Hezekiah went on to be healed of a fatal infection and granted an extra 15 years of life. But he was foolish enough to show the Babylonian envoy all the treasures he had gathered after God drove away the Assyrian army. At that time, Babylon was just a restive kingdom under the Assyrian Empire. They had plans to throw off the yoke of Assyria, and eventually did so, but our narrative was some time before that.
When King Hezekiah finally passed on, his heir was Manasseh. We remember him as easily the worst of the kings. Not only did he reign long — 55 years — but he drove hard against the Covenant in every way possible. The previous chapter says his perversion was even worse than the Canaanites. It included setting up pagan altars in the Temple courts, offering one of his sons in the fires of Molech, and apparently doing everything possible to silence the proper worship of Jehovah. From the context of this chapter, we discover that he had destroyed all the copies of the Pentateuch that he could find. God said that He would do to Judah what He had done to the Northern Kingdom.
Manasseh’s own heir, just as evil as his father, lasted two years before he was murdered in a plot by his own servants. The nobles stopped the insurrection and executed the participants of the coup. Then his heir was placed on the throne: Josiah. His long reign ran from 640-608 BC. As much as Manasseh represented an abrupt turn from Jehovah, so much was Josiah a restoration. He was faithful and true to the God of his nation. Our text says he was eight when he took the throne, and began seeking to restore the primacy of Jehovah worship. He had all the pagan shrines removed. At age 18 (around 621 BC), he felt led to refurbish the Temple.
The Assyrian Empire was under pressure from the warring tribes to the north of their capital. This had given Josiah breathing room. He called for the silver offerings in the Temple to be used for this project of restoring the facility. The work was supervised by Shaphan, the Royal Scribe along with the High Priest, Hilkiah.
It was common throughout the Ancient Near East to hide copies of important documents in the foundations of buildings. When the work on the Temple began, the hollow cavity in the foundation was uncovered. Inside was a copy of the Pentateuch. The High Priest found it, read it, and turned it over to Shaphan. The Scribe in turn looked it over and took it to the King. Saving the most important business for last, Shaphan reported on the work, then presented the Book of the Covenant. He read it to the King, which would have taken a significant amount of time.
At some point, the Josiah was stricken with conviction over the warnings. He knew what his grandfather and father had done, but had only some oral legacy of teaching to work from. Now that he had a copy of Moses, it was a shocking revelation of God’s wrath coming down on the kingdom. So he tore his clothes and lamented at the offense his nation had given to Jehovah.
He sent the book to have it examined by a reliable prophet. In this case, it was Huldah, a prophetess. She happened to reside in the more recent section of Jerusalem, constructed outside the original walls. She inquired of the Lord for an answer.
The answer was that Josiah’s fears were well placed. The Lord would indeed send all the calamity on Judah that He had warned about in the Law. However, because King Josiah was tender-hearted toward Jehovah, this punishment was delayed a bit so that he would die in peace before seeing any of it.
I find your paraphrasing of Old Testament scripture to be very insightful. Have you ever thought about collecting all these posts to form the Hurst Bible Commentary?
Thanks, Jack. I’ve published several commentaries on different sections of the Bible. They are all published on my Smashwords account under the series name “Ancient Truth.” However, I did not do this kind of commentary for the Old Testament History book. Still, I will probably collect these commentaries on the Law of Moses as another part of that series.