wives, and all thy substance: 15and thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of the sickness, [1]day by day. 16And the LORD stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines, and of the Arabians which are beside the Ethiopians: 17and they came up against Judah, and brake into it, and carried away
thy substance] Gen. xii. 5; the Heb. word includes both "goods" and "chattels" (i.e. live stock).
15. day by day] mg., year after year; a prolonged sickness.
16, 17 (no parallel in Kings). The Invasion of the Philistines and Arabians.
The Chronicler's theory of life demanded that disasters should mark the close of this wicked reign, and in view of the licence which marks the Chronicler's reconstruction of the history, it must be allowed that a raid by the very peoples who had paid tribute to Jehoshaphat (xvii. 11) may be only a conjecture to suit the requirements of his religious conviction. But neither the absence of the story from Kings, nor yet the religious appropriateness of the attack entails its rejection as unhistorical. The comparative fulness and vigour of the Chronicler's account of these reigns yields many suggestive indications (some of which have already been noted) favouring the view that he had before him valuable independent traditions of Edomite and Philistine hostilities against Judah which were referred to this period. That being so, the possible historicity of this tradition in vv. 16, 17 must be admitted; and it should be noted that such a raid would be a most natural sequel to Jehoram's loss of control over Edom recorded in ver. 8.
16. stirred up . . . the spirit] Perhaps not without the instigation of a prophetical party, of which Eliezer of Mareshah may have been a leading representative (see xx. 37). For the phrase "stirred up," cp. xxxvi. 22 and 1 Chr. v. 26.
which are beside the Ethiopians] Heb. Cushites—probably certain Arabian tribes, though it seems likely that the Chronicler understood the name to mean the Ethiopians of Africa (see the note on Zerah the Ethiopian, xiv. 9). Ancient geographical ideas were very inexact. Herodotus regarded all the land east of the Nile as part of Arabia. Distant lands are apt to be conceived of as all more or less "beside" one another. Thus the present writer has heard a Tyrolese peasant woman remark that she supposed "Russia and Japan were both beside England." We may assume that in the Chronicler's source Arabian Cushites were meant.
17. and brake into it] The proper meaning of the Heb. verb is "to make a breach in a city-wall [and so take the city]"; cp. xxxii, 1. Here and in Is. vii. 6 the word is applied to a whole country.
- ↑ Or, year after year
