One would think that the best way to understand the Old Testament is to start at the beginning (Genesis) and read through to the end (Malachi). But the first book is not necessarily the beginning. A different approach is to start where the text itself suggests it began: with the discovery of the Book of the Law in 2 Kings 22. That was in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign as king of Judah, just a few short years before the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of its leaders and thousands of its leading citizens to Babylon. The Exile in Babylon becomes a lens through which we can read the Old Testament.
The Exile as a Setting for the Old Testament
One should start by reading all nine chapters from 2 Kings 17 (relating the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria) through 2 Kings 25 (relating the fall of the southern kingdom of Judah to the Babylonians). Clearly, the primary theme of this historical narrative is trying to understand why Israel, the chosen people of the Lord, was defeated and carried off into exile. Defeat and exile is not what one would expect of the chosen people of the Lord, followers of the all-powerful God of all the earth.
Before the fall of Jerusalem, those in Judah had a simple explanation for the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel: the northerners were religious apostates who worshipped other gods. Even when they followed the God of Israel they patronized northern shrines under the direction of northern priests rather than coming to the Jerusalem temple and its priests. And the northerners were political apostates, having chosen to follow Jeroboam rather than staying loyal to the house of David. The fall of the northern kingdom was not a problem for those in Judah. It fit quite nicely into their worldview.
After the fall of the southern kingdom of Judah, such facile explanations were no longer convincing. Jehovah did not exercise His power to defend the house of David, the city of Jerusalem, or His temple. In retrospect, after the catastrophe, the words of Jeremiah were seen to be not misguided counsel or defeatist politics but prophetic pronouncement. God had been speaking through Jeremiah and they didn't listen.
To reconstruct their identity as Israelites — having lost their land, their king, and their temple — the priests and scribes in exile turned to what they had left: precious scrolls rescued from the temple and from royal archives and carried to Babylon. These scrolls contained a variety of sources, but were not the full narratives and books we have today — that is evident just from reading them. Some scrolls contained material from sources that went back centuries; others contained material that was quite recent. All of these were read, copied, pondered, interpreted, discussed, embellished, and expanded in an ongoing attempt first to understand why God had allowed first Israel and now Judah to fall, then to understand what the landless and leaderless people of Israel should do in exile. Before the fall, religion was one part of a busy civic, economic, social, and political life in bustling Jerusalem. After the fall, it was all they had.
2 Kings 22: The Book of the Law and Josiah's Reforms
The idea that the Exile provides the perspective for understanding the Old Testament (the narrative that we now have) runs somewhat contrary to the traditional notion that the books of the Old Testament as we have them are essentially chronicles that were written contemporaneously with the events they recount. Reading 2 Kings 22 helps us understand this newer view. Josiah ascended to the kingship of Judah at age 8. Eighteen years later, he apparently directed Hilkiah, the high priest of the temple, to repair and refurbish the temple. During the repair project, workers discovered a scroll, the Book of the Law, which Hilkiah read and then sent to Josiah. When the scroll was read to Josiah, here is how he responded:
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest ... : Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord's anger that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us. (2 Kings 22:11-13 NIV)
Obviously, Josiah was unfamiliar with the contents of the book. The details of the reforms lead scholars to conclude that the Book of the Law was an early form of the book of Deuternonomy. If Josiah had been familiar with Exodus, Deuteronomy would not have been unfamiliar. So it is possible that the Israelites were unacquainted with large parts of the Torah (the five books of Moses) as we know it as late as the reign of Josiah in the late seventh century.
The reforms that Josiah initiated were severe.
The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest ... to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. He did away with the pagan priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem — those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts. He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. ... He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes, which were in the temple of the Lord and where women did weaving for Asherah.(2 Kings 23:4-7 NIV)
Here are a few observations that suggest the importance of 2 Kings 22-23:
- Polytheism. Plainly those in Judah were not monotheists worshipping Jehovah, the god of Israel. They worshipped Baal and Asherah, they honored sun gods and moon gods, they followed the stars. 2 Kings 23:10 even indicates child sacrifice was practiced in Israel.
- Whose temple? While the text refers to it as "the temple of the Lord," the text also tells us that a variety of other gods were worshipped within the precincts of the temple. And they did more than just burn incense there! The temple was thus not, as it is sometimes depicted, a centralized sanctuary devoted to sacrifice for and worship of Jehovah. It was a state-sponsored temple that hosted the worship of many gods and goddesses.
- Good King Josiah. As judged by the text in Kings, Josiah was as good a king as Israel produced: "He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left" (2 Kings 22:2 NIV). But for the first 18 years of his reign these diverse religious practices apparently had the full support of the king.
- The Book of the Law. When this early edition of Deuteronomy was discovered and read to the king, Josiah did not say, "Sounds a lot like Exodus." He did not say, "I detect a few ritual requirements we have somehow forgotten." No, it was a bombshell. The king was largely or entirely unaware of what we now think of as the Israelite religion.
- Not much ethics here. The social justice themes so prominent in the prophetic books but also found in the Torah are strangely absent from the account of the reforms in 2 Kings 23. The reforms were about who was worshipped (only the god of Israel) and where the god of Israel was worshipped (at the temple in Jerusalem) and who presided (the priests of the Jerusalem temple). This is all about the first (Ex. 20:3) and second (Ex. 20:4) commandments.
- Echoes. You can't read Hilkiah's discovery of the scroll of the Book of the Law in the temple without thinking of Joseph Smith's discovery of the plates of the Book of Mormon. Or maybe the Dead Sea Scrolls.
So the heroic and righteous Josiah ended the worship of other gods, reformed the worship of Jehovah, and cleansed the temple. Yet he did not live long and prosper. In a brutally jarring transition, here is what happened to king Josiah:
Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Neco faced him and killed him at Megiddo.
Thus ended Josiah, king of Judah.
Other DMI posts on the Old Testament: