(There will be a lot of reading: perhaps ask for volunteers!)
In our last study, Isaiah had prophesied peace and prosperity for good king Hezekiah’s last 15 years. At the end of that he died, and his son Manasseh came to the throne.
Read 2 Kings 21:1
1 Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah.
Hephzibah means ‘In her is my delight’ and she had her baby three years into Hezekiah’s final fifteen year life extension. What a joy this child must have been.
He was only twelve when he came to the throne.
Read 2 Kings 21:2-6
2 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. 3 He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshipped them. 4 He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, ‘In Jerusalem I will put my Name.’ 5 In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. 6 He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practised divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.
How could this be? How could he turn so quickly against the Lord? You could hardly blame it on his upbringing.
As we have seen so often before, without a personal faith people will always do what is right in their own eyes (Judges 17:6). Here we have a teenager given immense wealth and power, who turned against a religion that required him to keep rules of purity and submission. Instead he eagerly followed the worldly pleasures provided by the gods that Ahab and Jezebel had introduced. But there will always be consequences, look at the end of the last verse again.
Read 2 Kings 21:7-9
7 He took the carved Asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple, of which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, ‘In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name for ever. 8 I will not again make the feet of the Israelites wander from the land I gave their ancestors, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them and will keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them.’ 9 But the people did not listen. Manasseh led them astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.
We can feel the distress in the author’s heart as he writes this. After all the Lord had done for his people. And it was not only Manasseh’s fault, verse 9 tells us the people seemed eager to be led astray too.
Read 2 Kings 21:10-13
10 The Lord said through his servants the prophets: 11 ‘Manasseh king of Judah has committed these detestable sins. He has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him and has led Judah into sin with his idols. 12 Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. 13 I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring line used against Samaria and the plumb-line used against the house of Ahab. I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes out a dish, wiping it and turning it upside-down.
And that descriptive expression has entered our language – ‘wiped them out’ – meaning totally destroyed.
(We don’t know which prophets these were. Isaiah had died by then, as the prophecy spoken in person to King Hezekiah in chapter 39, was to be his last. The following chapters in Isaiah concerning deliverance and restoration from exile in Babylon are truly prophetic.)
Read 2 Kings 21:14-15
14 I will forsake the remnant of my inheritance and give them into the hands of enemies. They will be looted and plundered by all their enemies; 15 they have done evil in my eyes and have aroused my anger from the day their ancestors came out of Egypt until this day.’
Ever since they had left Egypt, the Lord had constantly warned them against turning from him, and it seemed that every generation could not believe what their fathers had taught; again and again they had to learn the hard way.
Read 2 Kings 21:16
16 Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end – besides the sin that he had caused Judah to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
Man was the pinnacle of God’s creation. Killing innocent people was even more offensive to God than ignoring him.
Read 2 Kings 21:17-18
17 As for the other events of Manasseh’s reign, and all he did, including the sin he committed, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? 18 Manasseh rested with his ancestors and was buried in his palace garden, the garden of Uzza. And Amon his son succeeded him as king.
Notably, he was not buried in the tombs of the kings but in the garden. (Like a dog?)
Read 2 Kings 21:19-22
19 Amon was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for two years. His mother’s name was Meshullemeth daughter of Haruz; she was from Jotbah. 20 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done. 21 He followed completely the ways of his father, worshipped the idols his father had worshipped, and bowing down to them. 22 He forsook the Lord, the God of his ancestors, and did not walk in obedience to him.
Obviously, there was nothing more to say.
Read 2 Kings 21:23
23 Amon’s officials conspired against him and assassinated the king in his palace.
Were the rest of the people happy with that? Well, they also quite enjoyed ‘doing what was right in their own eyes’ so we read:
2 Kings 21:24-26
24 Then the people of the land killed all who had plotted against King Amon, and they made Josiah his son king in his place.
25 As for the other events of Amon’s reign, and what he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? 26 He was buried in his tomb in the garden of Uzza. And Josiah his son succeeded him as king.
Amon too, was buried in the garden.
Read 2 Kings 22:1
1Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for thirty-one years. His mother’s name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah; she was from Bozkath.
Oh dear, another boy-king? Would he follow the pattern set by his father and grandfather? Fortunately, no!
Read 2 Kings 22:2
2 He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.
Commentators are quick to assume that suddenly the royal court, and his own mother are eager to train this young boy in the ‘ways of his father David’, but I find it hard to imagine that happening after fifty years of apostasy. So what caused this sudden about-turn?
300 years before, the first king of Israel to follow David – Jeroboam – ‘made two golden calves. He said to the people, ‘It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ (1 Kings 12:28).
Now
Read 1 Kings 12:31-33 (Note: 1 Kings!)
31 Jeroboam built shrines on high places and appointed priests from all sorts of people, even though they were not Levites. 32 He instituted a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the festival held in Judah, and offered sacrifices on the altar. This he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves he had made. And at Bethel he also installed priests at the high places he had made. 33 On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, a month of his own choosing, he offered sacrifices on the altar he had built at Bethel. So he instituted the festival for the Israelites and went up to the altar to make offerings.
And then
Read 1 Kings 13:1-2
1 By the word of the Lord a man of God came from Judah to Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make an offering. 2 By the word of the Lord he cried out against the altar: ‘Altar, altar! This is what the Lord says: “A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who make offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you.”’
Now we can come back to the current time, and read from 2 Kings 23:14-16
14 Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones.
15 Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin – even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. 16 Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the Lord proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.
We started looking at Josiah and wondered: what had influenced the young boy for good? (2 Kings 22:2)
I can only say that God had his hand on him even 300 years before his conception (Psalm 139:15-16). At the end of our previous study we saw that God’s purposes will not be frustrated. He can and does raise up people who will do his will (e.g. Acts 9)
2 Kings now skips to when he was 26, but to fill in the events that happened before then we need to read 2 Chronicles 34:3-7
3 In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David. In his twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of high places, Asherah poles and idols. 4 Under his direction the altars of the Baals were torn down; he cut to pieces the incense altars that were above them, and smashed the Asherah poles and the idols. These he broke to pieces and scattered over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. 5 He burned the bones of the priests on their altars, and so he purged Judah and Jerusalem. 6 In the towns of Manasseh, Ephraim and Simeon, as far as Naphtali, and in the ruins around them, 7 he tore down the altars and the Asherah poles and crushed the idols to powder and cut to pieces all the incense altars throughout Israel. Then he went back to Jerusalem.
How old was Josiah when he came to the throne? (8) (2 Kings 22:1)
How old when he first began to seek God? (16)
How old when he began to destroy the altars of the Baals? (20)
He had been born into what had been a very pagan culture, and as an eight year old royal prince would he have already had to be present at the worship ceremonies of those pagan gods?
Now we will see how God can use our free will to carry out his own purposes. Very gradually, over the next eight years Josiah began to feel that there was something lacking in his life, something wrong in the worship of these ‘gods’. What was the God that his famous ancestor David had worshipped that was so different to these?
By the time he was sixteen ‘He began to seek’.
By the time he was twenty he was fully committed and ‘he began to purge’.
It seems to have taken another six years before his purge was completed. What descriptive words did we read in verses 4-7? ‘he cut to pieces . . . he smashed . . . he broke . . . he tore down . . . he crushed’
Now read 2 Chronicles 34:8:
8 In the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, to purify the land and the temple, he sent Shaphan son of Azaliah and Maaseiah the ruler of the city, with Joah son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the temple of the Lord his God.
In the previous 50 years Temple worship had been abandoned, and the Temple had been stripped of silver and gold and even made into a place of pagan worship. (2 Kings 18:15-16 2 Chronicles 33:7) It was now in a sad state of disrepair.
Read 2 Chronicles 34:9-11
9 They went to Hilkiah the high priest and gave him the money that had been brought into the temple of God, which the Levites who were the gatekeepers had collected from the people of Manasseh, Ephraim and the entire remnant of Israel and from all the people of Judah and Benjamin and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 10 Then they entrusted it to the men appointed to supervise the work on the Lord’s temple. These men paid the workers who repaired and restored the temple. 11 They also gave money to the carpenters and builders to purchase dressed stone, and timber for joists and beams for the buildings that the kings of Judah had allowed to fall into ruin.
It appears that money had been collected – either during the past years, or possibly by more recent order of the king – and it had been simply stored away in the Temple.
Now read 2 Chronicles 34:14-18
14 While they were bringing out the money that had been taken into the temple of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the Book of the Law of the Lord that had been given through Moses. 15 Hilkiah said to Shaphan the secretary, ‘I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.’ He gave it to Shaphan.
16 Then Shaphan took the book to the king and reported to him: ‘Your officials are doing everything that has been committed to them. 17 They have paid out the money that was in the temple of the Lord and have entrusted it to the supervisors and workers.’ 18 Then Shaphan the secretary informed the king, ‘Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.’ And Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king.
The ’book’ (actually a scroll) could have been part of one of the five books of Moses (the Pentateuch or Torah) – maybe Deuteronomy chapters 12-26 'The Book of the Law', considered to be the oldest, original writings of Moses.
Deuteronomy 31:24-29
24 After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end, 25 he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord: 26 ‘Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. There it will remain as a witness against you. 27 For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been rebellious against the Lord while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die! 28 Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes and all your officials, so that I can speak these words in their hearing and call the heavens and the earth to testify against them. 29 For I know that after my death you are sure to become utterly corrupt and to turn from the way I have commanded you. In days to come, disaster will fall on you because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord and arouse his anger by what your hands have made.’
