The king, in his alarm, sent to Hiddah " the prophet- ess" for her counsel in this emergency [see Huldaii] : her answer assiu-ed him that, although the dread penal- ties threatened by the law had been incurred and would be inflicted, he should be gathered in peace to his fa- thers before the days of punishment and sorrow came.
It was perhaps not without some hope of averting this doom that the king immediately called the people together at Jerusalem, and engaged them in a solemn renewal of the ancient covenant with God. When this had been done, the Passover was celebrated with care- ful attention to the directions given in the law, and on a scale of unexampled magnificence. (On the public importance of this sera, see Ezek. i, 1, 2.) But all was too late; the hour of mercy had passed; for "the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great WTath, where- with his anger was kindled against Judah" (2 Kings xxii, 3-20; xxiii, 21-27; 2 Chron. xxxiv, 8-33; xxxv, 1-19).
3. That removal from the world which had been promised to Josiah as a blessing was not long delayed, and was brought about in a way which he probably had not expected. Pharaoh-necho, kuig of Egypt, sought
JOSIAH
1034
JOST
through his territories on an expedition ] against the Chalihv?ans; but Josiah refused to allow the ] nTarch of the Egyptian army through his dominions, and prepared to resist the attempt by force of arms. His reason for this opposition has usually been assumed to have been a high sense of loyalty to the Assyrian mon- arch, whose tributary he is supposed to have been. Such is at least the conjecture of Prideaux {Connection, anno GIO) and of MUman {History of the Jens, i, 313). But the Bible ascribes no such chivalrous motive to Josiah; and it does not occur to Josephus, who attributes {Ant. X, 5, 1) Josiah's resistance merely to Fate urging him to destruction ; nor to the author of 1 Esdr. i, 28, who describes him as acting wilfully against Jeremiah's ad- vice ; nor to Ewald, who {Gesch. Isr. iii, 707) conjectures that it may have been the constant aim of Josiah to re- store not only the ritual, but also the kingdom of David in its full extent and independence, and that he attacked Necho as an invader of what he considered as his north- ern dominions. This conjecture, if equally probable with the former, is equally without adequate support in the Bible, and is somewhat derogatory to the character of Jiijiah. Necho was very unwillhig to engage in hos- tilities with Josiah : the appearance of the Hebrew army at 3Iegiddo (comp. Herod, ii, 159), however, brought on a battle, in which the king of Judah, although dis- guised for security, was so desperately wounded by a random arrow that his attendants removed him from the war-chariot and placed him in another, in which he was taken to Jerusalem, where he died, after a reign of thirty-one years. B.C. GOD. (See J. K. Riesling's Es- say on this subject. Lips. 1754.) No king that reigned in Israel was ever more deeply lamented by all his sub- jects than Josiah; and we are told that the prophet Jeremiah composed on the occasion an elegiac ode, ■which was long preserved among the people (2 Kings xxiii, 29-37 ; 2 Chron. xxxv, 20-27). See Lamexta- Tioxs. Compare the narrative in 2 Chron. xxxv, 25 with the allusions in Jer. xxii, 10, 18, and Zech. xii, 11, and with Jackson, On the Creed, bk. viii, ch. xxiii, p. 878. The prediction of Huldah that he should " be gathered into the grave in j)eace" nmst be interpreted in accord- ance with the explanation of that j^hrase given in Jer. xxxiv, 5. Some excellent remarks on it may be found in Jackson, On the Creed, bk. xi, ch. xxxvi, p. 664. Jo- siah's reformation and his death are commented on by bishop Hall, Contemplations on the 0. T., bk. xx. See also Howard, History of Josiah (London, 1842).
4. It was in the reign of Josiah that a nomadic horde of Scythians overran Asia (Herod, i, 104-106). A de- tachment of them went towards Egypt by the way of riiilistia : somewhere southwards of Ascalon they were met by messengers from Psammetichus and induced to turn back. They are not mentioned in the historical accounts of Josiah's reign ; but Ewald {Die Psalmen, p. 105) conjectures that the 59th Psalm was composed by king Josiah during a siege of Jerusalem by these Scyth- ians. The town Bethshan is said to derive its Greek name Scy thopohs (Keland, Palcest. \). 992 ; Lightfoot, Clior. Marc, vii, § 2) from these invaders. The facility with which Josiah appears to have extended his au- thority in the land of Israel is adduced as an indication tliat the Assyrian conquerors of that land were them- selves at this time imder the restraining fear of some enemy. Tlie prophecy of Zephaniah is considered to have been written amid the terror caused by tlieir ap- jiroach. The same people are described at a later pe- riod by Ezekiel (xxviii). See Ewald, Gesch. Isr. iii, 689. Abarbanel (ap. Eisenmenger, Ent. Jiid. i, 858) re- cords an oral tradition of the Jews to the effect that the ark of the covenant, which Solomon deposited in the Temple (1 Kings vi, 19), was removed and hidden by Jo.siah in expectation of the destruction of the Temple, and that it will not be brought again to light until the coming of Messiah.— Kitto ; Smith.