_A New Covenant._
Josiah was determined not to give up so easily. He would not admit to
himself that his country and his people were beyond hope. He figured
that perhaps the prophetess had exaggerated purposely in order to
recall the people to their duty to their God and to the country, more
quickly and more conscientiously.
He was not at all happy over the fact that he himself would escape the
threatened destruction of his people. What he wanted was to discover
some possible way, and to make every attempt, to save all his people.
At the council of the Elders, as a first step, he suggested that the
coming Passover be celebrated faithfully in accordance with the
commandments in the rediscovered law book.
Messengers were therefore sent throughout Judah, and even up into
Israel, to announce a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the celebration of
the Passover, by order of the king and the Elders.
Great and happy throngs came to the Capital for the festival. It was a
multitude of people far different in mien and behavior from that same
multitude that had rushed to the protection of the fortified city when
the Scythian invaders had threatened the country a few years before.
Now, when the Passover eve, that is the fourteenth day of the first
month, was at hand, it was found that the great majority of the people
did not bring with them the prescribed sacrifices, either because they
did not know of the custom or because they were too poor.
Such a condition, however, did not dismay Josiah and his officers. He,
himself, out of his own treasury, distributed the means for making the
sacrifices to over thirty-three thousand people. Hilkiah and the heads
of the Temple service, out of their own means, did the same for the
Priests and the Levites. So that everyone present in Jerusalem that
day observed the Passover properly and happily.
On the following morning, that is, on the first day of the festival,
an assembly of all the people present, both great and small, was
called in the Temple courts.
The King and his advisers sat on a platform especially erected for the
purpose. When order was secured, the King arose and stood in his place
and "read of the words of the Book of the Covenant that was found in
the House of God, before all the people."
The impression made upon the assembly was wonderful. As Josiah
proceeded with his reading the murmurs and low exclamations of
surprise changed into a deep and impressive silence that was not
broken even when the King had finished and had laid aside the Book of
the Law.
Reverently and with bowed head, Josiah raised a prayer unto God:
"Look down from Thy holy habitation, from heaven, O Lord,
and bless Thy people Israel."
And with one voice the whole assembly answered, softly:
"Amen, Oh Lord, Amen."
Then Josiah addressed the people. He pleaded with all the fervor and
sincerity of his soul for them to re-establish, on that day, the
ancient covenant between them and their God. This they did with a
great shout of acclamation. Josiah continued:
"This day the Lord thy God commandeth thee to do these
statutes and ordinances; thou shalt therefore keep and do
them with all thy heart, and with all thy soul. Thou hast
avouched the Lord this day to be thy God, and that thou
wouldest walk in his ways, and keep his statutes, and his
commandments, and his ordinances, and hearken unto his voice;
and the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be a people for
his own possession, as he hath promised thee, and that thou
shouldest keep all his commandments; and to make thee high
above all nations that he hath made in praise, and in name,
and in honor; and that thou mayest be a holy people unto
the Lord thy God, as he hath spoken."
When the King had finished and sat down, a great murmur welled up
from the assembled people, until it grew into one great shout from
the multitude:
"We have heard and shall do accordingly."
Thus the people of Judah and Israel once more took upon themselves the
duty and burden to be a holy people unto the Lord their God, as they
had done at Sinai in the days of Moses.
There was one man in the assembly, however, who not entirely carried
away by the enthusiasm of the moment. It was Jeremiah. He knew well
enough how a people, excited by a new and novel situation, would make
promises which perhaps later they would be disinclined to keep. The
mere acceptance of the covenant did not already mean the carrying out
of its statutes in their daily life.
Therefore, Jeremiah arose in the midst of the assembly, and, before
the people were dispersed, struck one note of warning:
"Cursed be the man that heareth not the words of this
covenant, which I commanded your fathers in the day that I
brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron
furnace, saying, 'Obey my voice, and do them according to
all which I command you; so shall ye be my people, and I
will be your God; that I may establish the oath which I sware
unto your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and
honey, as at this day.'"
In conclusion, Jeremiah bowed his head and expressed the hope of the
realization of the new covenant with the words:
"Amen, Oh Lord."
And all the assembly once more responded:
"Amen, Oh Lord."
Great feasting and rejoicing throughout the entire city by all the
people followed during the whole festival. It was the greatest
Passover in the history of Judah and Jerusalem, and of it is recorded:
"And the children of Israel that were present kept the
Passover at that time, and the feast of unleavened bread
seven days. And there was no Passover like to that kept in
Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet; neither did any
of the kings of Israel keep such a Passover as Josiah kept,
and the priests and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel
that were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. In the
eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this Passover kept."
When the festival and the celebration were over, the spirit thereof
did not die with the departure of the people from Jerusalem to their
homes in all parts of the country. Josiah went to work in earnest to
accomplish his share of the keeping of the new covenant. He dismissed
every idolatrous priest in the land and destroyed every vestige of
their worship in Jerusalem, in every town and village and on every
high place.
Up in Israel he carried on this work under his personal direction, and
at Bethel, with his own hands, he destroyed the altar erected by
Jereboam I. at the time of the division of the kingdom.
It was while in northern Israel, where he ordered the dead bones of
the idolatrous priests to be burned upon the very altars at which they
worshiped, that Josiah espied two sepulchers, of a type that he had
not met before. They were so unlike the sepulchers of the idolators
that he marked them especially and talked about them. One of the
monuments, he was told, "is the sepulcher of the Man of God who came
from Judah and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the
altar at Bethel;" and when he found that the other ancient monument
was the last bed on earth of "the Prophet that came out of Samaria,"
he ordered that neither one should be touched. The memory of those
early prophets was sacred and hallowed to the king.
Within a few years, all this work undertaken by Josiah was accomplished.
Genuine love of God and genuine living in accordance with His
commandments seemed to have been restored everywhere among the people.
In addition, the political changes that were taking place in Assyria,
Babylonia and Egypt, left Josiah entirely at peace to work out the
destiny of his own people and kingdom.
In the year 608, however, in the thirty-ninth year of Josiah's reign,
he entered upon a political campaign that proved to be the first and
greatest mistake of his life and resulted not alone in his death, but
in a great religious and moral decline that eventually led to the
destruction of Jerusalem and Judah.