2 Kings 23:25 - Meaning and Application

When we read these verses, we must say, Lord, your righteousness is like the great mountains, clear and beyond dispute, yet your judgments are a great deep, impossible to measure, (Psalm 36:6). What are we to make of this?

I. It is here acknowledged that Josiah was one of the best kings ever to sit on David’s throne, (2 Kings 23:25). As Hezekiah stood out for trusting God in trouble, (2 Kings 18:5), so Josiah stood out for sincerity and zeal in carrying out a work of reform. No one was like him in these ways. He turned to the Lord, from whom his fathers had turned away. True religion is turning to God as the one we choose and love. He also did what he could to turn his kingdom back to the Lord.

He did this with his heart and soul, so his motives and aims were right. People gain nothing from religion if they do not make it a matter of the heart. He did it with all his heart, soul, and strength, with energy, courage, and determination. Without that, he could not have pushed through the many hard things he faced. What great things may be done in God’s service if we are only lively and wholehearted in it! He also did this according to all the law of Moses, obeying it carefully and paying real attention to it. His zeal never drove him into disorder. In all he did, he kept to God’s rule.

II. Even so, he was taken by a violent death in the middle of his life, and his kingdom was ruined within a few years after. After such a reform, one would have expected peace and honor for both king and kingdom. Yet the opposite happened, and both came under judgment.

The reformed kingdom still stood marked for ruin. “For all this,” (2 Kings 23:26), “the Lord did not turn from the heat of his great anger.” What God said through the prophet is true, that if a nation already sentenced to destruction turns from its sin, God will also turn from the punishment, (Jeremiah 18:7-8). So we must conclude that Josiah’s people, though they obeyed Josiah’s authority, did not truly take in his principles. They were forced to change, not willing to leave their evil ways. They still loved their idols. So the one who knows the heart would not withdraw the sentence that Judah should be removed, as Israel had been, and Jerusalem itself cast off, (2 Kings 23:27). Even this destruction was meant to work as a final reform. We must say, then, not only that the people had filled up the measure of their guilt and were ready for ruin, but also that the disease had reached a turning point and was ready for healing. And this would be the result, the removal of sin.

As another sign of this, the reforming king himself was cut off in the middle of his usefulness. It was mercy to him, because he did not live to see the evil that was coming on his kingdom. But it was judgment on his people, because his death opened the way for their downfall. The king of Egypt was at war with the king of Assyria, who is here called the king of Babylon. Josiah’s kingdom lay between them. So he thought it his duty to stop the king of Egypt and check his rising power, for though the king of Egypt said he had no plan against Josiah, if he succeeded in joining the river of Egypt and the river Euphrates, Judah would soon be swallowed up between them. So Josiah went against him and was killed in the first battle, (2 Kings 23:29-30).

Here we cannot defend Josiah’s action. He had no clear call to enter this war, and we do not read that he asked God for guidance by the Urim or through prophets. What had he to do with appearing and acting as a friend and ally to the king of Assyria? Should he help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? If Egypt and Assyria were quarreling, he had reason to expect God would bring good from it for him and his people, by using them to weaken each other. Some take the promise that he would go to his grave in peace in a way that would make this seem unfulfilled, because by this mistake he lost the benefit of it. God has promised to keep us in all our ways, but if we leave the path, we step out of his protection. I understand the promise in this way, that it was fulfilled, because Josiah died in peace with God and his own conscience, and he did not see, nor did he have any immediate view of, Judah and Jerusalem being destroyed by the Chaldeans. Yet I still take the event as a rebuke for his rashness.

We must also honor God’s justice in taking away such a precious gift from an ungrateful people who did not know how to value him. They mourned his death deeply, (2 Chronicles 35:25), moved by Jeremiah, who told them what it meant and what a warning sign it was. But they had not made proper use of the mercy they enjoyed while he was alive. God taught them the worth of that mercy by taking it away.