2 Chronicles 17:3,4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

He walked in the first ways of his father David His ways before he fell so foully, in the matter of Uriah, which were good ways. David, indeed, recovered from that fall, but, perhaps, never, while he lived, fully retrieved the spiritual strength and comfort which he had lost. Jehoshaphat followed David as far as he followed God, and no farther. St. Paul himself thus limits our imitation of him, 1 Corinthians 11:1, Follow me, as I follow Christ, and not otherwise. The first ways of many pious people have been their best ways, and their first love their strongest love: which, however, ought not to be the case: for the last ought to be more than the first, Revelation 2:19. But in every copy we propose to write after, as we ought to single out that only which is good, so that chiefly which is best. The original words here are literally rendered, He walked in the ways of David his father, הראשׁונים, hareshonim, those first, or ancient ways. He proposed to himself, for his example, the primitive times of the royal family, those purest times, before the corruptions of the late reigns came in. See Jeremiah 6:16. The LXX. leave out David, and so refer this to Asa: He walked in the first ways of his father Asa, and did not imitate him in what was amiss in him toward the latter end of his time. It is well to be cautious in following the best men, lest we step aside after them. And sought not unto Baalim The neighbouring nations had their Baalim: one had one Baal, and another had another; but he abhorred them all, and had nothing to do with any of them. He sought the Lord God of his father, and him only; prayed to him only; and inquired of him only.