The Chosen Key Word in this Chapter is “Celebration” it comes from the Hebrew Word “chag” which means “feast, festival, celebration.”
Josiah leads the greatest Passover celebration Judah had seen in centuries, then dies unexpectedly in battle. Welcome to Bible Life Basics Chapter Reviews, I am Chris and this is 2 Chronicles 35.
Josiah keeps a Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem, organizing the priests and encouraging the Levites, who taught all Israel and were holy to the Lord, to serve in the house he had established. Josiah personally contributes an enormous number of lambs and cattle from his own possessions for the people’s offerings, and the princes give generously as well, with priests and Levites carefully following David and Solomon’s original organizational pattern for this “celebration,” “chag” in Hebrew.
The service is prepared in orderly fashion, with priests and Levites carrying out their assigned duties exactly according to the written instructions, and singers, sons of Asaph, remain at their posts as David, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun had originally commanded. The text notes emphatically that no Passover like this had been kept in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel, and none of Israel’s kings had kept such a Passover as Josiah now kept, along with the priests, Levites, all Judah, Israel, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Later, Necho, king of Egypt, comes up to fight at Carchemish, and though he warns Josiah that he has no quarrel with him, Josiah disguises himself and goes into battle anyway, where archers wound him severely. His servants carry him from his chariot, and he dies, and all Judah and Jerusalem mourn him deeply, with Jeremiah composing a lamentation for him, remembered in Israel’s written lamentations to this very day, closing the reign of Judah’s last genuinely faithful king before the kingdom’s final, rapid decline toward exile.
Josiah’s remarkably faithful Passover celebration, the greatest since Samuel’s era, makes his sudden, unnecessary death in battle all the more tragic and puzzling, especially given warnings he chose to ignore. His death marks a genuine turning point, the last truly faithful king before Judah’s final, irreversible slide toward the exile so many earlier prophecies had long warned was coming.
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