Hezekiah and Josiah were two of the greatest Hebrew kings on the Davidic tree. As Hezekiah was Josiah’s Great Grandfather, they never met. It may seem logical to suggest that Josiah would have been brought up being taught of the legendary Godliness of great Grandad “Hezzy”, however, it has to be added that Josiah’s father – and especially his grandfather were godless idolaters. Josiah’s family nights around the warm, brazier recounting stories of their ancestors would have had Granddad Manasseh doing all he could to deride his own father Hezekiah’s devout lifestyle. Manasseh was a malevolent wizard of genuine black magic and evil – even though the term “black magic” is never used in scripture – but sacrificing one’s son to some evilly conceived demonic “deity” has to be as deep and dark as it is possible to achieve. The scripture tells us, “Manasseh also sacrificed his own son in the fire. He practiced sorcery and divination, and he consulted with mediums and psychics. He did much that was evil in the Lord’s sight, arousing his anger. Manasseh even made a carved image of Asherah and set it up in the Temple.” (2 Kings 21:6-7a) How’s that for conjoined criminality and devil worship? So Godly Josiah succeeded the ultra-bad Manasseh.
According to a brief postscript to Manasseh’s narrative, Manasseh was brought in chains to the Assyrian king (nobody is sure whether it was Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal) which, by historical deduction could have been for non-payment of tribute, or as some trivial rumour of disloyalty – such was life living under such cruel dictatorships. The text in chronicles goes on to inform the reader that he was later treated well and restored to his throne. It seems that the severity of Manasseh’s Assyrian imprisonment brought him to repentance towards Yahweh. Manasseh was, however, restored to the throne, and abandoned idolatry, and even started removing foreign idols and exhorting the people to worship Yahweh. Neither Kings nor Assyrian records mention this end-of-life phenomenon – only the verses in 2 Chronicles 33:11-15.
Both negative and positive influences on the outlook and philosophy of heirs to the Davidic throne while they were young must have been viciously partisan. But I highlight this account while meditating on Hezekiah’s zeal for pure Yahwehism. Just as Samuel emerged as one of the Godliest men in scripture while being nurtured amid Eli’s godless sons, so did Hezekiah emerge strong in God despite evil father Amon, and evil grandfather Manasseh.
It is generally accepted that Hezekiah died circa 687 BC, and Josiah succeeded to the Davidic throne 640 BC, circa 50 years later. The clean clear convictions and practices of Josiah were birthed despite the spiritual sewage produced in the reigns of Manasseh and Amon. As a by the way, Josiah’s father only reigned 2 years and was murdered by his own courtiers, who were themselves then all murdered by the people of Judah. Ah! Gentle days of the closing seventh century in Judah.
Hezekiah had been King of Judah for 4 only years when Shalmaneser, king of Assyria started besieging Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, i.e., not in Hezekiah’s realm. As far as we know Hezekiah did absolutely zilch to aid Hoshea, king of Israel in his existential struggle against Assyria. Three years later Samaria crumbled. That brings us to an iconic date in Hebrew history -722 B.C. The vast majority of the population of the northern kingdom was infamously dragged away to nations and locations generally unknown (though variably guessed at by all and sundry, leaving us with the ever-unresolved mystery of “the ten lost tribes”). All that we know of Hezekiah’s life is described in 2 Kings, chapters 18-20. He became king of Judah at the age of twenty-five and reigned in Jerusalem for 29 years. A faithful worshipper of the true God, Hezekiah reopened the Temple of Solomon (2 Chronicles 20:3) and reigned in control throughout an amazingly traumatic period of Hebrew history. According to the Book of Kings, King Hezekiah instituted a deep furroughing reform that rid Judah and population-less Israel of anything that looked, smelt, or hinted at idolatry. He even went so far as to destroy “the brazen serpent that Moses had made; for up to those days the children of Israel burnt incense to it. It was called Nehushtan” (Bronze snake). However, 55 years of demonic witchcraft being instilled into Hebrew culture, and the popular assassination of Amon, left the young Josiah with a spiritual mountain to climb.
After reading countless times through Kings and Chronicles, the stories of Josiah’s contemporary Levitical priest Hilkiah finding something called “the scrolls” in a huge pile of dust, refuse and rats, and how the king tore his clothes after the book was read to him is impossible to unsee, post having read it through. The graphic image is like a cowhand burning cattle with a red-hot branding iron. In similar fashion, Josiah’s response is burnt into our imagination sustaining the deed in our understanding and in the depth of our souls. True worship is to be given to Yahweh and Yahweh alone.
I stand to be corrected, but Josiah and his Great Grandad are the only two Davidic kings who took God seriously enough to tear their clothes up in a display of their need for God’s assistance, and repentance for their own godlessness. Josiah’s passionate display was repentance for his ignorance of the Mosaic law, while Hezekiah’s was because of an absolutely hopeless situation with a quarter of a million bloodthirsty Assyrian soldiers surrounding Jerusalem. The well preached and thoroughly dramatised picture of noble Hezekiah, tearfully and desperately spreading out the Rabshakeh’s letter from the king of Assyria, smoothing out the creases of the letter on the floor in case Yahweh couldn’t read the missive properly is, yet again, another of one of the most incredible moments of Hebrew history. Every action and deed by Hezekiah wreak meaning and significance.
These two men seemed, throughout their lives, to fill any biblical consideration with impacting graphics as deeply spiritual as they are emotional. And it is with equal gravitas and pictorial clarity that Isaiah sent the message to Hezekiah with the quiet and peaceful message “not to worry – the problem was solved.” The weight is added to the prophet’s words when one realises that there must have been something like a quarter of a million Assyrian soldiers camped outside Jerusalem’s walls when he spoke the prophecy. And boy oh boy, was the problem solved! 185,000 men mysteriously lost their lives overnight in order to solve Jerusalem’s problem. The King James translation has that humourous line that, “When they awoke, they were dead.” Yes indeed, two great kings who knew what it meant to take all issues to Yahweh asking him to personally handle the scenario and get them out of their self-inflicted messes.
But why am I talking about these two while we a chewing on Isaiah’s narrative?
Both of these high-profile men of renown showed character and courage in their interactions with God while they were in the Davidic seat of power, guiding God’s people through crises of mammoth proportions, hinging their conduct to the swinging doors of Hebrew history. Once they had both, in their respective generations, learned how to lay hold of God Himself (as we are all invited to that kind of lifestyle) they took their people forward softening and slowing down the blanket of darkness that was seeking to bury Judah forever.
Isaiah was a key influence on Hezekiah with remarkable input into then life, opinions, and practices of King Hezekiah. And off the record, the scrolls that were discovered in the deserted Temple in the early days of Josiah’s reign, would have been left to rot there during the days of Isaiah’s work, and covered with detritus during Manasseh’s days.
King after king (especially the one depraved queen) lacked the belief, persuasion, or nerve to lay the axe to the spiritual roots of the infamous “bamot” (high Places) and remove them from the land. Hezekiah and Josiah were not only adept at doing so but they also pursued it as a national high priority policy. Only these two Davidic monarchs succeeded also in installing in the national diary at least once a Passover sacrifice.
A quick reading of the biblical passages centering on Hezekiah and Josiah could falsely lead the reader to believe that the two noble men and their reformations were quite similar in design and function. After all, in both stories, one reads of a righteous king who is determined to wipe out the idolatry from Judah. The king gathers the whole population to hold a national “religious convention”, exhorts, nay, virtually commands them to observe the Law of Moses, and then begins “cleaning house” from top to bottom throughout the nation. Idolatry is removed – though never completely wiped away – the holy separation of Jerusalem as “the city of the Great King” is restored, and the Passover sacrifice is offered with great enthusiasm.
So were these two kings, identical twins in the realm of their national input?
Allowing the scrolls to speak for themselves it would seem that Hezekiah’s outstanding quality was his trust in God. I know it sounds a bit basic and Sunday Schoolish, where the answer to all questions is, “Trust God more fervently” but … it’s there. Something utterly invisible that could only be perceived by his actions and the results. One cannot evade the line in II Kings 18:5 that states: “He (Hezekiah} trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those that were before him.” Scholars and Rabbis take the latter half of this verse to refer to Hezekiah’s quality of trusting in God. Hezekiah, it seems, always had a deep-seated conviction and belief in the providential and intervening God of Israel despite the wicked examples of his father Ahaz.
Chronicles relates that Hezekiah did not waste any time in translating his beliefs into action, but began his far-reaching reformations “in the very first month of the very first year of his reign.” (2 Chronicles 29:3) Although Hezekiah put his trust in God, like all of us, as already stated, he was not faultless. The Mystics and intellectuals accuse Hezekiah on account of his sin concerning allowing the messengers of Babylon to see the extent of his treasures.
Josiah’s outstanding characteristic was his repenting, returning and persistent recanting from his ignorance of the Mosaic statutes towards Yahweh. As II Kings 23:25 states: “And like him was there no king before him that returned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might … neither after him arose there any like him.”
So, Hezekiah had mastered the lifestyle of practically placing deep trust in Yahweh, while Josiah mastered the practice of repenting from ignorance and unbelief and turning to deep commitment towards God.
II Chronicles 34 relates that when Josiah was just a lad of mere sixteen years, he began seeking “the God of David his father.” In Josiah’s twelfth year as king, he began to purify both Judah and Jerusalem. In other words, he came gradually to a complete turnabout that he resolved to institute immediately after the discovered texts were read to him.
Hebrew has a term for the process of returning to God as a completely altered lifestyle. It is when a person becomes, so orthodox Jews call it, “’Baal teshuva.” From Hebrew to English, it literally translates as, “Master of the return”. Josiah was aiming first and foremost at personal correction, repentence and commitment to Yahweh. Perhaps this is why the Bible, in describing Josiah, not only repeats the phrases stated concerning Hezekiah, “And he did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David his father,” but also adds the phrase, “and turned not aside to the right hand nor to the left.” The spiritual shock of the discovery of the Pentateuch amidst the dirt and rubbish in the disused Temple, shifted Josiah’s focus to national reformation, precipitated by his own personal conversion experience, which he desired the entire nation to enjoy. Yes indeed! Josiah’s “national” reformation was in reality, merely an extension of his own personal reformation.
Hezekiah’s transforming is described in detail in II Chronicles 29-31. From the inception, it is palpable that Hezekiah made a sizeable determination to get the population immersed in the restoration. With patriarchal warm-heartedness he tackled the priests and Levites, saying: “My sons, be not now negligent: for the Lord has chosen you to stand before Him, to serve him.” Hezekiah’s ritual, sanctifying the Temple, was very extravagant. He desired to excite the people with the magnificence of the temple services as in the so-called “good old days.” Hezekiah himself brought sacrifices and bowed to God while the Levites sang and played their instruments.
After the initial ceremony, Hezekiah sent out letters throughout the land urging the people to come to Jerusalem to observe the Passover. His appeal was one of encouragement and comfort: “For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and he will not turn away His face from you, if you return to Him.” Hezekiah’s appeal found its way into the people’s hearts to the extent that God Himself put a spirit of unity in the people. As the Sages remarked: “He who comes to cleanse himself of sin is aided by heaven.”
Hezekiah’s Passover was a tremendous success in that it truly had an effect on the people’s ways: “Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and broke the images in pieces, and cut down the asherim, and broke down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin – in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had destroyed them all.” It is interesting to note that all the actions in this verse and throughout the narrative are indicated in the plural form, meaning that all the people participated in uprooting the idolatry. After they purified the land, the people readily brought heave offerings and tithes to their Temple worship. Restoration indeed!
The picture which the text paints of Hezekiah’s generation, a picture of sincere change, led the interpretation of II Chronicles 32: I: “After these things and these deeds of integrity, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came and entered Judah, and encamped himself against the fortified cities.” According to Rabbi’s, “these deeds of integrity” refer to the righteousness of Hezekiah’s generation. This invasion of Sennacharib merely informs me that the spiritual idolatry that had degenerated and become by default “the national widespread pervasive Jewish religion”, had unleashed things in the world that couldn’t be reversed without a deep national attitude of repentance and remorse. And the public at large never took God’s word serious enough. Whatever the Passover brought to the people it was not deep and/or permanent enough to stop the repercussions that were loosed into the world via the rising and falling world powers, which, in Hezekiah’s day was Assyria.
God caused Sennacherib to come up upon the land of Judah only for the purpose of performing a public miracle for this generation for the whole world to see. Other commentators take a different approach and say, that “these deeds of integrity” only refer to Hezekiah’s conduct. Sennacherib attacked Judah, however, because of the evil ways of Hezekiah’s generation, and especially these commentators base their opinion on Isaiah 8:5-8 which describes the coming of the king of Assyria upon Judah: “Since this people (presumably the people of Hezekiah’s generation) refuse the waters of Shiloh that go softly and rejoices in Rezin and the son of Remaliah.” I find it difficult to apply these verses in Isaiah to Hezekiah’s generation for the simple reason that the verses mention Rezin the son of Remaliah. Both of these kings had already met their ends by the time Hezekiah ascended to the throne.
Neither Kings nor Chronicles gives a detailed account of Josiah’s temple ceremony after the finding of the Torah scroll. The text simply states that Josiah read the Torah scroll and made a covenant before God that the people should follow in His ways. The last two verses of II Chronicles 34 tell us: “And he (Josiah) caused all who were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to it (the covenant of God) … and he made all that were present in Israel to serve the Lord their God; and all his days they departed not from following the Lord, the God of their fathers.”
Yes, the people served God (supposedly), but only because Josiah enforced this mode of behavior. The people did not choose of their own accord to serve God. The most striking feature of Josiah’s reformation is the singular form used throughout the narrative. Josiah did all the burning, uprooting, grinding, and shattering while the people were at most, passive bystanders. Jeremiah, in commenting on the generation of Josiah, gives us a very good idea of how involved the people really were in the reformation. Jeremiah 3:10 states: “And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to me with her whole heart, but in falsehood, says the Lord.” The generation of Josiah made themselves look like righteous people, but in fact, they were wicked. It was said that they used to carve figures of idolatry on the inside of their doors so that when those who were responsible for destroying idolatry checked the house, the door was open, and they did not see or recognize the figures. It was just for the one Passover of Josiah that the people changed their ways, “but at once they returned to their sins and were worshippers of idolatry, some secretly and others openly.”
Josiah’s reformation, understandably, did not have much of an effect on the people as a whole. The people may have loved him for other reasons, such as his bringing relative peace and quiet to the country, but they were not swept up in Josiah’s religious zeal. It makes it sound as if Josiah did not even realize that his generation was sinful. Consequently, he thought that his generation was worthy of enjoying all the blessings of the Torah including the promise that “neither shall the sword go through your land” (Leviticus 26:6).
Perhaps it was because of this gross miscalculation, Josiah went out to fight Pharaoh-Necho who was on his way to do battle in Carchemish with Assyria who were on the brink of collapse and dissipation. We see that, in effect, Josiah brought about his own death precisely because he was out of contact with the ways of his people. This is my theory.
I have never forgotten Christopher Gornold-Smith lecturing on history of Israel laboured the point that nobody has a real substantial reason explaining why Josiah needed to confront Necho on the way north to Carchemish to fight Assyria. Why didn’t he just let him go and do the fighting. In fact, if Josiah had met Necho and beaten him in battle, it would have left Assyria in power and existence to Judah’s detriment. However Josiah’s death was precipitated by his action, and his death left Judah in the hands of the woeful last five kings that in the space of 25 years over saw the collapse and total dissipation of the nation of Judah.
The question remains, however, why Hezekiah’s reformation did not have a more lasting effect on the people under the prophetic oversight of Isaiah. We know that Hezekiah’s son Manasseh succeeded in reversing all that his father had done.
A possible answer is that after his illness, Hezekiah was never in the same condition that he was before and consequently, he may also have begun to lose contact with the people. We must also bear in mind that Manasseh ruled for a very long time and could have carried out his reversal process gradually so as to gain the acceptance of the people.
Thank God for the lives of Hezekiah and Josiah.