Book of the Law
261
“Is not this laid up in store with Me,
And sealed up among My treasures?
To Me belongeth vengeance, and recompense;
Their foot shall slide in due time:
For the day of their calamity is at hand,
And the things that shall come upon them make
haste.”
Verses 15-21, 23, 24, 28-31, 34,
35
.
These and similar passages revealed to Josiah God’s love for His
people and His abhorrence of sin. As the king read the prophecies of
swift judgment upon those who should persist in rebellion, he trembled
for the future. The perversity of Judah had been great; what was to be
the outcome of their continued apostasy?
In former years the king had not been indifferent to the prevailing
idolatry. “In the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young,”
he had consecrated himself fully to the service of God. Four years
later, at the age of twenty, he had made an earnest effort to remove
temptation from his subjects by purging “Judah and Jerusalem from
the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten
images.” “They brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence; and
the images, that were on high above them, he cut down; and the groves,
and the carved images, and the molten images, he brake in pieces, and
made dust of them, and strowed it upon the graves of them that had
sacrificed unto them. And he burnt the bones of the priests upon their
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altars, and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.”
2 Chronicles 34:3-5
.
Not content with doing thorough work in the land of Judah, the
youthful ruler had extended his efforts to the portions of Palestine
formerly occupied by the ten tribes of Israel, only a feeble remnant of
which now remained. “So did he,” the record reads, “in the cities of
Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali.” Not until
he had traversed the length and breadth of this region of ruined homes,
and “had broken down the altars and the groves, and had beaten the
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graven images into powder, and cut down all the idols throughout all
the land of Israel,” did he return to Jerusalem.
Verses 6, 7
.