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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

JOSIAH

1. Sixteenth king of the southern kingdom of Judah (640–609 BC). A godly man, he stood in marked contrast to his grandfather Manasseh and his father, Amon. In fact, Scripture declares there was no king either before or after him who was as obedient to the law of Moses (2 Kgs 23:25). The Greek form of his name, Josias, appears in Matthew 1:10-11 (KJB).

The Times of Josiah

When Josiah became king in 640 BC, the international scene was about to change drastically. After the great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal died in 633 BC, mediocre rulers followed him on the throne, and there was considerable unrest in the empire. Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar, seized the kingship in Babylon and established the Neo-Babylonian Empire late in 626 BC. Soon Babylonians and Medes combined forces to topple the Assyrian Empire, and in 612 BC completely destroyed the city of Nineveh. As Babylonian power rose in the east, Assyrian control over the province that had once been the kingdom of Israel relaxed and Assyrian pressure on Judah virtually ceased. After the fall of Nineveh, the Assyrians established their capital at Haran. There they were defeated by Babylonians and Scythians in 610 BC. At that point Pharaoh Neco II of Egypt decided to support Assyria. In the late spring of 609 BC he advanced through Judah, defeated and killed Josiah, and spent the summer campaigning in Syria.

Before Josiah’s reign, Judah had capitulated to gross idolatry during the reign of Manasseh (697–642 BC). Baalism, Molech worship, and other pagan religions had invaded the land, as had occultism and astrology. A false altar even stood in the temple in Jerusalem, and human sacrifice to pagan deities was practiced near Jerusalem. The nation was thoroughly corrupt. Although some reform occurred in Manasseh’s latter days, conditions reverted to their former baseness during the reign of his son Amon (642–640 BC). In 640 BC officials of Amon’s household assassinated him, and the “people of the land” put Josiah on the throne (2 Kgs 21:26; 22:1; 2 Chr 33:25–34:1).

Josiah’s Reform Activities

Josiah was only eight years old when he became king. Evidently he had spiritually motivated advisers or regents; by the time he was 16, he began of his own accord “to seek the God of his ancestor David” (2 Chr 34:3). When he was 20, he became greatly exercised over the idolatry of the land and launched a major effort to eradicate the pagan high places, groves, and images from Judah and Jerusalem. So intense was Josiah’s hatred of idolatry that he even opened the tombs of pagan priests and burned their bones on pagan altars before the altars were destroyed.

Josiah carried his reform movement beyond the borders of Judah, venting his fury especially on the cult center at Bethel, where Jeroboam had set up his false worship. In fulfillment of prophecy (1 Kgs 13:1-3), he destroyed the altar and high place and burned the bones of officiating priests to desecrate the site (2 Kgs 23:15-18). What he did at Bethel he did everywhere else in the kingdom of Samaria (vv 19-20).

When Josiah was 26, he launched a project to cleanse and repair the temple in Jerusalem (2 Kgs 22:3). Shaphan, the king’s administrative assistant, commissioned the work; Hilkiah the priest supervised the renovation and construction. In the process of restoring the temple, Hilkiah found the Book of the Law, the nature and contents of which are otherwise unknown. Possibly in the dark days of Manasseh a deliberate attempt had been made to destroy the Word of God. At any rate, there was little knowledge of Scripture in Judah.

When Shaphan read the Book of the Law to Josiah, the king was devastated by the pronouncements of judgment against apostasy contained in it. He sent a delegation to Huldah the prophetess to find out what judgments awaited the land. The prophetess replied that the condemnation of God would indeed fall on Judah for its sin, but she sent word to Josiah that because his heart was right toward God, the punishment would not come during his lifetime.

The king called together a large representative group for a public reading of the law—evidently sections especially concerned with obligations to God. The king and the people made a covenant before God to keep his commandments.

Faced with the importance of maintaining a pure monotheistic faith, the king was spurred on to even more rigorous efforts to cleanse the temple and Jerusalem. He destroyed the vessels used in Baal worship, the monument of horses given by the kings of Judah for sun worship, the chariots dedicated to the sun, the homosexual community near the temple, and shrines built by Solomon and in use since his day. Moreover, he made stringent efforts to eliminate the pagan shrines and high places in all the towns of Judah (2 Kgs 23:4-14).

The Death of Josiah

Precisely why Josiah opposed Pharaoh Neco’s advance through Judean territory is unknown. He may have wanted to prevent aid from reaching the hated Assyrians or to maintain his own independence. Josiah was mortally wounded in the conflict and was greatly lamented by Jeremiah and all the people (2 Chr 35:25). Well they might weep, for their godly king was gone, and within a few years the judgment withheld during his lifetime would descend on the nation.

2. Son of Zephaniah, who returned to Jerusalem with other Jews after the captivity (Zec 6:10, 14; Hebrew “Hen”).