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28 April. 2 Kings chaptesr 23-25
The last chapters of Kings make terrible reading. Taking a purely historical reading, after about 700 years of occupying more or less of the ‘promised land’ of Canaan, the descendants of Abraham and Isaac, God’s chosen people, are removed from it by force. Unlike the first captivity of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, this time a generation later it is the new superpower of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar who come to Jerusalem and capture it in two successive sieges.
‘Good’ king Josiah had known that destruction was coming, for it had been prophesied, and he did his very best to repent on behalf of the people, carrying out the Mosaic law to the best of his ability, reinstating the festival of Passover that had been quietly neglected for many generations, and destroying all the idols that had been placed, not only on hilltop shrines but even in the Temple of God itself.
Such iconoclasm is not uncommon when religious zeal is at work – think of the Reformation in 16th century England, where what started as a protest against the excesses of Catholicism ended in the wholesale destruction of the abbeys and priories, and the whole way of life that went with them. Not only the abbots and their monks, but everyone employed on their farms would have suffered. It must have been equally destructive in Josiah’s time – the list of his targets included “the women who did weaving for Asherah”. In both cases the intentions was to ‘restore pure religion’, but in neither case did it lead to peace.
For even those reforms of Josiah were not enough, apparently, to satisfy God, for even if the king had genuine faith in him, the people did not. Destroying people’s way of life does not “win hearts and minds” as the US naively thought their invasion of Iraq would. As prophesied, Josiah himself died (in battle) before the destruction of Jerusalem, but under his grandson Jehoiachin, the first siege started. Jehoiachin capitulated quickly and let the Babylonians take his own family, the leaders of society, artisans and all the treasures of the temple away. But at that stage the city itself, and the common people of the land, remained.
The Babylonians allowed Zedekiah of the royal family to reign as a puppet king in Jerusalem, but when he rebelled against the occupying power, they started an 18-month siege which he resisted. This time the whole city and its temple were destroyed and the remainder of the population except the “vine dressers and tillers of the soil” were taken away.
Which of these kings had the right approach? Josiah who aimed to restore true religion to the remnant of Israel in an attempt to get God back on side (but actually destroyed the way of life of the common people), or Jehoiachin who capitulated to the enemy, or Zedekiah who resisted to the bitter end? In the face of conflict, do we try reform at home, appeasement, or resistance? It’s not an easy question: between them these three kings let the nation be destroyed.