The biblical Jehoshaphat is one of the lesser-known Jewish Kings, who ruled over the southern kingdom of Judah in the ninth century BC. He seems to have done a pretty good job as monarch, doing that ‘which was right in the sight of the Lord.’ But it isn’t his wisdom or justice which have made him famous.
In fact, he owes his immortality to the lucky accident of having a name that sounds a lot like ‘Jesus.’ The 10 Commandments forbid Christians from ‘taking the Lord’s name in vain’—saying ‘Jesus’ or ‘God’ as an expletive counts as blasphemy. So, if an unfortunate ‘Je–’ happens to slip out accidentally, one way to stay within the rules is to turn ‘Je–’ into Jehoshaphat, in the same way that people these days sometimes say ‘oh fudge!’
‘Jehosaphat’ first appears as an exclamation in Samuel Hammet’s 1857 novel Sam Slick in Texas, and it retains an ‘Old West’ feel today, rarely used without the addition of a corny cowboy accent. As for why Jehoshaphat is so often ‘jumping,’ we can, alas, only speculate.
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