Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. He did that which was right in Yahweh’s eyes, and walked in the ways of David his father, and didn’t turn away to the right hand or to the left. For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, the Asherah poles, the engraved images, and the molten images. They broke down the altars of the Baals in his presence; and he cut down the incense altars that were on high above them. He broke the Asherah poles, the engraved images, and the molten images in pieces, made dust of them, and scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. He burned the bones of the priests on their altars, and purged Judah and Jerusalem. He did this in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even to Naphtali, around in their ruins. He broke down the altars, and beat the Asherah poles and the engraved images into powder, and cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel, then returned to Jerusalem.
Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz the recorder, to repair Yahweh his God’s house. They came to Hilkiah the high priest, and delivered the money that was brought into God’s house, which the Levites, the keepers of the threshold, had gathered from the hands of Manasseh, Ephraim, of all the remnant of Israel, of all Judah and Benjamin, and of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They delivered it into the hands of the workmen who had the oversight of Yahweh’s house; and the workmen who labored in Yahweh’s house gave it to mend and repair the house. They gave it to the carpenters and to the builders, to buy cut stone and timber for couplings, and to make beams for the houses which the kings of Judah had destroyed. The men did the work faithfully. Their overseers were Jahath and Obadiah, the Levites, of the sons of Merari; and Zechariah and Meshullam, of the sons of the Kohathites, to give direction; and others of the Levites, who were all skillful with musical instruments. Also they were over the bearers of burdens, and directed all who did the work in every kind of service. Of the Levites, there were scribes, officials, and gatekeepers.
When they brought out the money that was brought into Yahweh’s house, Hilkiah the priest found the book of Yahweh’s law given by Moses. Hilkiah answered Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the book of the law in Yahweh’s house.” So Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan.
Shaphan carried the book to the king, and moreover brought back word to the king, saying, “All that was committed to your servants, they are doing. They have emptied out the money that was found in Yahweh’s house, and have delivered it into the hand of the overseers, and into the hand of the workmen.” Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, “Hilkiah the priest has delivered me a book.” Shaphan read from it to the king.
When the king had heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes. The king commanded Hilkiah, Ahikam the son of Shaphan, Abdon the son of Micah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying, “Go inquire of Yahweh for me, and for those who are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book that is found; for great is Yahweh’s wrath that is poured out on us, because our fathers have not kept Yahweh’s word, to do according to all that is written in this book.”
So Hilkiah, and they whom the king had commanded, went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tokhath, the son of Hasrah, keeper of the wardrobe (now she lived in Jerusalem in the second quarter), and they spoke to her to that effect.
She said to them, “Yahweh, the God of Israel says: ‘Tell the man who sent you to me, “Yahweh says, ‘Behold, I will bring evil on this place, and on its inhabitants, even all the curses that are written in the book which they have read before the king of Judah. Because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense to other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands; therefore my wrath is poured out on this place, and it will not be quenched.’ ” ’ But to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of Yahweh, you shall tell him this, ‘Yahweh, the God of Israel says: “About the words which you have heard, because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before God, when you heard his words against this place, and against its inhabitants, and have humbled yourself before me, and have torn your clothes, and wept before me, I also have heard you,” says Yahweh. “Behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace. Your eyes won’t see all the evil that I will bring on this place and on its inhabitants.” ’ ” They brought back word to the king.
Then the king sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. The king went up to Yahweh’s house, with all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the Levites, and all the people, both great and small; and he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in Yahweh’s house. The king stood in his place, and made a covenant before Yahweh, to walk after Yahweh, and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all his heart, and with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. He caused all who were found in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand. The inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries that belonged to the children of Israel, and made all who were found in Israel to serve, even to serve Yahweh their God. All his days they didn’t depart from following Yahweh, the God of their fathers.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 33 He followed David in all points that he followed…
He followed David in all points that he followed the Lord.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 22, 27, 28, 29, 33 2Ch 34:1 Josiah [was] eight years old when he…
2Ch 34:1 Josiah [was] eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem one and thirty years.
Ver. 1. Josiah was eight years old.] Woe to that land whose prince is a child, saith Solomon; {Ecc 10:16} but Josiah was an extraordinary child, and a great blessing to his people. So was our Edward VI, that second Josiah, who began early likewise, and lived much in a little time, in brevi vitae spacio tempora virtutum multa replevit. {a} See 2Ki 22:1.
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{a} Jerome.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 32 Of this chapter, see the notes on 2Ki 22;…
Of this chapter, see the notes on 2Ki 22; 2Ki 23.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 8, 14, 29 Concerning Josiah we are here told, 1. That he…
Concerning Josiah we are here told, 1. That he came to the crown when he was very young, only eight years old (yet his infancy did not debar him from his right), and he reigned thirty-one years (Ch2 34:1), a considerable time. I fear, however, that in the beginning of his reign things went much as they had done in his father's time, because, being a child, he must have left the management of them to others; so that it was not till his twelfth year, which goes far in the number of his years, that the reformation began, Ch2 34:3. He could not, as Hezekiah did, fall about it immediately. 2. That he reigned very well (Ch2 34:2), approved himself to God, trod in the steps of David, and did not decline either to the right hand of to the left: for there are errors on both hands. 3. That while he was young, about sixteen years old, he began to seek after God, Ch2 34:3. We have reason to think he had not so good an education as Manasseh had (it is well if those about him did not endeavour to corrupt and debauch him); yet he thus sought God when he was young. It is the duty and interest of young people, and will particularly be the honour of young gentlemen, as soon as they come to years of understanding, to begin to seek God; for those that seek him early shall find him. 4. That in the twelfth year of his reign, when it is probable he took the administration of the government entirely into his own hands, he began to purge his kingdom from the remains of idolatry; he destroyed the high places, groves, images, altars, all the utensils of idolatry, v. 3, 4. He not only cast them out as Manasseh did, but broke them to pieces, and made dust of them. This destruction of idolatry is here said to be in his twelfth year, but it was said (Kg2 23:23) to be in his eighteenth year. Something was probably done towards it in his twelfth year; then he began to purge out idolatry, but that good work met with opposition, so that it was not thoroughly done till they had found the book of the law six years afterwards. But here the whole work is laid together briefly which was much more largely and particularly related in the Kings. His zeal carried him out to do this, not only in Judah and Jerusalem, but in the cities of Israel too, as far as he had any influence upon them.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 Josiah was eight years old when he began to…
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign,.... Of these two verses; see Gill on Kg2 22:1; see Gill on Kg2 22:2.
.
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2 Chronicles 34:3
ch2 34:3
ch2 34:3
ch2 34:3For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young,.... Being in the sixteenth year of his age; though Kimchi thinks it was the very year he began to reign, which was the eighth of his age; and Jarchi observes, it may be interpreted, "though he was young, he began to seek after the God of David his father"; to pray unto him, to seek after the knowledge of him, and the true manner of worshipping him, what were his will, commands, and ordinances; the Targum is,"to seek instruction or doctrine of the Lord God of David his father,''to be taught his ways, such as David his great ancestor walked in, and whom he chose to follow:
and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves and the carved images, and the molten images; which were made in the times of Manasseh; and though removed by him when humbled, were restored in the reign of Amon. Now Josiah purged the land from these, by putting them down, and destroying them; and this he did when he was twenty years of age, having now more authority, being out of his minority, and from under guardians, and one year before Jeremiah began to prophesy, Jer 1:1.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 6, 8, 11, 12, 19, 32, 33 The general character of Josiah, ver. 1, 2. He…
The general character of Josiah, ver. 1, 2. He roots out idolatry, ver. 3-7. Repairs the temple, ver. 8-13. Rends his clothes on hearing the book of the law, and sends to inquire of God, ver. 14-22. Huldah foretells the destruction of Jerusalem, ver. 23-28. Josiah and the people renew their covenant with God, ver. 29-33.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, 14, 22, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32 Josiah reigns thirty-one years; destroys idolatry in Judah, as
CHAPTER XXXIV
Josiah reigns thirty-one years; destroys idolatry in Judah, as
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also in Manasseh, Ephraim, Simeon, and even to Naphtali, 1-7.
He begins to repair the temple, and collects money for the
purpose, and employs workmen, 8-13.
Hilkiah the priest finds the book of the law in the temple,
which is read by Shaphan before the king, 14-19.
He is greatly troubled, and consults Huldah the prophetess,
20-22.
Her exhortation, and message to the king, 23-28.
He causes it to be read to the elders of Judah, and they make
a covenant with God, 29, 32.
Josiah reforms every abomination, and the people serve God all
his days, 33.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXXIV
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 6, 8, 12, 19, 32 2Ch 34:1. Josiah was eight years old when he…
2Ch 34:1. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign — The reader will find the principal parts of this chapter explained at large in the notes on 2 Kings 22. and 23., to which he is referred.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 11, 13, 21, 30, 32, 33 Compare the parallel history of 2 Kings 22 notes;…
Compare the parallel history of 2 Kings 22 notes; 23:1-30 notes; the writer here being more full on the celebration of the Passover. The only approach to a discrepancy between the two narratives is with respect to the time of the religions reformation, which the writer of Chronicles distinctly places before, the author of Kings after, the repair of the temple. The best explanation seems to be, that the author of Kings has departed from the chronological order, to which he makes no profession of adhering.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 17, 22, 25, 28, 33 Boy; 16 years old. D. --- The kings of…
Boy; 16 years old. D. --- The kings of Juda were in their minority, till they had completed their 13th year. Grotius --- Cleansed. Heb. and Sept. "in the twelfth year he began to purify," &c. H. --- The work was not brought to perfection till six years afterwards, v. 8. C. T.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 p. Josiah: the Prophetess Huldah.—Ch. 34, 35
p. Josiah: the Prophetess Huldah.—Ch. 34, 35
α. Josiah’s Beginnings; the Extirpation of Idolatry: 2Ch_34:1-7
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2Ch_34:1.Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. 2And he did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David his father, and declined not to 3the right hand nor to the left. And in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a youth, he began to seek after the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, 4and the asherim, and the carved images, and the molten images. And they pulled down before him the altars of Baalim; and the sun-statues which were above them he hewed down; and the asherim, and the carved images, and the molten images, he broke and pounded, and strewed upon the 5graves of them that had sacrificed to them. And the bones of the priests he 6burned upon their altars,1 and he purged Judah and Jerusalem. And in the cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali, in their 7ruins2 around. And he pulled down the altars and the asherim, and he cut down the carved images to pound them, and hewed down all the sun-statues in all the land of Israel; and he returned to Jerusalem.
β. The Purging of the Temple and the Recovery of the Book of the Law: 2Ch_34:8-21
8And in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he purged the land and the house, he sent Shaphan son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah son of Joahaz the chancellor, to repair the house of the Lord 9his God. And they came to Hilkiah the high priest, and delivered the money that was brought into the house of God, which the Levites that kept the thresholds had gathered from the hand of Manasseh and Ephraim, and from all the remnant of Israel, and from all Judah and Benjamin, and the inhabitants3 of Jerusalem. 10And they put it into the hand of the work-masters who were appointed over the house of the Lord; and the work-masters who worked in the house of the Lord gave it to restore and repair the house. 11And they gave it to the carpenters and masons, to buy hewn stones and timber for girders and for joists of the houses, which the kings of Judah had destroyed. 12And the men wrought faithfully at the work, and over them were appointed Jahath and Obadiah the Levites of the sons of Merari, and Zechariah and Meshullam of the sons of the Kohathites, to oversee; and the 13Levites, all that had skill in instruments of song. And over the carriers, and overseeing all that were doing the work in any manner of service. 14And when they took out the money that was brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord by Moses. 15And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord: and Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan. 16And Shaphan brought the book to the king, and returned to the king a report, saying, All that was committed to thy servants, they do. 17And they have poured out the money that was found in the house of the Lord, and 18given it into the hands of the overseers and of the workmen. And Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath given me a book: 19and Shaphan read in it before the king. And when the king heard the words of the law, then he rent his clothes. 20And the king commanded Hilkiah, and Ahikam son of Shaphan, and Abdon4 son of Micah, and Shaphan 21the scribe, and Asaiah the servant of the king, saying: Go, inquire of the Lord for me, and for them that are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book that is found; for great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord, to do after all that is written in this book.
γ. Consultation of Huldah the Prophetess, and Solemn Reading of the Law in the Temple: 2Ch_34:22-33
22And Hilkiah and those who were appointed5 by the king went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum son of Tokehath, son of Hasrah, keeper of the wardrobe; and she dwelt in Jerusalem in the second (quarter); and 23they spake to her to this effect. And she said to them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Say ye to the man who sent you to me, 24Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon its inhabitants, all the curses that are written in the book which they have read before the king of Judah: 25Because they have forsaken me, and have made burnings6 to other gods, to provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands; and my 26wrath is poured out on this place, and will not be quenched. And to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus shall ye say: Thus saith the Lord God of Israel of the words which thou hast heard. 27Because thy heart was tender, and thou didst bow down before God, when thou heardest His words against this place and its inhabitants, and thou didst bow down before me and didst rend thy garments and weep before me, so have I also heard thee, saith the Lord. 28Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, and thine eyes shall not see all the evil that I will bring upon this place and upon its inhabitants: 29and they brought the king word again. And the king sent and gathered all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. 30And the king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the Levites, and all the people, great and small; and one read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord. 31And the king stood in his place, and made the covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep His commandments and testimonies and statutes with all his heart and with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this book. 32And he caused all that were found in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to it; and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. 33And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries of the sons of Israel, and bound all that were found in Israel to serve the Lord their God: all his days they departed not from the Lord God of their fathers.
δ. The Passover: 2Ch_35:1-19
2Ch_35:1.And Josiah kept a passover unto the Lord in Jerusalem; and they killed the passover on the fourteenth of the first month. 2And he set the priests in their charges, and strengthened them for the service of the Lord. 3And he said unto the Levites, who taught all Israel,7 who were consecrated to the Lord, Put the holy ark into the house which Solomon son of David, the king of Israel, built; it shall not be a burden on your shoulders: now 4serve ye the Lord your God, and His people Israel. And make you ready8 in your father-houses by your courses, after the writing of David king of 5Israel, and after the description of Solomon his son. And stand ye in the sanctuary after the divisions of the father-houses of your brethren, the sons 6of the people, and a part of a father-house of the Levites [ for each]. And kill the passover, and sanctify you, and prepare your brethren, to do according to 7the word of the Lord by Moses. And Josiah dealt to the sons of the people sheep, lambs, and kids, all for paschal offerings, for all that were found, to the number of thirty thousand, and three thousand bullocks: these were of the property of the king. 8And his princes presented a free gift to the people, to the priests, and to the Levites: Hilkiah, and Zechariah, and Jehiel, rulers of the house of God, gave unto the priests for the passover-offerings two thousand 9and six hundred [ sheep], and three hundred oxen. And Conaniah, and Shemaiah, and Nethaneel, his brethren, and Hashabiah, and Jeiel, and Jozabad, chiefs of the Levites, presented to the Levites for passover-offerings five thousand [ sheep], 10and oxen five hundred. And the service was prepared, and the priests stood in their place, and the Levites in their courses, at the command of the king. 11And they killed the passover, and the priests sprinkled [ the wood] from their hand, and the Levites flayed. 12And they removed the burnt-offering to give them to the divisions of the father-houses of the sons of the people, to offer unto the Lord, as it is written in the book of Moses; and so with the oxen. 13And they roasted the passover with fire, according to the ordinance; and the holy things they sod in pots and kettles and pans, and brought them quickly 14to all the sons of the people. And afterwards they made ready for themselves and for the priests: because the priests the sons of Aaron were engaged in offering the burnt-offering and the fat until night; and the Levites prepared for themselves and for the priests the sons of Aaron. 15And the singers the sons of Asaph were in their place, according to the command of David, and Asaph, and Heman, and Jeduthun the king’s seer; and the porters were at every gate: it was not necessary for them to depart from their service, 16for their brethren the Levites prepared for them. And all the service of the Lord was prepared that day, to keep the passover, and to offer burnt-offerings 17on the altar of the Lord, at the command of King Josiah. And the sons of Israel that were present kept the passover at that time, and the feast of unleavened bread seven days. 18And there was no passover like that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet; nor did all the kings of Israel keep such a passover as Josiah kept, and the priests, and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 19In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover kept.
ε. Josiah’s Battle with Necho of Egypt, and End: 2Ch_35:20-27
20After all this, when Josiah had prepared the house, Necho king of Egypt came up to fight at Carchemish, on the Euphrates; and Josiah went out against 21him. And he sent ambassadors to him, saying, What have I to do with thee, O king of Judah? I am not against thee this day, but against the house of my war;9 and God hath commanded me to make haste: withdraw thee from 22God, who is with me, that He destroy thee not. And Josiah turned not his face from him, but disguised himself,10 to fight with him, and hearkened not unto the words of Necho from the mouth of God, and he came to fight in the valley of Megiddo. 23And the archers shot at King Josiah: and the king said 24to his servants, Remove me, for I am sorely wounded. And his servants removed him from the chariot, and put him on his second chariot; and brought him to Jerusalem, and he died, and was buried in the sepulchres of his fathers: and all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. 25And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah; and all the songsters and songstresses spake of Josiah in their laments unto this day, and they made them an ordinance for Israel: and, behold, they are written in the Lamentations.
26And the rest of the acts of Josiah, and his kindness, as it is written in the law of the Lord, 27And his deeds, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.
q. Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah: Close.—Ch. 36
α. Jehoahaz: 2Ch_36:1-4
2Ch_36:1.And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and made him king instead of his father in Jerusalem. 2Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he became king; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. 3And the king of Egypt put him down11 in Jerusalem, and fined the land a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. 4And the king of Egypt made Eliakim his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem, and turned his name to Jehoiakim: and Necho took Jehoahaz his brother and carried him to Egypt.
β. Jehoiakim: 2Ch_36:5-8
5Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he became king; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and he did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord God. 6Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babel, 7and bound him in fetters, to carry him to Babel.12 And Nebuchadnezzar brought of the vessels of the house of the Lord to Babel, and put them in 8his palace at Babel. And the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and his abominations which he did, and that which was found against him, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah: and Jehoiachin his son reigned in his stead.
γ. Jehoiachin: 2Ch_36:9-10
9Jehoiachin was eight years13 old when he became king; and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did hat which was evil in 10the eyes of the Lord. And at the turn of the year, King Nebuchadnezzar sent and brought him to Babel, with the goodly vessels of the house of the Lord; and he made Zedekiah his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem.
δ. Zedekiah: 2Ch_36:11-21
11Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. 12And he did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord his God; he humbled himself not before Jeremiah the prophet, from the mouth of the Lord. 13And he also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who made him swear by God: and he stiffened his neck, and hardened his 14heart from turning unto the Lord God of Israel. Also all the chiefs of the priests and the people transgressed very much, after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the Lord, which He had hallowed in 15Jerusalem. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by His messengers, rising early, and sending; because He had compassion on His people and His 16dwelling-place. And they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against 17His people, till there was no healing. And He brought up against them the king of the Chaldees, and slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and He spared neither young man nor maiden, the old nor the grey-headed; the whole He gave into his hand. 18And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and his princes; the whole he brought to Babel. 19And they burned the house of God, and pulled down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its goodly vessels. 20And he carried away those that remained from the sword to Babel; and they became servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia: 21To fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: all the days of the desolation she rested to fulfil seventy years.
ε. Close: the Return from Captivity under Cyrus: 2Ch_36:22-23
22And in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, and he made proclamation in all his kingdom, and also in writing, saying, 23Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and He hath charged me to build Him a house at Jerusalem: whoso is among you of all His people? The Lord14 his God be with him, and let him go up.
EXEGETICAL
Preliminary Remark.—Whereas in 2 Kings 22, 23 the several moments of the reforming action of Josiah are so combined that they appear all conditioned and determined by the repair of the temple, and the discovery in it of the book of the law, the Chronist separates the several acts or steps of his reforming activity more exactly, and indeed chronologically, as he makes the work of the king begin with the eighth year of his reign, the commencement of his more energetic proceedings to fall in the twelfth, and its end in the eighteenth (comp. on 2Ch_34:3). In other respects the two accounts agree substantially, though the Chronist has related the cleansing of Judah and Jerusalem from idolatry (2Ch_34:3-7) with great brevity, and, on the contrary, the great passover (2Ch_35:1-19) so much the more fully; whereas the author of 2 Kings, in accordance with his It less careful attention to the history of the Levitical worship, has reversed this method, and treated of the passover quite briefly. Both historians relate the closing catastrophe of the history of Josiah at nearly the same length and in much the same manner, though the Chronist gives vent to the pragmatic reflective connection of this tragic end with the previous transactions of his reign (2Ki_23:25 f.). He proceeds, lastly, quite in the form of an epitome in his statements concerning the four last reigns, in 2 Chronicles 36, to which the author of the books of Kings devotes a great deal of space.
1. Josiah’s Beginnings; the Eradication of Idolatry: 2Ch_34:1-7.
2Ch_34:1-2 agree with 2Ki_22:1-2, especially with regard to the eulogy applied to Josiah (alone of all kings), that he “declined not to the right hand nor to the left”; only the mention of his mother (Jedidah, daughter of Adaiah) is wanting in our passage.
2Ch_34:3. And in the eighth year of his reign, when he was sixteen years old. The “seeking after God,” as 22:19 and elsewhere. On the relation of the present chronological statements, especially that referring to the twelfth year of Josiah’s reign as the date of the beginning of the abolition of idolatry, in 2Ki_22:3 ff, and 2Ch_34:33 of our chapter, see Bähr’s full discussion (Bibelw. vii. 453 ff.). This agrees with the conclusion of almost all recent expositors in this, that neither the Chronist nor the author of 2 Kings proceeds exactly in chronological order, in so far as the latter compresses the whole measures of the purification of worship and extirpation of idolatry into the eighteenth year of his reign; but the former (according to 2Ch_34:4-7, which are to be taken partly as proleptic) attaches to that which was put in operation in the twelfth year part of that which was only carried into effect in the eighteenth year, as he himself indicates at the close of the chapter (2Ch_34:33).
2Ch_34:4. And they pulled down before him the altars of Baalim, and the sun-statues . . . he hewed down; comp. 2Ch_33:3, 2Ch_31:1; and for the sun-statues especially, 2Ch_14:4; and for that which follows, 2Ch_15:16.—And strewed (the dust of the ground images) upon the graves of them that had sacrificed to them, literally, “upon the graves that sacrificed to them.” In 2Ki_23:6, perhaps more exactly the ashes of the great asherim merely are designated as strewn upon the graves of the idolaters.
2Ch_34:5. And the bones of the priests he burned; for the particulars, see 2Ki_23:13-14; 2Ki_23:16-20.
2Ch_34:6. And in the cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon, and unto Naphtali, that is, in all the land, from the most southern to the most northern part of the tribes. That the regions belonging to the northern kingdom (among which here, as in 2Ch_15:9, Simeon also is named as a tribe addicted to idolatry) were at that time wasted by the invasion of Shalmaneser and Sargon, is indicated by the addition: “in their ruins around.” For the exclusive admissibility of this reading (בְּחָרְבֹתֵיהֶם), see Crit. Note. Moreover, the present account (with the parallel statement in 2Ki_23:19-20 f.), according to which the kingdom of Josiah included again in some measure all the twelve tribes, is certainly to be estimated in the same way as the statement in 2Ch_30:18, according to which, even in the beginning of Hezekiah’s reign, before the northern kingdom had fallen, a partial annexation of its inhabitants to the southern kingdom in respect of worship had taken place. Here also it is only the introduction of the remnant of the inhabitants of the north into the work of the purification of worship that is spoken of, not the exercise of a formal sovereignty over their country. What Neteler says, p. 261, of a supposed “reunion of the country of Israel with the kingdom of Judah” under Manasseh, and of an inheritance of this collective Israelitish kingdom, restored to its original compass, on the part of Josiah son of Manasseh, is devoid of all definite hold in the text as well of the books of Kings as of Chronicles.
2Ch_34:7. Pulled down the altars; here first is the chief sentence to the (in the form of an absolute sentence, 2Ch_34:6) premised determination of the scene of the king’s action.—And the asherim; לְהֵדַק is a perfect-like (retaining the vowel of the perfect) infinitive with לְ, on which see Ewald, § 238, d.—And he returned to Jerusalem, from his campaign against the idols, which had carried him into the former region of Ephraim and Simeon. In 2Ki_23:20 also is this notice found, but there certainly in reference to the eighteenth year of Josiah. A chronological contradiction of the two accounts, however, can scarcely be found in this circumstance; comp. Bähr on the passage.
2. The Purging of the Temple and Recovery of the Book of the Law: 2Ch_34:8-21. Comp. 2Ki_22:3-13, and Bähr on the passage.—In the eighteenth year . . . when he purged. לְטַהֵר is neither “after the purging, after he had purged” (Luther, de Wette, etc.), nor “in order to purge” (Berth., Kamph.), but a note of time and circumstance “in the purging” (Keil, Net.); comp. Jer_46:13. In the naming of Shaphan, his designation as scribe or royal secretary (2Ki_22:3) has perhaps fallen out of the text of our account by a mere oversight, for the two other officers named by the Chronist (reporting more exactly than 2 Kings) are introduced by the addition of their titles. For “repair (literally, ‘strengthen’) the house of the Lord,” see on 2Ch_24:5, and also on 2Ch_34:9 of the present report concerning the repair of the temple under Joash (2Ch_24:11-13); see, moreover, the Crit. Note on 2Ch_34:9.
2Ch_34:10. Put it into the hand of the work-masters, etc. וַיִּתְּנוּ is a resuming of the same verb in the foregoing verse, but connected with עַל־יַד, “into the hand,” by which the sense of “handing” is reached. For the plur. עשֵֹׁה הַמְּלָאכָה (for עשֵֹׁי ה׳), comp. 1Ch_23:24.—The work-masters . . . gave it, etc.; so according to the received text; but if, as 2Ki_22:5 seems to show, a לְ has fallen out before עשֵֹׁי, it should be rendered: “they gave it to the work-masters” (or labourers). The latter reading appears the more suitable, though it cannot be affirmed that it is the original one.
2Ch_34:11. And timber for girders and for joists of the houses, literally, “to joist the houses”; comp. Neh_3:3; Neh_3:6. This means, naturally, not any houses of the city, but the buildings of the temple.—Which the kings of Judah had destroyed, let go to ruin; a like exaggeration of phrase as in the case of Athaliah, 2Ch_24:7.
2Ch_34:12. And the men wrought faithfully at the work, literally, “were working.” For באמונה, “truly, conscientiously,” see on 2Ch_31:12.—To oversee the building; comp. לְנַצֵּח in essentially the same meaning, Ezr_3:8.—And the Levites, all that had skill in instruments of song; comp. 1Ch_15:16; 1Ch_25:7; Dan_1:17. These closing words of 2Ch_34:12 are to be connected with 2Ch_34:13 a, so that the repeated וְ is = “as well as.” This is simpler and less violent than the proposal of Bertheau, accepted by Kamph., to erase the first וְ of 2Ch_34:13, and annex the words “over the carriers” to 2Ch_34:12. On 2Ch_34:14, comp. 2Ki_22:8.—The book of the law of the Lord by Moses, that is, the Mosaic law (comp. for the phrase, 2Ch_33:8). The whole Torah at all events is meant, not merely Deuteronomy, as the modern critical school (last of all, Hitzig, Gesch p. 236) think; and not merely the groups of laws contained in the three middle cooks of the Pentateuch (according to Bertheau’s hypothesis, Beiträge zur israelit. Gesch. p. 375). Decisive grounds against these modern hypotheses, especially so far as they endeavour to connect the assertion of an origin from Manasseh or even Josiah with our passage, see in Kleinert, Das Deuteronomium und der Deuteronomiker, 1871, and in Klostermann, “Das Lied Mosis und das Deuteronomium,” Theol. Stud. und Krit. 1871, ii.;1872, ii. and iii. Comp. also Stähelin, Einleit. ins A. T. (1862) p. 242 ff.; J. Fürst, Gesch. der bibl. Literat. i. 351 ff.; and Bähr on 2Ki_22:7.
2Ch_34:16. And Shaphan brought the book to the king. Somewhat different in the parallel 2Ki_22:9, where at first it is only related: “and Shaphan the scribe came to the king,” and where, therefore, no עוֹד, “yet,” stands in the following: “and brought the king word.” The structure of the words in the Chronist appears in every respect the younger, although none of its deviations is of any essential importance; comp. Keil on this passage.
2Ch_34:17. Given it into the hands; comp. on 2Ch_34:10 at the beginning.
2Ch_34:20. And Ahikam son of Shaphan, the father of Gedaliah and protector of Jeremiah; see Jer_26:24; Jer_40:5. For the probable originality of the reading “Achbor” for “Abdon,” see the Crit. Note. The Achbor of this passage appears the same who is so named Jer_26:22; Jer_36:12.
Ver 21. And for them that are left in Israel, literally, “for that which is left”; a significant phrase, like the parallel 2Ki_22:13 : “for the people and for all Judah.” The expression “that is poured out” (נִתְּכָה) stands for the essentially synonymous “that is kindled” (נִצְּתָה) of the parallel.
3. Consultation of Huldah, and Solemn Reading of the Law in the Temple: 2Ch_34:22-33. Comp. 2Ki_22:14-20; 2Ki_23:1-3, and Bähr on this passage.—Went to Huldah . . . the wife of Shallum. The forefathers of this husband of Huldah are called in 2 Kings, not Tokehath and Hasrah, but Tikvah and Harhas.15 Which of these (nowhere else occurring) names are original cannot now be decided. For “the second” quarter or district of the lower city, see Bähr.—And they spake to her to this effect, namely, as Josiah had said to them; this כָּזֹאת, which reminds us of 2Ch_32:15, is wanting in 2 Kings.
2Ch_34:24. All the curses, etc.; in 2 Kings less strong: “all the words.”
2Ch_34:25. And my wrath is poured out on this place. As in 2Ch_34:21, here again stands the verb נתךְ instead of נצת, the one usual in the parallel (2Ki_22:17), which latter, moreover, the Sept. expresses also in our passage, perhaps because it appears to suit better the following words: “and will not be quenched.”
2Ch_34:27. Because thy heart was tender . . . when thou heardest his words. In the original text the construction is somewhat different, namely, “the words which thou hast heard” (2Ch_34:26 for example), “because thereby thy heart was made tender, and thou didst bow down before God, when thou heardest,” etc. The words הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר שָׁמַעְתָּ, absolutely prefixed, can scarcely be translated. In 2Ki_22:19, moreover, the words “against this place” are rendered still more distinct by the addition wanting here: “that they should become a desolation and a curse.”
2Ch_34:28. And they brought the king word again; comp. 2Ch_34:16.
2Ch_34:32. Caused all . . . to stand to it, namely, to the covenant. In 2Ki_23:3, instead of וַיַּעֲֽמֵד stands rather the Kalוַיַּעֲֽמֹד, joined with בַּבְּרִית, “and all the people stood to the covenant.”
2Ch_34:33. And Josiah took away all the abominations. For the relation of this statement, that reverts to 2Ch_34:3-7 in the way of recapitulation, to 2Ki_23:4-20, see above, Preliminary Remark, and on 2Ch_34:3, By “all the countries of the sons of Israel” are here meant the territories of the former kingdom of the ten tribes, as distinguished from Jerusalem and Benjamin, 2Ch_34:32 (that is, Jerusalem, Judah, and Benjamin). Comp. above, 2Ch_34:6, also 2Ki_23:15; 2Ki_23:19, where in particular Bethel and the cities of Samaria are mentioned as places of the former Israel that were subjected to the great purging process of Josiah.—And bound all … to serve (וַיַּֽעֲבֵד לַֽעֲבֹד), “caused to serve,” bound to the service of the Lord.—All his days they departed not from the Lord. This theocratic behaviour of the people during the whole reign of Josiah can, at all events, have only been external, without true conversion of heart, and therefore without real constancy; see Evangelical and Ethical Reflections, No. 1.
4. The Passover: 2Ch_35:1-19. Comp. 2Ki_23:21; 2Ki_23:23; as also the tolerably close Greek version of our section in 1Es_1:1-21 (in Tischendorf’s edit. of the Sept. the first book of Esdras).—And they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month; thus, though Hitzig (Gesch. p. 235) doubts it without any ground, at the time prescribed by law, otherwise than in the passover of Hezekiah, 2Ch_30:2 ff. The year of this solemnity is (2Ch_35:9; see on this verse) the eighteenth of Josiah’s reign, and therefore 623 (or 622) b.c.
2Ch_35:2. And he set the priests in their charges (watches; comp. 2Ch_7:6, 2Ch_8:14), in their functions; comp. 1Ch_23:32.—And strengthened them for the service of the Lord, by comforting, encouraging exhortation, as also by instructions in their legal functions; comp. Neh_2:18, where חִזֵּק stands in the same sense, and 2Ch_29:5.
2Ch_35:3. Who taught all Israel. Comp. הֵבִין in Neh_8:7; Neh_8:9, also the synonymous למד above, 2Ch_17:8-9. For the following designation of the Levites as “consecrated to the Lord,” that is, alone entitled to enter His sanctuary and conduct His holy service, comp. 2Ch_23:6.—Put the holy ark into the house. These words are somewhat surprising, and admit of various interpretations, as a parallel yielding a more definite explanation is wanting. But although not הָשִׁיבוּ, “bring back,” but תְּנוּ, “give place,” is the verb used, yet the assumption of a previous removal of the ark from its place in the holy of holies appears to present itself with constraining necessity, even if we think (with many ancients, as well as Berth. and Kamph.) of Manasseh or Amon as the author of this temporary transference of the ark; in which case, however, it would be very surprising that nothing should be expressly stated in the reign of these godless kings concerning so profane a violation; or if (with Starke and others) we consider Josiah’s repair of the temple to be the occasion of the temporary removal of the ark from its place, which is undoubtedly the simplest and best supposition. Quite arbitrary is the hypothesis of some ancients, that the ark was, in the days of the idolatrous kings, sometimes carried round the country as a means of strengthening the faith of the people, and Josiah now forbids this custom in the present words (see v. Mosheim in Calmet’s Bibl. Untersuchungen, vi. 226 ff.); and equally so the Rabbinical conceit, that Josiah here gives orders to remove the ark from its place in the holy of holies to a subterranean chamber, to place it in safety from the impending destruction of the temple. But even the rendering: “Leave the holy ark in the house, leave it in the temple, to which it properly belongs” (Keil, after the ancients), is arbitrary; and so is Neteler’s attempted emendation, which, against the grammar, would change the imperat. תְּנוּ into the perf. תַּנּוּ (from נתן = תנן, “give”), and translate accordingly: “And he said to the Levites, Those who taught all Israel, who were consecrated to the Lord, have put the ark of the sanctuary into the house,” etc. Were such an explanation of the passage possible, how surprising that it is first discovered in the 19th century !—It shall not be a burden on your shoulders; comp. Num_4:15; Num_7:9. The sense of these words can only be: ye have to minister to the ark of the Lord not as a moveable sanctuary, to be carried laboriously on the shoulders, through the wilderness or from city to city, but as the throne of God standing in the centre of the temple; the times of the toilsome and perilous (comp. 1Ch_13:9) transport of the ark are over; an easier ministry before this sanctuary, but not the less conscientiously to be discharged, now lies upon you. If we take the words thus (with Keil, Kamph., etc.), there seems to be no necessity for Bertheau’s assumption that the Levites at the pass-over had carried round the ark on their shoulders in an inconsiderate way, and Josiah therefore instructed them that this function of carrying was no longer binding on them with regard to the ark of the covenant.
2Ch_35:4. And make you ready (see Crit. Note) . . . after the writing of David, properly, “in the writing,” etc. (בְּ, as in 2Ch_29:25). There were then writings or notes (מִבְתָּב, as in 2Ch_26:22, 1Ch_28:19) of David and Solomon, in which these kings had established as law their prescriptions for the ministry of priests and Levites in the sanctuary, from which also our author had directly or indirectly drawn his former communications on this subject (1 Chronicles 23-26); comp. Introd. § 5, for example, and the preliminary remark in explanation of 1 Chronicles 23-26
2Ch_35:5. And a part of a father-house of the Levites (for each); so that to every division (פְּלֻגָּה, as Ezr_6:18) of the non-Levitical father-houses may correspond a part of a Levitical father-house (comp. 1Ch_24:6). In this way it is not necessary to erase וְ before חֲלֻקַּת in the sense of “and indeed,” or “namely” (against Berth.).
2Ch_35:6. Kill the passover and sanctify you, namely, by washing, before ye hand to the priests the blood to sprinkle on the altar; comp. 2Ch_30:16 f.
2Ch_35:7-9. The King and his Princes bestow Victims.—And Josiah dealt to the sons of the people; הֵרִים, bestow as a heave-offering, as in 2Ch_30:24, Ezr_8:25.—To the number of 30,000 head of small cattle, and 3000 bullocks,—the latter, as appears from 2Ch_35:13, for slaying and consuming as peace-offerings. All this was from the king’s domains; comp. 2Ch_31:3, 2Ch_32:29.
2Ch_35:8. And his princes presented a free gift; so is לִנְדָבָה to be taken here (comp. the corresponding לַפְּסָחִים for passover-offerings in the verse before), not as an adverb, “willingly,” as Berth. thinks. How many the princes gave as free gifts is not here mentioned (it is otherwise in 2Ch_30:24); for the three “rulers of the house of God” named in b as in 2Ch_35:9, and six chiefs of the Levites, are certainly as different from “the princes of the king” as the spiritual office-bearers in any kingdom are from the temporal. Moreover, of the three princes of the house of God, Zechariah, named next after the high priest Hilkiah, appears to be his nearest subordinate or deputy (כֹּהֵן מִשְׁנֶה, 2Ki_25:18); but the third, Jehiel, seems to be the head of the line of Ithamar (comp. Ezr_8:2, and Berth, on this passage). Of the six chiefs of the Levites named in 2Ch_35:9, three—Conaniah, Shemaiah, and Jozabad—have the same names with those named in 2Ch_31:12-15 on the occasion of the reform of Hezekiah, but are scarcely the same persons.
2Ch_35:10 ff. depicts the preparation of the passover and the sacrificial feast connected with it.—And the service was prepared (or arranged, Luther), comp. 2Ch_35:16; 2Ch_29:35; for the following, also 2Ch_30:16 f.
2Ch_35:12. And they removed the burnt-offering; הֵסִיר is here to separate the parts of the victim that were to be burned on the altar; comp. Lev_3:9 f., Lev_4:31. These parts are here called הָעוֹלָה, because, as the law of the peace-offering, Lev_3:6-16 (especially 2Ch_35:11; 2Ch_35:16), directs, they were wholly burned as the burnt-offering, and, moreover, on the flesh of the evening sacrifice. A special burnt-offering is not to be thought of, because such were not prescribed on the evening of the 14th Nisan for the pass-over; the only offerings to be presented thereon were the paschal lambs.—To give them to the divisions; “them,” namely, the separated pieces, to be burned as burnt-offerings.—And so with the oxen; they also (those special gifts in oxen mentioned 2Ch_35:7-9, 3800 head in all) were presented not as burnt-offerings or holocausts to be wholly burned, but as peace-offerings, to be eaten as a joyful festival in part, that is, after taking away the fat that was to be burned.
2Ch_35:13. And they roasted the passover with fire, according to the ordinance; see Exo_12:8-9. The “holy things” (הַקֳּדָשִׁים) are the slain oxen (see 2Ch_29:33). If it is further said of these, that their flesh, after being sodden in pots, etc., is to be brought “quickly” to the sons of the people, that is, the non-Levitical partakers in the feast, it does not follow that this was done on the first evening of the feast, the 14th Nisan, and thus that all that was provided, passover lambs and peace-offerings, was consumed on the very first evening (as Berth. and apparently also Kamph. think). On the contrary, Keil justly remarks: “Such a junction or rather mingling of the feast prepared of the roasted lambs with the eating of the boiled beef would have been so rude an offence against the legal prescriptions concerning the passover, that we shall not ascribe it either to King Josiah and the priests, or even to the author of Chronicles, as the latter expressly remarks that they proceeded in the festival according to the prescription of the law of Moses, and according to the ordinance.” Accordingly, that which is here and in the two following verses recorded concerning the preparation of the offering and the feast refers not merely to the opening evening, but to the whole seven days of unleavened bread.
2Ch_35:14. And afterwards, when the laity were provided for.—Because the priests . . . (were engaged) in offering the burnt-offering and the fat until night, and thus could not cook and prepare for themselves, the Levites must do this for them. Burnt-offering and fat appear to denote one and the same thing, and so to form a hendiadyoin; or also the conjunctive ו between the two phrases appears to be explicative (Keil).
2Ch_35:15. And the singers . . . were in their place (comp. 1Ch_23:28; 1Ch_25:1; 1Ch_25:6). What is here recorded concerning the co-operation of the singers and the porters in the solemnity clearly refers, as the comprehensive character of the scene shows, not merely to one, but to all the seven days of the feast. The phrase “that day,” at the beginning of 2Ch_35:16, does not oppose this view, but reverts to the 14th Nisan as the fundamental day of the festival; comp. the sing. יוֹם in Gen_2:4 and in 2Ch_35:17, which shows most directly and clearly the correctness of our interpretation.
2Ch_35:18. And there was no passover like that kept. . . from the days of Samuel. This does not contradict 2Ch_30:26, for there the point of comparison is the magnificence and numerous participation in the solemnity; here, on the contrary, its theocratic purity and legitimacy. Comp. above on that passage, as well as Bähr on the parallel 2Ki_23:22. On “all Judah and Israel that were present,” that is, so far as they were present, comp. 2Ch_34:33.
2Ch_35:19. In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover kept; thus in the same year in which, according to 2Ch_34:8, the full execution and conclusion of Josiah’s reform of worship took place (comp. on 2Ch_35:1). There is no proper chronological difficulty in this date, which is also found in 2Ki_23:23; for the 18th year which is here spoken of is a reign and calendar year (Bähr), and if dated from the autumn, from that time till the legal term of the paschal feast, about the middle of Nisan (in the spring of the following calendar year), all that is related in 2Ch_34:8-33 may take place. And all the more because not a little that referred to the cleansing and repair of the temple might have been already prepared in the previous years of Josiah’s reign (from the 12th, 2Ch_34:3).
5. Josiah’s Battle with Necho of Egypt, and End: 2Ch_35:20-27. Comp. 2Ki_23:25-30.—After all this . . . Necho, king of Egypt, came up; not the Necho I. (Ni-ik-ku-u sar Mi’-im-im-piu S’a-ai, “king of Memphis and Sais,” on an inscription of Asurbanipal) mentioned 2Ch_33:11, who had reigned before 664, but the successor of Psammetichus, Necho II., who reigned till about 605. The Assyrian (or rather Babylonian) king who is attacked by Necho in the present campaign is probably Asur-idil-ili, the Sarak of Abydenus and Syncellus (see Schrader, p. 231 ff.), or even, if Nineveh was already fallen, Nabo-polassar (see Then., Berth., Bähr, etc.), but by no means Sardanapalus (5. Gumpach, Zeitrechnung der Babyl. und Assyr. p. 146), who was much earlier. For Carchemish = Circesium, on the Euphrates, comp. the expositors on Isa_10:9; Jer_46:2.16
2Ch_35:21. What have I to do with thee? properly, “what is there to me and thee?” comp. Jdg_11:12; 2Sa_10:9; Joh_2:4.—I am not against thee this day, “I am come up” (עָלִיתִי), my attack is not on thee; after עָלֶיךָ the suffix of the second pers. is rendered emphatic by an added אַתָּה, which would be expressed in English by “even thee.”—But against the house of my war. ַThese words must, if original, be interpreted like the phrase: “man of wars of Tou,” 1Ch_18:10, or the similar form in 2Sa_8:10, and would thus denote the hereditary foe of the Egyptian king. But it seems more natural to amend, as in 1 Esdras 1, according to the Crit. Note.—And God hath commanded me to make haste. By this God, to whose command he was obedient, Necho means not any Egyptian deity, as the Targ. as well as some recent expositors (appealing to Herodotus, 2:158) think, but, according to 2Ch_35:22, the true supreme God, the acknowledgment of whom in the mouth of Necho cannot surprise us more than 2Ch_36:23 in the edict of Cyrus. The older expositors assume a special divine command (sive per somnium, sive per prophetam aliquem ad ipsum a Judœa missum) without sufficient necessity; what Necho had recognised as agreeable to the will of his Egyptian deity, that he transfers at once to a supposed indication of the will of Jehovah.
2Ch_35:22. But disguised himself to fight with him; he gave up his true character, the part of the peaceful, which he was bound to play, and engaged against the will of God in combat with Necho. Perhaps, however (with Berth., Kamph.), the reading of the Sept.: “but made himself strong for battle” (comp. 2Ch_25:11), is to be preferred. A literal disguise, such as that of Ahab, 2Ch_18:29, should in no case be thought of (against Starke and other ancients, also Neteler). For the well-founded opinion of our author, that the battle of Josiah with Necho was a contravention of the divine will, see Evangelical and Ethical Reflections, No. 1. For the valley of Megiddo, see on 2Ki_23:29 f.
2Ch_35:24. And his servants . . . put him in his second chariot, perhaps a more commodious one, which he had with him besides the war chariot. Not so exact 2Ki_23:30.
2Ch_35:25. And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah. This lamentation of Jeremiah was certainly included in the collection of lamentations (קִינוֹת) on Josiah mentioned immediately after at the end of the verse, but is no longer found in the present Lamentations of Jeremiah, which must be regarded as a later collection than that here named. Perhaps the passages in Jer_22:10; Jer_22:18, and Zec_12:11 contain allusions to the older laments in memory of Josiah that are here intended; comp. Nägelsbach on Jeremiah, and Köhler on Zechariah.
2Ch_35:26. And his kindness; חֲסָדִים, as in 2Ch_32:32 of Hezekiah, but more exactly defined in our passage by the addition: “as it is written in the law of the Lord,” corresponding to the characteristic peculiarity of Josiah, as a prince living and reigning in the strictest sense according to law.
6. Jehoahaz: 2Ch_36:1-4. Comp. 2Ki_23:30-35.—And the people of the land took Jehoahaz; the same mode of elevation to the throne as in Josiah, 2Ch_33:25, and Uzziah, 2Ch_26:1. In the present case, the will of the people took effect in a usurping way, as the younger brother (Jehoahaz, or properly Shallum; see 1Ch_3:15, and comp. remarks on this passage) was preferred to the older Jehoiakim, perhaps because they had learned to fear the latter on account of the tyrannical spirit early manifested by him (comp. on 2Ch_36:8).
2Ch_36:3. Put him down. For the here probably necessary supplement of מִמְּלֹךְ after וַיְסִירֵהוּ, see Crit. Note. On the terms 100 talents of silver and a talent of gold, which are also found in 2 Kings 23, see Bähr on this passage.
7. Jehoiakim: 2Ch_36:5-8. Comp. 2Ki_23:36 to 2Ki_24:7.—Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he became king, and so two years older than his brother Shallum-Jehoahaz.—Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar; according to the Assyrio-Babylonian monuments, Nabiuv-kudurriusur (comp. the Hebrew form נְבוּכַדְרֶאצוֹר, Jer_49:28 and Ezr_2:1, Kethib; likewise Ναβοκοδρόσορος in Alex. Polyhistor, Megasthenes, and Abydenus). The name (according to Schrader, p. 235) is compounded of the idol name Nabiuv or Nabu, the subst. Kudur, “crown” (κίδαρις), and the imperat. usur or nasar, “protect,” and means: “Nebo, guard the crown” (not Nebo guards the crown, as Keil states our passage and at Dan_1:1).—And bound him in fetters, as befell Manasseh, and as the Assyrio-Babylonish sovereigns were wont to do to all captive princes; comp. on 2Ch_33:11.—To carry him to Babel. That this carrying to Babel was only intended, not executed, almost all recent expositors justly assume; comp. besides Movers (Chron. p. 333), Bertheau, Keil, Neteler on our passage, also Bahr on 2Ki_24:1 ff., Nägelsbach on Jer_22:17 ff., as well as my remarks on Dan_1:2. If the Sept., which presents a text often deviating from the Masoretic text, and amplified with many additions, makes out of “to carry him” (לְהוֹלִיכוֹ) an actual “and carried him” (καὶ ἀνήγαγεν αὐτὸν εἰς Βαβυλῶνα), and also 1 Esdras and the Vulg. translate accordingly (et vinctum catenis duxit Babylonem), this has its ground in the erroneous assumption derived mainly from a onesided view of Dan_1:2, as if already the misfortune of being carried to Babel had befallen Jehoiakim, which, according to the sequel, first overtook his son Jehoiachin, whereas he himself, according to the express statement of 2Ch_36:5, reigned eleven years at Jerusalem (the last of these eleven years, naturally, as the vassal of Nebuchadnezzar). On the date of this first invasion of Nebuchadnezzar, according to Dan_1:1 “in the third year of Jehoiakim,” about 606 or 605 b.c., comp. our remarks in the Introd. to the book of Daniel, § 8 (Bibelw. xvii. 28, 30 ff.). On 2Ch_36:7, comp. Dan_1:2; Ezr_1:7.
2Ch_36:8. And his abominations which he did; not certainly a mere designation of the idolatry of Jehoiakim (as Berth. thinks, who understands עָשָׂה תוֹעֲבוֹת of the making of idols), but also of his other evil deeds—for example, his shedding of innocent blood, 2Ki_24:4. The next phrase: “and that which was found against him,” is a still more general and comprehensive expression for these evil deeds; comp. 2Ch_19:3.
8. Jehoiachin: 2Ch_36:9-10. Comp. the fuller account, 2Ki_24:8-17.—Jehoiachin was eight years old. That the number eight here is, at all events, a miswriting for eighteen, see in Crit. Note. Not merely in 2Ki_24:8 is Jehoiachin designated as a youth of eighteen years at his accession, but Eze_19:5-9 makes him appear at least as old, since he is depicted as a young lion, who practised man-stealing, oppressed widows, and laid waste cities, abominations which a boy of eight years could not have committed. Against Bertheau’s opinion, that it follows from 2Ki_24:12; 2Ki_24:15, Jer_22:26, where Jehoiachin’s mother is mentioned along with him, that he was still in his minority, and thus the present statement of the Chronist that he is only eight years old is correct, is the joint mention of the queen-mother in the account of the accession of a new king which is usual in the books of Kings, and occurs, for example, also in Jehoahaz (2Ki_23:31), Jehoiakim (2Ki_23:36), and Zedekiah (2Ki_24:18). For the name Jehoiachin, and its relation to the kindred form Jechoniah or Coniah, comp. on 2Ki_3:16.
2Ch_36:10. And at the turn of the year, in the spring, when men are wont to open the campaign (comp. 2Sa_11:1; 1Ki_20:22).—And brought him to Babel (“caused him to come”) with the goodly vessels, etc. In the mention of these “goodly vessels” (as in 2Ch_32:27) there is an advance in comparison with “some of the vessels,” as in 2Ch_36:7. The spoliation under Jechoniah (598 b.c.) was more thorough than under Jehoiakim.—And he made Zedekiah his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem. That this designation of Zedekiah, the last king before the exile, as the brother of Jehoiachin is inexact, and, according to 2Ki_24:17, to be explained by father’s brother (uncle,דּוֹר), or even directly changed into this term, is shown by the full list of Josiah’s four sons already communicated by the Chronist, 1Ch_3:15 f. Comp. on this passage, especially on 1Ch_3:16, where also mention is made of Mattaniah, the name borne by Zedekiah before he ascended the throne.
9. Zedekiah: 2Ch_36:11-21. Comp. 2Ki_24:18 to 2Ki_25:21, also Jeremiah 52. and 1Es_1:44-55.—Zedekiah was twenty-one years old. The younger Zedekiah, brother of Jehoiachin, and nephew of Mattaniah Zedekiah (see 1Ch_3:16), could not have been so old at the time when Jehoiachin, being eighteen years old, was deposed. The eleven years of Zedekiah’s reign extend from 598 to 587.
2Ch_36:12. Humbled himself not before Jeremiah the prophet from the mouth of the Lord, who spoke from the mouth of God; comp. 2Ch_35:22; Jer_23:16. Of these prophetic warnings and threatenings addressed by Jeremiah to Zedekiah, Jer_21:4 ff. especially comes into account; comp. also Jer_37:2 ff.
2Ch_36:13. And he also rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar. This revolt is also censured by the prophet Ezekiel (Eze_17:13 ff.) as a grievous transgression.—And he stiffened his neck (showed himself stiff-necked; comp. 2Ki_17:14; Jer_19:15, etc.) and hardened his heart, “made his heart firm.” Comp. Deu_2:30, where God is said to harden and make stiffnecked; which does not, however, warrant the conclusion that he must also here be the subject of וַיֶּקֶשׁ, as Bertheau thinks; comp., on the contrary, Deu_15:7.
2Ch_36:14. Also all the chiefs of the priests and the people transgressed very much; comp. Eze_8:6 ff., where priests and people are described as sunk in base idolatry under the last kings, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, while prominence is expressly given to the “elders of the people” (2Ch_36:11) and the priests (2Ch_36:16) as the chief participators in these abominations. Neither there nor here would a reference of the accusation concerning idolatrous abominations to an earlier time than that of the last kings, namely, to that of Manasseh and Amon, be justified (against Berth.). From the circumstance that in the prophetic discourses of Jeremiah such complaints of idolatry are less vehement under Zedekiah, no inference can be drawn against this view. The phrase: “chiefs of the priests,” denotes here, as in Ezr_10:5, the presidents of the twenty-four classes, together with the high priests, and therefore the same whom Ezekiel has in view in the twenty-five men in the temple; comp. Hitzig, Gesch. p. 238.
2Ch_36:15. Sent to them by his messengers, rising early and sending, constantly and earnestly; הַשְׁכֵּם וְשָׁלוֹחַ, as in Jer_26:5; Jer_29:19; Jer_35:14 f.—Because He had compassion on His people, exercised forbearance toward them, did not wish to deliver them over instantly to condign punishment.
2Ch_36:16. And they mocked, literally, “were mocking.” מַלְעִיבִים (also occurring in Syriac in the sense of subsannantes) is ἅπ. λεγ., of like import with מַלְעִיגִים30:10. Also the following מִתַּעְתְּעִים (Hithp. of תעע), “ape, befool,” occurs only here; the equivalent pilel, see in Gen_27:12. On the contents of the present accusation, comp. especially Eze_33:22. If, then, at first only Ezekiel, the prophet of the exiles, is named as mocked by the people, yet it cannot be doubted that mocking and reproach were often cast upon the other prophets, especially Jeremiah, whose bold exhortations to repentance had to encounter so much opposition on the part of the ungodly population under the last kings before the exile. There is, therefore, in the plural “messengers of God” and “prophets” no exaggeration, though there may be some rhetorical generalization In the expression.—Till there was no healing, till the threatening judgment could no longer be averted. Comp. on the phrase, 2Ch_21:18, 2Ch_30:20; Pro_6:15.
2Ch_36:17. And slew their young men with the sword. To וַיַּֽהֲרֹנ, “slew,” or “caused to slay,” also is God the subject, as to the foregoing and following verbs. To bring in Nebuchadnezzar here as the subject is to import an unnecessary harshness of construction (against Keil, Neteler). The temple, where the young men were slain, is designated the “house of the sanctuary,” because they had profaned it by their idolatry; comp. 2Ch_36:14 b. The Sept. (τοῦ ἁγιάσματος αὐτοῦ) unnecessarily changes בֵּית מִקְדָּשָׁם into ב׳ מִקְדָּשׁוֹ (2Ch_7:20).—The whole He gave into his hand; comp. Jer_27:6; Jer_32:3-4. The neutral הַכֹּל, notwithstanding that persons only are previously named, is used, in view of the vessels and treasures about to be mentioned in the following verse; yet it may be rendered “them all.”
2Ch_36:19. And they burned; comp. Jer_39:8; 2Ki_25:9.—And destroyed all its goodly vessels (comp. Isa_64:10, also 2Ch_36:10), literally, “to destroy”; comp. לְהַשְׁחִית in 2Ch_12:12.
2Ch_36:20. And he carried away those that remained from the sword, literally, “the remnant from the sword.” The following words: “and they became servants to him and his sons,” coincide with the prophecy, Jer_27:7.
2Ch_36:21. To fulfil; לְמַלֹּאת, as in 1Ch_29:5; Dan_9:2. The oracle here quoted stands in Jer_25:11 f. (comp. Jer_29:10), where, however, only the seventy years’ duration of the Babylonish bondage is predicted; but nothing is said of a representation of these seventy years as an expiation or requital for the neglect of the sabbath years. This symbolizing of the seventy years’ duration of the exile predicted by Jeremiah, contained in the words: “until the land enjoyed her sabbaths,” is taken from the passage Lev_26:34, where such an expiation of neglected sabbath-year solemnities by an equally long time of desolation was announced to the people; and the added remark: “all the days of the desolation she rested” (kept a sabbath), is taken word for word from this passage of Leviticus. That there were exactly seventy neglected sabbath-years, and therefore a period of 490 years on account of which the seventy years of exile (with the beginning of the Persian monarchy as terminus ad quem, see 2Ch_36:20) were decreed, our author scarcely assumes. The terminus a quo of his reckoning of the neglected sabbath-years need not be sought exactly 490 years before the beginning of the exile (606 or 605), in the time of the last judges, Eli and Samuel; and we can scarcely suppose the whole period of the kingdom down to the exile to have been marked by the neglect of the sabbath-years, since under such theocratic sovereigns as David, Solomon, and Hezekiah, the observation of the precept in question was scarcely omitted. The whole statement is only approximate (like that in 2Ch_35:18 regarding the passover of Josiah, and its relation to the preceding one); it is in no way fitted to be the basis of any calculations, whether of the number of sabbath-years neglected till the exile, or of the point from which these acts of neglect date.
10. Close; The Return from the Captivity under Cyrus: 2Ch_36:22-23. Comp. Ezr_1:1-3 (also 1Es_2:1-5); and on the coincidence of the beginning of Ezra with the close of Chronicles, Introd. §§ 2 and 3.—And in the first year of Cyrus, in the first year of his sovereignty over the former Babylonian-Assyrian monarchy, immediately after the taking of Babylon. For the name Cyrus (כּוֹרֶשׁ. Pers. Quurus), see the expositions on Ezr_1:1 and Isa_44:28.—That the word of the Lord … might be fulfilled;לִכְלוֹת (from כלהperfici, 2Ch_29:34) thus = לְמַלְּאוֹת of the verse before, as the same prediction of Jeremiah is spoken of there as here.—And he made proclamation, literally, “let go a cry”; comp. 2Ch_30:5.
2Ch_36:23. All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me. In the same way as Necho, 2Ch_35:21, Cyrus knows and confesses himself the instrument or the “anointed” (Isa_45:1) of the most high, living, and only true God, but designates Him not by the common name “God,” like the former, but at once as Jehovah, the name of the God of the Jews, whose existence and identity with his own supreme god he at once acknowledges, and therefore as the “God of heaven,” by the title which his supreme god, Ahuramazda, was wont to receive at the heads of all the royal edicts of the Persian sovereign. Comp. Evangelical and Ethical Reflections, No. 3.—Whoso is among you all of his people, the Lord his God (be) with him. That here probably יְהִי is to be read instead of יְהוָֹה, see in Crit. Note. On the abrupt termination of the narrative after these words of the royal edict, see Introd. as quoted above.
Evangelical And Ethical Reflections And Homiletic Hints On 2 Chronicles 34-36
1. The last mighty outburst of the theocratic spirit under Josiah, which brought in at the same time the last flourishing epoch of the Jewish kingdom and people, is depicted by our author with comparative fulness in one respect, namely, as regards the great passover after the purging of the temple, which accords with his Levitical leanings, with much greater fulness than by the author of the books of Kings. If he not only celebrates the theocratic purity, exactitude, and legitimacy of this festival, as one the like of which had not been held during the whole period of the kings (from the days of Samuel the prophet, 2Ch_35:18), but praises the pious deeds of Josiah as it is written in the law of the Lord, 2Ch_35:26, designates the single case in which he renounced his character as a prince of peace, walking strictly according to law, as a disguising of himself, as being untrue to himself (2Ch_35:22), and in the very opening of his description gives him a commendation which was given to no other king, namely, that he walked in the ways of David his father, and declined not to the right hand nor to the left (2Ch_34:2), nothing of all this appears to be exaggerated; on the contrary, the whole extremely favourable picture of the prince is correctly conceived and faithfully rendered from the standpoint of our author. In the second book of Kings, while no specially Levitical leaning affects the pragmatism of the narrator, the praise of his walking in the footsteps of David, without declining to the right or left, is set forth with equal prominence; and a special aspect of his theocratic disposition and demeanour, his zeal in the extirpation of idolatry, is there described still more minutely and commended with more fulness (2Ki_23:4-20) than in the account before us, which compresses that which is here referred to, as already sufficiently known, into a brief sketch of a few verses. But as there, so here, it is manifest, amid the glory of his theocratic success, that his strenuous efforts were unsatisfactory, and insufficient to effect a permanent recovery, a true regeneration of the people of God. That, notwithstanding the sincerity of his conversion, “the Lord turned not from the great hotness of His anger which was kindled against Judah because of the provocations of Manasseh,” but rather the divine sentence of extirpation against the kingdom of Judah remained unrevoked (2Ki_23:26 f.),—this our author certainly does not say in the express words of the older parallel text; indeed he appears, according to 2Ch_34:33, to add to the testimony for the sincerity of the king’s conversion the assurance of the reality of the conversion of the people, when he writes: “All his days they departed not from the Lord God of their fathers.” But even this “all his days” contains a fatal limitation of the praise here bestowed on the endeavours of Josiah; and the lamentable state of idolatrous degeneracy which betrayed itself immediately under his sons (2Ch_36:5 ff.), and which was the fault no less of the maladministration of these last kings than of the apostasy of the chiefs of the priests and the people (2Ch_36:14), sufficiently shows that the adherence of Judah to the law of the Lord during the period from the reform of Josiah to his death was by no means sincere or truly genuine, but rather the complaints uttered in the last days of the kingdom by Jeremiah, of the unfaithfulness, the inner apostasy, and immorality, uncleanness, corruption indeed, of the people (Jeremiah 11, 13, 25, etc.), were fully justified. The insufficiency of mere reforms of the theocratic worship, healing only the surface, not the deep seat of the wound, and accordingly, as all that could serve the king as the standard for his reforming action lay in the ordinances of worship, the inadequacy of the law to the production of true life, that ἀδύνατον τοῦ νόμου (Rom_8:3), that impotence of the law to secure true freedom, true righteousness, and assured hope of the heavenly inheritance (Gal_3:4; Romans 7),—all this came out with astonishing clearness in the history of the reform of Josiah, which was pursued with so much zeal and sudden success, and yet yielded so transient a result. The king hears the words of the law discovered in the temple; the curses which it pronounces on the infidelity of the apostates pierce through his heart; he rends his garments, weeps, and bows down in deep, sincere sorrow before God. He succeeds also in inspiring the rulers of the people, if not with the same spirit of sincere repentance, yet with the fiery zeal that turns to the monuments and instruments of idolatry, and repeats the deeds of an Elijah. And what does he effect by all this? The stern message of Huldah announces this to him: for himself, and for the duration of his reign, he shall enjoy the blessings of walking with God; in peace he shall be gathered to his fathers’ sepulchres; his eyes shall not see air the misfortune which the Lord is determined to bring upon his kingdom and city; for His wrath is now once for all poured out on this place, and nothing is now able to quench it (2Ch_34:23-28). It is impossible more thoroughly and powerfully to exemplify and exhibit what is the curse which the law works (Gal_3:13) than by these words of Huldah, of which it can scarcely be said whether they are more an exhortation to repentance or a promise of mercy (comp. the in many ways similar address of Azariah ben Oded to King Asa, 2Ch_15:1-7). And not even the salvation and blessing which they promise the king on account of his personal piety—that he shall depart in peace to his fathers—is fulfilled in a perfectly satisfactory way. Josiah departs before he has seen all the misfortune that the Lord has threatened to send, but as a brand plucked from the fire! Not in a painless way is he brought home to his fathers, but through conflict, war, and bloodshed, as he himself had willed. The only infidelity of which he made himself guilty in an otherwise irreproachable walk is avenged by a certainly only temporal (slaying only the body, not the soul), but yet terribly sharp and severe punishment; and even thereby is the series of judgments which bring on the end of the Jewish state and kingdom immediately introduced.
2. Josiah’s defeat and tragic decease is the beginning of the end. As a fair but rapidly-overspreading evening glow after a dull, rainy day indicates the approaching nightfall, so his reform of worship, as the last powerful movement of the theocratic spirit, almost immediately precedes the sinking of the people of God into the murky night of political annihilation and protracted subjugation. It goes rapidly down, after its better administration of the people and the kingdom had once risen to a certain height; and, like that better emperor of the house of Palæologus shortly before the fall of the Byzantine Empire, or like the reign of Louis XVI. as the forerunner of the terror of the French Revolution, had delayed for a short time the execution of the sentence of extirpation, already ripened into an inevitable decree under the last preceding kings. The Chronist indicates this rapid riding of the dead that came on after the decease of Josiah, this entrance of the galloping consumption into the long since internally rotten and putrid state of Judah, by the extreme brevity with which he despatches the last four reigns. In a way more summary still than the author of the books of Kings, who likewise does not dwell very long on them, he depicts the ungodly practice of the first three successors of Josiah, to none of whom he devotes more than four verses, and for none of whom he has any word of praise or acknowledgment—not even for Jehoahaz, with respect to whom he does not indeed employ the formula used of the following two, in harmony with 2 Kings, “and he did that which was evil before the Lord” (comp., on the contrary, 2Ki_23:32), but simply on account of his epitomizing habit, as he hastens to the end, not because he cherished any better opinion of him. On Zedekiah he dwells somewhat longer; but not to report more fully the public acts of this unfortunate last of the Davidic kings, nor to depict the terrible catastrophe of wasting and destruction forming the close of his reign with the same fulness as in 2 Kings 25 or Jeremiah 52, but only to exhibit the ungodliness and perversity, carried out to the end, of the course of both king and people, in a pragmatic, reflective way, as the cause of the inevitable judgment (see vers. 13–16), and to display the contrast between this course and the incessant but always ineffectual cries of admonition and warning coming from the prophet Jeremiah (vers. 12, 21). His report of the fall of Jerusalem and the beginning of the Babylonish captivity (vers. 17–20) is, compared with the fuller accounts of the parallels, in fact, as compendious as possible, but by its very conciseness and brevity produces only the deeper and more powerful impression.
3. The conclusion of his historical account, 2Ch_36:22-23, is also characteristic for the standpoint and method of our author. While the author of the books of Kings (2Ki_25:27-30) closes with a notice of the release of the captive king Jehoiachin in the middle of the exile, by the grace of the Babylonian king Evilmerodach, and thus, in correspondence with his paramount interest in the personal fate of the king, reports a mere prelude of the final release of Judah from the exile, and not the very release itself, our work closes with a notice, though brief, of the cessation of servitude in a foreign land by the gracious edict of Cyrus. In this characteristic trait is exhibited the historian who bears on his priestly heart the fortune of the whole people, not merely of the royal house. As he had set forth immediately before the divinely decreed and prophetically attested necessity of a servitude of seventy years, to compensate for the past neglect of seventy sabbath-years, so he cannot but point, at the close of his work, to the final fulfilment of this prediction. The internal organic connection of this closing notice, by which the fair perspective opens into a new and more fruitful beginning of the history of the covenant people after the exile, with that which was recorded immediately before concerning the last kings before the exile and their downfall, is as clear as day, and precludes any such opinion as that the contents of 2Ch_36:22-23 stood originally only at the beginning of Ezra, and was afterwards Added at the close of our work by a later hand (comp. Introd. § 3, p. 7). But these closing Verses betray their originality and integral connection with the whole preceding work not only by the manifest reference to predictions of Jeremiah and Moses quoted in ver. 21, but also by this, that they add to that earlier testimony from the mouth of Necho to the fate of Israel-Judah as divinely decreed and carried on (2Ch_35:21) by the counsels of the supreme living God, the God of heaven (2Ch_36:22), a second such testimony on the part of a holder of the heathen world-power; as if it were intended to prove to superfluity that God’s judicially strict but also gracious rule over His deeply guilty and corrupt people might be known in its reality, and according to its salutary effect on the people, even on the part of the heathen executors of His judgments. Necho and Cyrus appearing as witnesses of the divine truth, as involuntary and more or less unconscious heathen prophetic announcers of the severity and the goodness of God in reference to the destiny of His people, as prophetic dispensers of blessing to Israel,—as Balaam formerly,—the one as a foe, but the other as a friend and protector, yea, as the type of its future Messiah (comp. Isa_45:1);—in this light the close of our history presents the relations of the heathen world-powers to the people of God when entering the period of its development after the exile. His representation in this respect corresponds with the mode of thought of the prophets before the exile, especially Jeremiah, to whom the world-power external to Israel had ceased to appear as something absolutely opposed to God, so that they frequently warn their people against foolish opposition to it, and inculcate willing submission to its authority (comp. Bibelw. XV. p. X. ff., and especially E. Vilmar, “Der Prophet Jeremia,” in the monthly journal Bew, des Glaubens, Bd. v. 1869, p. 19 ff.); and on the other hand, with the view of the world taken by the prophetic men of God of and after the exile, as Daniel, Zechariah, etc., in accordance with which the dependence of the destiny of Israel on such of the world-powers as were occasional executors of the judicial and beneficent providence of God is presupposed as a thing understood of itself, a certain mission-call of Israel in reference to the heathen nations around is preached, and the continuance of this state to the entrance of the Messianic era is announced (comp. Bibelw. Bd. xvii. pp. 3 f., 37 f., 41; also Hengstenb. Gesch. des Reiches Gottes, ii. 2, p. 277 ff.). It is of no small consequence that the Old Testament Chronicles, the most comprehensive historical work of sacred literature, closes with such universalistic views of Israel’s call of salvation to all nations, and of the future union of all in faith in Jehovah as the one and only true God. Its end thus turns to its beginning. Setting out from the first Adam, the author concludes his work with the consoling expectation of the future and not far distant, but rather, in the reconstruction of the theocracy promoted by the edict of Cyrus, already guaranteed and necessarily involved restitution of the blessed kingdom of the second Adam, the Redeemer of the world.
Footnotes:
[1] מִזְבְּחוֹתַיִם is probably an error of transcription for מִזְבְּחוֹתָם
[2]Instead of the Keri בְּחַרְבֹתֵיהֶם, that appears formed after Eze_26:9, or Neh_4:7, but yields not suitable sense, we should point בְּחָרְבֹתֵיהֶם, in ruinis eorum (comp. Psa_109:10). The Kethib: בָּחַר בָּתֵּיהֶם, “he chose (examined, searched) their houses,” is scarcely warranted by the usage of speech.
[3]The Kethib וְישְׁבֵי is undoubtedly to be preferred to the Keri ויָּשֻׁבוּ, “and they returned.”
[4]For עַבְדּוֹן the Syr. presents עַכְבּוֹר, which seems to be the original reading according to 2Ki_22:12.
[5]For אֲשֶׁר הַמֶּלֶךְ is to be read, according to the Sept: וא׳ אמר המּ׳, “and whom the king had commanded.”,
[6] Kethib וַיַּקְטִרוּ, “have burned offerings”; Piel, as 2Ki_22:17 : “have burned incense.”
[7] Kethib המבונים, perhaps only a slip of the pen for הַמְּבִינִים (Keri), “the teaching, instructing”; some mss. give this directly as the Kethib; some have המבינים, which is perhaps only another way of miswriting the original המבינים.
[8]The Kethib הִבּוֹנוּ (imp. Niph. “make you ready”) is undoubtedly to be preferred to the Keri הָכִינוּ, “prepare ye” (comp. 2Ch_35:6).
[9]The difficult phrase אֶל־בֵּית מִלְחַמְתִּי is not translated by the Sept.; the Vulg. gives the very free rendering: sed contra aliam pugno domum. The original text is perhaps still to be discovered from 1Es_1:25 : ἐπὶ γὰρ τοῦ Εὐφράτω ὁ πόλεμός μού ἐστι, namely, אֶל־פְּרָת מִלְחַמְתִּי (comp. also Josephus, Antiq. x. 5, 1). So at least O. F. Fritzsche (on 1 Esdras), Berth., and Kamph.
[10]Instead of הִתְחַפֵּשׂ, “disfigured, unrobed himself,” the Sept. read (ἐχραταιώθη) הִתְחַוֵּק (comp. 2Ch_25:11); the Vulg. (præparavit) and 1 Esdras (ἐπεχείρει) appear only to have run into the indefinite.
[11]Instead of וַיְסִירֵהוּ, “and removed, put him down,” the Sept. read (ἔδησεν) וַיַּאַסְרֵהוּ, agreeing with 2Ki_23:33. But the Vulg., Syr., and 1 Esdras confirm the Masoretic reading The last (1Es_1:33) seems to have read וַֽיְסִרֵהוּ מִמְּלֹךְ, with a supplement which Berth., Kamp., and others pronounce necessary before בירושלם.
[12]The Sept., Vulg., and 1 Esdras change לְהוֹלִיבוֹ into the past וַיּוֹיבֵהוּ; comp. Exeg. Expl.
[13] שְׁמֹנֶה, though the Sept. and Vulg. give the number 8, is certainly an error of the pen for שׁמנה עשׂרה; comp 2Ki_24:8, also some Hebr. manuscripts, the Syr. and Arab. in our passage.
[14]For יְהוָֹה the parallels Ezr_1:3 and 1Es_2:5 present יְהִי, which is perhaps the original form.
[15]Not Harham, as Luther and after him also Bähr (changing the ם into ם) write
[16]Recently G. Maspero (De Carchemis oppidi situ et historia antiquissima, Lut. Par. 1872) has attempted to identify Carchemish with the town Mabug = Βαμβύkη or Hierapolis, north-east of Aleppo, following the lead of Ephraem on 2Ki_23:30.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 19 HE DESTROYS IDOLATRY. (Ch2 34:3-7)
HE DESTROYS IDOLATRY. (Ch2 34:3-7)
in the eighth year of his reign--This was the sixteenth year of his age, and, as the kings of Judah were considered minors till they had completed their thirteenth year, it was three years after he had attained majority. He had very early manifested the piety and excellent dispositions of his character. In the twelfth year of his reign, but the twentieth of his age, he began to take a lively interest in the purgation of his kingdom from all the monuments of idolatry which, in his father's short reign, had been erected. At a later period, his increasing zeal for securing the purity of divine worship led him to superintend the work of demolition in various parts of his dominion. The course of the narrative in this passage is somewhat different from that followed in the Book of Kings. For the historian, having made allusion to the early manifestation of Josiah's zeal, goes on with a full detail of all the measures this good king adopted for the extirpation of idolatry; whereas the author of the Book of Kings sets out with the cleansing of the temple, immediately previous to the celebration of the passover, and embraces that occasion to give a general description of Josiah's policy for freeing the land from idolatrous pollution. The exact chronological order is not followed either in Kings or Chronicles. But it is clearly recorded in both that the abolition of idolatry began in the twelfth and was completed in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign. Notwithstanding Josiah's undoubted sincerity and zeal and the people's apparent compliance with the king's orders, he could not extinguish a strongly rooted attachment to idolatries introduced in the early part of Manasseh's reign. This latent predilection appears unmistakably developed in the subsequent reigns, and the divine decree for the removal of Judah, as well as Israel, into captivity was irrevocably passed.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv6, 11, 12, 13, 33 6. Cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon, even…
6. Cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali — The northern kingdom having been long since broken up, and the new colonists from the East having no power or special care to hinder him, Josiah probably met with no great opposition in overthrowing “all the idols throughout all the land of Israel.” 2Ch_34:7.
With their mattocks — Margin, with their mauls; others, with their swords. Furst connects the phrase with “burnt the bones” in the preceding verse, and then renders the phrase “in their palatial resting-places,” that is, their princely graves or mausoleums. Gesenius adopts the Kethib, and renders “he proved their houses,” that is, examined the houses of the idolaters. But we incline to the view of Bertheau, who adopts the Keri, and points it thus בהרבתיהם: the meaning then is, as the same word is translated in Psa_109:10, in their desolate places, or, in their ruins. Josiah overthrew idolatry in the cities named, which were many of them in ruins, and all of them, perhaps, might have been spoken of as desolate places. But notwithstanding their ruin, many signs of their old idolatry remained.
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The remainder of the chapter (2Ch_34:8-33) is substantially identical with 2Ki_22:3-20; 2Ki_23:1-3, where see notes.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–33 Ch. 2Ch_34:1-2 (= 2Ki_22:1-2). Josiah’s good Reign
Ch. 2Ch_34:1-2 (= 2Ki_22:1-2). Josiah’s good Reign
1. In Jerusalem one and thirty years] R.V. thirty and one years in Jerusalem (as 2 Kin.). Here the Chronicler omits Josiah’s mother’s name; cp. 2Ch_33:1; 2Ch_33:21.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 (1) Josiah was eight years old.—So 2Ki_22:1, which adds,…
(1) Josiah was eight years old.—So 2Ki_22:1, which adds, “and his mother’s name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath.”
(1, 2) Length and character of the reign.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 This chapter, with the following, embraces the entire of…
This chapter, with the following, embraces the entire of the beneficent reign of Josiah, son of Amon the son an illustrious contrast to the father. The parallel (2Ki_22:1-20; 2Ki_23:1-30) is less full, and also, so far as chronology goes, less clear in the earlier verses. For once the writer of Kings spends his strength more largely than our compiler on the moral and religious aspects of Josiah"s work, and is rather scantier in the detail of his external works for his nation, city of Jerusalem, and temple. He, however, gives very much less prominence to the matter of the celebration of the Passover.
Again the name of the mother is omitted. From the parallel we learn she was "Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath.
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HOMILETICS.
Vers. 1-33.
The reign of Josiah its unexpected boon, in a republication of revealed religion, with the legitimate and happy results following thereupon.
In the reign and person of Josiah, once more and for the last time in the now numbered years of the kingdom of Judah, the light of piety and "goodness" flickered up in the socket. His reign began when his yearn numbered but eight; it lasted thirty-one years. Four reigns succeeded his to the date of the destruction of Jerusalem, but the four together occupied but twenty-two or twenty-three years in all. The term of life is run, therefore, within a very short length, and the pensive sadness of the coming end falls upon us before the horrors of the end itself overwhelm us. Josiah"s care for the reformation of the national religion emulated, rather exceeded, that of any predecessor. (2Ki_23:22, 2Ki_23:25) He boldly denounced and destroyed, enlisted help and spiritual sympathy, and reconstructed. And, both by word and deed, laid most solemn stress on the immaculate celebration of the sacred Passover. And explain it as we may, there was granted to him and his reign an opportunity, and it not neglected, which bid fair, going to the root of the matter, to promise brighter days days of more lasting brightness for the welfare of the people, in the true security of religion. But the knell of doom was already clanging. To the piety of Josiah, it was not so much that respite of the dread sentence on Judah was given, but this was given, the condescending information and merciful assurance that it was dated to a time when he would be "gathered to his fathers, and gathered to his grave in peace, and his eyes not see all the evil" (vers. 27, 28). This, with some special emphasis, came true; for Josiah, though slain in battle, and so far not dying "in peace," did die in peace, so far as the end or captivity of Judah was concerned; and he was the last of the kings who received honourable burial in Jerusalem. Three of his successors and descendants died in captivity, and if Jehoiakim, the other of the four last kings, eventually "slept with his fathers", (2Ki_24:6) in the sense of his dust resting with theirs, it was not so at first (Jer_22:19 Jer_36:30; Eze_19:8, Eze_19:9) The remarkable opportunity already spoken of, which was granted to Josiah in the interest of religion for his nation, which came on him so unexpectedly, which made such deep impression on him, and which he endeavoured with all his might to turn to the greatest and best advantage, may be dwelt upon, in all its lasting significance, for every time of day. The fact of the sudden discovery of "the book of the Law of the Lord by Moses" (Deu_31:26; also 10-13) loses its wonder perhaps for ourselves, as we look back on that history, as compared with the other extraordinary fact and appalling thought, that it had been lost, so lost that its very existence, the tradition of it, seemed as a thing unknown to Josiah. Counting the years of the reign of Manasseh, of Amon, and those which had already elapsed of Josiah, we may say that the sacred manuscript had been lost for some eighty years. In point of fact, some pious priest among the degenerate rank-and-file of the priests had probably carefully hidden it at the beginning of the iniquities of Manasseh. The wonder nevertheless is still left, that no quest of it, no literal active search for it, seems to have been made, and no perpetuation of the tradition of it even, by priest or prophet, seems to have been at hand, for Josiah to have had the opportunity of availing himself of it. It is not impossible to surmise partial explanations to meet the difficulty, but the surprising fact is full of significance. Practically the incident amounted to this that to Josiah was vouchsafed some "republication of revealed religion." And his treatment of the novel, the startling message of revelation is a very parable in itself. We may for the text of this parable, to call it such, be reminded of the reputed words of father Abraham," in our blessed Lord"s parable of the rich man and Lazarus, when he says of the five brethren of the rich man in torments, "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. " They had not heard them, i.e. had not practically heeded them. But Josiah hears and heeds. And are we not confronted very happily and very suggestively, though in very brief, with these examples of the just demands of revealed religion, justly met? viz. when we read how
I JOSIAH "HEARS" IT.
II BELIEVES IT.
III REVERENTLY FEARS IT, AS HE PERMITS IT TO SINK INTO HIS VERY SOUL, AND DOES NOT RESIST IT, NOR TRY TO DROWN IT, NOR PUT IT OFF TO BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION AT A MORE CONVENIENT SEASON.
IV WITH ALL URGENCY MAKES FULL INQUIRY, AND THAT IN THE RIGHT QUARTERS RESPECTING ITS FULL AND MOMENTOUS IMPORT.
V DILIGENTLY GUIDES HIMSELF PRACTICALLY BY IT.
VI CALLS WITH THE VOICE OF A TRUE PREACHER ALL AROUND HIM TO HEAR AND HEED THE SAM, E, AND WITHOUT A QUIBBLE OR DELAY TO ENTER INTO COVENANT WITH THAT GOD, WHO SO REVEALS HIMSELF, HIS TRUTH, HIS WILL, HIS COMMANDS, AND THE FEARFUL OR OTHERWISE THE AWEINSPIRING SANCTIONS BY WHICH THEY ARE ACCOMPANIED. The rich man, the five brethren of the rich man, Judah and Israel, and countless millions upon millions of others, would have been saved and blessed had they been followers of Josiah. How many of modern days, how many of ourselves have neglected, are neglecting, and are making a mock of sin, because of neglecting the simple, faithful example of Josiah, as to the way to receive God"s revelation of his truth and will for our lives!
HOMILIES BY T. WHITELAW Vers. 1-7.
Josiah the good.
I HIS EARLY ACCESSION. "Josiah "Whom Jehovah heals" was eight years old when he began to reign" (ver. 1). Manasseh, Uzziah, and Joash had been twelve, sixteen, and seven respectively when they ascended the throne. Generally speaking, it is perilous to have greatness thrust upon one at too early an age; sometimes premature responsibility calls forth capacities that might otherwise have continued latent. Edward VI, who assumed the crown of England in his tenth year, Charles IX, who was of the same age when he was raised to the throne of France, and Kang Hi (A.D. 1661), who became Emperor of China in his seventh year, wereexamples of the truth here stated.
II HIS FERVENT RELIGION. Josiah"s piety was:
1. Ancestral. If his father Amen was not a good man, but the opposite an insensate idolater and a hardened trangressor (2Ch_33:22, 2Ch_33:23) his mother Jedidah, "Beloved," the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath, (2Ki_22:1) may have been a good woman, who, like Eunice of later times, (2Ti_1:5) nurtured her son in the fear of Jehovah. Besides, as that son was six years of age before Manasseh died, he may have received from his aged grandfather such instructions as disposed him to the choice of the true religion of Jehovah. In any case, in him was reproduced the piety of the best sovereigns that had preceded him in particular of Hezekiah, Jotham, Jehoshaphat, and David.
2. Early. "In the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father" (ver. 3). Youthful piety, of which Scripture furnishes numerous examples Samuel, (1Sa_2:26) Abijah, (1Ki_14:13) Obadiah, (1Ki_18:12) John, (Luk_1:80) Jesus, (Luk_2:52) Timothy (2Ti_1:5) while beautiful in all, is specially attractive in princes. King Edward VI, besides being a good linguist, "had a particular regard for the Holy Scriptures" (Bishop Burnet). That religion which begins in youth is most likely to be permanent, and certain to be most useful. Christ commends religion to the. (Mat_6:33)
3. Sincere.
(1) Earnest and active, not merely nominal and formal: "He began to seek after the God of David his father," which meant that he inquired after and practised the rites and commandments of the true religion.
(2) Humble and obedient, not proud and self-willed: "He did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David his father" (ver. 2), in so far, i.e., as he walked in the ways of Jehovah.
(3) Persevering and thorough, not intermittent and incomplete: "He turned not aside to the right hand or to the left" (ver. 2).
III HIS ZEALOUS REFORMATION. I The period of it. Beginning in his twelfth year of reign, i.e. the twentieth of his life, and terminating in his eighteenth year of reign, or the twenty-sixth of his life, it occupied six years in all (vers. 3, 8).
2. The scene of it.
(1) Jerusalem, the metropolis of the kingdom. Reformations, like charity, should begin at home. Many would reform others who have no heart to reform themselves. (Son_1:6)
(2) Judah, of which Jerusalem was the capital. Though "beginning at Jerusalem," Josiah"s reformation should not end there. A good king will give his first thoughts to the improvement of himself; his second, to the improvement of his capital, where his court sits and whence his laws proceed; his third, to the improvement of his land and people; his fourth, to the improvement of cities, empires, nations beyond, as far as lies within his power.
(3) The cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali, in their ruins round about. A good. king will extend his influence as widely as possible, and in particular strive to be helpful to those peoples in his vicinity that are less enlightened or more necessitous than himself.
1. The manner of it. With "The violence probably hinted at in the phrase, with their axes" (ver. 6, margin). "The reformation executed by the king was earnestly intended; it was thorough, it was comprehensive; but it was above everything violent" (Ewald, "History of Israel," 4:237). This appears more distinctly from 2 Kings. (2Ki_23:4-20) But the extirpation of religious, no more than of political abuses, can be carried out without a degree of harshness. Privileged iniquity in Church or in state is always difficult to dislodge.
2. The extent of it. Judah, Jerusalem, and the Israelitish cities already mentioned were purged from high places, Asherim, images and altars (vers. 3-7). Particularly
(1) the altars of the Baalim were broken down in the young king"s presence, the sun-images above them being hewn down at his command (ver. 4);
(2) the Asherim or "pillars and trees of Asherah" (Keil), with the graven and molten images connected with the impure worship of Astarte, were broken in pieces, and their dust (after burning) strewn upon the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them (ver. 4) the Book of Kings speaking of the removal of the Asherah from the house of the Lord, and the destruction of the houses of the infamous women who wove tents for the idol; (2Ki_23:6, 2Ki_23:7) and
(3) the bones of the priests who had sacrificed at the heathen shrines having first been exhumed from their graves, were burnt upon the altars at which the priests had ministered before these were destroyed.
LESSONS.
1. The beauty of early piety.
2. The excellence of Christian zeal.
3. The difficulty of executing reformations. W.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 14, 27, 28 Josiah was eight years old when he began to…
2Ch_34:1-8
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign.
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Josiahs early piety
I. The possibility of youthful responsibility. Other children besides Josiah have been called to the cares of a kingdom. Manasseh commenced to reign at twelve, Joash was seven, Uzziah sixteen; Henry III and Edward VI of England were both nine; four of the Scottish kings, James II, III, IV, and V, ascended the throne when children. Of the French kings, Louis I. began to reign at sixteen, Louis IX at eleven, Louis XIII at nine, Charles VI at eleven, Charles IX at ten; Louis XIV, inheriting the kingdom at five, assumed full control by his own force of character at thirteen. Charles I of Spain, better known as Charles V of Germany, became king at sixteen; Charles II at fourteen, seizing the kingdom from an ill-governing regency which had existed since his fourth year.
II. Early piety is possible and desirable. When does the period of moral accountability begin? We cannot fix it definitely. But this much is certain: whenever the child can intelligently choose this or that because it is right or wrong, then has moral accountability commenced, and the child can be a Christian.
III. The influence of good advisers. Josiah was but a boy, and yet around him were spiritual Titans--Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Jeremiah.
IV. The energy of youthful piety.
V. The influence of the surrounding atmosphere on piety. We must be watchful against irreligious influences. (Monday Club Sermons.)
Importance of early piety
Ancient nations would not receive old men into their armies, as being unfit for service. Let us not wait until we can only offer unto Him who hath loved us dry and worthless bones. (W. M. Taylor, D.D.)
The example of Joash
There is at the top of the Queens staircase in Windsor Castle a statue from the studio of Baron Triqueti, of Edward VI., marking with his sceptre a passage in the Bible, which he holds in his left hand, and upon which he earnestly looks. The passage is this concerning Josiah: Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David, his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left. The statue was erected by the will of the late Prince Consort, who intended it to convey to his son the Divine principles by which the future governor of England should mould his life and reign on the throne of Great Britain. (T. Hughes.)
Early piety
I was admitted into the Church at the early age of eight. I dont remember that I experienced at the time any extraordinary work of God on my soul. I loved Christ, and felt a strong desire to be identified with His people. When I mentioned the fact to some of the deacons some of them looked askance, and expressed grave doubts as to the propriety of allowing one so young to sit at the Lords table. Among them, however, there were wiser men. Their counsels prevailed, and after some months of probation I was admitted. From that day until now I have never ceased to thank God that I was induced to take the important step at the time I did. Had I not done so I doubt whether I should have been a missionary--if a member of the Christian Church at all. (Griffith Johns.)
Josiah the old-fashioned young man
As the sensitive plate in the photographic camera, when the person who sits for a likeness is placed in a powerful light, takes an impression of him in which every line upon the countenance and every furrow upon the brow are exaggerated, so that the artist has to touch the negative in order to do him simple justice, so, when a man sits in the fierce glare of public light, his failings are so prominently recorded, and his defects so clearly brought out, that it is necessary for us in fairness to touch the negative with the pencil of charity, and thus soften down the defects. Remembering this, this description of Josiah fills us with wonder. Consider--
I. His disadvantages.
1. His extreme youth.
2. The degeneracy of the times. He ascended the throne in a dark age.
3. He was the son of a bad father.
II. What is the explanation of his piety? It may have been largely due to the quiet but all-powerful influence of a good mother. But there are wonders of grace often wrought in the lives of the children of wicked men which you cannot explain.
III. The manifestation of his piety. He walked in the ways of David his father. Four hundred years separated Josiah from David. Thank God, there are seasons, even in degenerate times, when the old purity of things is restored, when the grand old faith is received and lived over again, and when the heroism of those who are gone comes back like a new inspiration to young lives. Ah! he is an old-fashioned young man: he lives behind the age; he ought to have been living in the time of David, for he has quite adopted his ancient ways, exclaimed some young men of the period. All the conceited striplings of the day would join in the chorus, Poor Josiah, he does not move with the age. He is an eccentric young fellow, very puritanic in his notions, and sings psalms as if he lived in the days of old King David. My young friends, a true man likes to be old-fashioned sometimes. It is noble to move with the age when the age is going forward; but it is grand to remain with the past when the age in which we live retrogrades from ancient purity and ancient faith. When there is no spiritual vigour or moral fibre in our day, it is well to stick to the old days when there were strength and fibre in religion and morals. Do not be afraid of the charge of being old-fashioned. It is cheaply made, and is often meaningless, save as it is the highest possible compliment. Be in the company of the worlds best and noblest men: never mind whether they live to-day, or whether they lived eighteen hundred years ago, or even more. (D. Davies.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 2 Chronicles 34-36
THE LAST KINGS OF JUDAH
2 Chronicles 34-36
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WHATEVER influence Manassehs reformation exercised over his people generally, the taint of idolatry was not removed from his own family. His son Amon succeeded him at the age of two-and-twenty. Into his reign of two years he compressed all the varieties of wickedness once practiced by his father, and undid the good work of Manassehs later years. He recovered the graven images which Manasseh had discarded, replaced them in their shrines, and worshipped them instead of Jehovah. But in his case there was no repentance, and he was cut off in his youth.
In the absence of any conclusive evidence as to the date of Manassehs reformation, we cannot determine with certainty whether Amon received his early training before or after his father returned to the worship of Jehovah. In either case Manassehs earlier history would make it difficult for him to counteract any evil influence that drew Amon towards idolatry. Amon could set the example and perhaps the teaching of his fathers former days against any later exhortations to righteousness. When a father has helped to lead his children astray, he cannot be sure that he will carry them with him in his repentance.
After Amons assassination the people placed his son Josiah on the throne. Like Joash and Manasseh, Josiah was a child, only eight years old. The chronicler follows the general line of the history in the book of Kings, modifying, abridging, and expanding, but introducing no new incidents; the reformation, the repairing of the Temple, the discovery of the book of the Law, the Passover, Josiahs defeat and death at Megiddo, are narrated by both historians. We have only to notice differences in a somewhat similar treatment of the same subject.
Beyond the general statement that Josiah "did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah" we hear nothing about him in the book of Kings till the eighteenth year of his reign, and his reformation and putting away of idolatry are placed in that year. The chroniclers authorities corrected the statement that the pious king tolerated idolatry for eighteen years. They record bow in the eighth year of his reign, when he was sixteen, he began to seek after the God of David; and in his twelfth year he set about the work of utterly destroying idols throughout the whole territory of Israel, in the cities and ruins of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali, as well as in Judah and Benjamin. Seeing that the cities assigned to Simeon were in the south of Judah, it is a little difficult to understand why they appear with the northern tribes, unless they are reckoned with them technically to make up the ancient number.
The consequence of this change of date is that in Chronicles the reformation precedes the discovery of the book of the Law, whereas in the older history this discovery is the cause of the reformation. The chroniclers account of the idols and other apparatus of false worship destroyed by Josiah is much less detailed than that of the book of Kings. To have reproduced the earlier narrative in full would have raised serious difficulties. According to the chronicler, Manasseh had purged Jerusalem of idols and idol altars; and Amon alone was responsible for any that existed there at the accession of Josiah: but in the book of Kings Josiah found in Jerusalem the altars erected by the kings of Judah and the horses they had given to the sun. Manassehs altars still stood in the courts of the Temple; and over against Jerusalem there still-remained the high places that Solomon had built for Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom. As the chronicler in describing Solomons reign carefully omitted all mention of his sins, so he omits this reference to his idolatry. Moreover, if he had inserted it, he would have had to explain how these high places escaped the zeal of the many pious kings who did away with the high places. Similarly, having omitted the account of the man of God who prophesied the ruin of Jeroboams sanctuary at Bethel, he here omits the fulfillment of that prophecy.
The account of the repairing of the Temple is enlarged by the insertion of various details as to the names, functions, and zeal of the Levites, amongst whom those who had skill in instruments of music seem to have had the oversight of the workmen. We are reminded of the walls of Thebes, which rose out of the ground while Orpheus played upon his flute. Similarly in the account of the assembly called to hear the contents of the book of the Law the Levites are substituted for the prophets. This book of the Law is said in Chronicles to have been given by Moses, but his name is not connected with the book in the parallel narrative in the book of Kings.
The earlier authority simply states that Josiah held a great passover; Chronicles, as usual, describes the festival in detail. First of all, the king commanded the priests and Levites to purify themselves and take their places in due order, so that they might be ready to perform their sacred duties. The narrative is very obscure, but it seems that either during the apostasy of Amon or on account of the recent Temple repairs the Ark had been removed from the Holy of holies. The Law had specially assigned to the Levites the duty of carrying the Tabernacle and its furniture, and they seem to have thought that they were only bound to exercise the function of carrying the Ark; they perhaps proposed to bear it in solemn procession round the city as part of the celebration of the Passover, forgetting the words of David that the Levites should no more carry the Tabernacle and its vessels. They would have been glad to substitute this conspicuous and honorable service for the laborious and menial work of flaying the victims. Josiah, however, commanded them to put the Ark into the Temple and attend to their other duties.
Next, the king and his nobles provided beasts of various kinds for the sacrifices and the Passover meal. Josiahs gifts were even more munificent than those of Hezekiah. The latter had given a thousand bullocks and ten thousand sheep; Josiah gave just three times as many. Moreover, at Hezekiahs passover no offerings of the princes are mentioned, but now they added their gifts to those of the king. The heads of the priesthood provided three hundred Oxen and two thousand six hundred small cattle for the priests, and the chiefs of the Levites five hundred oxen and five thousand small cattle for the Levites. But numerous as were the victims at Josiahs passover, they still fell far short of the great sacrifice of twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep which Solomon offered at the dedication of the Temple.
Then began the actual work of the sacrifices: the victims were killed and flayed, and their blood was sprinkled on the altar; the burnt-offerings were distributed among the people; the Passover lambs were roasted, and the other offerings boiled, and the Levites "carried them quickly to all the children of the people." Apparently private individuals could not find the means of cooking the bountiful provision made for them; and, to meet the necessity of the case, the Temple courts were made kitchen as well as slaughterhouse for the assembled worshippers. The other offerings would not be eaten with the Passover lamb, but would serve for the remaining days of the feast.
The Levites not only provided for the people, for themselves, and the priests, but the Levites who ministered in the matter of the sacrifices also prepared for their brethren who were singers and porters, so that the latter were enabled to attend undisturbed to their own special duties; all the members of the guild of porters were at the gates maintaining order among the crowd of worshippers; and the full strength of the orchestra and choir contributed to the beauty and solemnity of the services. It was the greatest Passover held by any Israelite king.
Josiahs passover, like that of Hezekiah, was followed by a formidable foreign invasion; but whereas Hezekiah was rewarded for renewed loyalty by a triumphant deliverance, Josiah was defeated and slain. These facts subject the chroniclers theory of retribution to a severe strain. His perplexity finds pathetic expression in the opening words of the new section, "After all this," after all the idols had been put away, after the celebration of the most magnificent Passover the monarchy had ever seen. After all this, when we looked for the promised rewards of piety-for fertile seasons, peace and prosperity at home, victory and dominion abroad, tribute from subject peoples, and wealth from successful commerce - after all this, the rout of the armies of Jehovah at Megiddo, the flight and death of the wounded king, the lamentation over Josiah, the exaltation of a nominee of Pharaoh to the throne, and the payment of tribute to the Egyptian king. The chronicler has no complete explanation of this painful mystery, but he does what he can to meet the difficulties of the case. Like the great prophets in similar instances, he regards the heathen king as charged with a Divine commission. Pharaohs appeal to Josiah to remain neutral should have been received by the Jewish king as an authoritative message from Jehovah. It was the failure to discern in a heathen king the mouthpiece and prophet of Jehovah that cost Josiah his life and Judah its liberty.
The chronicler had no motive for lingering over the last sad days of the monarchy; the rest of his narrative is almost entirely abridged from the book of Kings. Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah pass over the scene in rapid and melancholy succession. In the case of Jehoahaz, who only reigned three months, the chronicler omits the unfavorable judgment recorded in the book of Kings; but he repeats it for the other three, even for the poor lad of eight who was carried away captive after a reign of three months and ten days. The chronicler had not learnt that kings can do no wrong; on the other hand, the ungodly policy of Jehoiachins ministers is labeled with the name of the boy-sovereign.
Each of these kings in turn was deposed and carried away into captivity, unless indeed Jehoiakim is an exception. In the book of Kings we are told that he slept with his fathers, i.e., that he died and was buried in the royal tombs at Jerusalem, a statement which the LXX inserts here also, specifying, however, that he was buried in the garden of Uzza. If the pious Josiah were punished for a single error by defeat and death, why was the wicked Jehoiakim allowed to reign till the end of his life and then die in his bed? The chroniclers information differed from that of the earlier narrative in a way that removed, or at any rate suppressed the difficulty. He omits the statement that Jehoiakim slept with his fathers, and tells us that Nebuchadnezzar bound him in fetters to carry him to Babylon. Casual readers would naturally suppose that this purpose was carried out, and that the Divine justice was satisfied by Jehoiakims death in captivity; and yet if they compared this passage with that in the book of Kings, it might occur to them that after the king had been put in chains something might have led Nebuchadnezzar to change his mind, or, like Manasseh, Jehoiakim might have repented and been allowed to return. But it is very doubtful whether the chroniclers authorities contemplated the possibility of such an interpretation; it is scarcely fair to credit them with all the subtle devices of modern commentators.
The real conclusion of the chroniclers history of the kings of the house of David is a summary of the sins of the last days of the monarchy and of the history of its final ruin in 2Ch_36:14-20. All the chief of the priests and of the people were given over to the abominations of idolatry; and in spite of constant and urgent admonitions from the prophets of Jehovah, they hardened their hearts, and mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets, until the wrath of Jehovah arose against His people, and there was no healing.
However, to this peroration a note is added that the length of the Captivity was fixed at seventy years, in order that the land might "enjoy her sabbaths." This note rests upon Lev_25:1-7, according to which the land was to be left fallow every seventh year. The seventy years captivity would compensate for seventy periods of six years each during which no sabbatical years had been observed. Thus the Captivity, with the four hundred and twenty previous years of neglect, would be equivalent to seventy sabbatical periods. There is no economy in keeping back what is due to God.
Moreover, the editor who separated Chronicles from the book of Ezra and Nehemiah was loath to allow the first part of the history to end in a gloomy record of sin and ruin. Modern Jews, in reading the last chapter of Isaiah, rather than conclude with the ill-omened words of the last two verses, repeat a previous portion of the chapter. So here to the history of the ruin of Jerusalem the editor has appended two verses from the opening of the book of Ezra, which contain the decree of Cyrus authorizing the return from the Captivity. And thus Chronicles concludes in the middle of a sentence which is completed in the book of Ezra: "Who is there among you of all his people? Jehovah his God be with him, and let him go up." {2Ch_36:23}
Such a conclusion suggests two considerations which will form a fitting close to our exposition. Chronicles is not a finished work; it has no formal end; it rather breaks off abruptly like an interrupted diary. In like manner the book of Kings concludes with a note as to the treatment of the captive Jehoiachin at Babylon: the last verse runs, "And for his allowance there was a continual allowance given him of the king, every day a portion, all the days of his life." The book of Nehemiah has a short final prayer: "Remember me, O my God, for good"; but the preceding paragraph is simply occupied, with the arrangements for the wood offering and the firstfruits. So in the New Testament the history of the Church breaks off with the statement that St. Paul abode two whole years in his own hired house, preaching the kingdom of God. The sacred writers recognize the continuity of Gods dealings with His people; they do not suggest that one period can be marked off by a clear dividing line or interval from another. Each historian leaves, as it were, the loose ends of his work ready to be taken up and continued by his successors. The Holy Spirit seeks to stimulate the Church to a forward outlook, that it may expect and work for a future wherein the power and grace of God will be no less manifest than in the past. Moreover, the final editor of Chronicles has shown himself unwilling that the book should conclude with a gloomy record of sin and ruin, and has appended a few lines to remind his readers of the new life of faith and hope that lay beyond the Captivity. In so doing, he has echoed the key-note of prophecy: ever beyond mans transgression and punishment the prophets saw the vision of his forgiveness and restoration to God.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 CRITICAL NOTES.] This and next chapter give history of…
CRITICAL NOTES.] This and next chapter give history of Josiah, and parallel with 2 Kings 22 and 2Ki_23:1-30. Josiah’s good beginning (2Ch_34:1-7); cleanses temple (2Ch_34:8-13); finds a copy of the law (2Ch_34:14-17); which is read by Shaphan (2Ch_34:18-22); Huldah’s message (2Ch_34:23-28); J. reads the law to the elders (2Ch_34:29-33).
2Ch_34:1-7.—J.’s good beginning. Walked, declined neither to right hand nor left: honourable contrast to predecessors. 2Ch_34:3. Young, fifteen or sixteen years old. Jewish youths in majority at thirteen. 2Ch_34:4. Images, sun statues (marg.), 2Ch_14:3. Dust (Exo_32:20). Strewed, as if graves guilty of crimes of inmates. Burnt, greatest infamy to disinter bones of idolatrous priests (cf. 2Ki_23:13-20). 2Ch_34:6. Cities of Mana. The power of Assyria now (B.C. 629–624) greatly weakened, if not completely broken. J., it is evident, asserted and maintained a claim to authority over the whole land of Isa. [Speak. Com.]. Mattocks, “in their dry (desolate) places” (cf. Psa_109:10). 2Ch_34:7. He had, king himself went in person and purified the land.
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2Ch_34:8-13.—Temple repaired. Purged, first cleansed, then repaired (2Ki_23:4). S., M., and J. sent to report progress; repair, carry on the work. 2Ch_34:9. Money collected in temple and in all parts of Judah and Isa. 2Ch_34:10. Workmen, overseers or superintendents (2Ki_22:5). Eastern people only work under overseers. 2Ch_34:11. Couplings, beams to bind the house and support joists. Floor, to rafter chambers surrounding temple or outbuildings attached to courts. 2Ch_34:12. Faithfully, skilfully and diligently. 2Ch_34:13. Scribes, now designating a class, a distinct division of Levitical body.
2Ch_34:14-22.—Discovery of a copy of the law. Found, probably an original copy of Pentateuch. 2Ch_34:15. The book, the temple copy, kept in most holy place (Deu_31:26). Shaphan the scribe able to read it. “If this were the very autograph of Moses or his scribe, it would not be more than 830 years old. Manuscripts exist of nearly twice this age” [Murphy]. 2Ch_34:16. S. took the book to king and reported the work (2Ki_22:9). 2Ch_34:17. Gathered, emptied out of a chest into a bag. 2Ch_34:19. Rent, in distress of mind. 2Ch_34:21. Enquire, from a prophet. Agitated feelings prompted J. to seek immediate counsel to avert curses under which his kingdom lay. Huldah, keeper of wardrobe, priestly or royal garments; she dwelt in college, second part or suburb of city (cf. Neh_11:9; Zep_1:10).
2Ch_34:23-28.—Message of Huldah. Tell, oracular response, in which justice is blended with mercy, announcing impending evil to overtake the city and its inhabitants. Very likely such places as Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28-32 were read to the king. 2Ch_34:27. Heard, wrath delayed and prayer of king heard on account of penitence.
2Ch_34:29-33.—Public reading of the law. King does what he can to bring people to penitence. Elders, representatives of the nation. Read, caused to be read aloud before the whole assembly. 2Ch_34:31. Place, upon his pillar, covenanted with his subjects to keep commandments and walk after the Lord. 2Ch_34:33. Took away. Completes purgation of the land, is followed by the people in outward reformation during his lifetime; but the special mission of Jeremiah in earlier ministry to rebuke the error and urge real change of heart and life (cf. Jer_7:3-4; Jer_7:21-24).
HOMILETICS
JOSIAH, OR EARLY PIETY.—2Ch_34:1-13
What Hezekiah had accomplished was soon undone by successors, Manasseh and Amon. Manasseh brought down God’s judgment for present and awful threatenings for future. Destruction not averted, but delayed. God’s goodness and longsuffering displayed. Josiah mounts the throne, and even in youth shows the power of true religion, and the blessings which it gives to its possessor.
I. Displayed in seeking God in youth. “For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, &c.” A minor till thirteen years old, he sought God, in three years after he attained majority. Probably devout and prayerful before this. No difficulty in young persons serving God. Joseph, Samuel, David, and Timothy. Boys may evince beautiful character, and give promise of virtuous life. Beza thanked God, in his last will and testament, that he became a Christian at the age of sixteen. “Those that seek me early shall find me.”
II. Displayed in the administration of his kingdom. “In the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem.”
1. He purged the temple. In the long reign of his idolatrous grandfather, and short but wicked rule of his father, the temple neglected and out of repair—dilapidated and deserted for the gods of heathenism. Concerned for God’s glory and God’s house—sought to make temple attractive and restore it to former beauty.
2. He cleansed the land. Altars of Baal overturned, images broken down and turned to dust, and groves uprooted. The shrines of idols forsaken and obliterated. The land cleansed and the worship of temple restored and performed with scrupulous obedience.
III. Displayed with undeviating consistency. “Declined neither to the right hand nor to the left.” Not satisfied with first impressions, first convictions, and first feelings towards God, but reformed the wrong and “did that which was right.” Surrounded by profligate courtiers, opposed by unprincipled men, he was earnest, decided, persevering, and consistent. “He began to seek,” continued and spent a whole life in setting things right through length and breadth of his kingdom. One of the first, he was one of the most zealous converts. Judah never had a more devoted and earnest prince.
JOSIAH THE YOUNG REFORMER
I. Reform originated by personal agency. Personal efforts of king and priests, elders and officers of the court. Good laws, religious institutions, helpful, required and not to be ignored; but moral influence essentially personal. Good men, earnest reformers—originate good laws and good institutions—the means of revivals and extensive reforms. Luther, Whitfield, and Wesley.
II. The object of reform to restore the worship of God in the land. Not commerce or education even—not to introduce any new religion, but revive the old, pure religion which God instituted at first. J. destroyed the evil and fostered the good; secured workmen and overseers to repair the temple in great numbers. We are addicted to idolatry, to love the creature more than the Creator; but God will have no rival, should have the chief place in our hearts and lives, in our temples and kingdoms.
III. Reform was regulated by the principles of God’s Word. Engaged in the work, he was stimulated by the discovery of the law. Henceforth he acted with greater intelligence and reverence for the book. Great reforms have always been preceded and accompanied by study of God’s Word. In days of Isaiah and Ezra people brought to penitence and prayer by reading of Scrip. The Reformation prepared by the translations of Tyndale and Wycliffe. The germ of the great movement in days of Whitfield and Wesley, in the “Holy Club,” a meeting of a few students and tutors to study the Greek Testament in Oxford University. Bible study and Christian activity now joined together. “Have a Bible always about you,” was Wesley’s injunction. Follow not what is fashionable, prevalent, and convenient, but what is right in the sight of the Lord.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK.—2Ch_34:11-21
The Book of the Law found is no other than the temple copy, which was deposited beside the ark in the holy of holies (Deu_31:25-26), and during the ungodly reigns of Manasseh and Amon, perhaps under Ahaz, when the temple itself had been profaned by idols, and as we may infer from 2Ch_35:3, the ark also removed from its place, was somehow lost, and was now found again during the repair of the temple [Keil].
I. The Scriptures may be lost for a season. If not actually lost, hidden away and forgotten. The Bible lost by wilful neglect to read; by mere attention to the letter and not the spirit; by criticising and dissecting it as if the production of man; by every abuse of it, though boasting of its possession.
II. When found and rightly read, the Scriptures will quicken spiritual life. Its discovery a complete surprise to the king, who “rent his clothes,” studied the book himself, and read it to others. “It is possible that it may have been a mere rediscovery, like the revival of the Pandects at Amalfi, like the revival of the Hebrew and Greek text of the Bible at the Reformation. But, in either case, this sudden appearance of the Law amounted almost to a new revelation” [Stanley].
1. It reminded of neglected duty. Duties of prophets, priests, and kings set forth in the volume, concerning religious and political unity, the destruction of high places and obedience to Jehovah. “All that which is written concerning us.”
2. It produced a sense of guilt. “Our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book.” Curse pronounced on apostasy pierces the king’s heart; he rends garments and bows down in deep sorrow before God.
3. It gave insight into God’s service. “Enquire of the Lord.” The enquiry revealed the moral condition of the nation and urged the necessity of reform. “There was still a higher purpose which the ‘Second Law’ served, a still nobler spirit in which Moses might be said to have risen again in the days of Josiah, to promulgate afresh the coda of Sinai. Now, for the first time, the love of God, as the chief ground of his dealing with his people—the love towards God as the ground of their service to him—the spiritual character a free choice of that service—were urged on the nation with all the force of Divine and human authority” [Stanley].
4. It stimulated to vigorous activity. King active before, more so after discovery. Not deterred by stern message from Huldah. Rulers of people inspired, if not with the spirit of penitence, yet with the burning zeal that destroys the monuments of idolatry and repeats the deeds of Elijah.
III. Hence, when a right sense of duty is created by reading the Scripture, a revival of religion will ensue. Spiritual sensibility was maintained in the king’s profession and elevation. In the personal life of the leaders, the religious worship of the temple and the government of the nation. Political reforms and ameliorations beneficial when a spirit of piety pervades the people, and the nation fears God. Regard to God’s will the secret of prosperous churches, happy governments, and genuine revivals. As individuals, churches, and nation, how do we treat the Bible? Is it losing or keeping its hold upon our religion, our manners and customs? “Hear ye the word of the Lord, ye that tremble (with holy awe) at His word” (Isa_66:5).
THE LOSS OF THE SCRIPTURES
Consider what we should lose if we were to part with the Christian Scriptures, and with all the institutions and blessings for which we are indebted to them. I. In the loss of the Bible and its fruits, we should lose the knowledge of the true God. History proves this beyond reasonable dispute. God must speak, or man does not find him. Mankind needs a book to keep alive in the earth the knowledge of a spiritual and personal God. II. By the loss of the Scriptures and their results from the knowledge of mankind, we should lose sooner or later our institutions of benevolence. Benevolence on a large scale, and in the form of permanent institutions, and for all classes of mankind, is a Biblical idea. III. In the loss of the Bible and its fruits, we should sooner or later suffer the loss of our institutions for popular education. Culture has existed without a revelation from heaven. Schools are not the product of the Bible only. But it is beyond question that popular education is of Bible origin. Other than Christian religions build themselves on the ignorance of the masses. IV. By the loss of the Scriptures and their creations, we should sooner or later part with our institutions of civil liberty. History shows that the great charter of freedom in the world is the Word of God. The great free nations of the earth are the great Christian nations [A. Phelps, O. T. a Living Book].
EARLY PIETY AND ITS ADVANTAGES
I. Enlightened piety consists in seeking God. J. “while yet, young began to seek after God.” God the object of all religion. To seek his favour, presence, glory, the end of rational and immortal beings. The essence of sin to deny, dishonour, and disobey God.
1. In seeking earnestly. Not enough to think, talk, and argue about God. Seek as after riches, “he that seeketh findeth.”
2. In seeking promptly. J. delayed not. Jehovah had kept him from influence of corruption, from passing through the fire in his father’s reign; but this satisfied not, he sought higher knowledge, “began” early and promptly “to seek God.”
3. In seeking perseveringly. In youthful inexperience, surrounded with temptations and hindered with disadvantages, he pursued “that which was right with decided steps,” “declined neither to the right hand nor to the left.”
II. Seeking God early will conduce to honour. In temporal things it tends to health, reputation, and long life; in spiritual and eternal more advantageous.
1. It keeps alive religious susceptibilities. “His heart was tender,” not only in the ardour and sensibility of youth, but in maturity of age, crowned with regal honours and surrounded by worldly pleasures.
2. It saves from snares. Temptations like wind, spring from every quarter. Exposed in company and in solitude, in God’s house and in our own—always exposed. Business, pleasure, and companions may become a snare. But great risks in youth. Religion alone can preserve.
3. It brings eminent usefulness in life. Power in patience, love, courage, and action; influence over others in relations of life; safety in position. Self-willed monarchs have brought destruction on themselves and ruin on kingdoms.
4. It prepares for happy death. J. honoured in age and lamented in death. Virtues which led to prosperity cherished, and vices which tended to poverty escaped. Converted in early morning, his day bright, his work accomplished. Few sins to bewail at last, no remorse, no sins of youth to fill his bones with pain; his end, though mysterious, peaceful and triumphant. “Godliness profitable to all things, &c.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
2Ch_34:3. The character of Josiah. I. He began to serve God at a very early period of life. II. He proceeded in his career with extraordinary zeal and diligence. III. He was as zealous in promoting piety as in suppressing vice. IV. In all he did he adhered strictly to the Word of God [Rev. C. Simeon]. Learn—I. That a child may begin to serve God early. II. That a child may serve God when the world is most attractive. Moses, David, Josiah. III. That when a child begins to serve God early he will be likely to become honourable and useful. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” A lesson—I. To the young. Avoid the wrong and “do that which is right.”
2. To parents and guardians of youth. Look well to rising generation. The welfare of families, churches, and the nation depends upon their training. “That of all men we meet with, nine parts out of ten are what they are, good or bad, useful or not, according to their education” [Locke]. Began to seek. “Sweet words are these!—to ‘begin;’ not only to begin, but to begin ‘to seek.’ What suggestions of modesty, lowliness, and insignificance of effort! What determination expressed in simple patience! No violence, no demonstrativeness, nothing of ostentation, but inquiry, waiting, expectancy, a look that means I know not from what part of the heavens the Lord may come, but from some point he will presently descend, and it is for me to seek, to be prepared to receive him” [Dr. Parker]. The verse contains a description—I. Of our moral condition; without God.
2. Of essential principles of all religion; seeking God.
3. Of true prayer; earnest desire for God, not cold asking, formal seeking, &c. The words also describe the way to
(1) eminent piety;
(2) eminent consistency;
(3) eminent usefulness.
2Ch_34:13. Scribes. Hitherto designation of a class, officers of state, who mustered troops and managed finances (cf. 2Sa_8:17; 2Sa_20:25; 2Ki_12:10; Isa_33:18). Here evidently a new state of things—an order of scribes forming a distinct division of Levitical body. The class term first found in this passage, yet probably originated in reign of Hezekiah, who employed men to “copy out” uncollected proverbs of Solomon (Pro_25:1). Probably to the rise of this class are we indebted for preservation of many prophecies belonging to Hezekiah’s time, while works of previous prophets—of Ahijah, Iddo, Shemaiah, Jehu son of Hanani, and others—have perished [Speak. Com.].
2Ch_34:14. Found a Book.
1. The profound sensation created.
2. The intense anxiety to know the truth. The inquiry, personal reading, and public exposition.
3. The need of the Book now. To preserve religion, educate the race, and advance the cause of God and humanity.
2Ch_34:23-28. The faithful message. Notice—
1. The estimate of the king. “Tell the man.” Only a man, sinful and mortal like other men. Kings need to be told this truth. “I acknowledge myself a mortal,” said Charles V. Emperor. With God no respect of persons.
2. The threatened judgment. “I will bring evil upon this place.” No hiding, no toning down of unpleasant truths.
3. The procuring cause of judgment. “They have forsaken me.” Announcement to Manasseh repeated with terrible significance to Josiah. Repentance will not avail, now too late to save guilty people “Wrath poured out and shall not be quenched.”
2Ch_34:26-28. A tender spirit. Huldah in first outburst of prophetic spirit thinks only of the matter in hand, forgetting the person of the inquirer; but when that is past, and the stream flows more smoothly, the thought of the person occurs to her, “the King of Judah” [Speak. Com.]. Here she giveth him his just title, whom before she had called “man.” Piety is no enemy to civility [Trapp]. I. Give a general account of a tender heart.
1. It implies a quick and ready sense of feeling in spiritual things—quickness of apprehension, ready reflections of conscience, a disposition to be easily affected.
2. A pliable disposition to yield to Divine influences. II. The way in which such a temper should express itself.
1. In relation to the Word of God.
2. In relation to sin.
3. In relation to providential events.
4. In relation to the honour of God. III. What foundation is laid for such a temper in Christianity.
1. Good men in the ancient church were not strangers to it.
2. The recompenses of the life to come are more fully revealed.
3. Richer discoveries of grace are made to us.
4. Ceremonials have given way to substantials of religion.
5. The softening spirit is more plentifully communicated. IV. Inferences.
1. Discern the difference between a truly Christian temper and some things mistaken for it: it is not natural easiness of disposition, not occasional tenderness.
2. Let us all seek after and cultivate this tenderness of spirit.
3. If conscious of its possession, take the comfort of it as good evidence of a renewed and Christian state [Dr. Evans].
2Ch_34:29-33. I. The public reading of the Book. The Book exists; not to be invented; only to be found, used, understood, and obeyed. II. The making of the solemn covenant. Made with sincerity, “with all his heart and with all his soul;” made “to perform” in Kings (2Ch_23:2), “to stand to the covenant.” Many forget and fall away. III. The impression created upon the people. The example of the king, reforms in the temple and solemn resolution in open covenant. A restraint for a season. No open idolatry, no grove, nor Baal worship, yet superficial, not deeply seated amendment. Did not stand for personal purity and loyal obedience. The mission of Jeremiah in his early ministry to rebuke and urge a real change. “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees.”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 34
2Ch_34:1-7. Eight years old. There is at the top of the Queen’s staircase in Windsor Castle a statue from the studio of Baron Triqueti, of Edward VI. marking with his sceptre a passage in the Bible, which he holds in his left hand, and upon which he earnestly looks. The passage is concerning Josiah. “J. was eight years old when he began to reign … and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.” The statue was erected by the will of the late prince, who intended it to convey to his son the Divine principles by which the future governor of England should mould his life and reign on the throne of Great Britain [T. Hughes].
2Ch_34:8-13. Men did work faithfully (2Ch_34:12). What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils will, for the most part, be found to be but the outgrowth of man’s own perverted life; and though we may endeavour to cut down and extirpate them by means of law, they will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some other form, unless the conditions of personal life and character are radically improved. If this view be correct, then it follows that the highest patriotism and philanthropy consist, not so much in altering laws and modifying institutions, as in helping and stimulating men to elevate and improve themselves by their own free and independent individual action [Smiles]. We put too much faith in systems and look too little to men [B. Disraeli].
2Ch_34:14-22. The Bible the Saviour of the Church. Men say that the Church has saved the Bible. I say that the Bible has saved the Church ten thousand times over. You shall find that when great questions come up in a community churches do not go ahead. You cannot make them. Churches are like the baggage-waggons of an army. They carry the provisions and indispensable things; but, after all, baggage-waggons never go first in a march. And the Church is so busy taking care of the things which it carries that it has no time to devote to new things that present themselves. Reforms hardly ever originate in churches. I am not speaking against churches, I am merely putting them where they put themselves, and saying that tendencies to unusual conduct in the application of gospel principles to new questions are oftentimes ridiculed by ministers, rejected from pulpits, and refused places in conference meetings, and stigmatised by church members as being fanatical [H. W. Beecher]. When we find the book of the law, let us not shrink from finding its judgments as well as its gospels. The prophecies must all be fulfilled, when they indicate that the wicked shall be destroyed (2Ch_34:25), shall be driven away in the wrath of God. The Bible is not all gospel; or where it is all gospel it involves the element of judgment and the certainty of doom [Dr. J. Parker].
2Ch_34:33. Departed not. The multitude “go at all adventures” (Lev_26:21, marg.), careless of their ways, reckless of their end. It is with them scarcely worth looking into—whether God is displeased or not; whether they be walking in the narrow or broad path, and what the end of that path may be. Sometimes they come into the world fresh from the influence of a religious education. For a while they yield alternately to their conscience and their corruptions. They are touched a moment under the convictions of the word, or the corrections of the rod. Yet the want of steadiness and consistency soon sweeps all away into “worse” hardness than before [C. Bridge].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 2Ch 34:1-3
2Ch 34:1-3
I. The story of Josiah shows that a child may become a Christian very early in life. He was but fifteen years old when he is spoken of as "seeking the God of his father David."
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That was the first that people knew of it. But probably he had been a prayerful boy long before that.
II. The narrative of this young king shows also that young persons may become Christians without the excitement of a revival. When Josiah began the reformation of his kingdom, he stood absolutely alone. He started the revival by being the first convert.
III. King Josiah’s conversion shows that a young person may become a Christian just at the time when the pleasures of the world are most attractive.
IV. The story of Josiah shows that a child may be a Christian without being unmanly or unwomanly. Judah never had a more spirited and gallant prince. He put down the bad men of the realm right and left most valiantly. Not one of them dared to insult him.
V. The story of Josiah suggests also that one who becomes a Christian early in life is likely to become a better man than one who first lives through a career of sin.
VI. The story of Josiah suggests that the way for a young person to become a Christian is to make a business of doing right.
A. Phelps, The Old Testament a Living Book, p. 161.
Reference: 2Ch 34:1-4.—Sermons for Boys and Girls, p. 338.
2Ch 34:3
Notice:—
I. When Josiah’s religious life began. The text tells us it was "while he was yet young." As a mere boy, he evinced a beautiful character, and gave promise of a virtuous life. His religious life really began about his sixteenth year.
II. What was the complexion of Josiah’s piety? There is something suggestive in the expression "He began to seek the God of David his father." (1) It is an unspeakable blessing to have been born in the line of a Christian parentage. (2) It is no dishonour to a young man to believe in the religion of his fathers. It is always a hopeful and promising sign of a young man’s character that, without absolutely pinning himself down to the faith of his fathers, he treats that faith with the profoundest respect, and will not easily be persuaded to surrender it.
III. What was the practical outcome of Josiah’s piety? His whole life was spent in setting things right throughout his kingdom. All his energy was devoted to promoting the happiness of his people and the glory of God.
J. Thain Davidson, Talks with Young Men, p. 203.
2Ch 34:14, 2Ch 34:20-21
Consider what we should lose if we were to part with the Christian Scriptures and with all the institutions and blessings for which we are indebted to them.
I. In the loss of the Bible and its fruits, we should lose the knowledge of the true God. History proves this beyond reasonable dispute. God must speak, or man does not find Him. Mankind needs a book to keep alive in the earth the knowledge of a spiritual and personal God.
II. By the loss of the Scriptures and their results from the knowledge of mankind, we should lose sooner or later our institutions of benevolence. Benevolence on any large scale, and in the form of permanent institutions, and for all classes of mankind is a Biblical idea.
III. In the loss of the Bible and its fruits, we should sooner or later suffer the loss of our institutions for popular education. Culture has existed without a revelation from heaven. Schools are not the product of the Bible only. But it is beyond question that popular education is of Bible origin. Other than Christian religions build themselves on the ignorance of the masses.
IV. By the loss of the Scriptures and their creations, we should sooner or later part with our institutions of civil liberty. History shows that the great charter of freedom in the world is the word of God. The great free nations of the earth are the great Christian nations.
A. Phelps, The Old Testament a Living Book, p. 187.
References: 2Ch 34:14-33.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xiii., p. 295. 2Ch 34:27.—I. Williams, Characters of the Old Testament, p. 244; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii., No. 748. 2Ch 35:2.—Ibid., vol. xxvi., No. 1513. 2Ch 36:1-23.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 94. 2Ch 36:12.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 265.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv1, 14 2 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
JOSIAH
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2Ch 34:1 - 2Ch 34:13.
Another boy king, even younger than his grandfather Manasseh had been at his accession, and another reversal of the father’s religion! These vibrations from idolatry to Jehovah-worship, at the pleasure of the king, sadly tell how little the people cared whom they worshipped, and how purely a matter of ceremonies and names both their idolatry and their Jehovah-worship were. The religion of the court was the religion of the nation, only idolatry was more congenial than the service of God. How far the child monarch Josiah had a deeper sense of what that service meant we cannot decide, but the little outline sketch of him in 2Ch 34:2 - 2Ch 34:3 is at least suggestive of his having it, and may well stand as a fair portrait of early godliness.
A child eight years old, who had been lifted on to the throne of a murdered father, must have had a strong will and a love of goodness to have resisted the corrupting influences of royalty in a land full of idols. Here again we see that, great as may be the power of circumstances, they do not determine character; for it is always open to us either to determine whether we yield to them or resist them. The prevailing idolatry influenced the boy, but it influenced him to hate it with all his heart. So out of the nettle danger we may pluck the flower safety. The men who have smitten down some evil institution have generally been brought up so as to feel its full force.
‘He did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah’-that may mean simply that he worshipped Jehovah by outward ceremonies, but it probably means more; namely, that his life was pure and God-pleasing, or, as we should say, clean and moral, free from the foul vices which solicit a young prince. ‘He walked in the ways of David his father’-not being one of the ‘emancipated’ youths who think it manly to throw off the restraints of their fathers’ faith and morals. He ‘turned not aside to the right hand or to the left’-but marched right onwards on the road that conscience traced out for him, though tempting voices called to him from many a side-alley that seemed to lead to pleasant places. ‘While he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father’-at the critical age of sixteen, when Easterns are older than we, in the flush of early manhood, he awoke to deeper experiences and felt the need for a closer touch of God. A career thus begun will generally prelude a life pure, strenuous, and blessed with a clearer and clearer vision of the God who is always found of them that seek Him. Such a childhood, blossoming into such a boyhood, and flowering in such a manhood, is possible to every child among us. It will ‘still bring forth fruit in old age.’
The two incidents which the passage narrates, the purging of the land and the repair of the Temple, are told in inverted order in 2 Kings, but the order here is probably the more accurate, as dates are given, whereas in 2 Kings, though the purging is related after the Temple restoration, it is not said to have occurred after. But the order is of small consequence. What is important is the fiery energy of Josiah in the work of destruction of the idols. Here, there, everywhere, he flames and consumes. He darts a flash even into the desolate ruins of the Israelitish kingdom, where the idols had survived their devotees and still bewitched the scanty fragments of Israel that remained. The altars of stone were thrown down, the wooden sun-pillars were cut to pieces, the metal images were broken and ground to powder. A clean sweep was made.
A dash of ferocity mingled with contempt appears in Josiah’s scattering the ‘dust’ of the images on the graves of their worshippers, as if he said: ‘There you lie together, pounded idols and dead worshippers, neither able to help the other!’ The same feelings prompted digging up the skeletons of priests and burning the bones on the very altars that they had served, thus defiling the altars and executing judgment on the priests. No doubt there were much violence and a strong strain of the ‘wrath of man’ in all this. Iconoclasts are wont to be ‘violent’; and men without convictions, or who are partisans of what the iconoclasts are rooting out, are horrified at their want of ‘moderation.’ But though violence is always unchristian, indifference to rampant evils is not conspicuously more Christian, and, on the whole, you cannot throttle snakes in a graceful attitude or without using some force to compress the sinuous neck.
The restoration of the Temple comes after the cleansing of the land, in Chronicles, and naturally in the order of events, for the casting out of idols must always precede the building or repairing of the Temple of God. Destructive work is very poor unless it is for the purpose of clearing a space to build the Temple on. Happy the man or the age which is able to do both! Josiah and Joash worked at restoring the Temple in much the same fashion, but Josiah had a priesthood more interested than Joash had.
But we may note one or two points in his restoration. He had put his personal effort into the preparatory extirpation of idols, but he did not need to do so now. He could work this time by deputy. And it is noteworthy that he chose ‘laymen’ to carry out the restoration. Perhaps he knew how Joash had been balked by the knavery of the priests who were diligent in collecting money, but slow in spending it on the Temple. At all events, he delegated the work to three highly-placed officials, the secretary of state, the governor of Jerusalem, and the official historian.
It appears that for some time a collection had been going on for Temple repairs; probably it had been begun six years before, when the ‘purging’ of the land began. It had been carried on by the Levites, and had been contributed to even by ‘the remnant of Israel’ in the northern kingdom, who, in their forlorn weakness, had begun to feel the drawings of ancient brotherhood and the tie of a common worship. This fund was in the keeping of the high priest, and the three commissioners were instructed to require it from him. Here 2 Kings is clearer than our passage, and shows that what the three officials had mainly to do was to get the money from Hilkiah, and to hand it over to the superintendents of the works.
There are two remarkable points in the narrative; one is the observation that ‘the men did the work faithfully,’ which comes in rather enigmatically here, but in 2 Kings is given as the reason why no accounts were kept. Not an example to be imitated, and the sure way to lead subordinates sooner or later to deal unfaithfully; but a pleasant indication of the spirit animating all concerned.
Surely these men worked ‘as ever in the great Taskmaster’s eye.’ That is what makes us work faithfully, whether we have any earthly overseer or audit or no. Another noteworthy matter is that not only were the superintendents of the work-the ‘contractors,’ as we might say-Levites, but so were also the inferior superintendents, or, as we might say, ‘foremen.’
And not only so, but they were those that ‘were skilful with instruments of music.’ What were musicians doing there? Did the building rise
‘with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet?’
May we not gather from this singular notice the great thought that for all rearing of the true Temple, harps of praise are no less necessary than swords or trowels, and that we shall do no right work for God or man unless we do it as with melody in our hearts? Our lives must be full of music if we are to lay even one stone in the Temple.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Reign of Josiah
Reign of Josiah
The chapter narrates how Josiah suppressed idolatry and repaired the Temple; how a book of the Law, found in the Temple, was read to the king and the people; and how the nation's covenant with the Lord was renewed.
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This chapter and the following are, in general, parallel to 2 Kings 22, 2Ki_23:1-30 with some unimportant variants; but the Chronicler gives more prominence than the writer of 2 Kings to the passover celebrated by Josiah.
3. In the twelfth year] In 2 Ki the abolition of the 'high places' is described as subsequent to the repair of the Temple, and the latter is assigned to Josiah's 'eighteenth' year: 2Ki_22:3; 2Ki_23:5, 2Ki_23:8.
5. Burnt the bones] This was believed to afflict the souls of the dead priests, as well as to desecrate the shrines at which they had ministered. The condition of the spirit after death depended in a large measure upon the treatment sustained by the body.
6. With their mattocks] A slight alteration gives 'in their ruins' (so RV), i.e. the desolate sites of the cities destroyed by the Assyrians.
9. And they returned to Jerusalem] Another reading is 'and of the inhabitants of Jerusalem.'
11. The houses] i.e. the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies: cp. 1Ch_28:11; 1Ch_29:4.
22. In the college] RV 'in the second quarter' (of the city). It has been suggested that this may have occupied the upper end of the Tyropoean valley, W. of the Temple.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv3, 7 groves (See Scofield "Deu 16:21") See Scofield "Jdg 3:7".
groves (See Scofield "Deu 16:21") See Scofield "Jdg 3:7".
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 8. Reformation under Josiah
8. Reformation under Josiah
CHAPTER 34 The Reign of Josiah and the Reformation
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1. The record of his reign (2Ch 34:1-2)
2. The beginning of the reformation (2Ch 34:3-7)
3. The house of the LORD repaired (2Ch 34:8-13)
4. The law of Moses found and read (2Ch 34:14-21)
5. Hulda, the prophetess (2Ch 34:22-28)
6. The law read and the covenant (2Ch 34:29-33)
The contents of this chapter are found also in Second Kings, chapters 22:1-23:30. Inasmuch as this has been covered by our annotation, we do not need to repeat it here. However, we add a paragraph from the Synopsis of the Bible.
“We find in Josiah a tender heart, subject to the word, and a conscience that respected the mind and will of God: only at last he had too much confidence in the effect of this to secure blessing from God, without the possession of that faith which gives intelligence in His ways to understand the position of God’s people. God, however, makes use of this confidence to take Josiah away from the evil He was preparing in the judgments which were to fall upon Judah, the knowledge of which should have made Josiah walk more humbly. At the age of sixteen he began by the grace of God to seek Jehovah; and at twenty he had acquired the moral strength necessary for acting with energy against idolatry, which he destroyed even unto Naphtali. We see here how sovereign grace came in; for both Hezekiah and Josiah were the sons of extremely wicked fathers.
“Having cleansed the land from idolatry, Josiah begins to repair the temple; and there the book of the law was found. The king’s conscience, and his heart also, are bowed under the authority of the word of his God. He seeks for the prophetic testimony of God with respect to the state in which he sees Israel to be, and God makes known to him by Huldah the judgment about to fall upon Israel; but tells him at the same time that his eyes shall not see the evil.”
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 14 Josiah Restores the true Worship
Josiah Restores the true Worship
v. 1. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, having been elevated to the throne by the people of the country, who wanted a descendant of David as their king, and not an assassin, and he reigned in Jerusalem one and thirty years.
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v. 2. And he did that which was right, in strict accordance with the Law, in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David, his father, and declined neither to the right hand nor to the left. His character and manner of comporting himself throughout his reign was such as to make his rule stand out most honorably among that of the kings of David’s line.
v. 3. For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, about sixteen years old. he began to seek after the God of David, his father, openly showing his preference for the ancient worship; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, the wooden Asherah-pillars, and the carved images, those fashioned out of wood, and the molten images, those cast of metal.
v. 4. And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence, wherever these evidences of Canaanitish idolatry were found; and the images, the sun-statues erected according to Chaldean customs, that were on high above them, he cut down; and the groves, the wooden statues consecrated to Astarte, and the carved images and the molten images he brake in pieces and made dust of them, as Moses had done with the golden calf at Horeb, and strewed it upon the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them, thus exposing the guilt of those who were lying in those graves before all men.
v. 5. And he burned the bones of the priests upon their altars, after having taken their skeletons from their graves, thereby defiling the altars of idolatry, and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.
v. 6. And so, in the course of the next years, did he in the cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, the central portion of what had been the northern kingdom, and Simeon, the cities in the south of Judah, even unto Naphtali, what was later known as Upper Galilee, with their mattocks round about, or rather, in their ruins round about, in their deserted suburbs, for the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser and Sargon had devastated their territory, and the people who remained in the mountains of the north turned to Judah and expected the kings of the southern kingdom to protect them as far as possible.
v. 7. And when he had broken down the altars and the groves, and had beaten the graven images into powder, and cut down all the idols throughout all the land of Israel, thus removing all evidences of idolatrous practices as far as his authority extended, he returned to Jerusalem. Note that Josiah did not attempt, to get the people of the northern part of Canaan away from their allegiance to the Assyrian kings, but confined himself strictly to the destruction of idolatry.
v. 8. Now, in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the house, removed the defilement of idolatry from the Temple, he sent Shaphan, the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah, the governor of the city, and Joah, the son of Joahaz, the recorder, among the highest officials of the realm, to repair the house of the Lord, his God, that is, to order and to supervise the repairs.
v. 9. And when they came to Hilkiah, the high priest, they delivered the money that was brought into the house of God, which the Levites that kept the doors had gathered of the hand of Manasseh and Ephraim, and of all the remnant of Israel, all the members of the northern kingdom who had remained in the devastated territory and had turned back to the ancient worship of Jehovah, and of all Judah and Benjamin; and they returned to Jerusalem, rather, and from the inhabitants of Jerusalem. All these people brought their Temple tax to Jerusalem and the money was taken care of as provided for.
v. 10. And they, the men entrusted with this work, put it in the hand of the workmen that had the oversight of the house of the Lord, that is, the workmasters or foremen, and they gave it to the workmen that wrought in the house of the Lord to repair and amend the house, to strengthen it wherever the walls showed signs of weakness or the floors threatened to give way;
v. 11. even to the artificers and builders gave they it to buy hewn stone and timber for couplings, for girders to carry the roof, and to floor the houses, to provide joists for the various buildings of the Temple, which the kings of Judah had destroyed, deliberately letting them go to ruin for want of proper care.
v. 12. And the men did the work faithfully, with conscientious care; and the overseers of them were Jahath and Obadiah, the Levites, of the sons of Merari, and Zechariah and Meshullam, of the sons of the Kohathites, to set it forward, to direct the execution of the work with which they were charged, and other of the Levites, all that could skill of instruments of music, literally, "all who had skill in instruments of song," it being necessary to connect this phrase with the following verse.
v. 13. Also they were over the bearers of burdens, over the unskilled laborers, and were overseers of all that wrought the work in any manner of service; and of the Levites there were scribes and officers and porters. As in the case of Josiah, God still, from time to time, awakens and strengthens pious men who work for the purification of the Church.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 20, 22, 23, 26, 29, 31, 33 thirty-one years
thirty-one years
"31 years" (See: Numbers)
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what was right in the eyes of Yahweh
Here Yahweh's "sight" refers to how he judges or decides on the value of something. See how you translated a similar phrase in 2 Chronicles 14:2. AT: "the things that Yahweh said were right" or "the things that Yahweh considers right" (See: Metaphor)
walked in the ways of David his ancestor
Josiah behaving as David did is spoken of as if he walked on the same road or way as David. AT: "lived the way David his ancestor had lived" or "followed the example of David his ancestor" (See: Metaphor)
did not turn away either to the right or to the left
To fully obey Yahweh is spoken of as if a person were on the correct road and never turned from it. AT: "did not do anything that would displease Yahweh" or "fully obeyed the laws of Yahweh" (See: Metaphor)
the eighth year ... the twelfth year
"year 8 ... year 12." See how you translated this in 2 Chronicles 14:2. (See: Ordinal Numbers)
he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem from ... the cast metal figures
This speaks of Josiah getting rid of the things that were used for worshiping false gods from Judah and Jerusalem as if he were making the places physically clean. Josiah would have commanded his workers to remove these things. AT: "he began to make Judah and Jerusalem acceptable again to Yahweh by having his workers remove from them the high places, the Asherah poles, the craved figures, and the cast metal figures" (See: Metaphor and Metonymy)
translationWords
Josiah
Yahweh
walk
David
seek
God
clean
kingdom of Judah
Jerusalem
Asherah
image
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 6, 12, 14, 24, 27, 29 34:1 Josiah’s reign of thirty-one years was from 640…
34:1 Josiah’s reign of thirty-one years was from 640 to 609 BC.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.