His servants therefore took him out of that chariot, and put him in the second chariot that he had; and they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died, and was buried in [one of] the sepulchres of his fathers. And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.
Ver. 24. His servants therefore took him.] They forsook him not in his extremity, and last agony; as our Edward III's servants did him; all but one poor priest, who called upon him, now dying, to remember his Saviour and to ask mercy for his offences: whereupon he showed all signs of contrition, and at his last breath expressed the name of Jesus. a
And they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died.] See 2 Kings 23:30. He repented at his death, no doubt, of his rashness. As did also Curiensis, a godly Dutch divine, who held it unlawful to forbear to visit the infected with the pestilence; but when this good pastor, being too venturous, had got the plague, and was nigh to death, he cried out, O utinam Zanchii consilium secutus essem! O that I had taken Zanchius my colleague's counsel, which was to forbear visiting such as were so visited!
And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.] As great cause they had; greater than the Thebans had for their Epaminondas, or the Romans for their Augustus. Who when he died, we feared, saith Paterculus, that all would have been nought with us. And did not our fathers fear the like when that peerless Queen Elizabeth died? When Louis XII left the world, such a turn of things fell out in France, saith Budaeus, that he who erst seemed to touch heaven with his finger, now lay grovelling on the ground, as if he had been thunderstruck. Think the same of this sad state, all whose happiness died with their good king Josiah.
a Dan. Hist., 260.