A Covenant Renewed Before the Judgment Falls

Josiah does not act on the book alone. Summoning the elders first follows the old pattern of covenant making, in which Moses and Joshua gathered the elders before the people (Exodus 19:7; Joshua 24:1).

The king himself reads, not a priest or Levite, as Deuteronomy 31:11 had envisaged at the feast of booths. Prophets are named among the listeners; Jeremiah, called in Josiah's thirteenth year (Jeremiah 1:2), may have stood in this crowd.

The pillar is probably one of the two bronze columns, Jachin and Boaz, at the temple entrance, where Joash too was presented as king (11:14). “Stood to the covenant” means took their stand in it, entered it as a party.

“Priests of the second order” may be the deputy priests, next in rank to the high priest (25:18). Burning the vessels at Kidron and carrying their ashes to Bethel dumps Jerusalem's pollution on the north's own sanctuary, defiling it in advance.

“Idolatrous priests” is kemarim, a word used only for pagan priests (Hosea 10:5; Zephaniah 1:4). “The planets” translates mazzaloth, found only here, probably the constellations of the zodiac, a Babylonian astral term.

Grinding and scattering the Asherah pole repeats Moses' treatment of the golden calf, burned and ground to powder (Exodus 32:20). Casting the dust on common graves made it unclean, since contact with the dead defiled anything (Numbers 19:16).

The women wove “hangings”, literally “houses”, perhaps tent shrines or garments to clothe the Asherah image. The rooms stood within the temple precinct itself, a measure of how far foreign worship had been absorbed.

Geba to Beersheba is Judah's north to south extent after the division, as Dan to Beersheba had been for all Israel. The gate of Joshua the governor is otherwise unknown, but excavators at Lachish have found a shrine inside the city gate deliberately put out of use, with a toilet set in it, which they link to a royal reform of this kind.

Deuteronomy 18:6–8 allowed a Levite from the country to serve at the central sanctuary; these priests were barred, perhaps because their shrines had been impure. They kept the right to priestly food, the unleavened bread, as a disabled priest did in Leviticus 21:22–23.

Topheth probably comes from an Aramaic word for hearth or fireplace, vocalised by the scribes like bosheth, shame. The valley of Hinnom, gey hinnom, gives the later word Gehenna, which Jesus uses for the place of final judgment.

Horse and chariot figurines associated with a solar cult have been found in Jerusalem excavations. Nathan-melech's chamber lay in the parvarim, a rare word probably meaning colonnades or annexes; the King James “suburbs” is a guess.

The upper chamber of Ahaz is the same building as the dial of 20:11, if the Qumran reading there is right. Roof altars were used for worship of the host of heaven (Jeremiah 19:13; Zephaniah 1:5). The dust goes into the Kidron, like the Asherah in verse 6.

The mount of corruption is the Mount of Olives, or its southern spur, its name mashchith, destruction, being a pun on mishchah, anointing oil, the olive's product. Solomon's shrines (1 Kings 11:7) had stood there some three hundred years, spared even by Hezekiah.

Human bones made a site permanently unclean for worship. What cleansed the land of idols was, by the law's own logic, the most defiling material available.

Bethel had been in Assyrian hands for a century, which shows Josiah pushing north into the vacuum as Assyria collapsed. The description names Jeroboam with his full epithet, “who made Israel to sin”, one last time.

The prophecy of 1 Kings 13:2 had named Josiah three centuries before and specified this act, burning men's bones on the altar. The repeated “proclaimed” at the end of the verse stresses that it was spoken aloud and publicly long ago.

“Title” is tsiyyun, a grave marker or signpost, the same word used for road markers in Jeremiah 31:21. The townspeople of Bethel still knew the grave's history after the deportations, a detail suggesting some Israelite population remained.

The prophet “that came out of Samaria” is the old prophet of Bethel who had deceived the man of God and then asked to be buried beside him (1 Kings 13:31). His request, made so that his bones would be spared, is honoured here.

“The cities of Samaria” refers to the former northern kingdom, now an Assyrian province. Josiah's reach there fits a moment after about 627 BC when Assyrian control of the west was weakening.

Judah's high place priests were retired (verse 9), but the northern priests are executed, the severity 1 Kings 13:2 foretold for “the priests of the high places”. Burning bones on their own altars makes the sites unusable.

Deuteronomy 16:5–6 required the passover to be kept only at the place the LORD would choose, not in homes or towns. “As it is written in the book of this covenant” ties the feast to the scroll just found.

Chronicles describes Hezekiah's passover too (2 Chronicles 30), yet also says none was like Josiah's (2 Chronicles 35:18). What was unmatched was a national passover kept at one sanctuary strictly by the written law.

The whole reform, from the scroll's discovery to the passover, falls within the eighteenth year, 622 BC. The passover fell in the first month of the year, so the reform moved very quickly, unless the year was counted from autumn.

Familiar spirits and wizards had been introduced by Manasseh (21:6). The household gods here are teraphim, rendered “images”, the same objects Rachel stole from Laban (Genesis 31:19). Josiah's reform reaches into private houses as well as shrines.

Heart, soul and might are the three terms of Deuteronomy 6:5, and Josiah is the only person in the Old Testament of whom all three are said. The verse is the high point of praise in the whole Book of Kings.

“Notwithstanding” is 'akh, “yet” or “only”, a single short word that stops everything. The verse returns to Manasseh's provocations of 21:11–15 as the reason, so the book holds Josiah's reform and Manasseh's legacy side by side.

Each clause reverses an earlier promise: removal as Israel was removed (17:18), the city “which I have chosen” (1 Kings 11:13), the house where the name would be (1 Kings 8:29). The LORD now quotes his own words to revoke them.

The regnal formula comes before Josiah's death rather than after it, which is unusual, as though the book wished to close his reign on his achievements before recounting how it ended.

The King James says Necho went “against” Assyria, but the Hebrew preposition can mean “to”, and the Babylonian Chronicle shows Egypt marching to support Assyria against Babylon in 609 BC. Josiah tried to block him at Megiddo, the pass through Carmel. “When he had seen him” likely means at their first encounter.

Chronicles adds that Josiah was hit by archers, changed chariots and died at Jerusalem, and that Jeremiah composed laments for him (2 Chronicles 35:23–25). Zechariah 12:11 remembers “the mourning in the valley of Megiddon” as a proverb of national grief.

Jehoahaz was not the eldest; Jehoiakim was two years older (verse 36). The people passed over the elder son, perhaps because Jehoahaz shared his father's anti-Egyptian policy. His personal name was Shallum (Jeremiah 22:11), and Jehoahaz may be a throne name.

Three months is enough for a verdict. “According to all that his fathers had done” is a formula that places even Josiah's son among the evil kings before Josiah, as if the reform had skipped a generation.

Riblah on the Orontes in Syria was Necho's field headquarters and later Nebuchadnezzar's (25:6). A hundred talents of silver is a modest tribute compared with Hezekiah's three hundred (18:14); some Greek texts read ten talents of gold.

Changing a vassal's name asserted mastery, as Pharaoh renamed Joseph (Genesis 41:45). Necho changes only the first element: Eliakim, “God raises up”, becomes Jehoiakim, “the LORD raises up”. Jeremiah 22:10–12 laments that Shallum would never return.

Jehoiakim levies the tribute by assessment, “every one according to his taxation”, a graded tax on landowners, the same people of the land who had rejected him for his younger brother. Jeremiah 22:13–17 accuses him of building a lavish palace with unpaid labour in the same years.

Zebudah was a different wife of Josiah from Hamutal, mother of Jehoahaz, so the brothers had different mothers and perhaps rival court factions. Rumah may be in Galilee, another queen mother from former northern territory, like Amon's mother in 21:19.

The verdict repeats verse 32 word for word, closing the chapter with two sons of the best king judged alike. Jeremiah 36 shows Jehoiakim cutting a scroll of Jeremiah's prophecies with a penknife and burning it, the opposite of his father's response to a scroll.