Josiah #63

Josiah was king of Judah from about 640 to 609 BC. He came to the throne at the age of eight after his father Amon was assassinated (2 Kings 22:1), and he is remembered as the king who led Judah in a thorough return to covenant faithfulness. The main accounts are in 2 Kings 22 and 23 and in 2 Chronicles 34 and 35. Both books judge him with rare approval: he did what was right and did not turn aside to the right or left (2 Kings 22:2).

Biblical Significance

According to Chronicles, Josiah began to seek the God of David in his eighth year as king and started removing high places and idols in his twelfth (2 Chronicles 34:1-7). In his eighteenth year, while the temple was being repaired, the high priest Hilkiah reported finding the Book of the Law. When it was read aloud to the king, he tore his clothes in distress at how far the nation had fallen short of it (2 Kings 22:1-13). Many scholars have suggested the scroll was Deuteronomy or a portion of it, though the text simply calls it the Book of the Law or Book of the Covenant, and this identification is an inference.

Josiah sent officials to consult the prophetess Huldah, who confirmed that judgment was coming on Jerusalem but promised that Josiah himself would be spared from seeing it because of his humble response (2 Kings 22:14-20). He then gathered the people to the temple, read the whole book to them, and led them in renewing the covenant (2 Kings 23:1-3). The reforms that followed removed pagan objects from the temple, dismantled shrines across Judah, and reached into former northern territory at Bethel (2 Kings 23:4-20). He also kept a Passover of unusual scope, which the writer says had not been observed in that way since the days of the judges (2 Kings 23:21-23).

Yet the narrator adds a sober note. Despite Josiah’s reforms, the Lord did not turn from his anger over the sins of Manasseh (2 Kings 23:25-27). Josiah died in 609 BC when he confronted Pharaoh Neco of Egypt at Megiddo (2 Kings 23:29-30; 2 Chronicles 35:20-24).

Legacy

Josiah is often set beside Hezekiah as one of Judah’s two great reforming kings. Jeremiah began his prophetic work in Josiah’s thirteenth year (Jeremiah 1:2) and later spoke of Josiah as a king who did justice and defended the poor (Jeremiah 22:15-16). Chronicles records that Jeremiah composed a lament for him (2 Chronicles 35:25). Later readers have seen his story as a lesson about the power of Scripture to reform a people, and also about the limits of outward reform when it does not reach the heart. Within a generation of his death, Judah fell to Babylon.