The account of Josiah points us directly to another boy king who would come 500 years later, a coming not in a royal palace with a royal audience, but in a stable with farm animals and shepherds as an audience. 

Josiah is introduced in 2 Kings 22 as the new king of Judah who is merely eight years old. As a young boy growing up in church, this story intrigued me. Later in elementary school in writing for an assignment asking what person in the Bible would I most like to spend one day with and what would we do, I chose Josiah. I imagined the fun that could be had by two young boys having the run of a royal palace. I imagined what it must be like for a kid like me to have servants waiting on him at every turn, tasked to listen to his every word. Yet as I’ve grown, I’m still left in wonder at this young man, not in fascination with the fun that could be had running around a palace as a boy, but in wonder at how such a young man could have this written of him: “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him” (2 Kings 23:25).

But how is it that there was no king like him either before or after? The story begins in the 18^th year of his reign, at which time he ordered repairs to be made to the Temple. Note firstly that his attention is given to the House of God. While renovations were being made, Hilkiah the high priest finds a copy of the Book of the Law. It is read to the king and, upon hearing of God’s promised judgment on the nation for their disobedience, he tears his clothes in anguish and immediately inquires of the Lord what must be done. The message of God to the nation is one of destruction. They have disobeyed for too long and destruction is inevitable. Yet God promises Josiah that this destruction will not come while he is king. And God Himself gives the reason why: “Because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the Lord, when you heard how I spoke….”

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