I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Chronicles 34-36.

Josiah took the throne at 8 years old.  When he was 16 he began to seek God.  At 20, which was probably when he started to have full authority and no longer answered to a regent, he ordered the destruction of all of the pagan altars and idols in the land.  He also ordered the purification of the Temple.  Once all of this was completed, Josiah ordered the Temple repaired.  What happened next never ceases to cause me wonder.  During the repairs they found the Book of the Law of Moses.   Which makes me wonder what Josiah was going by up until this point.  Did they have some partial accounts of what the Law of Moses said?  Or, was Josiah merely relying on oral tradition?  I want to note that because King Josiah did his best to follow God’s will based on his limited understanding of what that was, God provided him with a more complete understanding.  If you are unsure of all of God’s will for your actions, do what you know to be His will and He will give you clearer guidance.

In any case, Josiah was horrified to learn how badly they had been falling short of obeying God’s commands and went into mourning for their shortcomings.  He also instructed his top advisers to petition the Lord about what they should do going forward since they had failed so badly to do God’s will up to this point.  Here we see something interesting.  Only one of these advisers was a priest.  Yet all of them seem to be intimately involved in Josiah’s religious reforms.  A fact which tells us something about King Josiah.  He had surrounded himself with men who sought the Lord just as much as he did.  Despite getting an answer from God that the disasters described in the Law of Moses would fall on the people of Israel because of their unfaithfulness, although not in his lifetime, King Josiah instituted further religious reforms that implemented the entire Law of Moses.  He appears to have enforced his religious reforms over the entire land of Israel, even though his political control only extended to the area of Judah and Benjamin.

Unfortunately, after Josiah died in battle his sons and grandson did not follow his example.  When we get to the Book of Jeremiah, it will be worth remembering that King Zedekiah was King Josiah’s son.