18:1-34 Jehoshaphat's alliance with Ahab. - This history we read in 1Ki 22. Abundant riches and honour give large opportunities of doing good, but they are attended with many snares and temptations. Men do not know much of the artifices of Satan and the deceitfulness of their own hearts, when they covet riches with the idea of being able to do good with them. What can hurt those whom God will protect? What can shelter those whom God will destroy? Jehoshaphat is safe in his robes, Ahab killed in his armour; for the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. We should be cautious of entangling ourselves in the worldly undertakings of evil men; and still more we should avoid engaging in their sinful projects. But, when they call upon him, God can and will bring his faithful people out of the difficulties and dangers into which they have sinfully run themselves. He has all hearts in his hand, so that he easily rescues them. Blessed is the man that putteth his trust in the Lord.

Verse 33. - At a venture; Hebrew, לְתֻמּו; i.e. "in his innocence." The root is the familiar root expressive of uprightness, perfectness, simplicity, and the meaning here is that the shooter was innocent of what a distinguished deed he was doing, of the personality of the man at whom he aimed (for it is not necessary to suppose his shot was quite at random), and of the skill that gave the arrow to reach its ultimate destiny. Between the joints of the harness; literally, between the joints and the harness, i.e. that part called the breastplate. The arrow went through, or by the side of one of the actual articulations of the armour-mail worn. Ahab's direction to the chariot-driver at the spur of the first wounded moment to turn and carry him out of the host, was evidently qualified, when he found that the wound was not immediately fatal. As the heat of the battle grew, and victory did not at once turn one way or the other, he was the more anxious to give the moral support of his presence to the last to his army, and, unable to stand by himself, he was supported by his own orders (so our rendering is not inconsistent with that in the parallel "was stayed" (1 Kings 22:35) in the chariot till he died in the evening. Although the spirit of Ahab, and his fidelity to his own army, kingdom, and self, cannot but appear to advantage in these last incidents of his unworthy life, yet it is probable that they find their record here for the sake of giving clear statement to the fact, that in the chariot his life-bleed collected according to the saying of the parallel (ver. 35 compared with ver. 38). Note, therefore, particularly the truncated history of the writer of Chronicles in this instance. He, no doubt, consciously omitted, and with a purpose, his own usual purpose; but light is lost, and the cross light tends rather to misleading, except for that only correct user of Scripture, which teaches us to compare one Scripture with another, and balance one part against another - a thing easy to do in matters of fact, but too often forgotten in the weightier matter of doctrine. Here our eighteenth chapter closes, less the mention of the proclamation for the self-disbanding of Ahab's army (ver. 36 of the parallel chapter) which should fulfil the prophecy of our ver. 16, and less any mention of Ahab's burial, of the washing of his chariot in the pool of Samaria, of the dogs licking up of the blood there, and of his ivory house, etc. (vers. 37-40 of the parallel chapter). All of which omittings accord well with the one clear ecclesiastical and religious intent of the Chronicles, in place of the pursuit of matters of general and merely graphic historic interest, however charged with instruction they too might be.

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