CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
2 Kings 23:26. Notwithstanding the Lord turned not—The nation’s heart was not changed by all this fervour of the king and the reformation of external worship. Jeremiah’s ministry during Josiah’s reign shows the gross moral corruption and total spiritual falsity of this hopelessly apostate people.
2 Kings 23:28-30. Josiah slain at Megiddo—Necho, the son of Psammeticus, ascended the throne of Egypt in the twentieth year of Josiah. The two rival monarchies of Egypt and Assyria were then still struggling for ascendancy. Palestine was a coveted frontier territory. From Manasseh’s time Juda’ was tributary to Assyria, and Josiah felt necessitated to rally to Assyria’s side against Necho of Egypt. On the Egyptian monarch’s way to Charchemish, by the Euphrates, Josiah intercepted his line of advance by meeting his in the great vale of Migeddo, in the plain of Esdraelon. Although Necho remonstrated (Chronicles account), yet Josiah opposed him, and was slain.
2 Kings 23:31-34. Jehoahaz—It was the people’s act to raise Shallum, Josiah’s youngest son, afterwards named Jehoahaz, to the throne in preference to his elder brother Eliakim. This popular choice may be accounted for by Shallum’s military spirit (Ezekiel 19:3), and his resolute opposition to the Egyptian monarchy; for there were two parties in the Jewish state, the one favouring allegiance with Assyria, the other with Egypt. He was quickly deposed by Necho.
2 Kings 23:34-37. Eliakim, named Jehoiakim by Pharoah-Necho, followed an evil course, and was a reckless ruler. Jeremiah portrays his character most vividly (2 Kings 22:13-19).—W. H. J.
HOMILETICS OF 2 Kings 23:25-37
FAILURE IN THE WORK OF REFORMATION
I. That the work of Reformation may fail, notwithstanding the exemplary character of the principal agent (2 Kings 23:25). High praise is here accorded to Josiah. It is usually maintained that Hezekiah equalled or surpassed him in trusting Jehovah (2 Kings 18:5), but that he excelled Hezekiah in his scrupulous adherence to the minute details of the Mosaic law. It is, however, evident from this verse that Josiah was also conspicuous for his trust in Jehovah, for he turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might. The eulogy of Josiah, as of Hezekiah, may be regarded as a passage worded after the manner of oriental hyperbole, not to be literally understood, but as intended to distinguish a person who was gifted with specially great qualities. Josiah was the best character that age could produce, and was the fittest to grapple with the abuses that others deplored, but were powerless to rectify. With all the high personal qualifications and supreme royal influence possessed by Josiah, his reforming work was not permanently successful. He was not the first, or the last, great man who has attempted a great and much-needed reform, and failed.
II. That the work of Reformation fails when it does not prevent the accomplishment of the threatened doom (2 Kings 23:26-27).—After all the colossal and drastic efforts of Josiah to remove the dark curse that lowered over his kingdom and people, we learn from these verses the fateful sentence is still unrepealed. The evil was too deep and inveterate to be easily eradicated. By a comparatively early death, the good king was removed from the evil to come. Scarcely had the wail of lamentation for the popular monarch died away, ere the people relapsed into their former sins. The nation sank into deeper gloom, and the vial of Divine wrath, so long and patiently restrained, was at length poured out. The position of Judah at this time was similar to that of the Netherlands when William the Silent retired for a time from his loved Fatherland, which he felt himself unable to save, and a thunderbolt burst upon the land in the savage onslaught of the Duke of Alva and his butchering army—the thunderbolt that ultimately fell on Israel being Sennacherib and his victorious legions.
III. That the work of Reformation fails when it does not raise up competent agents to perpetuate its policy (2 Kings 23:28-37).—Josiah left no successor, either clerical or lay. The priests whose cause he had so bravely championed, had not the ability, or the will, to press forward the good work; and his two sons—Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim—who held the sceptre but as vassals under the dominating authority of the Egyptian monarch, showed their dislike to their father’s reforming work by throwing in their lot with the opposing party. They forsook the God of their father, and became idolaters. A great work of genuine reform usually creates its own agents, who perpetuate and consolidate the work, when the pioneer advocate is no more; and there must have been something defective about the plans and methods of Hezekiah’s work that failed to do this. “Reformation,” says Sir Joshua Reynolds, “is a work of time. A national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally changed at once; we must yield a little to the prepossession which has taken hold on the mind, and we may then bring people to adopt what would offend them if endeavoured to be introduced by violence.”
IV. That the work of Reformation fails when it does not thoroughly penetrate the heart and life of every member of the community.—Reform, to be real and abiding, must be personal, convincing the judgment, biassing the will, changing the spirit. “Reform, like charity, must begin at home. Once well at home, how will it radiate outwards, irrepressible, into all that we touch and handle, speak and work; kindling ever new light by incalculable contagion, spreading in geometric ratio, far and wide, doing good only wherever it spreads, and not evil” (Carlyle). National evils are thoroughly cured only so far as the individual is morally transformed and exalted.
LESSONS:—
1. The mightiest efforts of reform may come too late.
2. The failure of any worthy effort is an occasion of sincere sorrow to the good.
3. Failure should lead to self-examination and more complete trust in God.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
2 Kings 23:25-28. We cannot doubt that the sanguinary acts of Josiah, no less than of Elijah and Jehu, are condemned by Him in whom was fulfilled the spirit of the true Deuteronomy, the Revived Law, which the impetuous king carried out only in its external observances, and by its own hard measures. It was the first direct persecution that the kingdom of Judah had witnessed on behalf of the True Religion. Down to this time the mournful distinction had been reserved for the half-Pagan king Manasseh. But cruelty had here, as in all like cases, provoked a corresponding cruelty; and the reformation of Josiah, if from his youth and zeal it has suggested his likeness to our Edward VI., by its harsher features encouraged the rough acts which disfigured so many of the last efforts of that and other like movements of the Christian Church. But, in spite of all this effort, the kingdom of Judah was doomed. Perhaps the very vehemence of the attempt carried with it its own inefficacy. Even the traditions which invested Josiah with a blaze of preternatural glory, maintained that in his day the sacred oil was for ever lost. Too late is written on the pages even which described his momentary revival. It did not reach the deeply-seated, wide-spread corruption which tainted rich and poor alike.—Stanley.
2 Kings 23:26-27. The downward course of sin.
1. May reach a depth from which recovery is hopeless.
2. The best considered efforts of reform may fail to arrest.
3. Sinks at last to its inevitable doom.
2 Kings 23:29-30. The hope of Judah.
1. Rose to its brightest zenith amid the reforming efforts of Josiah.
2. Was quenched in that monarch’s death.
3. Rose no more in the history of the kingdom.
4. Will revive and burst into perfect glory, only under the sceptre of the Messiah-King.
—The early death of the king was no punishment for him, for he was thus gathered in peace to his fathers; but it was a chastisement for his unrepentant people, who now lamented him, and saw, when it was too late, what noble purposes he had had in their behalf.
2 Kings 23:30. His fall caused a universal mourning. Jeremiah wrote a lamentation for him (Lamentations 4:20). His loss formed the burden of regular songs even after the captivity, when “the mourning of Hadad-rimmon in the valley of Megiddon” was still the type of the deepest national affliction (Zechariah 12:11). “Well might such feelings be excited by the battle of Megiddo. That great valley of Esdraelon, the lists of Palestine, the scene of the great victories of Barak and of Gideon, was now stained with a second defeat more disastrous than that in which Saul lost his life. Then it had witnessed the fall of the short-lived dynasty of the people’s choice, but now it saw the virtual end of the earthly monarchy of the house of David. Hence may be traced the mystic significance which surrounds the name of this battlefield. The prophet Zechariah employs the mourning of Megiddo as a type of the more wholesome sorrow of Judah, in the day when God shall pour out upon them the spirit of grace and prayer, as a preparation for His final destruction of all the nations that come up against Jerusalem; and his imagery is adopted in the visions of the Apocalypse. On the very scene of the two most signal defeats of Israel and Judah by their most inveterate enemies, the Philistines and Egypt, the seer beholds the mystic “Battle of Armageddon,” which avenges all such defeats by the final overthrow of the kings of all the world in the great day of God Almighty” (Zechariah 12:9-14; Revelation 16:14-16).—Dr. Smith’s Student’s Scripture History.
—What eye doth not now pity and lament the untimely end of Josiah? Whom can it choose but affect to see a religious, just, virtuous prince, snatched away in the vigour of his age? After all our foolish moan, the Providence that directed that shaft to his lighting place, intends that wound for a stroke of mercy. The God whom Josiah serves, looks through his death at his glory, and by this sudden violence will deliver him from the view and participation of the miseries of Judah. O the wonderful goodness of the Almighty, whose very judgments are merciful! O the safe condition of God’s children, whom very pain easeth, whom death revives, whom dissolution unites, whom their very sin and temptation glorifies!—Bp. Hall.
2 Kings 23:31-37. Royal automata.
1. Divested of personal freedom and power, and manipulated by a grasping and imperious will (2 Kings 23:33-35).
2. Imitating with mechanical helplessness and precision the worst features of wicked predecessors (2 Kings 23:32-37).
3. Maintained by the privations and sufferings of their subjects (2 Kings 23:35).
4. Indicate a lowering of natural spirit and prestige.
2 Kings 23:32. The reassertive power of sin.
1. Repressed for a time by the influence of public reformation.
2. Ready to take advantage of the slightest relaxation of restraint.
3. Defiantly awaits its unavoidable punishment.
2 Kings 23:35. “He exacted the silver and the gold of the people.” Though he received likely from the subjects no less sums of curses than of coin.—Trapp.
2 Kings 23:37. Jehoiakin was a most unprincipled and oppressive tyrant. Jeremiah sternly rebukes his injustice and oppression, his cruelty and avarice, and his reckless luxury in building himself a magnificent palace; and contrasts all this with his father’s justice to the poor (Jeremiah 22:13-19). In the Chronicles his name is dismissed with an allusion to “all the abominations that he did.” To all his other evils he added this, that he slew Urijah, the prophet (Jeremiah 26:20; Jeremiah 26:23).