JOSIAH (irt,ni,10, Wzovah heals ; Sept. 'Iwolas).
I. Seventeenth king of Judah, and son of Amon, whom he succeeded on the throne in B.C. 698, at the early age of eig,ht years, and reigned thirty-one years.
As Josiah thus early ascended the throneove may the more admire the good qualities which he manifested, seeing, as Coquerel remarks, qu'il est difficile de recevoir une bonne education sur le trOne' (Biographie Saerlte, p. 305). Avoiding the example of his immediate predecessors, he did that wbich was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left ' (2 Kings xxii. 1, 2 ; 2 Chron. xxxiv. I, 2). So early as the sixteenth year of his age he began to manifest that enmity to idolatry in all its forms which distinguished his character and reign ; and he was not quite twenty years old when he pro claimed open war against it, although more or less favoured by inany men of rank and influence in the court and kingdom. He then commenced a thorough purification of the land from all taint of idolatry, by going about and superintending in person the operations of the men who were em ployed in breaking down idolatrous altars and images, and cutting down the groves which had been consecrated to idol-worship. His detestation of idolatry could not have been more strongly expressed than by ransacking the sepulchres of the idolatrous priests of former days, and consuming their bones upon the idol altars before they were overturned. Yet this operation, although unex ampled in Jewish history, was foretold 326 years before Josiah was born, by the prophet who was commissioned to denounce to Jeroboam the future punishment of his sin. He even named Josiah as the person by whom this act was to be performed ; and said that it should be performed in Beth-el, which was then a part of the kingdom of Israel 0 Kings xiii. 2). All this seemed much beyond the range of human probabilities. But it was per formed to the letter ; for Josiah did not confine his proceedings to his own kingdom, but went over a considerable part of the neighbouring' kingdom of Israel, which then lay comparatively desolate, with the same object in view ; and at Beth-el, in parti cular, executed all that the prophet had foretold (2 Kings xxiii. 1-19; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 3-7, 32).
In these proceedings Josiah seems to have been actuated by an absolute hatred of idolatry, such as no other king since David had manifested, and which David bad scarcely occasion to manifest in the same degree.
In the eighteenth year of his reig,n and the twenty-sixth of his age, when the land had been thoroughly purified from idolatry and all that be longed to it, Josiah proceeded to repair and beau tify the temple of the Lord. In the course of this pious labour, the high-priest Hilkiah discovered in the sanctuary a volume, which proved to contain the books of Moses, and which, from the terms employed, seems to have been considered the ori ginal of the law as written by Moses. [HILKIA.H.] It appears that the king was greatly astonished when some parts of this were read to him. It is manifest that he had previously been entirely ignor ant of much that Ile then heard ; and he rent his clothes in consternation when he found that, with the best intentions to serve the Lord, he and all his people had been living in the neglect of duties which tbe law declared to be of vital im portance. It is difficult to account for this ignor ance. Some suppose that all the copies of the law had perished, and that the king had never seen one. But this is very unlikely ; but however scarce complete copies may have been, the pious king was likely to have been the possessor of one. The probability seems to be that the passag,es read were those awful denunciations against disobedi ence with which the book of Deuteronomy con cludes, and which from some cause or other the king had never before read, or which had never before produced on his mind the satne strong convic tion of the imminent dangers under which the nation lay, as now when read to him from a volume in vested with a character so venerable, and brought with such interesting circumstances under his notice.