Sixth: ‘Tain’t no dé·jà vu, Hamutal dear!

‘Tain’t no dé·jà vu, Hamutal dear!

The story we are looking at, spread across chapters 22 – 24 in the 2nd Book of Kings, opens innocuously enough: “Josiah was eight years old 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.”

Let’s look at the background in chapter 21.

Fifty five years – yes 55 years – of the most abominable reign of grandfather Manasseh had only ended a couple of years ago. Young father Amon who ascended to the throne was assassinated right in the palace, and the people lost no time in doing away with the assassins.

Murder and mayhem in the land.

New King Josiah was all of eight years and mother Jedidah has her job cut out – to mould him, instruct him, guide him, educate him, inspire him , in short to train him ( Prov.22:6)

But the models available: miserable!

What good can you learn from Manasseh, the very personification of evil? And Amon wasn’t a wonderful guy either (2 Kings 21:20)! The former, father-in-law and the latter, husband. Talk about a blessed family, talk about domestic congeniality. Pathetic! Perfect ground for a young widow to drown herself in self pity, withdraw from the world and wilt away, unsung. And none can blame you.

Not your Jedidah! She was made of sterner stuff.

To work she went.  We have no clue as to what her resources were. Perhaps Adaiah of Boscath belonged to a line in the tribe of Judah that remembered something of the God of David. May be she was a member of a little clandestine prayer fellowship in the palace. Whatever the case, it appears she knew God Jehovah. She was marching to a drum beat different from that blaring all over the land. Down in her heart, she knew that there had to be a total change in the way the kingdom was governed if one were to follow the commandments of God. What was visible was all vain; she had to look within and draw from the deep well of faith.

Remarkable woman!

We do not quite know how she went about the task, but from subsequent verses it is clear that she had surrounded young Josiah with men of God or at least men who were about the business of the temple of God.  Members  of the same prayer group? Possibly.

Don’t dismiss prayer groups.

Going by their esoteric, sometimes forbidding membership and apparent uselessness, you might think them as being of no consequence but beware! They may be all that stand

between  ungodly anarchy and a modicum of sanity,

between wickedness unchecked and a little yeast of wisdom,

between utter hopelessness and a ray of light,

between self glorifying megalomaniacs and a touch of humility,

between the maddening roar of unrighteousness and  the  feeble voice of reason,

between raging passions rushing headlong towards a precipice and sensible reflection in a spirit of quietness,

between frenetic clamour of avarice and a quiet sense of contentment.

Like in this case, for example.

It is good to make sure you are covered by a circle of prayer one way or another. Better still to belong to one. Don’t be so presumptuous as to exclude yourself.

Prayer is no doubt the best way to begin but what next? We need to acquire knowledge as well.

Now, I am all for liberal education. A product of one himself, Paul seems to advocate this in his practice and profession, most notably when he writes to the Thessalonians (2nd book 5:23) where he says: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good”. With the kind of evil aura enveloping the nation at that time, the difficult thing was to learn what was good and pleasing in the sight of God. Wherefore, Jedidah had to go back several generations, back to David as verse 2 hints.

Knowledge of history helps, if you know how to use it. Don’t just go by the proximate badness you see all around – the way of the world, what most everybody else is doing – but reach out to the exemplary goodness wherever it is to be found. Surely you will be in a minority, but

Hold fast.

Yes, Josiah was given the right influence. He could count among his friends and acquaintances Shaphan who came in a line of scribes and Hilkiah, the High Priest himself (II Kings 22: 3-4)

Brother, who are your friends? Anyone who can guide you, counsel you, pray with you? God forbid that you should follow vain persons (Psalms 26:4, Prov. 28:19).

Not a bad idea to be able to do high fives with Hilkiah, the High Priest. Befriend your pastor. He could be a lonely man!

Well, it takes a while (v 3, ibid) but King Josiah realizes eventually that all is not well with the temple of God. A half century of neglect has taken its toll. The place needs to be repaired, some areas rebuilt.

Is everything around you hunky-dory or are there things wanting a touch of healing, a bit of reconciliation, cementing of relationships? Are there breaches in the House?

Eighteen years of good and righteous living and governing, fine, but are you OK with God?

Josiah displayed the right instincts.

Though many a time when we think projects we think money, we ought to be thinking more aboutintegrity: the way money is handled, honesty, individual accountability in the sight of God sans the need for skeptical, cavil eyes of a committee. In this regard,

Josiah was blessed. He resolved not to doubt the other guy, determining in his mind that each one is accountable to God. He inspired integrity and wasn’t let down (v 7 ibid).  Like Master, like servants.

Talk about leadership.

Chartered Accountants might run out of work, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a society where there is no need to keep account, for everybody is clean? Where ‘financial irregularity’ is not a term you’d use in the same breath as ‘service or missionary organization’?

Right influence, right instincts, enviable integrity.

Great regime. The next thing we note in this fascinating story is the discovery of the book of the law(v 8)

When you are serious about setting things right between God and you, when you are serious about seeking the Lord, He will be found.

Dust on the Bible?

This may be a problem in some of our households. It is there, a treasured possession of godly ancestors in all its purity but long buried in modern thoughts and new fangled, politically correct philosophies. Ah, that liberal education again, quite pushing aside the perceived pathway.

But it is there, yes, somewhere beneath the clutter of opinions and a cargo of unbridled imaginations

The Word of God.

But unlike good old Hilkiah, some of us have a problem recognizing it. Is it really God’s Word? Even before we open the book, we imprison ourselves behind a hundred questions about its authenticity. Sometimes we do a merry dance around the good book preferring to admire it from a distance; oh we might even deign to carry it at the risk of being labelled holy, but read it?

Shaphan read it (v 8)

Oh, liberal student, first get the coat of dust out of the way, the layer of prejudice and the veneer of self assured opinion.

Verse 11 is interesting. “And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.”

(credit: www.htmlbible.com)

To those of us listening to the word of God read in the church week after week, with our heart suffering hardly a ruffle, this is extreme reaction. Yet that is precisely the kind of effect something that is described as a hammer and sword should have on our souls.

An impact.

The King was concerned. “Go ye, enquire of the LORD for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found” he cries (v 13). Rather strange that some one of his stature should worry so much what the word of God has to say when we, much smaller men, care a hoot! It is a wonder we take the trouble to go to church at all when we are quite determined not to let anything bother us, most of all the Word of God.

Resolutely dead.

Look at Josiah. Not only was he moved himself, but he embarks on a mission of evangelization, getting all the people to hear the Word (2nd Kings 23:1-2).

And then what does he do? (V 3) “And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.”

Interesting again. It all seems so very one sided. The King isn’t asking God to do something, but instead he is surrendering himself to His all surpassing sovereignty in a spirit of worshipful awe. Remember, he had already been told by the Prophetess Huldah (2 Kings 22:19-20) that the nation is not going escape the consequences of Manasseh’s sin but that he himself will be spared the sad sight. No rewards dangling before his eyes for God pleasing conduct but yet the man makes

a covenant, not a deal! (Remember that the next time you go to the house of the Lord)

Let us take a step back and take a fresh look at verses 1-3 in chapter 23. In the business of going to church, it appears the King was purposeful. He acknowledged God’s immense greatness, he was eager to hear the Word of God – once again –  and he was ready to enter into a relationship with God.

He wasn’t making a casual visit to Church, he wasn’t dropping by, he certainly wasn’t conditioned by the Sunday morning syndrome.

What’s your reason for going to church?

Parking is no problem (this of course is a relative phenomenon and may only explain why you choose one church over another)

The ambience is balmy

The sermon is breezy

The Pipe Organ sounds beautiful

The anthems are great

The “Praise and Worship” session is almost a performance

The coffee is good

The P.C. meeting is scheduled right after the service

I’ve just got to meet that __

Where else can you ‘text’ and ‘game’ totally undisturbed?

I have a wonderful testimony to share

Cut back to covenant

This solemn moment in the history of the Kings of Judah, is followed by a most dramatic period of intense action. Upwards of two dozen verbs pepper the passage that follows in describing how the zeal of the ruler grips the nation as it rids itself of the vestiges of idol worship –  doing things such as  cutting down the groves, breaking the images, destroying strange altars and defiling high places; the act of cleansing culminates in a most glorious Passover.

Covenant backed up by concrete action. Walking the talk.

Josiah’s eventful life comes to an early end, as predicted by the Prophetess Huldah. He was no more than 39 when he died but there is no doubt he left an indelible mark in history, a mark that should inspire all those who aspire to align themselves with God Jehovah.

Well done Jedidah! Kudos Josiah!

If the story had ended here, that would have been a neat little cameo in the chronicles of kings of Judah that children in your Sunday school class would cherish very much.

But wait.

What follows unfortunately is a rather sad ending that puts the major story of Josiah’s life in sharp relief. Josiah had no business to go to for an encounter with the King of Egypt who was cutting a chord between Egypt and Assyria and ended up dead at Megiddo. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed him, and made him king in his father’s stead. Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign (2 Kings 23:31); considering the age of Josiah when he died, this means that Jehoahaz was born pretty early in the short life of his father. Like when he was about 16. Everything about Josiah was kind of compressed – what?

That is not our point so much. Let us read the record that Jehoahaz “reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done”(ibid)

Therein lies a lesson.

While Josiah was going about all gung-ho for God, he pretty much neglected his family. It was the eighteenth year of his reign when he undertook operation clean-up, and his first born must have been around 10 at that time, old enough to discern.

Yet sadly, the son never rose.

All around failure. Perhaps

The prayer meeting stopped.

–          When the whole nation is so avowedly Christian, where is the need for a little quiet time, fasting and praying?

Jedidah got tired.

–         After having invested so much in her son Josiah with admirable results, she didn’t have the same care for her grandchildren

Josiah was just too busy

–         with external affairs to mind his own home

Hamutal wan’t much of a mother

–         or for that matter a worthy wife or even a decent daughter-in-law

Pharaohhnechoh takes away Jehoahaz to Egypt and appoints his half brother Jehoiakim as King. His story is not worth writing about. His eleven year reign was ‘evil’ (Josiah failed again with another wife, another son), he rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and when he died his son Jehoiachin ascended to the throne for yet another spell of evil reign which was this time mercifully shortlived when he gets carried away to Babylon.

And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah his father’s brother king in his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah. “Zedekiah was twenty and one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that Jehoiakim had done (2nd Kings 24:18-19).

Does that name ring a bell – Hamutal?

Another of her sons comes to power and his report card is no better than his brother’s. Mattaniah aka Zedekiah was about 10 when his older brother Jehoahaz ascended to the throne and upended all the good work of his father Josiah.

Hamutal had time, about 11 years plus. Yet she did nothing to mould the young fellow aright. OK, she failed with the first. Too young, busy husband, whatever.

But she gets a chance to redeem herself, when she is older and ought to have been wiser, but sadly she goofs again.

There is so much she could have learnt from Jedidah, her mother-in-law, who had but one chance and made it count.

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