Josiah (King)

• destroyed Jerusalem ring of corrupt politicians

97:9.23The real un­do­ing of Ju­dah was ef­fected by a cor­rupt and rich ring of politi­cians op­er­at­ing un­der the rule of a boy king, Man­asseh. The chang­ing econ­omy fa­vored the re­turn of the wor­ship of Baal, whose pri­vate land deal­ings were against the ide­ol­ogy of Yah­weh. The fall of As­syria and the as­cen­dancy of Egypt brought de­liv­er­ance to Ju­dah for a time, and the coun­try folk took over. Un­der Josiah they de­stroyed the Je­ru­sa­lem ring of cor­rupt politi­cians.

• intercepted Necho’s mighty army; was wiped out

97:9.24But this era came to a tragic end when Josiah pre­sumed to go out to in­ter­cept Ne­cho’s mighty army as it moved up the coast from Egypt for the aid of As­syria against Baby­lon. He was wiped out, and Ju­dah went un­der trib­ute to Egypt. The Baal po­lit­i­cal party re­turned to power in Je­ru­sa­lem, and thus be­gan the real Egyp­tian bond­age. Then en­sued a pe­riod in which the Baalim politi­cians con­trolled both the courts and the priest­hood. Baal wor­ship was an eco­nomic and so­cial sys­tem deal­ing with prop­erty rights as well as hav­ing to do with soil fer­til­ity.

• Egyptians defeated at Megiddo

126:1.2This hill, a lit­tle more than one hun­dred years pre­vi­ously, had been the “high place of Baal,” and now it was the site of the tomb of Sim­eon, a re­puted holy man of Is­rael. From the sum­mit of this hill of Sim­eon, Je­sus looked out over Naz­a­reth and the sur­round­ing coun­try. He would gaze upon Megiddo and re­call the story of the Egyp­tian army win­ning its first great vic­tory in Asia; and how, later on, an­other such army de­feated the Judean king Josiah. Not far away he could look upon Taanach, where Deb­o­rah and Barak de­feated Sis­era. In the dis­tance he could view the hills of Dothan, where he had been taught Joseph’s breth­ren sold him into Egyp­tian slav­ery. He then would shift his gaze over to Ebal and Ger­izim and re­count to him­self the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Ja­cob, and Abim­elech. And thus he re­called and turned over in his mind the his­toric and tra­di­tional events of his fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple.