Jehoram (Joram) was king of Judah who married Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, perhaps the most wicked royal couple ever to rule God's people. Though of the house of Judah, he joined his line to the house of Israel, and this union bore evil fruit. Like his ancestor Solomon, he could not resist the negative influence of his wife and her family. He walked in the ways of the house of Ahab, because his mother advised him to do wickedly, and he did evil in the sight of the LORD. The house of Ahab became his counselors after the death of his father, to his destruction (II Chronicles 22:3-4). During his reign, influenced by the kings of Israel, high places were constructed in Judah. His son Ahaziah reigned only one year and continued in his father's evil. After Ahaziah's death, Athaliah seized the throne, and Jehoram's grandson Jehoash later inherited a kingdom still marked by the high places built in the reigns of his father and grandfather. Jehoash was a more moral king than Jehoram.

Jehoram is counted among the kings who cast off all restraint and built idolatrous high places that became stumbling blocks to Israel and Judah. Along with Jeroboam, Ahaz, and Manasseh, he stands on the negative side of God's assessment of the kings, in contrast to loyal rulers such as Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah, who ordered the high places destroyed. His reign illustrates the pattern by which God measures a king: whether he remained true to God or allowed and encouraged His people to follow the idolatrous practices of the surrounding nations. Building high places, rather than merely failing to remove them, marks a king as abhorrent in God's eyes. Such worship sites had long been forbidden, since God told Israel to destroy pagan instruments of worship, including the high places. Jehoram's apostasy is thus part of the spiritual decline that left the high places a thorn in the side of both kingdoms until Assyria and Babylon subjugated them.