sates that “according to the sages, Orpah and Ruth had converted to Judaism upon marriage, but it would be only future fidelity to the faith and the Jewish people that would prove their sincerity. In leaving, Orpah reveals her lack of commitment, while Ruth’s declaration to Naomi displays the true nature of her devotion. In Judaism, Ruth is a spiritual paradigm of the righteous covert who, like Abraham, forsakes her land, her birthplace, and her father’s house. And in cleaving to Naomi, she shows a depth of spirituality when she declares, “Your people will be my people and your God will be my God.”. Ruth’s coming to the God of Isra’el is only part of her spiritual conversion. As a Gentile, she binds herself for life to the nation and people of Isra’el, while invoking a curse if she ever abandons them.” Here we have another Gentile woman, who not only knew that the God of Abraham was the One True God she married two Jewish men. While her first husband left her a widow, her second husband enabled her to become the great-great-grandmother of David, and ancestor to Yeshua.
These first two accounts look at individual women who by their faith became matriarchs within the line of the Savior of mankind. Our third look is that of an entire city. In one of the most popular accounts in the Bible, we find Adonai wanting to show mercy the city of Nineveh, capital of Assyria. The Assyrians were a brutal and feared people, so when Jonah was called by Adonai to go to Nineveh and preach repentance, he hopped the first ship in the opposite direction. Jonah knew how barbarous and ferocious the Assyrians were, but he also knew that if they repented, Adonai would show them mercy. After getting his attention in an unconventional manner, Jonah set out for Nineveh to deliver Adonai’s message to the people. After hearing that Nineveh would be overthrown in forty days, “they believed God, proclaimed a fast, put on sackcloth and from the greatest of them to the least”, the city cried out in repentance. When God saw that they had turned from their evil way, He had mercy upon them and did not destroy them. Chapter 4 tells us of Jonah’s reaction and in verses 1-2 reads, But this was very displeasing to Yonah, and he became angry. He prayed to Adonai, “Now, Adonai, didn’t I say this would happen, when I was still in my own country? That’s why I tried to get away to Tarshish ahead of time! I knew you were a God who is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in grace, and that you relent from inflicting punishment.
Psalm 66:7 says, With his power he rules forever; his eyes keep watch on the nations. Let no rebel arise to challenge him. After turning towards God and their city being saved, over time, the Assyrians would go back to their old ways and forget the great revival that took place in their capital city. Once again, Adonai would send another prophet to Nineveh, but this time, mercy would not fall, this time it would be judgement. Nineveh would be completely destroyed. We can see that be it mercy or judgement, the Assyrian nation was in the hand of the Almighty, and it is so with every nation of the earth.