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We have one last good king to look at, and boy, did he come from a bad background! His grandfather was Manasseh, who we learned last time drowned Jerusalem in a tide of blood, executing even Isaiah- but then he was exiled to Babylon for a time, and came back repentant. Much of the running of Judah from his exile on fell to his son Amon, who had no such "Come to Jesus moment", so it IS possible that while Amon did his best to Emulate the Manasseh that was, the new Manasseh trained up grandson Josiah, who was a complete change...
2Ki 23:25 Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.
But old Manasseh had put paid to the story of Judah...
2Ki 23:26 Still the LORD did not turn from the burning of his great wrath, by which his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him.
2Ki 23:27 And the LORD said, "I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and I will cast off this city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there."
Still, Josiah did many devoted things for the Lord:
- One of his first acts was to re-open the Temple, giving the instructions and orders necessary to make it vital and self-supporting again.
- When the priests then found the long hidden Books of Moses, his first act was to send men to seek a prophet of God- at that time it was the woman Huldah- who gave him the "state of the Kingdom":
2Ki 22:15 And she said to them, "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: 'Tell the man who sent you to me,
2Ki 22:16 Thus says the LORD, 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.
2Ki 22:17 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.
2Ki 22:18 But to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the LORD, thus shall you say to him, Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Regarding the words that you have heard,
2Ki 22:19 because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the LORD, when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, declares the LORD.
2Ki 22:20 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 they brought back word to the king.
-He re-established the covenant between God and the faithful.
-And he had the Great Passover celebration: and you can make a case for it having been as long from the Great Passover to this one (430 years, give or take) as it was from the last prophet, Malachi's, prophecies (made somewhere in the 440s BC) to the birth of Christ (figured to be in 6 BC- yeah, our calendar is messed up!). Which would seem to be another clue to the Jews about WHEN to look for Messiah.
But then came Josiah's mistake. In the years 609-8 BC, the Assyrian Empire was rapidly being destroyed by a coalition led by Babylon. Egypt's latest Pharaoh, Necho II, was on his way to 'assist the Assyrians', as a means to check the Babylonian might they feared. On the way, Josiah brought out his army to check their advance- in the place we would come to know much later as Armageddon. And just as Abraham, the beginning of God's promise, once had to be rebuked by a pagan king, Josiah would be rebuked by Necho, giving the Lord's words:
2Ch 35:20 After all this, when Josiah had prepared the temple, Neco king of Egypt went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah went out to meet him.
2Ch 35:21 But he sent envoys to him, saying, "What have we to do with each other, king of Judah? I am not coming against you this day, but against the house with which I am at war. And God has commanded me to hurry. Cease opposing God, who is with me, lest he destroy you."
But, you see, it was God's plan- the destruction of Judah started with Josiah's defeat and death; the Egyptians would fight the coalition to a stalemate in Harran which would end the fleeing Assyrian kingdom once and for all. While they were gone, the people of Judah proclaimed the 4th son of Josiah, named Jehoahaz, king. That was because they knew the son that should have been king, Jehoiakin, was a monster, where Jehoahaz- who was no man's saint, either, was a bit of a tiger, as Ezekiel said...
Eze 19:1 And you, take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel,
Eze 19:2 and say: What was your mother? A lioness! Among lions she crouched; in the midst of young lions she reared her cubs.
Eze 19:3 And she brought up one of her cubs; he became a young lion, and he learned to catch prey; he devoured men.
Eze 19:4 The nations heard about him; he was caught in their pit, and they brought him with hooks to the land of Egypt.
Ow, those nose-hooks again! So Jehoahaz was dragged to Egypt and never heard from again; and Necho put Jehoaikim in charge. The Bible only hints of his wickedness; the Jews say he committed every blasphemy he could- including forcing himself sexually on his mother and other female relatives PURELY to defy God. The Bible does give a wealth of info on him, though, in the books of Jeremiah, including the incident in Jeremiah 36 where he is read a written down prophecy- and stops the reader every so often to cut off the section and throw it in the fire. In response of this, he got another prophecy he couldn't throw away:
Jer 22:18 Therefore thus says the LORD concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: "They shall not lament for him, saying, 'Ah, my brother!' or 'Ah, sister!' They shall not lament for him, saying, 'Ah, lord!' or 'Ah, his majesty!'
Jer 22:19 With the burial of a donkey he shall be buried, dragged and dumped beyond the gates of Jerusalem."
How exactly this was ultimately accomplished is unclear, even among the Jews- one story claimed the priests and leaders of the city helped it out. 8 years into his 11-year reign, he tried to play fast and loose between Egypt (who had narrowly escaped destruction by Babylon in 601) and Nebuchadnezzar; and when the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem, the leaders killed Jehoiakim, tossing his body over the wall to appease Nebuchadnezzar. Some further add on that the body was then drug around the city behind Nebby's chariot and dumped in the garbage. Nonetheless, this brought his son, variously known as Jehoiachin, Jeconiah, and/or Coniah to the throne- briefly. Jeremiah tells us how God's hand passed judgment down from Jehoiakim to Jeconiah:
Jer 22:24 "As I live, declares the LORD, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet ring on my right hand, yet I would tear you off
Jer 22:25 and give you into the hand of those who seek your life, into the hand of those of whom you are afraid, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and into the hand of the Chaldeans.
Jer 22:26 I will hurl you and the mother who bore you into another country, where you were not born, and there you shall die.
Jer 22:27 But to the land to which they will long to return, there they shall not return."
Jer 22:28 Is this man Coniah a despised, broken pot, a vessel no one cares for? Why are he and his children hurled and cast into a land that they do not know?
Jer 22:29 O land, land, land, hear the word of the LORD!
Jer 22:30 Thus says the LORD: "Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah."
It wasn't that he didn't have children- we'll see in a minute- but he's COUNTED as as if childless, because while he is not the last of Judah's kings, he doesn't have his own son take the throne. The Jews say that the siege had barely ended and the Babylonians gone home, when...
Jehoiachin was made king in place of his father by Nebuchadnezzar; but the latter had hardly returned to Babylon when some one said to him, "A dog brings forth no good progeny," whereupon he recognized that it was poor policy to have Jehoiachin for king (Jewish encyclopedia).
Jeconiah was besieged again; this time, the Jews credit him with a supernatural "handing the keys of the Temple back to God", and surrendered, being taken to Babylon. Now, Nebby's army put not a son of Jeconiah on the throne, but another son of Josiah. Born Shallum, he was given the royal name of Zedekiah. And he ran out the last nine years of Judah's existence. Jeconiah, because of humbling himself to (temporarily) save Jerusalem- and because taking the kingship away didn't mean God wanted to close the path to Messiah- after Nebby's death, his successor let Jeconiah out of the dungeon and treated him with favor. He had a son in exile, who also had a son. This son, Zerubbabel, (literally, "Son from Babylon"), would become the new "signet ring" as governor after the exile, and bind for a moment the two lines from David (the 'Joseph' line that was the royal line from Solomon, and the line of Mary's descent, from Nathan.)
No such luck for Zedekiah. Never being ones to learn, the last King of Judah served Babylon faithfully until, guess what? He tried to make yet another alliance with Egypt. But as the Pharaoh du jour, Apries, started up the Palestinian coast, an invasion of Dorians (early Greeks) at his back door (Libya) made him turn around and go home- only to face Civil War, being overthrown, and going to hide- in Babylon.
And Zedekiah? After a 16-month siege, he and his top boys made a hole in the wall and tried to escape- probably, as laughable as it seems, to Egypt. (Wouldn't it be funny if he was making for Egypt while Apries passed him on the way to Babylon? Almost like when Peter denied Jesus the third time, and he looked to the court and saw Jesus looking at him...) The difference between those who submit to God's will with honor rather than fleeing out of cowardice couldn't be more stark than what happened to these last two kings; Jeconiah submitted and (after a while) was treated with honor. But Zedekiah...
2Ki 25:7 They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him in chains and took him to Babylon.
That way, the last things Zedekiah would ever see were the deaths of his sons which he couldn't prevent.Just as both Jeremiah and Ezekiel tried to tell him before the fall:
Eze 12:12 And the prince who is among them shall lift his baggage upon his shoulder at dusk, and shall go out. They shall dig through the wall to bring him out through it. He shall cover his face, that he may not see the land with his eyes.
Eze 12:13 And I will spread my net over him, and he shall be taken in my snare. And I will bring him to Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, yet he shall not see it, and he shall die there.
Blinded like his people, witnessing the loss of his sons just as Jerusalem did, bound in the same bronze fetters that Samson wore when he didn't take his God serious. Jeremiah had warned him that he might not face this fate, but rather the fate of Jeconiah the Captive, if only he would submit. But instead, he said, "Why should I worry what God thinks, if I can't have things the way I want them? Of all the kings, the last one's story is the saddest of all- given the choice between submission and defiance, he refused to bend the knee- and the forfeit was everything he knew, loved, held.
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