2 Chronicles 35:1-6, 16-19
SS Lesson for 09/22/2024
Devotional Scripture: 2 Chron 30:1-6
When you hear or read the word ritual, is your immediate reaction positive or negative? Chances are your first reaction is negative, as the word ritual conjures up mental images of tedious formal ceremonies that bear little relevance to reality. We may also think rituals are just “going through the motions” of a periodic observance, where one’s thoughts and attitude don’t match one’s actions while the ritual is underway (examples: Isaiah 29:13; Mark 7:6-8). But aren’t celebrations of birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, etc., rituals in a good sense? Perhaps we can move toward clarity by distinguishing between ritual as a good thing and ritualism as a bad thing. We humans need ritual, in its best sense, for the formation and flourishing of our relationships. Rightly practiced, rituals help us remember the past as it explains the present and helps us plan wisely for the future (example: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). Regarding our worship of God, rituals only have meaning if they are followed with obedience to God (examples: Isaiah 1:11-17; 1 Corinthians 7:19). Further, ritualism without discernment risks placing a person under divine judgment (example: 11:27-30) God knows our need for ritual. That’s why he established annual feasts (Exodus 23:17; etc.) for the Old Testament covenant people. Today’s study examines the renewed practice of one such ritual. Today’s lesson takes us to the year 623 BC, “the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign,” king of Judah (2 Chronicles 35:19). That moves us forward some 336 years after King Solomon’s dedication of the temple in 959 BC (lesson 2) and 79 years after King Hezekiah’s prayer in 702 BC (lesson 3). The year 623 BC positions the events of today’s lesson right at 100 years since the Assyrian Empire cast Israel’s 10 northern tribes into exile in 722 BC (2 Kings 17). Unbeknownst to the Judeans of the time, their removal from the land lay only 37 years in the future (that is, 586 BC). The 31-year reign of Josiah (641-609 BC) over the southern kingdom of Judah was a time of respite from the consequences of sin. This was a direct result of Josiah’s godly leadership (2 Chronicles 34:2-7). In the process of purifying the land and renovating the temple, a certain priest found “the Book of the Law of the Lord that had been given through Moses” (34:14). Some today believe this to have been a copy of Deuteronomy (see terminology in Deuteronomy 29:21; 30:10; 31:26). King Josiah was shaken to his core when he heard the book read (2 Chronicles 34:19). He acted immediately, receiving both bad and good news in return (34:20-28). Even so, he continued to exercise godly leadership in both word and deed (34:29-33). His leadership included reinstituting the celebration of the Passover. This neglected feast had been instituted more than 800 years previously to mark the divine liberation from Egyptian slavery (Exodus 12; Deuteronomy 16:1-2). The feast’s revival is a focus of today’s lesson.
Now Josiah kept a Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem, and they slaughtered the Passover lambs on the fourteenth day of the first month.
(Scriptural Text from the New King James Version; cross-references from the NIV)
1 Now Josiah kept a Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem, and they slaughtered the Passover lambs on the fourteenth day of the first month.
2 And he set the priests in their duties and encouraged them for the service of the house of the Lord.
3 Then he said to the Levites who taught all Israel, who were holy to the Lord: "Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David, king of Israel, built. It shall no longer be a burden on your shoulders. Now serve the Lord your God and His people Israel.
4 Prepare yourselves according to your fathers' houses, according to your divisions, following the written instruction of David king of Israel and the written instruction of Solomon his son.
5 And stand in the holy place according to the divisions of the fathers' houses of your brethren the lay people, and according to the division of the father's house of the Levites.
6 So slaughter the Passover offerings, consecrate yourselves, and prepare them for your brethren, that they may do according to the word of the Lord by the hand of Moses."
14 At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality,
10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.
10 Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.
12 This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God.
19 And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
10 This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 11 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit — fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.
6 And you will be called priests of the Lord, you will be named ministers of our God. You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast.
18 And they installed the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their groups for the service of God at Jerusalem, according to what is written in the Book of Moses.
11 The priests then withdrew from the Holy Place. All the priests who were there had consecrated themselves, regardless of their divisions.
14 In keeping with the ordinance of his father David, he appointed the divisions of the priests for their duties, and the Levites to lead the praise and to assist the priests according to each day's requirement. He also appointed the gatekeepers by divisions for the various gates, because this was what David the man of God had ordered.
4 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
15 When they had assembled their brothers and consecrated themselves, they went in to purify the temple of the Lord, as the king had ordered, following the word of the Lord.
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly. 16 Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber.
16 So all the service of the Lord was prepared the same day, to keep the Passover and to offer burnt offerings on the altar of the Lord, according to the command of King Josiah.
17 And the children of Israel who were present kept the Passover at that time, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days.
18 There had been no Passover kept in Israel like that since the days of Samuel the prophet; and none of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as Josiah kept, with the priests and the Levites, all Judah and Israel who were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
19 In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah this Passover was kept.
2 Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
17 "Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.
7 Eat unleavened bread during those seven days; nothing with yeast in it is to be seen among you, nor shall any yeast be seen anywhere within your borders. 8 On that day tell your son, 'I do this because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.'
8 Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.
25 But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it — he will be blessed in what he does.
16 Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey — whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
19 If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; 20 but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword." For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
After Amon’s assassination the people placed his son Josiah on the throne. Like Joash and Manasseh, Josiah was a child, only eight years old. The chronicler follows the general line of the history in the book of Kings, modifying, abridging, and expanding, but introducing no new incidents; the reformation, the repairing of the Temple, the discovery of the book of the Law, the Passover, Josiah’s defeat and death at Megiddo, are narrated by both historians. We have only to notice differences in a somewhat similar treatment of the same subject.
Beyond the general statement that Josiah "did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah" we hear nothing about him in the book of Kings till the eighteenth year of his reign, and his reformation and putting away of idolatry are placed in that year. The chronicler’s authorities corrected the statement that the pious king tolerated idolatry for eighteen years. They record bow in the eighth year of his reign, when he was sixteen, he began to seek after the God of David; and in his twelfth year he set about the work of utterly destroying idols throughout the whole territory of Israel, in the cities and ruins of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali, as well as in Judah and Benjamin. Seeing that the cities assigned to Simeon were in the south of Judah, it is a little difficult to understand why they appear with the northern tribes, unless they are reckoned with them technically to make up the ancient number.
The consequence of this change of date is that in Chronicles the reformation precedes the discovery of the book of the Law, whereas in the older history this discovery is the cause of the reformation. The chronicler’s account of the idols and other apparatus of false worship destroyed by Josiah is much less detailed than that of the book of Kings. To have reproduced the earlier narrative in full would have raised serious difficulties. According to the chronicler, Manasseh had purged Jerusalem of idols and idol altars; and Amon alone was responsible for any that existed there at the accession of Josiah: but in the book of Kings Josiah found in Jerusalem the altars erected by the kings of Judah and the horses they had given to the sun. Manasseh’s altars still stood in the courts of the Temple; and over against Jerusalem there still-remained the high places that Solomon had built for Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom. As the chronicler in describing Solomon’s reign carefully omitted all mention of his sins, so he omits this reference to his idolatry. Moreover, if he had inserted it, he would have had to explain how these high places escaped the zeal of the many pious kings who did away with the high places. Similarly, having omitted the account of the man of God who prophesied the ruin of Jeroboam’s sanctuary at Bethel, he here omits the fulfillment of that prophecy.
The account of the repairing of the Temple is enlarged by the insertion of various details as to the names, functions, and zeal of the Levites, amongst whom those who had skill in instruments of music seem to have had the oversight of the workmen. We are reminded of the walls of Thebes, which rose out of the ground while Orpheus played upon his flute. Similarly in the account of the assembly called to hear the contents of the book of the Law the Levites are substituted for the prophets. This book of the Law is said in Chronicles to have been given by Moses, but his name is not connected with the book in the parallel narrative in the book of Kings.
The earlier authority simply states that Josiah held a great passover; Chronicles, as usual, describes the festival in detail. First of all, the king commanded the priests and Levites to purify themselves and take their places in due order, so that they might be ready to perform their sacred duties. The narrative is very obscure, but it seems that either during the apostasy of Amon or on account of the recent Temple repairs the Ark had been removed from the Holy of holies. The Law had specially assigned to the Levites the duty of carrying the Tabernacle and its furniture, and they seem to have thought that they were only bound to exercise the function of carrying the Ark; they perhaps proposed to bear it in solemn procession round the city as part of the celebration of the Passover, forgetting the words of David that the Levites should no more carry the Tabernacle and its vessels. They would have been glad to substitute this conspicuous and honorable service for the laborious and menial work of flaying the victims. Josiah, however, commanded them to put the Ark into the Temple and attend to their other duties.
Next, the king and his nobles provided beasts of various kinds for the sacrifices and the Passover meal. Josiah’s gifts were even more munificent than those of Hezekiah. The latter had given a thousand bullocks and ten thousand sheep; Josiah gave just three times as many. Moreover, at Hezekiah’s passover no offerings of the princes are mentioned, but now they added their gifts to those of the king. The heads of the priesthood provided three hundred Oxen and two thousand six hundred small cattle for the priests, and the chiefs of the Levites five hundred oxen and five thousand small cattle for the Levites. But numerous as were the victims at Josiah’s passover, they still fell far short of the great sacrifice of twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep which Solomon offered at the dedication of the Temple
Then began the actual work of the sacrifices: the victims were killed and flayed, and their blood was sprinkled on the altar; the burnt-offerings were distributed among the people; the Passover lambs were roasted, and the other offerings boiled, and the Levites "carried them quickly to all the children of the people." Apparently private individuals could not find the means of cooking the bountiful provision made for them; and, to meet the necessity of the case, the Temple courts were made kitchen as well as slaughterhouse for the assembled worshippers. The other offerings would not be eaten with the Passover lamb, but would serve for the remaining days of the feast.
The Levites not only provided for the people, for themselves, and the priests, but the Levites who ministered in the matter of the sacrifices also prepared for their brethren who were singers and porters, so that the latter were enabled to attend undisturbed to their own special duties; all the members of the guild of porters were at the gates maintaining order among the crowd of worshippers; and the full strength of the orchestra and choir contributed to the beauty and solemnity of the services. It was the greatest Passover held by any Israelite king.
Josiah’s passover, like that of Hezekiah, was followed by a formidable foreign invasion; but whereas Hezekiah was rewarded for renewed loyalty by a triumphant deliverance, Josiah was defeated and slain. These facts subject the chronicler’s theory of retribution to a severe strain. His perplexity finds pathetic expression in the opening words of the new section, "After all this," after all the idols had been put away, after the celebration of the most magnificent Passover the monarchy had ever seen. After all this, when we looked for the promised rewards of piety-for fertile seasons, peace and prosperity at home, victory and dominion abroad, tribute from subject peoples, and wealth from successful commerce - after all this, the rout of the armies of Jehovah at Megiddo, the flight and death of the wounded king, the lamentation over Josiah, the exaltation of a nominee of Pharaoh to the throne, and the payment of tribute to the Egyptian king. The chronicler has no complete explanation of this painful mystery, but he does what he can to meet the difficulties of the case. Like the great prophets in similar instances, he regards the heathen king as charged with a Divine commission. Pharaoh’s appeal to Josiah to remain neutral should have been received by the Jewish king as an authoritative message from Jehovah. It was the failure to discern in a heathen king the mouthpiece and prophet of Jehovah that cost Josiah his life and Judah its liberty.
The chronicler had no motive for lingering over the last sad days of the monarchy; the rest of his narrative is almost entirely abridged from the book of Kings. Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah pass over the scene in rapid and melancholy succession. In the case of Jehoahaz, who only reigned three months, the chronicler omits the unfavorable judgment recorded in the book of Kings; but he repeats it for the other three, even for the poor lad of eight who was carried away captive after a reign of three months and ten days. The chronicler had not learnt that kings can do no wrong; on the other hand, the ungodly policy of Jehoiachin’s ministers is labeled with the name of the boy-sovereign.
(Adapted from URL:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/teb/2-chronicles-35.html)
When Josiah kept the Passover ritual, he became a model of ritual faithfulness that originated in his heart. God has instituted certain rituals in the new covenant. At least two come immediately to mind: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism is a ritual reenactment of Christ’s burial and resurrection (Romans 6:3-4; Colossians 2:12). The Lord’s Supper reenacts the Passover meal that Jesus shared with his followers the night he was betrayed (Matthew 26:17-29; Mark 14:12-26; Luke 22:7-23). The meal remembers Christ’s sacrifice and death and focuses our attention and hope on his future return (1 Corinthians 5:7-8; 11:23-26). These rituals invite us to participate in God’s mission and God’s story of redemptive history. They are touchstones of continuity and stability. They teach and remind, and God delights in our obedience as we seek him through what he has commanded.