2 KINGS
The Final Days of the Southern Kingdom of Judah
2 Kings 21:1-23:37
INTRODUCTION
Because our works reveal what kind of person we truly are, God will judge us on the basis of our works. If a person does Christ-like works, it is because he is a Christian. If a person lives like the devil, it is because he is for all practical purposes a devil. What I do reflects who I am.
Whereas the above is true to a real degree, it is also true that sometimes our works do not completely reveal who we are or exactly how well we are doing. Take for example the following 2 people. The first person has just become a Christian and has dedicated his life completely to the Lord. Although he does not understand all it means to live the Christian life, he has set his face towards the Lord to follow Him perfectly. The second person though has learned how to live the Christian life and has been doing so for many years. Yet this second person has turned cold in his relationship with the Lord and has turned his heart away from the Lord. When this happens, his actions don't change, at least not all at once. From appearance who is closer to the Lord, the first or second person? The second. Yet in all actuality, who is closer to the Lord? The first one.
We have 2 kings who greatly affected the nation of Israel: Solomon and Manasseh. From appearance it looks like Solomon is a much better king than Manasseh. Manasseh will make his sons go through the fires of human sacrifice. He will offer sacrifice to foreign gods in every corner of the nation. Yet Solomon is just as bad. He is the one who turned Israel into the path of idolatry. Israel did not descend into the depths of idolatry like she did during the time of Manasseh; however, Solomon had made the nation turn away from the Lord and unto idols. Manasseh is only bringing the decision of Solomon to completion.
THE BOTTOM FALLS OUT: THE REIGN OF MANASSEH (21:1-18)
With the coming of Manasseh, the bottom literally falls out of Judah. Judah has flirted with idolatry since the days of Solomon; she got really serious about it during the days of Ahaz. With Manasseh there is no more pretending that Judah is the nation of the Lord, Yahweh. With Manasseh we see full-blown idolatry. He ascends to the throne of Judah at the age of 12 and reigns for 55 years. During those 55 years he is able to lead Judah to such depths of sin that she cannot pull herself out of them.
Second Kings describes the reign of Manasseh as being the worst of all the reigns of the southern kingdom of Judah. Normally whenever 2 Kings describes a king, it compares the king to David. For example, 2 Kings says that this or that king was like David but not quite. When describing Manasseh, 2 Kings does not insult David by even mentioning his name. Instead of comparing Manasseh to David, 2 Kings compares Manasseh to Ahab, the worst of all the kings of the northern kingdom of Samaria (Israel). As Ahab leads the northern kingdom to hit rock bottom, so Manasseh leads Judah to hit rock bottom.
Moreover, 2 Kings says that Manasseh has such a disastrous effect upon the southern kingdom of Judah that it now resembles the Canaanite kingdoms God had used Israel to destroy during the time of Joshua 600 years earlier. How bad had the Canaanite (Amorite) peoples been? God told Abraham that 430 years later He would lead Abraham's descendants out of the land of Egypt and destroy the Canaanites who inhabited the Holy Land. Why wait 430 years to destroy them? Because it would be another 430 years before the Canaanites had gotten so bad that the only right response for God to take towards the Canaanites would be to destroy them. Well now 2 Kings informs us that the Jews are as bad as the Canaanites God had brought judgment upon with the Jewish invasion 600 years earlier. Just as God had destroyed the Canaanite kingdoms, so now God was going to destroy the kingdom of Judah.
"But," you might say, "the Jews are God's chosen people. God wouldn't destroy them, would He?" Well, the truth is that simply because I am God's son does not mean that the moral laws of the universe don't affect me. My dad was a Christian; yet he wasn't immune from the harmful effects of cigarette smoking. I've seen Christians who became alcoholics. Their being Christians didn't stop the harmful effects of alcohol in their lives. I've seen Christians violate themselves morally. Because they were Christians did not mean that they were immune from the moral laws of the universe. Those Christians ended up committing suicide.
Because we are God's people does not mean we are immune to God's discipline. The truth is that because we are God's people, we can expect discipline when we go astray. We have a lot of young people in our community, but the only 2 which I discipline are Nathan and Molly. Parents are going to pay special attention to their children. Well, God is a better Parent than you or I will ever hope to be. If we discipline our children, how much more will God discipline His? (Hebrews says this discipline is actually an indicator that we are His children: Heb. 12:5-8). Peter informs us that judgment actually begins with God's family. Because it begins with us, non-Christians should really shudder because as bad as it can be for us, God's children, it will be much worse for them (1 Pet. 4:17-18)
In what way did Manasseh lead the Jews to the depths of idolatry? He pollutes the temple and the holy city by erecting idols everywhere. He re-institutes the worship of Baal and the Asherah. He brings male prostitution into the worship services of the temple (intercourse being the means by which the worshipers would entice Baal the rain god to mate with the earth Asherah, thereby bringing forth crops). Manasseh will reenergize the shrines on every high place in Judah, for the worship of Baal and other idols. He will introduce the worship of the heavenly bodies (astrology). He will go so far as to erect the Topheth, the "furnace," that is, the place where he would offer his sons as human sacrifices to the Canaanite gods.
Second Kings informs us that Manasseh "deceived" the Jews into falling this far into idolatry. It is very seldom that evil comes right out and tells you what it is really trying to do. Maybe Manasseh persuaded the people to go this far into idolatry by saying that he was making them more like Assyria, the world's super power. Maybe if they were like Assyria in this respect, Judah would become the world's super power. Or maybe he convinced the Jews that the worship of the Lord was passe, that now that they were in the post-modern era it was time to worship the new gods.
Because of the deceit of former politicians, how many of us have been deceived into thinking that character now no longer is important? Results matter. The economy matters. Not character. Ask Martha Stewart if character doesn't matter. Ask the state of New Jersey if character doesn't matter. The governor there had passed over the former director of the FBI, Louis Freed, to head up the security of New Jersey in favor of his male lover who knew nothing at all about security. He risked the lives of the millions of citizens of NJ for the sake of a male lover. And character doesn't matter? Yet some prominent politicians have deceived so many Americans into thinking it doesn't.
With regards to Judah, God has had it. God is not going to put up with it any more. There is no way that God would be able to look at His face in the mirror if He annihilated the Canaanites and yet let the Jews off scot-free. God is a righteous judge. It's just not going to happen. God will destroy the city of Jerusalem, the polluted temple, and the nation itself. It is the only appropriate response the righteous Judge of the universe can have in this situation.
Why this wholesale destruction of the nation of Judah? Did they really deserve this? Although the whole earth is God's, God had carved out that tiny piece of real estate and made it especially His own. The land did not belong to the Jews. It belonged to God. The other day in one of our men's groups we were talking about how much land everybody owned. One man claimed he owned 2 acres; another man, 10 acres; another, half an acre; and the last man was leasing out over 100 acres. When we thought about it further, we realized we didn't own any land. B.F. once said that one man claimed that he didn't own anything because in 100 years his land would be possessed by somebody else. The truth is that it all belongs to God. We're simply stewards of the things God has entrusted to us. How did Israel handle its stewardship? It took God's house and made it a place of sexual immorality. It became the hub of idol worship. God is completely justified in His treatment of Israel.
THE REIGN OF AMON (21:19-26)
Like father, like son. Upon the death of Manasseh, his son Amon ascends the throne. He continues in the pursuit of a pro-Assyria policy and the pursuit of the worship of Canaanite idols. As a result, Amon reigns for only 2 years. At that time there is a coup in the palace. He is assassinated by courtiers in the palace. Although Amon was evil, he was nevertheless the Lord's Anointed. (Even David refused to lift up his hand against Saul, the Lord's Anointed, even though Saul was seeking his life.) As a result the people rise and slay the men who had assassinated Amon.
THE REIGN OF JOSIAH (22:1-23:37)
When all seems hopeless, Josiah emerges. Because of the premature death of his father, Josiah ascends the throne at the age of 8. Second Kings informs us that here was the best king Judah ever had. David was the standard. Josiah more than lived up to that standard; he surpassed it. Just like David, Josiah set his heart to follow the Lord. He turned neither to the right, nor to the left. His heart was fully the Lord's.
(Just a side note here. Some have asked why Manasseh turned out so great after he had had such an excellent father as Hezekiah? The question almost implies that good parenting necessarily leads to good children and that bad parenting necessarily leads to bad children. That implication is not always true. Each person is an individual. Although Manasseh had been exposed to good parenting, he chose to do poorly. Because he was exposed to good parenting, his punishment is going to be more severe than the bad person who experienced bad parenting. In the same way although Josiah had experienced terrible parenting, he turned out great. Think of it this way: if good parenting always leads to good children, then God is not a good parent because His 2 children, Adam and Eve, totally blew it in the best environment of all, the Garden of Eden.)
During the 18th year of his reign (he is now 26), Josiah leads the nation of Judah into the greatest revival it had ever known. First, he launches the restoration of the temple. For the past 57 years Manasseh and Amon had defiled the temple and had left it in a state of disrepair. Trash and debris litter the temple. He entrusts the task to such worthy workers that he does not even demand an account from them.
During the restoration of the temple, the workers discover the book of the law. Many OT scholars debate the content of the book of the law. Was it the first 5 books of the OT, or was it just Deuteronomy? We know that it was at least Deuteronomy because of the similarities between Deuteronomy and some of the subsequent actions Josiah embarked upon after learning about the discovery of the book.
Upon discovering the book, Hilkiah the high priests sends it to Josiah by way of Shaphan After having the book read to him, Josiah is in great anguish because of the threats contained within the book against people who had committed the same sins the Jews had committed. To see if the curses within the book would apply to the Jews, Josiah inquires of Huldah the prophetess. She delivers the bad news that the curses within the book are about to fall upon the nation of Judah. Because Josiah though has followed the Lord wholeheartedly, God will spare him from seeing these curses fulfilled within his lifetime. They will be activated only after Josiah's death.
Although the text does not say it, Josiah's actions lead you to think that he is going to try to avert God's wrath. In the past God's people had faced insurmountable odds, such as, the Assyrian invasion during the reign of Hezekiah. God had come through for the people then. Just maybe a complete revival will lead to the cancellation of the curses. Whatever the motivation, Josiah launches upon the greatest revival Judah had ever seen.
After covenanting with the Lord to follow Him completely, Josiah launches upon a religious purge of Judah. The revival starts with the temple. He rids the temple of the idolatrous altars erected there during the reigns of Manasseh and Amon. He destroys the statues of horses dedicated to the sun god which lined the entrance to the temple compound. He eradicates the temple of male prostitution and removes the looms used to weave materials for the worship of Asherah..
From the temple Josiah moves throughout Jerusalem. He destroys the implements of child sacrifice used in the area of the valley of Gehenna, to the south and west of Jerusalem. He destroys the altars used for the worship of idols, altars erected 300 years earlier by Solomon to placate his idolatrous wives. He grinds up the idols of gold and silver and sprinkles their dust upon the graves which lay upon the Mount of Olives to the east of the temple and the Kidron Valley.
From Jerusalem Josiah moves throughout the land of Judah, from its northernmost point of Geba to its southernmost point of Beersheba. He burns the altars upon the high places throughout Judah, high places dedicated to the worship of idols or to a perverted form of Yahweh worship. No site is spared.
Although Josiah is king only over the southern kingdom of Judah, he is able to extend his purge northward through the former northern kingdom of Samaria (Israel). He takes his reforms to the areas of Manasseh and Ephraim to the north of Jerusalem. He destroys the altars and images used for worship at Bethel, the site of Jeroboam's apostasy. He defiles the altar there by burning upon it the bones of the priests who had initiated this idolatrous worship. (This fulfilled the prophet's words to Jeroboam 1--see 1 Kings 13). Only the bones of the prophet who warned Jeroboam 1 and the prophet who deceived the first prophet were spared the desecration.
Finally, Josiah reinstates the observance of Passover. Since Passover was the defining moment in the history of Israel, it was only proper for Josiah to reinstate it. What an observance it was. Second Kings said that in order to find a Passover to rival this one, you had to go all the way back to the days of Samuel, 400 years earlier. Now that is praise indeed. No king in Judah's history rivaled Josiah. For the next 13 years Josiah leads Judah in the sole worship of the Lord.
Thirteen years are definitely a long period of time; however, in the large scheme of things 13 years don't make that much difference. For over 300 years Judah had engaged in unbroken idolatry (as seen in the fact that Solomon's idolatrous altars were still in existence during the days of Josiah). Two factors probably prevented Josiah's reforms from canceling the disaster God had said would fall upon Judah.
First, although Josiah's heart was truly the Lord's, all that he changed among his people were their actions, not their hearts. His purge was like sprinkling some perfume upon an open sewer. The perfume merely masked the putrid nature of the people's hearts. What was needed was a change of heart, not just a change of actions.
Second, 13 years may change some people's hearts; however, it is not long enough for a complete change of heart. When God decided to raise up a new generation of Israelites to enter the Holy Land, it took Him FORTY years, not just 13, to accomplish this feat. Moreover, He had to destroy everyone 20 years of age and older to effect this change. Too many who had tasted the joys of idolatry would have outlived Josiah's brief life. Once he was removed from the scene, all the restraints were removed so that they might return to their old ways.
During the 31st year of his reign, Josiah meets Pharaoh Neco in battle. At this point the Assyrian empire is in serious decline. A new power is emerging in the East, the Babylonians under Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar. In order to counter this new power, Pharaoh Neco wishes to buttress the Assyrians. Josiah though is ready for the complete collapse of the oppressive Assyrian empire. He marches to the plain in front of Megiddo (what is known as Armageddon) to stop Neco from helping the Assyrians. During the battle Josiah is mortally wounded. He is transported back to Jerusalem where he dies and is buried. Josiah, the last factor restraining God from destroying Judah, has been removed. The destruction of Judah is about to begin.