2 Chronicles 35:25 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Jeremiah lamented for Josiah Sorrowed much on account of the immature death of this good king, foreseeing that the utter ruin of his country would follow upon it. And as it was usual with the Jews to make lamentations, elegies, or mournful pieces upon the death of great men, princes, and others that had distinguished themselves among them, and deserved well of their country, it is probable Jeremiah wrote such a piece on the occasion of Josiah's death. If he did so, the loss of it is very much to be deplored, because, as Dr. Dodd observes, it was, no doubt, “a masterpiece of its kind as there never was an author more deeply affected with his subject, or more capable of carrying it through all the tender sentiments of sorrow and compassion, than Jeremiah.” All the singing-men and singing-women spake of Josiah in their lamentations Among the Jews men and women were usually employed to mourn at funerals, and to sing the praises of the dead. And so real and great was the mourning for Josiah, that for ages afterward they always remembered it in their lamentations for the dead, saying of the person deceased, Then art worthy to be lamented for, as good Josiah was, or words to the same purpose. Or, as Poole thinks, the meaning may be, that in all their succeeding lamentations for their public calamities, they remembered Josiah's death as their first and fatal blow, which opened the flood-gates to all their following miseries. And made them an ordinance in Israel Ordained that the mournful pieces, penned on this sad occasion, should be learned and sung by all sorts of people. And, behold, they are written in the Lamentations Not in the book termed The Lamentations of Jeremiah, which was written on another occasion; but in some collection of mournful poems, now lost.