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CHAPTER XXXV

Josiah celebrates a passover, 1; regulates the courses of the priests; assigns them, the Levites, and the people, their portions; and completes the greatest passover ever celebrated since the days of Solomon, 2-19. Pharaoh Necho passes with his army through Judea, 20. Josiah meets and fights with him at Megiddo, and is mortally wounded, 21-23. He is carried to Jerusalem, where he dies, 24. Jeremiah laments for him, 25. Of his acts and deeds, and where recorded, 26, 27.

NOTES ON CHAP. XXXV

Verse 3. "Put the holy ark in the house" - It is likely that the priests had secured this when they found that the idolatrous kings were determined to destroy every thing that might lead the people to the worship of the true God. And now, as all appears to be well established, the ark is ordered to be put into its own place.

For an ample account of this passover and the reformation that was then made, see on 2 Kings xxiii. 1, &c., and the places marked in the margin.

Verse 11. "They killed the passover" - The people themselves might slay their own paschal lambs, and then present the blood to the priests, that they might sprinkle it before the altar; and the Levites flayed them, and made them ready for dressing.

Verse 18. "There was no passover like to that" - "That which distinguished this passover from all the former was," says Calmet, "the great liberality of Josiah, who distributed to his people a greater number of victims than either David or Solomon had done."

Verse 20. "Necho king of Egypt" - Pharaoh the lame, says the Targum.

Verse 21. "God commanded me to make haste" - The Targum gives a curious turn to this and the following verse: "My idol commanded me to make haste; refrain therefore from me and my idol which is with me, that he betray thee not. When he heard him mention his idol, he would not go back; and he hearkened not unto the words of Necho, which he spake concerning his idol." Here is the rabbinical excuse for the conduct of Josiah.

Verse 24. "The second chariot" - Perhaps this means no more than that they took Josiah out of his own chariot and put him into another, either for secrecy, or because his own had been disabled. The chariot into which he was put might have been that of the officer or aid-de-camp who attended his master to the war. See the note on 2 Kings xxii. 20.

Verse 25. "Behold, they are written in the lamentations." - The Hebrews had poetical compositions for all great and important events, military songs, songs of triumph, epithalamia or marriage odes, funeral elegies, &c.

Several of these are preserved in different parts of the historical books of Scripture, and these were generally made by prophets or inspired men.

That composed on the tragical end of this good king by Jeremiah is now lost. The Targum says, "Jeremiah bewailed Josiah with a great lamentation; and all the chiefs and matrons sing these lamentations concerning Josiah to the present day, and it was a statute in Israel annually to bewail Josiah. Behold, these are written in the book of Lamentations, which Baruch wrote down from the mouth of Jeremiah."