And 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 (בִנְבִיאָיו/ἐν
προφήτῃ αὐτοῦ) so shall ye prosper.
It has been long recognized that the king’s exhortation is based on
the words of Isaiah to Ahaz in Isa. 7:9: ‘If you will not believe, surely you
shall not be established.’ And yet there are several differences between the
two utterances. Isaiah’s demand for complete faith is phrased as a warning,
with a negative condition: ‘If you will not believe …’. Here, there is a
positive admonition: ‘Believe … and you will be established.’ Isaiah’s brief
statement is elaborated into a two-colon parallel passage, in which the play on
the root ’mn is continued in ‘believe
in (NEB) his prophets’, and climaxes with ‘you will succeed’. Most important of
all is this addition of faith in the prophets to trust in God; while strictly
related to the context, it nevertheless reflects a major tenet of the
Chronicler’s attitude towards prophecy: the prophets themselves are objects of
faith. (Sara Japhet, I & II Chronicles: A Commentary [The
Old Testament Library; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993], 797,
emphasis in bold added)
The exhortation to “have faith” uses another form of the same verb (ʾmn) meaning “you will be upheld” in v.
20. The “prophets” (v. 20) could be the earlier prophets, whose writings
already had become canonical, but probably it refers to the more immediate
prophecy of Jahaziel. (J.
A. Thompson, 1, 2 Chronicles [The New American Commentary 9; Nashville:
Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994], 294-95, emphasis in bold added)
