Melakhim B 22-23: Yoshiyahu and the Return to God
SEFER MELAKHIM BET: THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS
By Rav Alex
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Sponsored by Aaron and
Tzipora Ross and family in memory of our grandparents
Shmuel Nachamu ben Shlomo Moshe HaKohen, Chaya bat Yitzchak Dovid, Shimon ben
Moshe, and Rivka bat Aharon,
whose Yahrzeits fall out this month.
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Shiur #26: Chapter 22-23
Yoshiyahu and the Return to God. Part 1
Of all the kings of Sefer Melakhim, Yoshiyahu is unsurpassed as a
champion of God worship, cleansing the kingdom of its idolatry and returning the
nation to God. No accolade is spared in Melakhims enthusiastic
assessment of the ardently religious king, as reflected in the opening and
closing lines of Chapter 22-23:
He did what was correct in
God's eyes
he did not deviate to the right or to the left
(22:2)
There was no king like him who
turned to God with all his heart and soul and might, in full accord with the
teachings of Moshe, nor did any rise like him.[1] (23:25)
Previous chapters have charted the dramatic twists and turns that characterize
the kingdom of Yehuda in the latter First Temple period: Achaz's capitulation to
Assyrian idolatry is reversed by Chizkiyahu's return to God. Menashe and Amon
dramatically overturn Chizkiyahu's religious accomplishments, steeping the
country in idolatry yet again. And now with the Yoshiyahu, the pendulum swings
back towards monotheism.
RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION
Yoshiyahu rises to the throne at age eight, after his father's assassination.
Little is documented of his early life. Sefer Melakhim records his
religious actions as concentrated in the eighteenth year, when the king was
twenty-six years old. Divrei Ha-yamim, however, details a more gradual
timeline:[2]
In the eighth year of his
reign, while still young, [Yoshiyahu] began to seek the God of his father David,
and in his twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the bamot,
the sacred posts, the idols and the molten images. (Divrei Ha-yamim II
34:3)
We don't know what spurred Yoshiyahu's devotion to God in contrast to his
idolatrous father and grandfather. Did he have a natural personal aversion to
idolatry and an attraction to monotheism, or was his religion a discovery made
at age sixteen,[3]
an initial interest that developed into a passion as he grew up?
Who influenced Yoshiyahu? When a child king is sovereign, he is not
independently managing the kingdom; a group of advisors are effectively in
charge. Who are these figures? Are they from the group known as Am Ha-aretz[4]
(21:24) the political faction that executed Amon's assassins, possibly an
aristocratic association that supported the monarchy in times of instability?
Whatever the precise identity of Yoshiyahu's guardians, it seems reasonable to
suggest that he was nurtured in a God-fearing environment.[5]
One aspect of his guardians' priorities certainly influences his adult
decisions. Yoshiyahu marries, at age
fourteen,[6]
to Zevuda from the northern town of Ruma (23:36). Presumably this wife was
selected for the young king and thus the choice of a queen from a northern
province reflects a policy of national reunification, reflecting the intentions
of the administration to return the northern Israelites to the jurisdiction of
Yehuda, a policy that Yoshiyahu later pursues.
Yoshiyahu's religious turnabout is aided by yet another factor. In this period,
the Assyrian empire begins to wane,[7] and with
the shrinkage of its influence, Yehuda is released from its hefty cultural
impact. Yoshiyahu now gains the freedom to manage his kingdoms affairs without
interference.
YOSHIYAHU FINDS A SEFER TORAH
Yoshiyahu's first act is the renovation of the Mikdash. After a long
period[8]
in which God has been abandoned, the building needed restoration. Some point to
the interior decoration needed to repair the scars left on the Temple structure
by the removal of idolatrous icons. In the course of the repairs, Chilkiyahu
discovers a Sefer Torah. He hands it to Shafan, the sofer or
secretary, a senior government minister:
Shafan read it in the presence of the king. When the king heard the words of the
Sefer Torah, he tore his clothes. Then the king commanded
Chilkiya the priest, Achikam the son of Shafan, Akhbor the son of Mikhaya,
Shafan the secretary, and Asaya the kings servant saying:
Go, inquire of God for
me and the people and all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been
found, for great is the wrath of God that
burns against us, because our fathers have not listened to the words of this
book, to do according to all that is written concerning us. (22:10-13)
What is the Sefer Torah that they found? Why did it elicit such alarm
among all those who encountered it? And how did this book or scroll communicate
the message that God was furious with Israel?
I.
Lost Torah, Lost Religion.
Radak suggests that the Torah had been lost to
Menashe was a king for an
extended period, fifty-five years, and he did evil in God's eyes, as the
abominations of the nations (21:2)
and he caused Torah to be forgotten from
Israel; no one was interested in it, for they all turned to other gods and
practices of the nations. In those fifty-five years, the Torah was forgotten.[9]
Radak suggests that upon the discovery of the Sefer Torah in one of the
inner chambers of the Temple, they realized how they had forgotten the Torah
which prohibits all the evil practices that Israel was engaged in. According to
Radak, the shock that Yoshiyahu and his officials displayed was a result of
their sudden exposure to wide areas of Jewish law of which they were entirely
ignorant.
In order to give some credence to this reading, we should appreciate that with
Menashe's 55 years, followed by Amon's two-year rule, and the 16 years of
Yoshiyahus reign prior to the Torah's discovery, we have seventy-three years in
which foreign religious norms held sway in Israel. If we can put this in a
contemporary context, we may want to think about Soviet Jewry, a rich Jewish
community, which was starved of Judaism from the time of the Russian revolution
until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 seventy-four years! After that
period, how many Jews knew anything substantial about their Judaism? How many
practiced mitzvot in any significant way? If Israel was swamped by
idolatry during the Menashe, Amon and early Yoshiyahu period, we can certainly
imagine the shock that the re-discovery of the Torah would make on a young king
who seeks to rediscover the religion of his fathers.
II.
Moshe's Torah Scroll.
Melakhim
talks about discovering the Sefer Torah, Divrei Ha-yamim
talks about the book of the Torah of God, by the hand of Moshe (Divrei
Ha-yamim II 34:14). For this reason, many commentaries[10] explain
that the scroll Yoshiyahu found is the Torah scroll that was written by Moshe at
the end of his life (Devarim 31:26). Abarbanel says:
Chazal
say (Sanhedrin 102b) that Menashe would erase God's name from the
Sefer Torah and replace it with idolatrous names. Hence, one of the
priests feared that if Moshe's Torah scroll were to come into the king's hands,
he would erase the divine names here too and replace them. As such, he hid the
scroll away in a chamber between the walls. In Yoshiyahu's period when he
returned to God
the priests failed to find the scroll. But when they came to
repair the House, Chilkiyahu found it between the walls and it was like finding
a treasure; as such he said, I have found the Sefer Torah
It
would not have generated such terror had it not been the Sefer Torah
written by Moshes holy hands, directly from the Almighty.
We have identified the specific identity of the Torah scroll, but we have yet to
appreciate why it generated such a panic. Abarbanel supports his interpretation
with yet another detail:
The Rabbis in the Talmud
Yerushalmi[11]
explain that normally, Moshes scroll was rolled to the beginning, but at that
time, they opened it at the verse: God shall bring you, and your
king which you shall set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your
fathers have known
(Devarim 28:35). The king was alarmed, as he
saw the entire event as a miracle, and a divine sign regarding the future.
The verse in question is part of the Tokheicha, the collection of
rebuke verses in Devarim that predicts the destruction of the land and
the exile of the nation as punishment for their sins. This approach certainly
fits into the narrative context, as we hear Chulda's terrible prediction:
This is what God says: I am going to bring disaster on this place and its
people, according to everything written in the book the king of Judah has read. Because
they have forsaken me and burned incense to other gods and aroused my anger by
all the idols their hands have made
(22:16-17)
III.
The King's Scroll
The Seforno in his commentary to Sefer Devarim offers a different
interpretation. He suggests that the scroll found was indeed Moshe's scroll, but
not the five books of the Torah a different book:
It seems that the book found
by Chilkiyahu was the scroll that Moshe gave to the priests who carried the Ark
of the Covenant, mentioned above (Devarim 17:19) containing only the
portion of the King (i.e., Devarim 17:14-18). In that scroll, Joshua
recorded the covenant that he made with the nation in Shekhem (Joshua
24:25) that they should commit themselves to serve God in true devotion, in
ideas and action. When Yoshiyahu read this and realized how much they had
diverged from [this covenant], he was fearful and sought God
Seforno's creative suggestion circumvents the issue of the existence of Torah
scrolls in ancient Israel. It also furnishes an interesting understanding of the
king's shock upon reading the document, as he would have been unlikely to be
familiar with a text from Joshua's era. Moreover, the scroll contained the text
of a covenant (Melakhim II 23:2-3). It might have been the covenant of
Devarim (Devarim 28:69), but Joshua's covenantal speech is directed
at the repudiation of idolatry and seems particularly suited to this historical
juncture.
THE AFTERMATH
The revelation of the mysterious scroll followed by Chulda's ominous prophecy
stimulates Yoshiyahu into action. The elders of the kingdom and of Yehuda, the
inhabitants of
What follows is the most thorough purge of idolatry seen in Sefer
Melakhim. The book begins by describing the idolatrous accoutrements removed
from the Temple precinct. Following this, we find a comprehensive list of every
form of idolatry that had infected the kingdom: Baal, Ashera
(23:4), Kadesh (v. 7), the sun, moon and all the Hosts of the Heaven (v.
5), Molech (v. 10), necromancy and soothsayers (v. 24). Yoshiyahu
dismantles idolatry that has endured in Israel for hundreds of years and that no
loyal king had dared to expunge. First, he removes the idolatrous shrines of
Solomon's wives (v. 13-14), but then he progresses to the Northern kingdom to
desecrate Yerovam's altars at Beit-El (v. 15) and Shomron (v. 19). One wonders
why these were not removed in previous royal campaigns to cull idolatry, but the
thoroughness of Yoshiyahu's cull is impressive and unprecedented. Yoshiyahu does
not merely target idolatry; he takes purity of religion a stage further as he
dismantles the bamot (23:5, 8). Bamot are regional sacrificial
altars, usually dedicated to God, but illicit due to their location outside the
All of this destruction of idolatry culminates in a highly positive celebration
of God worship. Yoshiyahu instigates a mass celebration of Pesach in
There had not been a Passover celebration like that since the time when the
Judges ruled in Israel, nor throughout all the years of the kings of Israel and
Judah.
(23:22)
What made this event so unique? Rashi points to the sheer number of people
celebrating God, a gathering of a size unseen since the days of Shemuel (the
tail end of the period of Judges). Radak points to the national unity North
and South together along with the repudiation of idolatry, another feature of
the period of Shemuel. As we have seen, Yoshiyahu aspires to sovereignty beyond
the borders of Yehuda. His marriage to a northerner and his desire to destroy
the idolatry of the North, coupled with this Pesach for all of Israel, express
Yoshiyahu's passion for national cohesion.[12]
[1]
Note how this verse echoes the Shema. The phrases in these verses are
unique within the royal Sefer Melakhim, applied exclusively to Yoshiyahu.
Moreover, Yoshiyahu is the only king whose name is predicted, centuries before
his birth. See Melakhim I 13:2 and Melakhim II 23:16.
[2]
Divrei
Ha-yamim differs in its order of events. Whereas Melakhim opens with
Yoshiyahu's Temple renovation, it is the discovery of the Sefer Ha-Torah
that stimulates the purge of idolatry. In Divrei Ha-yamim, however, the
cull of idolatry predates the finding of the scroll and is merely a product of
Yoshiyahu's independent commitment to God.
[3]
See
Shabbat 56b, where one opinion derives from the word shav in
23:25 that Yoshiyahu was a penitent who sinned in his early life and then turned
to God and even repaired his earlier sins. Ralbag (22:2) is one of the
medievalists who maintain that Yoshiyahu was righteous throughout his life.
[4]
See
23:30, 11:17-19 and 15:5. In each of these instances, the Am Ha-aretz
functions when there is a disruption in the royal line. Talmon describes them as
not an institution at all but a fairly loosely constituted power group in the
kingdom of Judah
which does not function continuously but always goes into
action ad hoc when extraordinary political conditions make action imperative.
See
S.
Talmon,
The
Judean 'am
haares in
Historical Perspective, in Proceedings of the Fourth World Jewish
Congress of Jewish Studies I (1967) pg. 71-78.
[5]
Yoshiyahu's
story resembles that of Yoash another Judean child king their names are even
similar who also sets to repairing the Temple. Compare the language of 11:13
and 16, for example, with the identical phrases in 22:6-7. Both stories narrate
the downfall of an evil, idolatrous regime, to be replaced by a loyal,
monotheistic king. One image common to both stories is the king standing on an amud;
see Melakhim II 11:14 and 23:3. Yoash was raised by the High Priest. On
the basis of the parallel stories, it may be possible that Yoshiyahu's
courtiers, Chilkiyahu the High Priest and Shafan ben Atzalyahu, were God-fearing
men who raised the child king. See Yigal Ariel, Mikdash Melekh (Midreshet
Hagolan, Hispin 1994) pg. 395 no. 15.
[6]
Yehoyakim
is their son. He rises to the throne at age 25, following Yoshiyahu's death.
Since Yoshiyahu is killed in his 31st year, Yehoyakim would have been
born in Yoshiyahu's 6th year, when the king was just fourteen years
old.
[7]
Yoshiyahu
rises to power in 640 BCE. The Assyrian king Asurbanipal died in 627 BCE, a date
that marks the decline of Assyrian power.
[8]
Seder
Olam 22 asserts that it has been 218 years since the last redecoration in
the days of Yoash. Indeed, that is the last explicit citation of Temple
renovations, but it is difficult to imagine that a building of this importance
did not undergo any repairs for so lengthy a period.
[9]
Radak
also addresses the repentance of Menashe as described in Divrei Ha-yamim.
If Menashe had repented, would he not have had Torah scrolls written? His answer
is that Menashe only repented late in life, so his religious reforms had little
time to influence Judean norms. Furthermore, his repentance was limited to an
understanding that idolatry was forbidden, and as such,
he destroyed the
idolatry when he repented, but did not set his heart to search for Torah
scrolls.
[10]
Mentioned
also by Josephus, Radak, and Daat Mikra.
[11]
See
Shekalim 6:1 and Yoma 52b. The full midrash can be found in
Midrash Ha-Gadol, Devarim 27:26.
[12]
For more on this, see Binyamin Lau, Jeremiah (Maggid,
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