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Josiah's Good Reign
v. 1. Josiah was eight years old, his father having died at the age of twenty-four, when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath, a town in the Plain of Judah. It was doubtless due to the influence of his God-fearing mother that Josiah was trained to observe the ways of the Lord.
v. 2. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David, his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left; he clung to all the precepts of the Lord with unwavering firmness.
v. 3. And it came to pass in the eighteenth year of King Josiah that the king sent Shaphan, the son of Azaliah, the son of Meshullam, the scribe, the secretary of state, who was in charge of the finances, to the house of the Lord, saying,
v. 4. Go up to Hilkiah, the high priest, that he may sum the silver, get it ready for payment by having the priests in charge place it in sacks and weigh it, which is brought into the house of the Lord, the old rule of the payment of funds into the Temple treasury still holding good, which the keepers of the door have gathered of the people;
v. 5. and let them deliver it into the hand of the doers of the work, that have the oversight of the house of the Lord, the overseers and contractors in charge of the various repairs which the king contemplated; and let them give it to the doers of the work which is in the house of the Lord, to repair the breaches of the house, the inspectors taking care of the workmen's pay,
v. 6. unto carpenters and builders and masons, and to buy timber and hewn stone to repair the house. Cf 2Ki_12:11-16. Since the Temple had not been repaired for more than two centuries, the idea of the king was very timely.
v. 7. Howbeit, there was no reckoning made with them of the money that was delivered into their hand because they dealt faithfully; trustworthy men being in charge of the money, no special accounting was demanded.
v. 8. And Hilkiah, the high priest, who knew of the king's plan and had undertaken to bring order into the Sanctuary, said unto Shaphan, the scribe, I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord. The existence of this book, apparently the copy made by Moses, had been known, but it had been lost sight of for a while; in other words, Hilkiah had come across it almost by accident as he was straightening up in the Sanctuary. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.
v. 9. And Shaphan, the scribe, came to the king, and brought the king word again, and said, Thy servants have gathered the money that was found in the house, the priests in charge had poured out the money from the large chest into small sacks, and have delivered it into the hand of them that do the work, that have the oversight of the house of the Lord. It was a special grace of God that this sacred book, the authentic copy, was discovered, for it helped the king in his campaign for the restoration of the pure worship, even more than the manuscript copies which were ordinarily in use. It was a special act of God's grace that the Reformation restored the Bible to us in all its purity, teaching us the way of salvation aright.