And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day, and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the lamentations.
Jeremiah lamented for Josiah ... The elegy of the prophet has not reached us; but it seems to have been long preserved among his countrymen, and chaunted on certain public occasions by the professional singers, who probably got the dirges they sang from a collection of funeral odes, composed on the death of good and great men of the nation. The spot in the valley of Megiddo, where the battle was fought, was near the town of Hadad-rimmon, a name derived from that of a Syrian idol. Herodotus relates (b. 2:, 159) that the scene of Josiah's defeat was Magdolum - i:e., most probably the Migdol, or tower in Jezreel (Megiddo), on the northeast of that town (Josephus, 'Antiquities,' b. 10:, ch. 5:, sec. 1). Hence, the lamentation for the death of Josiah was called 'The lamentation of Hadad-rimmon in the valley of Megiddo,' which was so great and so long continued, that the lamentation off Hadad passed afterward into a proverbial phrase to express any great and extraordinary sorrow (Zechariah 12:11).