Josiah's Good Deeds II Kings 23

II Kings 23:3 "And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the LORD to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book And all the people stood to the covenant."

Josiah has been told that he would die. He still followed the precepts of the book he had found and tried to clean up the kingdom of all the false gods. He tore down the altars and the groves and crushed them to powder putting the ashes on the graves of the false prophets and elsewhere.

He was personally involved in the cleanup.

v16 "And as Joshia turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount and sent and took the bones out of the sepulchres and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words."

He also saw the grave of the prophets and told the people to not disturb them. He did his best but the nation was under the judgment of God for the sins of his forefathers: Jeroboam v15, Manasseh v26 and even Solomon v13. This chapter and those in II Chronicles tell the sad story of the sin of a great people and how they turned from the LORD who delivered them out of Egypt and gave them a land flowing with milk and honey.

In the end of his life, he died in battle. Egypt and Assyria were at war and Josiah went down to fight. He was killed in Megiddo and buried in his own sepulchre in Jerusalem. v30

v26 "Notwithstanding the LORD turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal. v27 And the LORD said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there."

We will be studying the captivity later but it is good to remember the why behind the captivity. This chapter might be reviewed to remind us of the why.

Of Josiah the Bible gives good praise: v25 "And like unto him was there no king before him that turned to the LORD with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him."

Lamentations 4:20 "The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the heathen."

Keywords: Bible Study, Judah, Kings, Josiah. A great king tries to clean up Judah of the false gods.