2 Chronicles 20:14

Verse 14 opens with “Then”, and the word ties what follows to the prayer just before it. The whole story is told in 2 Chronicles 20. When news came of the invading army, Jehoshaphat feared, set himself to seek the LORD and proclaimed a fast, and people came out of every city of Judah to ask the LORD for help (2 Chronicles 20:1–4). Standing in the temple court, with the men of Judah and their wives and children gathered there, the king prayed (2 Chronicles 20:5–12). He praised God’s power, reminded him of his promises, and ended by owning that Judah was helpless: “for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee” (verse 12).

God’s answer comes at once, in the place where they prayed. Chronicles shows him doing this again and again. He had promised to hear when his people humbled themselves and prayed (2 Chronicles 7:14), and he had given Asa the victory when he cried, “help us, O LORD our God; for we rest on thee, and in thy name we go against this multitude” (2 Chronicles 14:11).

The word for Spirit, rûwach, means wind, breath or spirit. When “the Spirit of the LORD” comes upon someone in the Old Testament, God is equipping that person for a task he has given, whether to lead, to make, to show unusual strength or, as here, to prophesy. So it was when the LORD put his Spirit on the seventy elders in Moses’ day, and they prophesied (Numbers 11:25). LORD is Yᵉhôvâh, the name God gave himself, connected with the verb hayah, “to be”. It is his covenant name, the name of the God who keeps his promises to Israel. Because his Spirit is on Jahaziel, the words that follow carry God’s own authority, and Judah can rest its whole weight on them.

It happened “in the midst of the congregation”. Everyone who had prayed heard the answer, so the whole nation could know that the word came from God, that he was present among his gathered people, and that he had heard them together. They had sought him as one people, and he answered them as one people.

Jahaziel speaks to everyone at once: “all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king Jehoshaphat”. The people of the land, the people of the city that would bear the brunt of the invasion, and the king himself all stand under the one word. Jehoshaphat was a king who sought the LORD and worked to reform Judah, though he had also made an alliance with Ahab, the king of Israel. Here he listens as one of the congregation.

“Thus saith the LORD unto you” is the prophets’ formula for a message that comes straight from God. What Jahaziel says next is God’s word, true and binding, and it calls for the whole nation’s attention.

Two words name what God forbids. To be afraid, yârêʼ, is to fear or dread, here the terror a small kingdom would feel before a far larger force. To be dismayed, châthath, is to break down, whether by violence or by confusion and fear, and it most often means to be afraid or discouraged. The first is fear of the enemy outside, the second is courage giving way within, and God speaks to both. He names their cause plainly as “this great multitude”. The army was real, and in the wars of that day numbers usually decided the outcome. God acknowledges the danger in full and then gives a greater reason.

That reason is “for the battle is not yours, but God’s”. The word for battle, milchâmâh, is the ordinary word for a battle or for war. To say it is God’s means that the fighting, the outcome and the victory all belong to him, and that lifts the weight of Judah’s weakness off their shoulders. The law gave Israel the same word for the day of battle: “For the LORD your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you” (Deuteronomy 20:4). The psalm sings, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1), and through Isaiah God says, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God” (Isaiah 41:10).

After the promise come the orders. “To morrow” fixes the time, and “go ye down” is yârad, to go or come down. Jerusalem stood on the high ground of Judah, and the way to the enemy led down toward the wilderness and the Dead Sea region.

God tells them where the enemy will be: “behold, they come up by the cliff of Ziz”. The word for cliff, ma’aleh, comes from ʻâlâh, to go up, and means an elevation, a rise or an ascent, so this is the ascent of Ziz (Tsîyts). It was probably a steep pass climbing from the Dead Sea region toward the heart of Judah, a natural road for an army coming from the east. Judah will find them “at the end of the brook”, where the word nachal means a stream valley, likely a wadi or dry riverbed, “before the wilderness of Jeruel”. The word midbâr means wilderness or desert, open land good for grazing more than farming, and Strong’s gives the name Yᵉrûwʼêl as “founded of God”.

“Ye shall not need to fight in this battle.” In the KJV the words “need” and “battle” are in italics, supplied by the translators to make the English clear, and the sense is plain: God will make their fighting unnecessary.

Then come the commands. “Set yourselves” is yâtsab, to place something so that it stays, and of oneself, to take one’s station. “Stand ye still” uses ʻâmad, to stand. Together they picture men taking a firm position and holding it, ready and expectant, waiting to see what God will do.

“And see the salvation of the LORD with you.” The word yᵉshûwʻâh means deliverance, help or victory. Scripture can use it of a rescue God works through a man, as when Jonathan “hath wrought this great salvation in Israel”, but here Judah’s part is to watch while the LORD does the saving “with you”, in their presence and on their behalf.

These words come almost straight from the Red Sea, where Moses told a terrified Israel, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day”, and “The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:13–14). Judah is told that the God of the exodus is about to act again.

“Fear not, nor be dismayed” repeats the command of verse 15, with the same verb châthath for dismay, and the repetition presses it home. “To morrow go out against them” repeats the order to march. All of it rests on the closing promise, “for the LORD will be with you”. His presence is their safety and the ground of their courage. He promised Moses, “Certainly I will be with thee” (Exodus 3:12), and the risen Jesus told his disciples as he sent them out, “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:19–20). The stillness God asks for is the stillness of trust: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), and “in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15).

Jehoshaphat answers the word by bowing down. His name, Yᵉhôwshâphâṭ, means “Jehovah-judged”. The verb qâdad means to bend the body or the head in deference, and he bows “with his face to the ground”. A king who held power over the whole nation lowered himself in front of his own people, and so showed that the LORD rules over every earthly ruler and every circumstance.

“All Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem” follow him. “Inhabitants” comes from yâshab, to dwell, and Jerusalem is Yᵉrûwshâlaim. They “fell”, nâphal, the ordinary word for falling, here a full prostration on the ground. They fell “before the LORD”, before his face, pânîym, a word that also means presence. The last word gives the meaning of it all: “worshipping”, shâchâh, to bow down or lie prostrate in homage to a king or to God, to do reverence and to worship. Their bodies showed what their hearts held, the humble adoration of a people who had put their whole hope in God’s hands.

The nation bowed, and then the Levites stood. Two Levite families are named. The Kohathites had carried the holiest things of the tabernacle, the ark among them (Numbers 3:27–31). The Korhites, descendants of Korah, served in the temple as singers, musicians and gatekeepers, and their name is joined to the singing of psalms. Among those David “set over the service of song in the house of the LORD” was Heman the singer, of the sons of the Kohathites (1 Chronicles 6:31–33). So the praise was led by men set apart for that very service, and it was ordered, consecrated worship.

“Stood up to praise” shows readiness and resolve. The verb hâlal means to shine, to make a show, to boast and to celebrate. Here it is open, joyful praise, a boast in the LORD’s might. They praised “the LORD God of Israel”, the covenant God of their nation and the one who had just promised to deliver it.

They praised “with a loud voice on high”. The Hebrew for a loud voice is qol gadol, qôwl “voice” with gâdôwl “great”: a great voice, strong and united, meant to be heard. “On high” is maʻal, upward or above, so their praise rose toward God himself. A psalm calls for this kind of praise: “I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth … O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together” (Psalm 34:1–3). Another puts “the high praises of God” in the mouths of his people as they face the nations (Psalm 149:6–9). The Levites praised for what they had only heard, which is faith as Hebrews describes it, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

The next morning Judah rose early and went out, and Jehoshaphat appointed singers to praise the LORD as the army marched. When they began to sing, the LORD set ambushes against the men of Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, and the invaders turned on one another until they had destroyed themselves. Judah came to find only dead bodies, and the spoil was so great that it took three days to gather (2 Chronicles 20:20–25). The victory was won without a single blow from Judah. Every word Jahaziel spoke came true, and the battle was God’s from beginning to end.

The Spirit came on Jahaziel for one message on one day. On Jesus the Spirit rests in fullness, for God gives him the Spirit without measure (John 3:34), and at Nazareth he took Isaiah’s words (Isaiah 61:1) as his own: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor” (Luke 4:18). Jahaziel carried God’s word, and Jesus is the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1). God promised through Joel, “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (Joel 2:28), and he kept that promise at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). Every believer is now sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise (Ephesians 1:13–14), and the Spirit equips all God’s people for witness, service and the whole of life in Christ.

The greatest battle, against sin, death and the devil, was far beyond our strength, and God fought it in his Son. Jesus came as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the true King who humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8). On that cross God “spoiled principalities and powers” and “made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15), and the resurrection declared the victory. The New Testament word for this salvation, soteria, answers to the yᵉshûwʻâh Judah was told to see. So Jesus says, “be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), and Paul says that “we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37).

Believers still stand. Paul tells us to put on the whole armour of God “that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil” (Ephesians 6:10–18), and to “stand fast in the faith” (1 Corinthians 16:13). We stand in a victory Christ has already won, with Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), at our side. Judah’s worship before the battle looks ahead to the worship of all who know him: every knee shall bow to Jesus (Philippians 2:10), and the great voice of heaven sings, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain” (Revelation 5:12). He is our peace (Ephesians 2:14) and the Deliverer who comes out of Sion (Romans 11:26).

This passage gives us a God who hears when his people pray together, and who answers in words they can understand and act on. He takes the full measure of the danger, calls it “this great multitude”, and tells his people that the battle is his. He is the same God who fought for Israel at the Red Sea (Exodus 14), and the promise “the LORD will be with you” rests on who he is. The battles of his people come in many forms, from sin and spiritual conflict to trouble at home and in the world, and he is as able in each of them as he was at the cliff of Ziz.

Judah’s part was to listen, to go where he sent them, to stand, and to watch. The king and the people answered with worship while the enemy was still marching, and the Levites praised with a great voice before anything around them had changed. In that order, prayer, then God’s word, then worship, then the victory, Scripture shows how God’s people live by his promises, and how gladly he keeps them.