_THE DEATH OF JOSIAH_
B.C. 608
2 KINGS xxiii. 29, 30
"Howl, O fir tree; for the cedar is fallen."--ZECH. xi. 2.
Josiah survived by thirteen years the reformation and covenant which
are the chief events of his reign. He lived in prosperity and peace.
He did justice and judgment; the poor and needy flourished under his
royal protection; and it was well with him. It seemed as if the
Deuteronomic blessings on faithfulness to its law were about to be
abundantly fulfilled, when "the azure calm of heaven" was suddenly
shattered, and "down came the thunderbolt." The great and victorious
Assurbanipal of Assyria had died, and left his power to weaker
successors. Meanwhile, Egypt was growing in power and splendour under
Pharaoh Necho II. (B.C. 612-596), the sixth king of the twenty-fifth
or Saitic dynasty. He nearly anticipated M. de Lesseps in making the
Suez Canal,[728] and perhaps actually anticipated Vasco de Gama in
rounding the Cabo Tormentoso, or Cape of Good Hope, in a three years'
voyage. He was fired by the ambitious dream of succeeding the
Assyrians as the chief power in the world, or at any rate of seizing
part of the dominions which they had conquered.[729] Accordingly, in
B.C. 608, he went up against the King of Assyria to the river
Euphrates. The Chronicler says that his destination was Carchemish, on
the Euphrates, and some have conjectured that the vague phrase
"against the King of Assyria" is incorrect, and that, as Josephus
states, he was really marching against the Medes and Babylonians after
the fall of Nineveh.[730]
With this expedition Josiah was not greatly concerned. He may have
begun his reign as the vassal of Assurbanipal; but if so, it is
probable that he had long since ceased to pay tribute to a power which
was tottering to its fall under the attacks of Scythians and
Babylonians. He had availed himself of the disorganisation of the
Assyrian power to re-establish some, at least, of the old authority of
the House of David over the Northern Kingdom, and perhaps he only
undertook the desperate expedient of withstanding the northward march
of the Egyptian host under the notion that either on the march or on
his return the Pharaoh intended to subjugate Palestine to Egypt.
Pharaoh Necho II., among his other achievements, had created a
powerful fleet,[731] and it is nearly certain that he did not advance
along the coast of Palestine, but made his way by sea to Acco or
Dor.[732] Here he received the news that Josiah meant to block his
path at Megiddo, on the plain of Jezreel. That plain has been the
great and only possible battle-field of Palestine, from the revolt in
which Barak destroyed the host of Jabin,[733] to that in which Tryphon
met Jonathan the Maccabee,[734] and Kleber in 1799 defeated
twenty-five thousand Turks with three thousand French.
The Chronicler here adds a very remarkable incident.[735] Necho, like
Joash of Israel in former days, did not care to fight with the poor
little King of Judah--or at any rate did not wish to do so at present,
when he was on his way to the greater encounter. He therefore sent an
embassy to Josiah, saying, "What have I to do with thee, King of
Judah? I come not against thee this day, but against the house
wherewith I have war.[736] For God [Elohim] commanded me [in a dream]
to make haste.[737] Forbear, then, from meddling with God, who is with
me, that He destroy thee not."
The conjecture "in a dream" is not unlikely, nor is it in disaccord
with other events in the annals of the Pharaohs and the Sargonidæ of
Assyria.[738] We may indeed be surprised that an Egyptian Pharaoh
should profess to deliver to a Jewish king the messages of Elohim,
though we have seen something like this in the case of the
Rabshakeh.[739] The variation in 1 Esdras i. 26-28 is curious and
interesting. We are there told that the message was sent to Josiah,
not only by Pharaoh Necho, who had sent to say "The Lord is with me
hastening me forward: depart from me, and be not against the Lord,"
but also by "the prophet Jeremy." Josephus frankly ascribes the error
of Josiah to destiny, as though he had been infatuated by the
dementation which the Greeks attributed to Atè.[740]
This, however, is not likely; for it is clear that Jeremiah, though
not mentioned in the Book of Kings, must have had a strong influence
over the mind of Josiah, whom he loved, whose views he shared, in
whose religious revolution he had taken part. Further, we do not read
of any warning recorded by the prophet himself; and had he uttered
one, it would certainly have been mentioned, when he committed his
prophecies to writing twenty-three years after their commencement. A
warning of which the neglect had led to fatal issues would have been
so decisive a confirmation of Jeremiah's prophetic insight that it
could not have been passed over in silence.
Indeed, Jeremiah may have shared the conviction which, founded on
imperfect generalisation, perhaps dazzled the unfortunate king to his
ruin. Josiah had accepted the Book of Deuteronomy with the whole
strength of his belief, and the Book of Deuteronomy had proclaimed to
Israel as the reward of faithfulness this promise: "And it shall come
to pass that Jehovah, thy God, shall set thee on high above all the
nations of the earth.... Jehovah shall cause thine enemies which rise
up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out
against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways."[741] In the
strength of that promise, Josiah was perhaps saying to himself, in the
language of the Psalms, that Jehovah could not fail to save His
anointed, and dash His enemies to pieces under His feet;[742] in the
language, perhaps, of later days, that the sound of a shaken leaf
should chase them, and they should flee when none pursued.[743]
Alas! such passages do not apply invariably to our worldly fortunes!
God's promises are general. The individual must be considered apart
from the universal in the region of spiritual and eternal blessings.
In the affairs of earth the wicked often seem to be in prosperity,
while the righteous are overwhelmed by all God's waves and storms.
Further, Josiah evidently received a warning--a warning which
professed to come, and really came, from God[744]--whether uttered by
Pharaoh or by Jeremiah. And in this instance Josiah had sought war; he
had not been forced into it. It was not for him to go out of his way
to champion the cause either of cruel Assyria or vaunting Babylon.
The result was entire disenchantment. No more disheartening and
disastrous calamity could have happened to the kingdom, which had just
begun to struggle out of the slough of idolatry and humiliation.
Heedless of the message he had received, strong in mistaken hopes,
Josiah opposed his poor, weak forces to the powerful host of renovated
Egypt. The result was instantaneous ruin.[745] Judah was defeated and
scattered without a blow,--Necho came, saw, conquered. Josiah,
according to the present record of the Chronicles, like Ahab,
"disguised himself"[746] and went into the battle; and as he drove
from rank to rank an Egyptian archer drew a bow at a venture, and
smote him while he was putting his forces in array. The arrow-point
brought conviction too late. Josiah saw his error; he knew that his
own death involved the rout of his army. He sounded a retreat, and
said to his servants, "Bear me away to my travelling chariot, for I am
sore wounded."[747] He died at Megiddo, where his ancestor Ahaziah had
died before him from the arrow-wounds of Jehu's pursuers. His servants
carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo. The famous plain of
Esdraelon had already witnessed two great victories--that of Barak
over Sisera, and that of Gideon over the Midianites; and one
deplorable defeat--that of Saul by the Philistines. It was now
darkened by a catastrophe even more sad.[748]
When that chariot, accompanied by its wailing escort, entered the
gates of Jerusalem, with the routed army of Judah behind it, the
feeling of the people must have resembled that of the Athenians when
the news reached them that Lysander had destroyed their whole fleet at
Ægospotami, and the long wail went thrilling up through that sleepless
night from the Peiræus all along the Makra Teichè to the Parthenon and
the Acropolis. And there followed such a mourning as the land had
never known before. It had begun at Megiddo and Hadadrimmon, leaving
the sad memory of its hopeless intensity. It was renewed at Jerusalem
when they buried the king in his own sepulchre. "The land mourned,
every family apart; the family of the House of David apart, and their
wives apart; the family of the House of Nathan apart, and their wives
apart; the family of the House of Levi apart, and their wives apart;
the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart; all the families
that remained, every family apart, and their wives apart."[749] "And
all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. And Jeremiah lamented for
Josiah: and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah
in their lamentations unto this day, and they were made an institution
in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the Lamentations."[750]
Not even for heroic David, or royal Solomon, or pious Asa, or
prosperous Jehoshaphat had there been so loud a dirge.
But, alas! there was cause for far deeper sorrow than the loss of a
prince, however able, however beloved. The dead was dead. Natural sorrow
for the bereavement of the people would soon be healed by time, but
behind the passing affliction lay a great fear and a great reaction.
A great fear,--for now a southern foe was added to the northern.
Jeremiah and other prophets had warned Israel of the peril from the
North. When the Scythian wave "rolled shoreward, struck and was
dissipated," when the source of Assyrian terror seemed to be drying up,
worldlings may have felt inclined to laugh at Jeremiah. But now it was
evident that, sooner or later, the Chaldæans would be as formidable as
their predecessors, and out of the serpent's egg was breaking forth a
cockatrice. The uncalled-for attempt of Josiah to bar the path of the
new and mighty Pharaoh had also added Egypt to the list of formidable
enemies. For the present the Pharaoh had passed on to the Euphrates; but
whether he returned victorious or defeated, his troops could not but be
a source of danger to the little kingdom, which would henceforth be
helpless between the overwhelming forces of its foes.
If such were the fears of the timid and the pessimistic, still deeper
was the disheartenment of the faithful. Josiah had been the most
obedient, the most religious, of all the kings of Judah from childhood
upwards. Where, then, were Jehovah's old loving-kindnesses which He
sware unto David in His truth? Had God forgotten to be gracious? Had
He hidden away His mercy in displeasure? Where were the blessings of
the newly discovered Book of the Law, if the curse fell on its most
earnest votary? Where was Huldah's promise that he should be gathered
to his fathers in peace, if he was carried back dead from the field of
fruitless battle? There can be little doubt that the apparent blight
which had fallen on unavailing righteousness hastened the reaction of
the subsequent reigns. Many might be inclined to cry out with even
Jeremiah in his moments of overwhelming despondency, "Ah, Lord God!
surely Thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying,
'Ye shall have peace'; whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul."[751]
"O Lord, Thou has deceived me, and I was deceived: Thou art stronger
than I, and hast prevailed: I am a derision daily, every one mocketh
me. Whenever I speak, I must shout, I must cry violence and spoil; for
the word of the Lord is made a reproach unto me, and a derision,
daily."[752]
But man judges partially and judges amiss. God's ways are not as man's
ways. God sees the whole; He sees the future; He sees things as they
are. Through defeat, through captivity, through multiform affliction,
lay the path to the final deliverance of the nation from the grosser
forms of idolatry. When they wept as they remembered Zion, when they
took down their harps from the willows by the water-courses of Babylon
to sing the Lord's song in a strange land, they turned again--and at
last with their whole heart--to God their Saviour, who had done so
great things for them;--until the grey secret lingering in the East
was brightened by the Morning Star, and there was revealed to the
world a True Israel, and a New Jerusalem, wherein the Lord should be
King for evermore.
FOOTNOTES:
[728] He was forced to desist by a fearful mortality among the
labourers.
[729] _Circ._ B.C. 611-605. Herod., ii. 158, 159, iv. 42. Psamatik,
the father of Necho, was perhaps a Lybian. He established his sway
over all Egypt displacing the Assyrians.
[730] _Antt._, X. v. 1.
[731] Herod., ii. 158. His father Psamatik had left him an adequate
army of natives and mercenaries.
[732] Herodotus says of his ships: Ἁι μὲν ἐπὶ τῇ βορηίῃ θαλάσσῃ
ἐποιήθησαν.
[733] Judg. iv. 23; 1 Sam. xxix. 1-11; 1 Kings xx. 26; 2 Kings xxiii.
29; 2 Chron. xxxv. 22; Rev. xvi. 16 (Armageddon). Herodotus confuses
it with Migdol (Μάγδολον).
[734] 1 Macc. xii. 49; Jos., _Antt._, XIII. vi. 2.
[735] 2 Chron. xxxv. 20-22.
[736] According to 1 Esdras i. 25-32, "for upon Euphrates is my war."
[737] Klostermann, in 2 Chron. xxxv. 21, reads _bachalôm_, "in a
dream," instead of "to make haste."
[738] Gen. xli. 1; Herod., ii. 188; _Records of the Past_, ix. 52.
[739] 2 Kings xviii. 25.
[740] _Antt._, X. v. 1: Τῆς πεπρωμένης οἶμαι εἰς τοῦτ' αὐτόν
παρορμησάσης.
[741] Deut. xxviii. 1-8.
[742] Psalm xx. 6, xviii. 29-50.
[743] Lev. xxvi. 36.
[744] 2 Chron. xxxv. 22: "hearkened not _to the words of Necho from
the mouth of God_."
[745] "When he had _seen_ him." Comp. 2 Kings xiv. 8.
[746] 1 Esdras i. 25; and LXX., "firmly resolved," "strengthened
himself," as in 2 Chron. xxv. 11.
[747] Jos., _Antt._, X. v. 1; and 2 Chron. xxxv. 23; 1 Esdras i. 30.
[748] The fortunes of the Jews again prevailed in this plain in the
days of Holofernes (Judith vii. 3); but they were defeated there by
Placidus (Jos., _B. J._, IV. i. 8).
[749] Zech. xii. 11-13 (comp. Jer. xxii. 10, 18). No such place as
Hadadrimmon is known, though there is a Rummâne not far from Megiddo.
Jerome (_Comm. in Zach._) identifies it with a place which he calls
Maximianopolis. Wellhausen (_Skizzen_, 192) thinks that the mourning
is compared to some wail over the god Hadadrimmon, like the wailing
for Tammuz. Jonathan and Jarchi say that Hadadrimmon was the son of
Tabrimmon, who opposed Ahab at Ramoth-Gilead.
[750] 2 Chron. xxxv. 24, 25. Jeremiah's elegy has probably perished.
It would have been most interesting had it been preserved. Lam. iv. is
too vague to have been this lost poem.
[751] Jer. iv. 10.
[752] Jer. xx. 7, 8.