23:21 The king ordered all the people, “Observe the Passover of the Lord your God, as prescribed in this scroll of the covenant.” 23:22 He issued this edict because 1 a Passover like this had not been observed since the days of the judges; it was neglected for the entire period of the kings of Israel and Judah. 2 23:23 But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah’s reign, such a Passover of the Lord was observed in Jerusalem.
23:24 Josiah also got rid of 3 the ritual pits used to conjure up spirits, 4 the magicians, personal idols, disgusting images, 5 and all the detestable idols that had appeared in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. In this way he carried out the terms of the law 6 recorded on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the Lord’s temple. 23:25 No king before or after repented before the Lord as he did, with his whole heart, soul, and being in accordance with the whole law of Moses. 7
23:26 Yet the Lord’s great anger against Judah did not subside; he was still infuriated by all the things Manasseh had done. 8 23:27 The Lord announced, “I will also spurn Judah, 9 just as I spurned Israel. I will reject this city that I chose – both Jerusalem and the temple, about which I said, “I will live there.” 10
23:28 The rest of the events of Josiah’s reign and all his accomplishments are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Judah. 11 23:29 During Josiah’s reign Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt marched toward 12 the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to fight him, but Necho 13 killed him at Megiddo 14 when he saw him. 23:30 His servants transported his dead body 15 from Megiddo in a chariot and brought it to Jerusalem, where they buried him in his tomb. The people of the land took Josiah’s son Jehoahaz, poured olive oil on his head, 16 and made him king in his father’s place.
23:31 Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. 17 His mother 18 was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah. 23:32 He did evil in the sight of 19 the Lord as his ancestors had done. 20 23:33 Pharaoh Necho imprisoned him in Riblah in the land of Hamath and prevented him from ruling in Jerusalem. 21 He imposed on the land a special tax 22 of one hundred talents 23 of silver and a talent of gold. 23:34 Pharaoh Necho made Josiah’s son Eliakim king in Josiah’s place, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. He took Jehoahaz to Egypt, where he died. 24 23:35 Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh the required amount of silver and gold, but to meet Pharaoh’s demands Jehoiakim had to tax the land. He collected an assessed amount from each man among the people of the land in order to pay Pharaoh Necho. 25
23:36 Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned for eleven years in Jerusalem. 26 His mother was Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah, from Rumah. 23:37 He did evil in the sight of 27 the Lord as his ancestors had done.
1 tn The Hebrew text has simply “because.” The translation attempts to reflect more clearly the logical connection between the king’s order and the narrator’s observation. Another option is to interpret כִּי (ki) as asseverative and translate, “indeed.”
2 tn Heb “because there had not been observed [one] like this Passover from the days of the judges who judged Israel and all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.”
3 tn Here בִּעֵר (bi’er) is not the well attested verb “burn,” but the less common homonym meaning “devastate, sweep away, remove.” See HALOT 146 s.v. בער.
4 sn See the note at 2 Kgs 21:6.
5 sn See the note at 1 Kgs 15:12.
6 tn Heb “carrying out the words of the law.”
7 tn Heb “and like him there was not a king before him who returned to the
8 tn Heb “Yet the
9 tn Heb “Also Judah I will turn away from my face.”
10 tn Heb “My name will be there.”
11 tn Heb “As for the rest of the events of Josiah, and all which he did, are they not written on the scroll of the events of the days of the kings of Judah?”
12 tn Heb “went up to.” The idiom עַל…עָלָה (’alah …’al) can sometimes mean “go up against,” but here it refers to Necho’s attempt to aid the Assyrians in their struggle with the Babylonians.
13 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Necho) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
14 map For location see Map1-D4; Map2-C1; Map4-C2; Map5-F2; Map7-B1.
15 tn Heb “him, dead.”
16 tn Or “anointed him.”
17 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
18 tn Heb “the name of his mother.”
19 tn Heb “in the eyes of.”
20 tn Heb “according to all which his fathers had done.”
21 tc The consonantal text (Kethib) has “when [he was] ruling in Jerusalem,” but the marginal reading (Qere), which has support from Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin witnesses, has “[preventing him] from ruling in Jerusalem.”
22 tn Or “fine.”
23 tn The Hebrew term כִּכָּר (kikkar, “circle”) refers generally to something that is round. When used of metals it can refer to a disk-shaped weight made of the metal or to a standard unit of weight, generally regarded as a talent. Since the accepted weight for a talent of metal is about 75 pounds, this would have amounted to about 7,500 pounds of silver and 75 pounds of gold (cf. NCV, NLT); CEV “almost four tons of silver and about seventy-five pounds of gold.”
24 tn Heb “and he took Jehoahaz, and he came to Egypt and he died there.”
25 tn Heb “And the silver and the gold Jehoiakim gave to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to give the silver at the command of Pharaoh, [from] each according to his tax he collected the silver and the gold, from the people of the land, to give to Pharaoh Necho.”
26 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
27 tn Heb “in the eyes of.”