Josiah’s name means “whom Jehovah heals.” Was this to be a life-long reminder of his godly great-grandfather?
After the 55-year reign of Manasseh, “his son Amon reigned in his place” (2 Ki 21:18). Following his father’s evil ways, “he forsook the Lord God of his fathers, and did not walk in the way of the Lord” (v 22). It is a truism that, if a person forsakes the Lord, any path he takes is guaranteed to be the wrong one. After two short years, “the servants of Amon conspired against him, and killed the king in his own house” (v 23). The killers were also summarily dispatched (v 24). At that point, Amon’s son was a mere eight years old! Yet “the people of the land made his son Josiah king” (v 24). Was his mother, “Jedidah the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath” (22:1), the hand upon his shoulder for good? We are not told. But the little fellow “did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left” (v 2). Did she know when she named him that he was the fulfillment to the prophecy given by an unnamed man of God three hundred years before? Against the place of false worship raised by Jeroboam at Bethel, the man had said, “O altar, altar! Thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, a child, Josiah by name, shall be born to the house of David; and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and men’s bones shall be burned on you’” (1 Ki 13:2). And so when he came of age, “in the eighteenth year” of his reign (2 Ki 22:3), he turned his hand to cleaning out the nests of foul spirits that had ruled the land in the days of his father and grandfather. In this he found help from “Shaphan the scribe” and “Hilkiah the high priest” (vv 3-4). And they were about to discover a treasure of far greater worth than all the gold and silver in Solomon’s vast empire!