Josiah. A king of the Southern Kingdom, Judah, in the seventh century B.C. During his reign, workmen in the temple found a book (probably parts of Deuteronomy) that had been hidden many years before. The discovery led to major reforms in the worship and life of the people. 2 Kings, chs. 22; 23:1-30; Jer. 1:1-2.

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Josiah (Heb., ‘Yahweh gives,’ ‘cures,’ or ‘brings forth’).

1 The son of King Amon by Jedidah, whom the people of the land made king of Judah at the age of eight after his father’s assassination (639 b.c.). Josiah’s reign during the last half of the seventh century b.c. lasted thirty-one years. The Assyrian Empire, which had previously dominated the region, was in its final decline, making the expansion and religious reform that characterized Josiah’s reign possible. According to 2 Kings 23, the reform (ca. 620) was motivated by discovery of ‘the book of the law,’ generally considered some form of Deuteronomy; Chronicles, however, suggests that the reform had already started six years before. The relationship of Josiah’s reform to that of Hezekiah almost a century earlier is also uncertain.

Josiah’s religious actions included the removal of all traces of foreign worship and the elimination of all outlying places of worship, including those in Assyrian-controlled sections of what had been the Northern Kingdom (v. 15), thereby effectively centralizing all officially sanctioned religious practice in Jerusalem. Josiah entered into a covenant with God and observed a unique Passover in Jerusalem. His political accomplishments are manifest in the evidence of the kingdom’s expansion, perhaps the result of an attempt to recreate the kingdom of David, an attempt made possible by Assyria’s weakened condition. Not only did Josiah remove shrines in Samaria (2 Kings 23:19) and Galilee (2 Chron. 34:6) as foretold in 1 Kings 13:2, but he apparently also expanded in other directions, as shown by the discovery of a Hebrew letter from this period at Yavneh Yam, a Judean fort on the Philistine coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

Josiah was killed in 609 b.c. at Megiddo while trying to block Pharaoh Neco II from helping the last remnant of the Assyrian Empire against the rising power of Babylonia (2 Kings 23:29). Whether this action was coordinated with Babylonia or undertaken on Josiah’s own initiative is unknown. According to 2 Chron. 35:20-24, he was merely wounded at Megiddo and taken from there to Jerusalem where he died. He was succeeded by his sons Jehoahaz (2 Kings 23:30, called Shallum in Jer. 22:11), who was installed by the people, and Jehoiakim (Jer. 22:18, previously Eliakim according to 2 Kings 23:34), who was installed by Neco. Later his son Zedekiah (or grandson according to 2 Chron. 36:10), whose original name was Mattaniah, became Judah’s last king (2 Kings 24:17).

Josiah’s reign was a time of Judean national resurgence. The king was highly regarded by Jeremiah (Jer. 22:15), who lived during his reign as did the prophet Zephaniah (Zeph. 1:1; see also Jer. 1:2; 25:3; 36:2). Josiah was considered by the author of Kings to have been Judah’s outstanding monarch (2 Kings 23:25).

2 The son of Zephaniah, a Jerusalemite homeowner who lived immediately after the Exile (mid-sixth century b.c.) (Zech. 6:10).