40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 21:19-22:20 (Episode 348)

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

Josiah begins to reign after the son of Manasseh is killed. The Book of the Law is discovered in the temple and read to Josiah. The king is convinced that judgment is coming, which is confirmed by Huldah the prophetess. Josiah may not live to see the wrath of God, but reform is coming anyway. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Donate HWSS Regional Conference 1517 YouTube

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast to check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you check out all the other things that 1517 does. Got daily articles, got sermon helps, got videos, got free academies, got 1517 music. We got events. Well, we got one event, an actual 1517 event that you can come to now. Guys like Chad, who would just roam in the earth speaking about things in the Old Testament,

you could probably catch him in a place near you because he's in all the places. So you can go over there and find out what Chad's speaking schedule is like. See if he's going to be somewhere near you and go check him out. If you want to go to a 15-17 event, like a conference, well, you can't go to the national event. It's sold out. But you can go to the regional event in Bentonville, Arkansas. That's May 5th and 6th. But if you want to go to that, you better buy a ticket real soon.

I say this as tickets are in very short supply for that. They have really picked up the last couple of weeks. And, yeah, they're just not going to be there that long, much longer. It is going to sell out. It always does. so uh go over there grab that there's a link in the show notes if you want to do it that way chad last week uh we got to talk about the a really long reign to a really bad king and and that was that's pretty much the beginning and end of it it was all bad and it lasted a long

time yeah i mean we've seen some bad guys but manasseh uh he uh he wins a gold medal for uh for not being a great king and uh turns out we're in we're in second kings 2119 so it turns out evidently his son wasn't much better uh we have in fact uh we've got just a little little blurb about him and before you know it they take him out and then we're on to to the next guy yeah this reads a this this reads a little bit like uh you know king you have a long reign of a terrible king and then his son takes over and some guys are like oh i just saw this movie i don't like it uh let's just let's just let's hit eject on this real quick yeah that's definitely what happened so his son's but it is is named uh amin or amin a-m-o-n however you want to say it

uh he was 22 when he started started his reign and he last lasted a a total of two years not quite the 55 years of his dad two years in jerusalem we get his mom's name uh the shulameth it's a mouthful and here's the here's the verdict on his reign verse 20 he did what was evil in the sight of the lord as manasseh his father had done so the apple did not fall very far from that tree walked in all the way in which his father walked served the idols that his father had served and worship them. So Manasseh had basically undone everything that his father had done. But when Manasseh's son comes along, he's like, hey, I kind of like what dad did. I think I'll just keep on doing what he did. Abandoned the Lord, the God of his fathers, didn't walk in the

way of the Lord. So he gets a flunking grade, big fat F. And so verse 23 says that some of his servants they got together behind closed doors had a little conspiracy and they put the king to death in his house so engaged in some regicide there took out the king the people of the land then turned around and struck down those guys who conspired against the king so you got well you got bloodshed going all over the place some folks killed the king some other folks killed those people uh it's just one of these uh royal messes literally that we've seen a few other times in first and second kings yeah i mean i guess it's not it's not explicit in here that yeah like these servants get together and they say we just got done with something terrible um let's not do that

again this guy's gonna do this this guy's already doing the same stuff um you know it could just be like oh let's let's try to see some power here it's possible for whatever reason like because it talks about all the things that he did and then immediately follows that it reads like that to me it might just be the might not be the case it certainly seems like he was doing some stuff and there was a couple of guys that they were they weren't into it anymore and that doesn't mean the people weren't because apparently a lot of the people were yeah yeah you know you see these uh the movies about the ancient times and anytime there's a death of the king and somebody else is going to take his place you know it's always dangerous well turns out those movies are like

based on reality it's a very dangerous time uh so if my dad was king and i knew that uh he was uh getting on up there i think i'd be surrounding myself with some trusted bodyguards at all times because just uh not a safe place to be as uh as ammon found out so these guys conspire against the king kill him some other people kill them and then they make josiah his son king in his place and then we get this uh notice that we're all accustomed to by now that if you want to find out more well then turn to the book of the chronicles of kings of judah and then one last verse about him he was buried in the tomb in the garden of azza and josiah his son reigned in his place so same place that his dad manasseh got got buried as well and that's really all i mean that's

what about uh seven verses about uh about Ammon and uh just kind of you know one of these uh one of these other examples we've seen seen many other ones like it where the son imitates the father and uh things do not go well with him but you get to uh get to chapter 22 and things are going to we're going to turn around I mean we're we're in after after hearing about Manasseh and about his son. It's not really what you'd expect coming up next, the guy that we hear about in chapter 22, but it's a welcome relief. In fact, it's kind of breath of fresh air that I never would have anticipated, given kind of the downward spiral that Judah has been engaged in, where you have a bad king, then you have a worse king, then you have an even worse king. The one you wouldn't

expect to come along is Josiah here in chapter 22. In fact, it turns out that if you look at all the stuff that's said about Josiah, he sparkles almost better than anybody else. I mean, even David and Hezekiah. I mean, we talked about Hezekiah was the best of the best, but you listen to some of the language about Josiah, and it's like, wow, he almost out Hezekiah's Hezekiah, almost out David's David. He's just incredibly impressive in his fidelity, as we will see. But I think what strikes me as the most impressive thing about Josiah is that after he initiates his reforms, kind of finds out how bad the situation is and begins to initiate his reform, he finds out that it won't make any difference in the long run, that God is still going to visit

still going to visit uh vengeance and punishment on the southern kingdom and josiah nevertheless continues with his with his reforms even though he knows in the end it's not going to stop that which has been predetermined and pre-warned by by god himself now josiah does i mean he reigns like a decent amount of time he reigns you know 30 plus years but that's considering he was eight years old when he started it's not a lot of adult reigning you know he doesn't get a lot he doesn't get to reign a long time as a man yeah he doesn't get to doesn't live to 40 about 39 when he dies yeah and you know as far as i'm concerned that's only about nine years of being an adult so because you know as we know in your 20s you don't know anything and so the it's he's impressive in

that way too that he did all this and he was young when he did this i mean most of the time you think that wisdom doesn't kick in until about the time that josiah is you know buried so that part's impressive and i think i mean i don't know maybe i'm wrong about this but as far as righteousness goes righteous kings go i mean josiah's got to be the most sort of righteous king that israel ever has yeah i mean it's a night well especially when you consider what he inherited yeah you know so he's got uh his grandfather manasseh reigns for over half a century he could not have messed up judah worse than he did i mean this full scale pedal to the metal idolatry all over the place we're going to hear about all all the stuff that that josiah had to

had to get rid of and it was like hey let's let's find every possible horrendous kind of thing and we're going to bring it into Jerusalem. That's kind of the way that Manasseh operated. So you got every imaginable kind of idolatry going on in Jerusalem. And that not only does he inherit that, but the people who are his citizens, I mean, that's what they've been used to. Mostly people did not know anything different. So for 55 years, plus the two years of his, so 57 years, almost six decades, Judah has been this downward spiral of idolatry. And then Josiah comes along, he inherits this and then after a few years he takes this night and makes it into day i mean it's a it's it's uh not just admirable it's just almost shocking what he was able to uh to accomplish and

like you said the righteousness that he shows as as a result and it seems that well i think what i think is really crazy is that at the beginning of this sort of um it doesn't talk about him having this you know because well i'm letting the cat out of the bag here but he doesn't have a manuscript he doesn't have a playbook uh but he's still a worshiper of yahweh this is all based on uh tradition somebody telling him stuff uh he doesn't he doesn't have the the scriptures he doesn't and uh and we're going to see that happen that's wild yeah i'm wondering if he uh you know some of the people who he had this assassination then they put to death those guys maybe hopefully possibly he had around him some people who were followers

of of the faithful way you know maybe some of the obviously an eight-year-old is not going to be the one who's making all the decisions about what's happening in the kingdom so he would have had these trusted set of advisors around him and it makes sense that they were good and they were you know giving him the right kind of right kind of advice counsel wisdom based upon based upon uh the ways of the israelite ancestors i mean nothing else kind of makes sense with regard to the decisions that he makes unless he was raised in in that fashion yeah and we'll see i mean we're gonna get into this text but i mean you'll see it kind of in verse three i mean there's people going up into the house of the lord which you don't know anything about other than like someone

just telling you something which may be right and may be wrong i mean you know how this works i mean if you had no bible and it just everything's just getting passed down like this game of telephone who knows how weird the things that are that you think are the right things oh yes absolutely all right so let's jump in here verse one he's eight years old when it begins to rain rains 31 years in jerusalem we get his mother's name jedediah and uh verse two kind of sums up everything we're told that he did what was right in the eyes of the lord and walked in all the way of david his father so we're stretching all the way back to uh the beginning of this davidic dynasty walked in the way of david his father and now this this coming description is significant

it says he did not turn aside to the right or to the left now this doesn't mean that he didn't become either a liberal or conservative but he was you know just kind of a middle of the road kind of guy just real moderate just real moderate no it's not what that means that that particular language in the hebrew is actually replicated in a couple of significant places and these are both from the book of deuteronomy so the first of these is deuteronomy 17 and one of the things that sticks out about deuteronomy 17 is this is the early command that god gives through moses about the kings of israel who will be in the future so remember of course when moses is still around there are no kings. There won't be kings for quite a while. But Moses in Deuteronomy does say, hey,

if you have a king, here's what the king is not supposed to do. He's not supposed to be like a horse collector or a gold collector. He's not supposed to do all these things. But what he is supposed to do is to make a copy of the law, in particular, a copy of Deuteronomy, and to study that. That's like his main task is to absorb the word of God. Now, in Deuteronomy 1720, we read that he's to not turn aside from the commandment either to the right hand or to the left so that he may continue long in his kingdom he and his children in israel so that language of not turning aside to the left and not turning aside to the right is a description of how the ideal king is supposed to operate and of course that's exactly what is now said of josiah and

then also we've had this same kind of language in deuteronomy 28 this is in the sections about blessings and curses. And it says that if you're careful to do all these, if you don't turn aside from any of the words that I tell you today to the right or to the left, then everything's going to be all right. So again, the idea is not that you're kind of a middle-of-the-road believer. It's rather that you stick with the straight and narrow. In other words, you stay right with what God has given in his word. So that is the verdict up front about Josiah. And that kind of tells you almost everything you need to know about what kind of person that he's he's going to be okay so let's get into what happened verse three introduces us to the time frame we're looking

at and this isn't right away this is when he's about 26 years old so it's the 18th year of king josiah and he sends uh shaphan son of azaliah son of mashulam who's his secretary his scribe that's kind of that's the same word that sometimes it's translated as scribe so fatter uh probably you know it's some sort of uh high government official we might say i don't know what we'd compare it to today uh you know the but one of the top governmental officials sends this guy uh to the temple and he gives these instructions he says i want you to go up to the high priest who is a fellow by the name of hilkiah so go to the high priest so that he can count the money that's been brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the threshold

have collected from the people. So basically what he wants them to do is, hey, I want you to go and take stock of how many offerings have been brought in. You know, people probably brought in gold and silver and other kinds of things in various forms. In fact, there's a pretty good argument that count the money would better be translated as like kind of melt it down because maybe you'll have, you know, a little, it's not like they didn't have coinage. Let's kind of get that straight. It wasn't like they came in and put their, their shekels or their quarters, dimes and pennies and whatever into the offering plate. These were just little, little pieces of metal. And maybe they were even sometimes, you know, earrings or other things that were made of gold and silver. So you had

to do something with these. And maybe some of these are melted down into kind of these, these units, these, these, these units of measurement. So whatever it is, he's supposed to keep track of how much is there how much has been brought into into the house of the lord as offerings and then he's supposed to take that and give it to the guys who are going to do all the repairs for for the temple the workmen who have oversight of the house of the lord so they can give it to the people that work under them all the carpenters and the builders and the masons so they can you know go to home depot buy their timber go to the place where they get their stone and where the quarry and anyway he wants him basically to take stock how much money is there

and make sure that the right people get it so that materials can be bought to make sure that the temple is is taken care of and even says at the end uh don't worry about you know keeping really close tabs and checking their credit card because they're trustworthy they do honestly so everything's going to be everything's going to be above board about this so that's that's the basic instructions that the king gives. So he gets there, Shaphan does, he's on this mission from the king, and Hilkiah, the high priest, this is like one of these moments where he says this, and it kind of comes across in a nonchalant sort of way. So Shaphan, the king's secretary, shows up and uh hilkia or hilkia says uh oh i found the book of the law in the house of the lord

this is amazing this is like if you imagine you like went to church and uh you know you're showing up there you're like hey it's church work day we'll make sure that we know we're gonna repair the roof and uh we're you know getting a new carpet put in and stuff and you're there and then the pastor goes hey check it out uh you never believe it uh i was I was in the sanctuary, and I found a Bible. This is crazy. Yeah. It was under some cleaning supplies in the back.

I was looking for some pledge, getting some rags. I was like, what is that? I haven't seen one of these in forever. Yeah. I've seen one of these in like, I don't know, 57 years. It's a Bible. I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. now uh there's there's plenty of uh plenty of ink has been spilled over exactly what this is i mean

was this a hook the entire torah uh was this deuteronomy most of the scholarly literature will point to that this was in particular the book of deuteronomy why uh because the the hebrew that's used there to describe the book of the law is is used in the book of deuteronomy to describe that book so maybe it was deuteronomy alone maybe it was more than that but whatever it was this was a book that had been what, misplaced? Hidden? Who knows?

We are coming out of the reign of Manasseh when things were terrible. We had all these anti-Deuteronomy, anti-Torah things happening, so wouldn't it be convenient if all of a sudden the book of the law of the Lord got misplaced so nobody could read it?

If it's misplaced, you're just out of luck, because what this text does is it should give a great appreciation for how easy books are to come by nowadays because back then if you have i mean he doesn't say i have found a book of the law son the book of the law what does this tell you that well there is not a lot of these uh it's not like there's like a thousand copies of this floating around or whatever and you're in a different time and place where you can hide one book people just could be ignorant i mean there's no way for you to to make more copies

of this if you don't have a if you don't have an original i mean this this is a disastrous thing and a huge deal if you find it yeah i think it's pretty i'm glad you you pointed that out because it's really hard for us to place ourselves in a situation where a book could be lost right you just print another one off just print another one off or you you know i log into my amazon prime and i download a kindle and then like that fast it's on my device you know millions of copies of whatever whatever you want are out there i mean you can read books for free online and google books at times i mean just they're everywhere even even but imagine there's one copy well even uh say they said uh dan uh every copy of the of scandalous stories there's a book i wrote you

can buy it and read it uh every it's about parables every copy gone and the the and the printer has you know the manuscript has went up in a fire they lost all their computers and stuff it just this is gone forever i then say that's no problem let me log on to the cloud here let me just uh i gotta just pull this down for you and hit print and i i mean i could have you a another a copy of that book in 10 minutes if you wanted it if every copy known to man was vanished from the earth i could have a you a printed copy of that in 10 minutes yeah yeah it's a different time and uh different scarcity of scarcity of books i mean i really i wish we knew um like how many copies of the various biblical books were out there in the ancient world there's

no way that that we can but i suspect you know extremely few there's there's no evidence right now in history in in this history that synagogues has existed yet so as far as we know synagogues probably began during the babylonian exile we're not there yet uh that's still a little bit down the road uh now so later on synagogues would have had copies at least of the torah so you know if something was to happen to one copy oh that's all right because we have other copies in other the synagogues. Now, how many copies of the book of the law were in existence at this time? Well, maybe one, who knows? Well, I think it tells you this, by the way, this book also more important than the book I wrote too, this is a much bigger deal. Whatever amount of copies there are or there

were, I think it's very safe to say if you were going to try to get rid of all the copies, however many copies there were you somebody knows how many that that what that number is it's not so high that but like something like this is going to be hard enough to come by that you're not going to not know how many copies of it there are right i mean judah's not a big place yeah so maybe there were 10 and this bad king is just like get rid of all 10 of them yeah would not have put it past uh manasseh uh whatsoever so he says that the high priest i have found the uh the book of the law in the house of the Lord. So he gives it to Shaphan, and he read it.

And then Shaphan, the secretary, comes to the king and reports to the king. I love the way this is presented, too. The first thing, he doesn't run back to the palace and say, we found the book of the law of the Lord. The first thing he says when he comes back to the king, he says, more or less, we did what you sent us to do. Your servants have emptied out the money

that was found in the house and would have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who have oversight of the house of the Lord. So he basically says, okay, you sent us to do this mission.

We did it. And then, then he tells the king, look at you, the priest has given me a book. I love this. He doesn't even say what it is. You just say,

yeah, while I was there, you know, the high priest, he gave this book. Doesn't say what it's about. He doesn't say anything else besides he's given me a book, literally a scroll, of course. And then he turns around, the secretary does, and he read it before the king. So what's going to be the king's reaction? That's really what this all has been leading up to.

What's Josiah going to do when he's read the book of the law of the Lord that's been found? Is he going to say, well, hide it, put it back where you found it? Or is he going to say, oh, that's an interesting perspective? Or is he going to actually react to the word of God as God would have him react? We'll find out. I know this. If I'm making a movie out of the life of Josiah,

the opening scene is like this king saying that all the books of the law must be destroyed. And then you see this one guy hide a book of the law under the floorboard in the temple. And then it says 40 years later. and that's that's how this this how this movie starts yeah you have that opening scene where it says 55 years earlier or whatever whatever it is yeah yeah i mean i mean it's it's it's a great kind of cinematic uh moment here here as you're picturing all this this happened so uh the

secretary reads the book and when the king heard the words of the book of the torah his his very your first reaction really tells you everything he tore his clothes so we've seen sometimes when you rend your garments it's because you're in mourning over the death of someone sometimes when you tear your clothes and you bring your garments it's because you're extremely distraught about something it doesn't have to do necessarily with grief over losing someone's you love but it can be over just this intense expression of a negative sort of emotion and that's what we have happening with the king here. He tears his clothes, commands Hilkiah the priest, and Ahicham the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the secretary, and Asiah the king's

servants, all of these people. He says, I want you to go, and I want you to inquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found for so this is this is uh this is his assessment of the situation that they're in based upon what he's heard from this book he says for great is the wrath of the lord that is kindled against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us yeah i think that's i think that's safe to say if you're reading deuteronomy and uh you're taking a hard look at the recent past and then and then you hear the words of that book yeah i think it's a reasonable conclusion to be like we're in trouble guys this

is yeah this is not good yeah great is the wrath of the lord that's kindled against us uh would be a an appropriate uh conclusion based upon what deuteronomy says because basically everything that manasseh did was to undermine everything that deuteronomy was all set out to to accomplish so jerusalem is full of idols and uh the pronouncement of deuteronomy is is a is a is a curse against all of that curse upon the nation uh just some of the some of the most frightening curses that you could imagine reading are are there in deuteronomy so that is the that's conclusion that he comes to and uh so he wants them to to go inquire of god and kind of find out if there's any kind of divine message that uh is going to be given based upon where they've been

and where they are now having having heard from this this word of the lord now what what they do is is also fast there's a number of fascinating uh elements of this chapter we we know from the writings of both jeremiah as well as zephaniah that both those guys were actually active in the in the prophetic ministry at this time so jeremiah had already been acting as a prophet for about five years up to this point and we know that zephaniah another one of the minor prophets he was already at work as well during the reign of josiah but for whatever reason we're not told why but for whatever reason these guys who are the servants of the king they don't go to jeremiah and they don't go to Zephaniah they don't go to anybody else but a lady by the name of Huldah

who is called the prophetess then we find out a little bit more about her she's the wife of a guy by the name of Shalom who is the son of Tikva who is the son of Harhas and he that is the husband of huldah is the keeper of the wardrobe probably this was some sort of uh maybe the vestments that the priests wore at at the temple i don't know for sure what the keeper of the wardrobe was but that's what her husband's job was and they lived or at least she lived it says in jerusalem in the in the second quarter so this i think it was a western side of jerusalem but she lives in jerusalem and uh these servants of the king go to inquire of her and she is called then a a prophetess one of a few by the way we'll get to what she says in just a minute but uh i think

there's probably maybe six or seven of uh six or seven women listed in the old testament that are referred to as a prophetess miriam is one back in exodus 15 uh deborah we talked about her in judges in judges chapter four and then uh in nehemiah there's also a reference to a uh a prophetess so and there's a couple in the new testament as well as far as we can tell this one this one is i mean this one feels different though even from some of the others because you go and inquire of this of this woman and you get you know a straight up thus saith the lord kind of response oh yeah yes we don't really get that from miriam for instance uh there's there's no prophetic announcement like that uh deborah a little bit a little bit more kind of the prophetic language

to choose but hold it i mean there's there's no difference between what she says and what isaiah or jeremiah or anybody else says so uh here's what here's what she says this is verse 15 she goes to them and they talk to her i'm assuming they kind of tell her about this whole situation here's what happened here's what was found here's what the king sent us to do and she tells them verse 15 thus says the lord the god of israel tell the man who sent you to me it's funny she doesn't even say the king she's just like yeah that guy all the prophets and the prophetesses they're like like the king is here and they're like way up here they're really not you know they don't they don't care oh so you're the king whatever that means nothing to them uh rank means

nothing to them like so yeah that guy that sent you here uh you can tell him you can tell him this this is what god says thus says the lord and it's not good news by the way at least the first parts not behold i will bring disaster upon this place and upon its inhabitants all the words of the book that the king of judah has read so everything that book talked about you know the disaster that this book threatened all these curses that is going to happen so this is this is unavoidable that is going to happen why verse 17 because they have forsaken me and have made offerings to other gods that they might provoke me to anger with all the work of their hands therefore my wrath will be kindled against this place and it will not be quenched so it's kind

of interesting so compare that especially that last part of verse 17 my wrath will be kindled against this place and it will not be quenched that's the same language that josiah used when he heard the word of god read he said oh great is the wrath of the lord that's kindled against us so what josiah concluded based upon what was happening around him and what the word of god said is now what god then confirms is true yes that's right my wrath has been kindled and it's not going to be quenched so needless to say that's not great news and you see this language uh that talked a little bit about last episode uh where i talked about you know how long god had been provoked i mean like the long provocation of god and and he uses this like god puts this language

in the mouth of the prophetess here where it just said like a long long time they have been provoking me yeah yeah this wasn't like israel stepped out on god uh one evening and then uh you know that was it this was century after century after century we had that language about you know ever since they came out of the land of egypt this has been happening there's like an intentionality in this language too because you know it says because they have forsaken me and have made offerings to other gods that they might provoke me to anger and i got them god feels like this was done in like not not in disregard to him but in spite like this is a this is a malicious act right yeah yeah a very uh willful conscious rebellion again against him repeated century

after century generation after generation so uh judgment is coming and it the decision is at least on the surface, final. There's no turning back from this. So that's definitely not good news. Now, verse 18 has at least some good news. She goes on to say, Huldah goes on to say, but to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord, this is what you can say to him. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, regarding the words that you have heard, because your heart was penitent that's the esv translation there uh the hebrew rakak could also be translated because your heart was soft and because your heart was tender it just basically setting up an antonym you know we're all familiar with hardness of heart described in the scriptures which is

typically associated with with idolatry rebellion now we have a heart that's not hard it's soft it's it's tender which i think probably penitent is a good good rendering of of that of that word so because your heart was was tender was soft was penitent and you humbled yourself before the lord when you heard how i spoke against this place and against its inhabitants that it should become a a desolation and a curse and this is kind of a whole long list of becauses and because you've torn your clothes and wept before me. So in other words, because to use the language that we've heard over and over, because you've listened to my voice, right? I spoke, you heard, and that word then had its effect on you. You had a tender heart, which received it. You outwardly expressed

your grief by rending your garments. You wept before me. So this wasn't just an act. This was what happens when the word of god has its way with you so because of all that i also have heard you declares the lord so you heard me so i heard you you listen to my voice i listen to your voice therefore behold this is verse 20 therefore behold i will gather you to your fathers and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that i will bring upon this place and then it wraps up by saying and they brought back word to to the king so uh well there's a i don't want to get too far ahead of myself here but there is a there is a a bit of a uh i don't know what the word would be but uh not contradiction but there's

there's a bit of an unease let's use that word between what huldah says is going to be the end of josiah and what actually happens to him because as we'll see in a couple more chapters he actually dies in battle uh when he when he takes on the the egyptian pharaoh but uh i think you know we can reconcile these uh he has gathered to his grave in the peace in the sense of at least he dies in the right place with the lord and we certainly know that his eyes will not see the disaster that god is going to bring upon this place yeah i mean this is a good contrast too because we we saw hezekiah get a similar announcement i was thinking about him and his his reaction he was like whoo that's good like it's gonna happen in the future great uh you

you don't get the we're not told this but you don't get the impression from josiah from what he goes on to do that he is just so relieved because what what somebody else might do like hezekiah is a bit okay good and just you know just let it be like well there's no point in me doing a bunch of work and trying to reform if this is inevitable then forget it you know uh at least it's not gonna at least the judgment's not gonna happen under my watch that's that's great it'd be like um if god told noah like i am sending a flood uh but don't worry you're gonna be dead uh by the time it happens i'm not gonna send it till after you you live he's like okay good well I don't I won't bother building this ark for everybody else then Josiah does all these reforms

it feels like knowing that judgment is coming and he's but even though he's not going to see it that there might be something and because you could be like well he's just doing it because it's the right thing to do and it's fidelity to God that's part of it but I have to believe that part of it's to try to get as many people uh in in right relationship with God before it happens yeah get as many people in the ark as possible yeah like i'm not gonna be here when the rain starts falling but like i'm gonna try to build something that will keep you safe yeah and i think that's a great way it's a great way to look at it and you know the wonderful thing about this is no doubt that was true you know if josiah would have simply said oh well fine then

i'm not gonna worry about it well then what would have prevented all these people from continuing down the path of uh of death in in their idolatry so what josiah was able to accomplish on a not just in jerusalem but on a national scale was enough to bring a whole lot of people into the ark of salvation thankfully if he hadn't engaged in all of the reforms that he engaged in based upon the the bible based upon the book that was found then a lot more people would have been cut off from from life itself so uh you know kudos to uh to josiah i mean he really is uh just about the uh the greatest model of fidelity and love that you can that we've encountered really in the book of in the book of kings so far because of the reforms which he initiated there's also

like something to be said here about like the efficacy of the word because i mean josiah doesn't he's never read this before i mean he's not had access to this and and i don't know if just read deuteronomy i mean it's not like it's the most spellbinding book ever written or anything you're like wow this thing is really beautiful i can't get over it uh so this is like shakespeare uh it's not like that i mean deuteronomy is not like the the most epic part of the bible reading plan or anything like that josiah has this redness presence and like the holy spirit does what the holy spirit does and makes that thing an active word that has a profound impact on josiah that that goes beyond just the words themselves it's about who's speaking the words yeah i'm glad you

i'm glad you said that it wasn't like he's he said read that again and after the second third fourth reading it kind of kind of begins to sink in yeah it's the first first time it hits him hits him right away because it's god speaking you know it's written by moses this is moses swan song this is his last message but uh moses is just the mouthpiece of god and where moses speaks god is the voice behind it and uh when it hits josiah it it has its way with him it makes an impact uh which then leads to a whole lot of repentance and a whole lot of life for people that would not have had that otherwise yeah all right well that's it we are out of time so we leave it there we will uh pick up next week where josiah is saying hey if i knew the world was

ending tomorrow i'd still do my reforms today and that's what he's gonna do so we'll get into that next week. I'll see you then, Chad. All right. See you then.