As we closed yesterday's study we learned that his sins were heinous enough to justify the Lord ending his life and cutting off his line of succession but the Lord intends to keep His promise to David. He promised David that he would never be without a direct descendant with the right to sit on the throne of Israel. If the Lord had cut off Jehoram and his sons, David would be without this direct line of succession because Jehoram murdered his brothers. This means that the line that came down from David down through time to Jehoshaphat would stop without male descendants.
So the Lord allows Jehoram to reign for eight years but those eight years are not without trouble. "In the time of Jehoram, Edom rebelled against Judah and set up its own king." (2 Kings 8:20, 2 Chronicles 21:8) Edom had been subject to Judah ever since David was king but the Edomites must have considered Jehoram a weak king, with his ascension to the throne looking to them like a good time to revolt.
I think the Edomites sensed that the civilians of Judah, the soldiers of the army, and the top officers and advisers aren't supportive of Jehoram the way they were of his father, particularly after he put all his brothers to death with no evidence provided by the Scriptures that they were planning a coup against him. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a common thing in ancient times for other nations to consider their options any time a powerful and prosperous king died. If the new king appeared to be immensely popular with his people and with the army, enemy nations would refrain from making a move. But if they sensed weakness in the new king and didn't believe his men would defend him to the death, they might rebel or even go on the offensive and invade.
Edom is not allowed to have its own king while it is subject to the nation of Judah. But the people of Edom want to be a sovereign nation and to quit paying tribute to the king, so they appoint their own king and declare their independence. Jehoram takes action to keep hold of Edom. "So Jehoram went to Zair with all his chariots. The Edomites surrounded him and his chariot commanders, but he rose up and broke through by night; his army, however, fled back home." (2 Kings 8:20-21) The Edomites were correct in their assessment that the army would not stand with Jehoram when the going got tough. Jehoram and his charioteers are able to break free of the surrounding enemy soldiers but then his entire army flees, leaving him with no choice but to return to Jerusalem.
He was unable to quell the rebellion because he does not have the support of his men. The authors of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles says that because of the defeat here in Chapter 8, "To this day Edom has been in rebellion against Judah." (2 Kings 8:22a, 2 Chronicles 21:10a) It wasn't only an enemy nation that rebelled against him; a city in Judah---one of the cities given to the tribe of Levi---also revolts. "Libnah revolted at the same time." (2 Kings 8:22b, 2 Chronicles 21:10b) Scholars presume that this rebellion of a city of the priestly tribe was due to Jehoram's abominable idolatry which would have been a stark and unwelcome contrast to the godly reign of his father Jehoshaphat.
We cannot live in opposition to the Lord without bringing trouble into our lives. Jehoram has no respect for the authority of the Lord and as a result his people have no respect for his authority. He is reaping what he has sown but he doesn't allow these troubles to minister to him by acknowledging his sins and repenting of them. Not even some very disturbing words spoken to him by the prophet Elisha in tomorrow's text will persuade him to repent.
(In closing today, I wanted to let you know that I wasn't able to post the link to today's Bible study on any of my Facebook pages for you because I'm under a 24 hour restriction by Facebook because they feel I participated too often in a support group yesterday. The support group page had been especially busy yesterday so I had expressed sympathy to several new people in the group and had used the "heart" reaction a number of times and the Facebook algorithm flagged it as spam. The restrictions are supposed to end around 9pm tonight so hopefully I will be able to post links again on Facebook tomorrow.)
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