2 Chronicles 34:29 - Meaning and Application

Here we see the further progress Josiah made in reforming his kingdom after hearing the law read and receiving God’s message through the prophetess. Happy was the nation that had such a king. He did not try to force the people into duty before first teaching them what their duty was.

He gathered all the people, young and old, rich and poor, high and low. All of them were concerned in the words of the book of the covenant, so all of them needed to hear it. To give the service greater honor and to draw more attention, the king himself read the book to the people, even though priests and Levites were there (2 Chronicles 34:30). No doubt he read in a way that showed he was deeply moved by it, and that would have helped move the hearers too.

The people were also firmly bound to this covenant. The terms of agreement between God and Israel were read so that they could knowingly renew their promise to God. Then king and people, with great seriousness, as it were signed the covenant. The king promised in his place to keep God’s commandments with all his heart and soul, according to what was written in the book (2 Chronicles 34:31).

He also urged the people to give their own consent to this covenant and solemnly promise that they would faithfully do all that was required on their side. They agreed, and shame should have kept them from doing otherwise. He made all who were present stand to it (2 Chronicles 34:32), and caused them all to serve, even to serve the Lord their God (2 Chronicles 34:33). That is, he pressed them to make serving God their real business. The repeated word “serve” shows how much his heart was fixed on this one aim, to bring the people back to God and their duty.

The people were also, for the time being, kept from falling back into idolatry. All Josiah’s days they did not depart from following the Lord, though it took much effort to keep them from turning again to idols. His whole reign was a restraint on them, which shows how strong their leaning toward idolatry still was. Many of them needed only to have Josiah removed, and they would have raised their high places and images again.

That is why the prophets spoke so sharply about Judah in Josiah’s days. God said that treacherous Judah had not returned to him with all her heart, but only in outward show (2 Chronicles 34:10; Jeremiah 3:6). Worse still, she had acted like an unfaithful wife and so had even made backsliding Israel look less guilty (2 Chronicles 34:8, 11). By the twenty-third year of Josiah’s reign, only four or five years after these reforms began, the people were still provoking God with the work of their hands (Jeremiah 25:3-7).

This is very important to notice: the prophet dated the guilt of Judah, the guilt that would bring destruction, from the beginning of Josiah’s reform, his twelfth or thirteenth year (Ezekiel 4:6). From that point to Jerusalem’s fall was forty years. Josiah was sincere, but the people in general were not. They resisted reform and still longed for their idols. So the reform, though wisely planned and earnestly pursued by the king, had little real effect on the nation.

They gave up their idols unwillingly. Their hearts were still attached to them, and they wanted them back. God saw this, and so from that very time, when it might have seemed that a lasting peace was being secured, the decree for their destruction went forth. Nothing speeds a nation toward ruin more than failed attempts at reform followed by a false return to God. Do not be deceived, God is not mocked.