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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comThrough the Bible Day by Day - 2 King 23:26 - 23:26
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
in the Hands of Heathen foes
2Ki 23:26-37
Josiah’s life ended in terrible disaster. He persisted in measuring himself in battle against the king of Egypt in a quarrel which was none of his, and thus met his death. The events of this paragraph are fully narrated in 2Ch 35:1-27, and are corroborated by the Greek historian, Herodotus, and by the sculptures on this Pharaoh’s tomb. The story of Jehoiakim should also be studied in the pages of Jeremiah- Jer 22:1-30; Jer 26:1-24; Jer 36:1-32 -which cast a flood of light on these last days, when the sands in the time-glass of repentance were running out.
It is extraordinary that, notwithstanding the earnest expostulations of Jeremiah and others, and the awful example furnished by the fate of the ten tribes, the kings of Judah and their people should be so persistent in wrong-doing. But their hearts were fully set upon evil. In our own time the history of the drink traffic furnishes a parallel. Its evils stand confessed, as they touch individuals and nations, and yet neither individuals nor nations seem able to cast off the coils of this serpent. The Hebrew race had to pass through terrible fixes to become fitted for their mission to the world, and surely the present anguish of conflict is our parallel!