2 Chronicles 34-35

Living Bible

34 Josiah was only eight years old when he became king. He reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. ² His was a good reign, as he carefully followed the good example of his ancestor King David. ³ For when he was sixteen years old, in the eighth year of his reign, he began to search for the God of his ancestor David; and four years later he began to clean up Judah and Jerusalem, destroying the heathen altars and the shameful idols on the hills. ⁴ He went out personally to watch as the altars of Baal were knocked apart, the obelisks above the altars chopped down, and the shameful idols ground into dust and scattered over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. ⁵ Then he burned the bones of the heathen priests upon their own altars, feeling that this action would clear the people of Judah and Jerusalem from the guilt of their sin of idol worship.

⁶ Then he went to the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even to distant Naphtali, and did the same thing there. ⁷ He broke down the heathen altars, ground to powder the shameful idols, and chopped down the obelisks. He did this everywhere throughout the whole land of Israel before returning to Jerusalem.

⁸ During the eighteenth year of his reign, after he had purged the land and cleaned up the situation at the Temple, he appointed Shaphan (son of Azaliah) and Maaseiah, governor of Jerusalem, and Joah (son of Joahaz), the city treasurer, to repair the Temple. ⁹ They set up a collection system for gifts for the Temple. The money was collected at the Temple gates by the Levites on guard duty there. Gifts were brought by the people coming from Manasseh, Ephraim, and other parts of the remnant of Israel, as well as from the people of Jerusalem. The money was taken to Hilkiah the High Priest for accounting, ^10-11 and then used by the Levites to pay the carpenters and stonemasons and to purchase building materials—stone building blocks, timber, lumber, and beams. He now rebuilt what earlier kings of Judah had torn down.

¹² The workmen were energetic under the leadership of Jahath and Obadiah, Levites of the subclan of Merari. Zechariah and Meshullam, of the subclan of Kohath, were the building superintendents. The Levites who were skilled musicians played background music while the work progressed. ¹³ Other Levites superintended the unskilled laborers who carried in the materials to the workmen. Still others assisted as accountants, supervisors, and carriers.

¹⁴ One day when Hilkiah the High Priest was at the Temple recording the money collected at the gates, he found an old scroll that turned out to be the laws of God as given to Moses!

^15-16 “Look!” Hilkiah exclaimed to Shaphan, the king’s secretary. “See what I have found in the Temple! These are the laws of God!” Hilkiah gave the scroll to Shaphan, and Shaphan took it to the king, along with his report that there was good progress being made in the reconstruction of the Temple.

¹⁷ “The money chests have been opened and counted, and the money has been put into the hand of the overseers and workmen,” he said to the king.

¹⁸ Then he mentioned the scroll and how Hilkiah had discovered it. So he read it to the king. ¹⁹ When the king heard what these laws required of God’s people, he ripped his clothing in despair ²⁰ and summoned Hilkiah, Ahikam (son of Shaphan), Abdon (son of Micah), Shaphan the treasurer, and Asaiah, the king’s personal aide.

²¹ “Go to the Temple and plead with the Lord for me!” the king told them. “Pray for all the remnant of Israel and Judah! For this scroll says that the reason the Lord’s great anger has been poured out upon us is that our ancestors have not obeyed these laws that are written here.”

²² So the men went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum (son of Tokhath, son of Hasrah). (Shallum was the king’s tailor, living in the second ward.) When they told her of the king’s trouble, ²³ she replied, “The Lord God of Israel says, Tell the man who sent you,

²⁴ “‘Yes, the Lord will destroy this city and its people. All the curses written in the scroll will come true. ²⁵ For my people have forsaken me and have worshiped heathen gods, and I am very angry with them for their deeds. Therefore, my unquenchable wrath is poured out upon this place.’

²⁶ “But the Lord also says this to the king of Judah who sent you to ask me about this: Tell him, the Lord God of Israel says, ²⁷ ‘Because you are sorry and have humbled yourself before God when you heard my words against this city and its people, and have ripped your clothing in despair and wept before me—I have heard you, says the Lord, ²⁸ and I will not send the promised evil upon this city and its people until after your death.’” So they brought back to the king this word from the Lord. ²⁹ Then the king summoned all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem, ³⁰ and the priests and Levites and all the people great and small, to accompany him to the Temple. There the king read the scroll to them—the covenant of God that was found in the Temple. ³¹ As the king stood before them, he made a pledge to the Lord to follow his commandments with all his heart and soul and to do what was written in the scroll. ³² And he required everyone in Jerusalem and Benjamin to subscribe to this pact with God, and all of them did.

³³ So Josiah removed all idols from the areas occupied by the Jews and required all of them to worship Jehovah their God. And throughout the remainder of his lifetime they continued serving Jehovah, the God of their ancestors.

35 Then Josiah announced that the Passover would be celebrated on the first day of April in Jerusalem. The Passover lambs were slain that evening. ² He also reestablished the priests in their duties and encouraged them to begin their work at the Temple again. ³ He issued this order to the sanctified Levites, the religious teachers in Israel:

“Since the Ark is now in Solomon’s Temple and you don’t need to carry it back and forth upon your shoulders, spend your time ministering to the Lord and to his people. ^4-5 Form yourselves into the traditional service corps of your ancestors, as first organized by King David of Israel and by his son Solomon. Each corps will assist particular clans of the people who bring in their offerings to the Temple. ⁶ Kill the Passover lambs and sanctify yourselves and prepare to assist the people who come. Follow all of the instructions of the Lord through Moses.”

⁷ Then the king contributed 30,000 lambs and young goats for the people’s Passover offerings and 3,000 young bulls. ⁸ The king’s officials made willing contributions to the priests and Levites. Hilkiah, Zechariah, and Jehiel, the overseers of the Temple, gave the priests 2,600 sheep and goats and 300 oxen as Passover offerings. ⁹ The Levite leaders—Conaniah, Shemaiah, and Nethanel, and his brothers Hashabiah, Jeiel, and Jozabad—gave 5,000 sheep and goats and 500 oxen to the Levites for their Passover offerings.

¹⁰ When everything was organized and the priests were standing in their places, and the Levites were formed into service corps as the king had instructed, ¹¹ then the Levites killed the Passover lambs and presented the blood to the priests, who sprinkled it upon the altar as the Levites removed the skins. ¹² They piled up the carcasses for each tribe to present its own burnt sacrifices to the Lord, as it is written in the law of Moses. They did the same with the oxen. ¹³ Then, as directed by the laws of Moses, they roasted the Passover lambs and boiled the holy offerings in pots, kettles, and pans, and hurried them out to the people to eat. ¹⁴ Afterwards the Levites prepared a meal for themselves and for the priests, for they had been busy from morning till night offering the fat of the burnt offerings.

¹⁵ The singers (the sons of Asaph) were in their places, following directions issued centuries earlier by King David, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun the king’s prophet. The gatekeepers guarded the gates and didn’t need to leave their posts of duty, for their meals were brought to them by their Levite brothers. ¹⁶ The entire Passover ceremony was completed in that one day. All the burnt offerings were sacrificed upon the altar of the Lord, as Josiah had instructed.

¹⁷ Everyone present in Jerusalem took part in the Passover observance, and this was followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread for the next seven days. ¹⁸ Never since the time of Samuel the prophet had there been such a Passover—not one of the kings of Israel could vie with King Josiah in this respect, involving so many of the priests, Levites, and people from Jerusalem and from all parts of Judah, and from Israel. ¹⁹ This all happened in the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah.

²⁰ Afterwards King Neco of Egypt led his army to Carchemish on the Euphrates River, and Josiah declared war on him.

²¹ But King Neco sent ambassadors to Josiah with this message: “I don’t want a fight with you, O king of Judah! I have come only to fight the power with which I am at war. Leave me alone! God has told me to hurry! Don’t meddle with God or he will destroy you, for he is with me.”

²² But Josiah refused to turn back. Instead he led his army into the battle at the valley of Megiddo. (He laid aside his royal robes so that the enemy wouldn’t recognize him.) Josiah refused to believe that Neco’s message was from God. ²³ The enemy archers struck King Josiah with their arrows and fatally wounded him.

“Take me out of the battle,” he exclaimed to his aides.

^24-25 So they lifted him out of his chariot and placed him in his second chariot and brought him back to Jerusalem where he died. He was buried there in the royal cemetery. And all Judah and Jerusalem, including even Jeremiah the prophet, mourned for him, as did the Temple choirs. To this day they still sing sad songs about his death, for these songs of sorrow were recorded among the official lamentations.

²⁶ The other activities of Josiah, and his good deeds, and how he followed the laws of the Lord, ²⁷ all are written in The Annals of the Kings of Israel and Judah.