5.
“ I spake unto you ... but ye heard not; and I called you, but ye answered not: therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by my name, ... as I have done to Shiloh.” Jeremiah 7:13,14.
AMON, the son and successor of Manasseh, had no sooner ascended the throne than he discovered the same deliberate determination to commit wickedness which had characterized his father’s youth, and proved himself to be one that despised the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, whose goodness led his father to repentance. He served those idols whose worship had proved the ruin of Manasseh, and “humbled not himself before the Lord, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself; but Amon trespassed more and more;” and was early made to eat of the fruit of his own way. He had reigned but two short years when his own servants conspired against him, and slew him in his own house.
The untimely death of the wicked Amon was an event fraught with blessing to Judah; for the throne thus suddenly rendered vacant was now occupied by a child, whose name had been announced at Bethel, several hundred years before, by the man of God that spake against the altar of Jeroboam (1 Kings 13:2). The boy-king Manasseh was an impious son of a pious father, and did a vast amount of evil in his kingdom before he reached the age of maturity; but the boy-king Josiah, as the godly son of an ungodly father, wrought a great amount of good before he attained to manhood.
He was but eight years old when he began to reign, and in the eighth year of his reign, “while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father.” The inspired historian briefly summarizes his actions thus,— “He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David his father, and declined neither to the right hand nor to the left.”
The blessed results of the piety of this youthful king early became apparent in his kingdom. In the twelfth year of his reign, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, groves, and carved and molten images, which had become so very numerous that the prophet Jeremiah afterward said, “According to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to that shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto Baal.” He that attentively reads the long catalog of the abominations which Josiah destroyed and abolished (2 Kings 23:4-20), and also observes that, not until the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign (i.e. six years after the first commencement of this all-important work), do we find it recorded that “ he had purged the land, and the house,” cannot fail to form at least some faint idea of the awful magnitude of Judah’s idolatry during the respective reigns of that king’s two immediate predecessors. And what child of God can reflect upon all this and not magnify and exalt Rim who, according to the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, raised up Josiah to sit upon the throne of such a kingdom, at such a time! Who thus lingered in grace over a beloved but rebellious and iniquitous nation, the doom of which was already sealed!
Having purged the land, and the house, Josiah’s next thought was to repair the house of the Lord his God. The expense of this was met by the willing offerings of the people. While this was being done, Hilkiah the high priest made a most remarkable discovery.
Every father in Israel was clearly responsible both to keep the words of the law in his heart, and to teach them diligently unto his children (Deuteronomy 6:6, 7). The members of the tribe of Levi were responsible before God to teach Israel that law (33:10) which Moses wrote in a book, charging them withal to place in the side of the ark of the covenant” (31: 24-26). Over and above all these, the priests were particularly commanded to “teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord bath spoken unto them” &c. (Leviticus 10:1;1). Had Israelites, Levites, and priests altogether lost sight of and forgotten that same “holy law,” when Hilkiah found the book of the law in the house of the Lord? For Josiah appears to have been suffered to remain in profound ignorance of the contents of this book until it was read before him by Shaphan the scribe.
The reading of that word which is “quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword,” brought the king into deep exercise of soul. To him it was indeed a light by which he discerned, as he never had done before, the appalling extent of the declension in that nation which had not kept the word of the Lord; so that he rent his clothes, and wept. Because of their fathers’ disobedience to that law, great wrath was already poured out upon them; and Josiah, rightly divining that that wrath still remained unappeased, delayed not to anxiously inquire of the Lord.
Yet he did not like Jehoshaphat, proclaim a fast; neither did he, like Hezekiah, enter into the temple, and there personally appeal to the God that dwelleth between the Cherubim. He sent the high priest and certain of his honored servants, to Huldah the prophetess, that they might inquire of the Lord for him. When we reflect upon all that had taken place within that sanctuary, surely we need not wonder that the anxious king acted as he did. With regard to the fate of the nation, the answer he received was decisively to the effect that the Lord would bring evil upon Judah, and wrath should be poured out, that should not be quenched, but that portion of it which referred to himself personally, was most merciful and gracious. He should be gathered to the grave in peace, and be spared the sorrow of beholding all the evil which the Lord would bring upon the land, and upon its people.
Having himself meekly received this word of the Lord, Josiah, as one whose heart yearned over his beloved subjects, lost no time in gathering the elders together. If he was himself powerless to avert the impending calamities, he would faithfully apprise Judah of their danger; that, ere it was too late, they might personally seek and obtain shelter from the wrath to come. In the house of God, in the audience of the assembled multitude, he read aloud all the words of the book of the law, and caused all that were present to stand to “the covenant of God.”
In accordance with the requirements of that law, in the same year, he kept the feast of the passover. It is in the chapter which treats of the observance of this passover that we have the last historical allusion to the ark of the covenant. Why did the king command the Levites to “put the holy ark in the house?” Such a command implies that it was at that moment outside of the house Had those who wickedly set up an idol in that house, removed it from its resting place, with sacrilegious hands? Or had certain faithful priests desirous of preserving it from sacrilege in those terrible days reverently borne it to some place of safety; as those Levites intended to have done, when Absalom threatened the peace of Jerusalem? (2 Samuel 15:24,25). Should this latter supposition be correct, it is not at all improbable that Ezekiel 44:15 refers to the same pious action.
Blessed in the pious king that sat upon the throne, and by his means with a knowledge of God’s holy law, Judah was about this time favored again with another threefold prophetic testimony; in the mouths of the prophets Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah. The peaceful reign of Josiah may be compared to nature’s glorious sunset, so soon succeeded by the blackness and darkness of night: or to the calm which precedes the storm. But when we compare the respective prophecies of the above-mentioned prophets, with those of the prophets who preceded them, we can but observe how much the language of the former differed from that employed by the latter.
It may not be out of place here to mention one remarkable point of contrast between the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah. The former wearied not of testifying to the coming of the Deliverer to Zion; the latter wept as he foretold the coming destruction of Zion, &c. If the nation had believed the report of the one, would the other have been charged to deliver such sorrowful tidings? But, as the prophet Hosea, while he foretold the fate of the ten tribes, aptly expressed Jehovah’s abiding and tender affection for Israel (Hosea 11 i-8), in like manner, while Jeremiah foretold the captivity of Judah, he also pathetically expressed the love that Jehovah ceased not to cherish toward Judah (Jeremiah 11:15;12. 7.).
We often distinguish Jeremiah by calling him “the weeping prophet.” Let us not forget that the Spirit of God moved him to cry; — “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.” While his words and his tears aptly expressed his own heart’s poignant grief, they none the less clearly expressed how deeply Judah had grieved the Holy Spirit of God. Jehovah had “marked their iniquity” (Jeremiah 2:22), and would speedily requite their great wickedness upon their own heads: —even the “ house of their sanctuary” should be leveled with the ground.
A. J.
(To be continued.)
Marginal Notes.
Genesis.
Genesis 15:18. In the glorious reign of Solomon we have a fulfillment of the covenant here established. “He reigned over all the kings from the river (i.e. Euphrates) even unto the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt” 2 Chronicles 9:26.
16: 7. Shur is generally supposed to have been a desert on the South West of Palestine, extending to the boundaries of Egypt, and Hagar, being an Egyptian, probably took a route most likely to lead back to her native land.
19: 1. The gate of Sodom. “You observe that the gateway is vaulted, shady, and cool. This is one reason why people delight to assemble about it. Again, the curious and vain resort thither to see and to be seen. Some go to meet their associates; others to watch for returning friends, or to accompany those about to depart, while many gather there to hear the news, and to engage in trade and traffic. I have seen in certain places —Joppa for example —the lady and his court sitting at the entrance of the gate, hearing arid adjudicating all sorts of causes in the audience of all that went in and out thereat.” Dr. Thomson.
19:22. Zoar was one of the five cities of the plain spoken of in Chapter 14:2,8, and as we learn from Deuteronomy 29:23 it was the only one spared by the judgments that fell in consequence of the iniquity of the inhabitants of that country. Its site cannot now be fixed with any degree of certainty.
20:2. Abimelech was the common title of the Philistine kings, as Pharaoh was of the Egyptians.
21:14. The first mention of Beersheba, a town so often mentioned afterward as one of the boundaries of the possession of the children of Israel. The name was given on the occasion of the covenant made between Abraham and Abimelech, v. 31, and was confirmed later by Isaac Chapter 26:33. In the neighborhood there are to this day the ruins of a town called Bir-es-Seba with two large wells and five smaller ones.
22:2. Solomon built the temple on Mount Moriah, and on the same spot the mosque of Omar now stands. The place where Abraham built the altar for the sacrifice of Isaac was near the spot where our Lord was crucified.
23:17. “The cave of Machpelah is one of the sites mentioned in the Old Testament as to the identity of which no doubt exists. The burying-place of the patriarchs is shown now, though so carefully guarded by the jealousy of the Mohammedans that but few Europeans have been permitted to see the monuments erected in honor of the dead. The manner in which the purchase was effected by Abraham is exactly in accordance with the details of a similar transaction as now carried out. The preliminary negotiations, the mediation of the neighbors, weighing out of the money, and exact description of the plot of land are all the accompaniments of a bargain by which the purchased land is made sure to the purchaser.”