Book of the Law
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and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word
of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these
words.
“Then he said, What title is that that I see? And the men of the
city told him, It is the sepulcher of the man of God, which came from
Judah, and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the altar
of Bethel. And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. So
they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet that came out
of Samaria.”
2 Kings 23:15-18
.
On the southern slopes of Olivet, opposite the beautiful temple of
Jehovah on Mount Moriah, were the shrines and images that had been
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placed there by Solomon to please his idolatrous wives. See
1 Kings
11:6-8
. For upwards of three centuries the great, misshapen images
had stood on the “Mount of Offense,” mute witnesses to the apostasy
of Israel’s wisest king. These, too, were removed and destroyed by
Josiah.
The king sought further to establish the faith of Judah in the God
of their fathers by holding a great Passover feast, in harmony with the
provisions made in the book of the law. Preparation was made by those
having the sacred services in charge, and on the great day of the feast,
offerings were freely made. “There was not holden such a Passover
from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of
the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah.”
2 Kings 23:22
. But the
zeal of Josiah, acceptable though it was to God, could not atone for the
sins of past generations; nor could the piety displayed by the king’s
followers effect a change of heart in many who stubbornly refused to
turn from idolatry to the worship of the true God.
For more than a decade following the celebration of the Passover,
Josiah continued to reign. At the age of thirty-nine he met death in
battle with the forces of Egypt, “and was buried in one of the sepulchers
of his fathers.” “All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. 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.”
2 Chronicles 35:24, 25
. Like unto Josiah “was there no
king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with
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all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses;
neither after him arose there any like him. Notwithstanding the Lord