2 Kings 22:3-10
I have found the book
Money is being counted out for carpenters and masons when Hilkiah says he has found it in the house of the LORD. Shaphan reads it first, then reads it to the king.
People of the Bible
Josiah
Was eight years old when he began to reign, and at twenty-six tore his clothes over a book nobody had read in his lifetime.
Josiah comes to the throne as a child after his father is murdered in the palace. In the eighteenth year of his reign he sends money to repair the house, and in the course of the repairs the high priest finds the book of the law. It is read aloud to him and he tears his clothes, because he understands immediately that generations have been living outside it without knowing. He sends to a prophetess, gets an answer that the disaster is coming but not in his days, and then spends the rest of his reign dismantling four centuries of shrines anyway.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Josiah
- 01
- 02
2 Kings 22:11-20
He tore his clothes
His reaction is immediate and physical. He sends five men to inquire, saying great is the wrath kindled against us because our fathers have not listened to the words of this book.
- 03
2 Kings 23:1-3
He read it in their ears
He gathers the elders, the priests, the prophets and all the people, small and great, and reads the whole book out loud himself, standing by a pillar, and makes a covenant.
- 04
2 Kings 23:4-20
Down to Bethel
Vessels burned in the fields of Kidron, the houses of the sodomites broken down, Topheth defiled so no one can pass a child through fire, the horses of the sun taken away, and finally the altar at Bethel that Jeroboam made.
- 05
2 Kings 23:21-25
Such a Passover was not held
Not from the days of the judges, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel or of Judah. Then the verdict: none like him before or after, with all his heart and all his soul and all his might.
- 06
2 Chronicles 35:20-25
Megiddo
Neco is going to fight at Carchemish and sends word that his quarrel is not with Judah. Josiah disguises himself and goes out to the valley anyway, and is shot by archers, and Jeremiah laments for him.
Why it matters
Josiah is the deepest reform in the history of Judah and it changes nothing about the outcome, which is the point the account is making. Kings says there was no king before or after him who turned to the LORD with all his heart and soul and might, according to all the law of Moses, and in the same breath that the LORD did not turn from the fierceness of his wrath because of Manasseh. He keeps the largest Passover since the days of the judges, and dies at Megiddo going out to meet Pharaoh Neco.
4 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
