2 Kings 23:25-37

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. ¹ 

23:26 Yet the Lord’s great anger against Judah did not subside; he was still infuriated by all the things Manasseh had done. ²  23:27 The Lord announced, “I will also spurn Judah, ³  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.” ⁴ 

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. ⁵  23:29 During Josiah’s reign Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt marched toward ⁶  the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to fight him, but Necho ⁷  killed him at Megiddo ⁸  when he saw him. 23:30 His servants transported his dead body ⁹  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, ¹⁰  and made him king in his father’s place.

Jehoahaz’s Reign over Judah

23:31 Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. ¹¹  His mother ¹²  was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah. 23:32 He did evil in the sight of ¹³  the Lord as his ancestors had done. ¹⁴  23:33 Pharaoh Necho imprisoned him in Riblah in the land of Hamath and prevented him from ruling in Jerusalem. ¹⁵  He imposed on the land a special tax ¹⁶  of one hundred talents ¹⁷  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. ¹⁸  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. ¹⁹ 

Jehoiakim’s Reign over Judah

23:36 Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned for eleven years in Jerusalem. ²⁰  His mother was Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah, from Rumah. 23:37 He did evil in the sight of ²¹  the Lord as his ancestors had done.

[23:25]  ¹ tn Heb “and like him there was not a king before him who returned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his being according to all the law of Moses, and after him none arose like him.”

[23:26]  ² tn Heb “Yet the Lord did not turn away from the fury of his great anger, which raged against Judah, on account of all the infuriating things by which Manasseh had made him angry.”

[23:27]  ³ tn Heb “Also Judah I will turn away from my face.”

[23:27]  ⁴ tn Heb “My name will be there.”

[23:28]  ⁵ 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?”

[23:29]  ⁶ 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.

[23:29]  ⁷ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Necho) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[23:29]  ⁸ map For location see Map1 D4; Map2 C1; Map4 C2; Map5 F2; Map7 B1.

[23:30]  ⁹ tn Heb “him, dead.”

[23:30]  ¹⁰ tn Or “anointed him.”

[23:31]  ¹¹ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[23:31]  ¹² tn Heb “the name of his mother.”

[23:32]  ¹³ tn Heb “in the eyes of.”

[23:32]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “according to all which his fathers had done.”

[23:33]  ¹⁵ 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.”

[23:33]  ¹⁶ tn Or “fine.”

[23:33]  ¹⁷ 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.”

[23:34]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and he took Jehoahaz, and he came to Egypt and he died there.”

[23:35]  ¹⁹ 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.”

[23:36]  ²⁰ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[23:37]  ²¹ tn Heb “in the eyes of.”