The kings of Israel and Judah

King Jehoram of Judah

The kingdom of Judah (the south) · Reigned eight years (2 Kings 8:17) · Also called Joram · Evil before God · 2 Kings 8:16 to 24; 2 Chronicles 21

Jehoram, the son of the good king Jehoshaphat, married Athaliah the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel and brought the idolatry of the northern kingdom into Judah. He murdered all his own brothers to secure the throne, led the people into unfaithfulness, and suffered revolt and invasion. Chronicles records that he died of a horrible disease, unmourned, after a reign the Bible judges wholly evil. He is not the same man as Joram king of Israel, his contemporary and brother-in-law.

Yet the LORD would not destroy Judah for David his servant’s sake, as he promised him to give him alway a light, and to his children.2 Kings 8:19 (KJV)

A promising father and a wicked son

Jehoram had every advantage: the son of the godly Jehoshaphat, raised in a reforming reign. Yet when he came to the throne, having strengthened himself, he slew all his brothers with the sword, and various princes of Israel too. He walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did the house of Ahab, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife, and he did evil in the sight of the LORD.

The marriage to Athaliah was the poisoned fruit of Jehoshaphat's alliance with Ahab, and through it the idolatry, and the murderous spirit, of Jezebel's house entered the royal family of David.

Revolt, judgment, and a letter from Elijah

In Jehoram's days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah, and Libnah revolted at the same time, because he had forsaken the LORD God of his fathers. He built high places and led Jerusalem into spiritual adultery. Chronicles records that a writing came to him from the prophet Elijah, declaring that because he had walked in the way of the kings of Israel and killed his better brothers, the LORD would strike his people, his family, and his own body with a great plague.

It came to pass. The Philistines and Arabians invaded, carried away his sons and wives, leaving only the youngest, and then the LORD smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease, so that after two years his bowels fell out, and he died in great pain.

The biblical verdict

Chronicles gives a devastating epitaph: he departed without being desired, and they buried him in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings. No one was sorry to see him go. He had come to the throne with everything and thrown it away for the idols and the cruelty of Ahab's house, and he left a kingdom weakened and a family shattered.

The books of Kings and Chronicles agree in their verdict, Chronicles simply telling more of the horror. He is one of the clearly evil kings of Judah, remembered chiefly for the ruin he brought on himself and his line.

Where it points

The one gleam of light in the account is not in Jehoram at all but in God's faithfulness. Kings says plainly: Yet the LORD would not destroy Judah for David his servant's sake, as he promised to give him alway a light, and to his children. Even under so wicked a king, God kept the lamp of David burning, refusing to let the line to the Messiah be snuffed out.

Jehoram shows how quickly a heritage of faith can be squandered when a heart turns to idols and to power, and how the sins of one generation's compromise can reach into the next. Yet the promise to David held, not because of the king, but because of the coming King whom God had determined to send.

A note on the record: everything here is drawn from the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Kings and Chronicles sometimes tell a reign differently, Chronicles often adding a king's repentance or building works, and where they differ this is said plainly rather than smoothed over. The exact lengths and overlaps of the reigns are genuinely complex, because kings often shared the throne with a son for a time, so the totals in Scripture do not always add up in a simple line. The verdict good or evil is the Bible's own assessment, whether a king did right or evil in the sight of the LORD.

Related: Jehoshaphat · Ahaziah of Judah · Athaliah · Joram of Israel · All the kings of Israel and Judah