Josiah’s Reforms

2 Chronicles 34-35

            Josiah is a good king, a faithful king. He may be a top-three king: David, Hezekiah, Josiah. As a boy, he dedicates himself to the Lord, and the Chronicler emphasizes how his eradication for the Baals and Asherahs extends to Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, highlighting his theme of “all Israel.” Josiah orders the rehabilitation of the temple, discovers the book of the Law, and receives an assurance that, although the Lord will bring disaster on Judah for its idolatry, it will not happen in Josiah’s day. Finally, Josiah celebrated a Passover unlike any since the days of Samuel. The Chronicler’s account of that Passover occupies 19 verses, as opposed to 3 in 2 Kings.

            Josiah’s one great failure is his interference in the war between Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. (The battle of Carcemish in 605 BC proved the decisive defeat of Assyria and marked the ascent of Babylon to dominance.) Strangely, Josiah received a word from God through the mouth of Egypt’s pharaoh. One can perhaps excuse Josiah for not taking it seriously. First, it was a word from God, not a word from the Lord—a significant difference because “god” can be a generic word for any number of deities. Second, the warning came from a pagan, not a prophet. Still, Josiah was warned. Frankly, he should have known from his predecessors that dabbling in the power struggles of the surrounding nations was never a good idea.

            The thrust of the Chronicler’s description of Josiah is that he was a good king, a faithful king, but that even his good example was too little, too late for a people who had repeatedly sullied themselves with idolatry.