Surely somewhat exercised by what he had gone through, Jehoshaphat returned to Jerusalem, and Jehu the son of that Hanani who had brought the divine rebuke to Asa, went out to meet him with a message from God.
"Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord?" was his message, coupled with the assurance that he had incurred God's displeasure, though there were good things found in him, which were not unnoticed. It would seem that Jehoshaphat received the word from God more humbly than his father had done.
He dwelt at Jerusalem, and stayed away from Samaria, where he never should have gone. Then he went out again from end to end of his little kingdom and "brought them back to the Lord Clod of their fathers." This was good work surely.
Jehoshaphat set judges in the land throughout all the fenced cities of Judah, and admonished them to judge righteously, acting not for man, but for God, whose fear must be upon them—the God with whom is no iniquity, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts (verse 7).
In Jerusalem he set of the Levites, the priests and the chief of the fathers of Israel, for the settlement of the more serious difficulties, and warned them as he had the judges in the other cities, to fear God, serve faithfully, and warn those who should come before them, that they trespass not against Him.
It is evident that Jehoshaphat, though again to be tempted and failing therein, was at this time profiting deeply by his failure; though he had brought sorrow and humiliation upon himself through being attracted by what the world had to offer, the lesson had been impressed upon him that God must have the first place, and he not only set himself to seek Him, but endeavored to arouse his people to the same object. If he could not restore the glory of his great ancestors David and Solomon, he would seek to provide the same sort of guardianship over his own reduced kingdom that David had arranged before his death.
May all God's people profit from the blunders they make, as Jehoshaphat did from his, and as Peter, we may say, did from his great fall, when he denied thrice the One with whom he thought he was ready to go to both prison and death.
May Jehoshaphat's "world-bordering" as it has been called, also be used of God to restrain His people from allying themselves with the present world which has added to the sins of the earlier period we are here considering, by rejecting the Son of God come in grace, and awaits, although ignorant of it, the judgment such rejection calls for. A clean cut separation in heart and in life is needed, and will meet the blessing of God, if practiced by His children.