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Bible Encyclopedias
Josiah
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Josi´ah (God-healed), seventeenth king of Judah, and son of Amon, whom he succeeded on the throne in B.C. 698, at the early age of eight years, and reigned thirty-one years.
As Josiah thus early ascended the throne, we may the more admire the good qualities which he manifested. Avoiding the example of his immediate predecessors, he 'did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left' (; ). So early as the sixteenth year of his age he began to manifest that enmity to idolatry in all its forms which distinguished his character and reign; and he was not quite twenty years old when he proclaimed open war against it, although more or less favored by many men of rank and influence in the court and kingdom. He then commenced a thorough purification of the land from all taint of idolatry, by going about and superintending in person the operations of the men who were employed in breaking down idolatrous altars and images, and cutting down the groves which had been consecrated to idol-worship. His detestation of idolatry could not have been more strongly expressed than by ransacking the sepulchers of the idolatrous priests of former days, and consuming their bones upon the idol-altars before they were overturned. Yet this operation, although unexampled in Jewish history, was foretold 326 years before Josiah was born, by the prophet who was commissioned to denounce to Jeroboam the future punishment of his sin. He even named Josiah as the person by whom this act was to be performed; and said that it should be performed in Bethel, which was then a part of the kingdom of Israel (). All this seemed much beyond the range of human probabilities. But it was performed to the letter; for Josiah did not confine his proceedings to his own kingdom, but went over a considerable part of the neighboring kingdom of Israel, which then lay comparatively desolate, with the same object in view; and at Bethel in particular, executed all that the prophet had foretold (;; ). In these proceedings Josiah seems to have been actuated by an absolute hatred of idolatry, such as no other king since David had manifested, and which David had scarcely occasion to manifest in the same degree.
In the eighteenth year of his reign and the twenty-sixth of his age, when the land had been thoroughly purified from idolatry and all that belonged to it, Josiah proceeded to repair and beautify the temple of the Lord. In the course of this pious labor, the high-priest Hilkiah discovered in the sanctuary a volume, which proved to contain the books of Moses, and which, from the terms employed, seems to have been considered the original of the law as written by Moses. On this point there has been much anxious discussion and some rash assertion. Some writers of the German school allege that there is no external evidence—that is, evidence beside the law itself—that the book of the law existed till it was thus produced by Hilkiah. This assertion it is the less necessary to answer here, as it is duly noticed in the art. Pentateuch. But it may be observed that it is founded very much on the fact that the king was greatly astonished when some parts of the law were read to him. It is indeed perfectly manifest that he had previously been entirely ignorant of much that he then heard; and he rent his clothes in consternation when he found that, with the best intentions to serve the Lord, he and all his people had been living in the neglect of duties which the law declared to be of vital importance. It is certainly difficult to account for this ignorance. Some suppose that all the copies of the law had perished, and that the king had never seen one. But this is very unlikely; for however scarce complete copies may have been, the pious king was likely to have been the possessor of one. The probability seems to be that the passages read were those awful denunciations against disobedience with which the book of Deuteronomy concludes, and which from some cause or other the king had never before read, or which had never before produced on his mind the same strong conviction of the imminent dangers under which the nation lay, as now when read to him from a volume invested with a character so venerable, and brought with such interesting circumstances under his notice.
The king in his alarm sent to Huldah 'the prophetess,' for her counsel in this emergency [HULDAH]: her answer assured him that, although the dread penalties threatened by the law had been incurred and would be inflicted, he should be gathered in peace to his fathers before the days of punishment and sorrow came.
It was perhaps not without some hope of averting this doom that the king immediately called the people together at Jerusalem, and engaged them in a solemn renewal of the ancient covenant with God. When this had been done, the Passover was celebrated with careful attention to the directions given in the law, and on a scale of unexampled magnificence. But all was too late; the hour of mercy had passed; for 'the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah' (;;; ).
That removal from the world which had been promised to Josiah as a blessing, was not long delayed, and was brought about in a way which he had probably not expected. His kingdom was tributary to the Chaldean Empire; and when Pharaoh-necho, king of Egypt, sought a passage through his territories, on an expedition against the Chaldeans, Josiah, with a very high sense of the obligations which his vassalage imposed, refused to allow the march of the Egyptian army through his dominions, and prepared to resist the attempt by force of arms. Necho was very unwilling to engage in hostilities with Josiah; the appearance of the Hebrew army at Megiddo, however, brought on a battle, in which the king of Judah was so desperately wounded by arrows that his attendants removed him from the war-chariot, and placed him in another, in which he was taken to Jerusalem, where he died. No king that reigned in Israel was ever more deeply-lamented by all his subjects than Josiah: and we are told that the prophet composed on the occasion an elegiac ode, which was long preserved among the people, but which is not now in existence (; ).
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Josiah'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/j/josiah.html.
