అధ్యాయం 11: గొప్ప సంస్కరణ

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¹¹ A Great Reformation

(639–586 BCE)

The reign of King Josiah of Judah marks the climax of Israel’s monarchic history— or at least it must have appeared that way at the time. For the author of the Deuteronomistic History, Josiah’s reign marked a metaphysical moment hardly less important than those of God’s covenant with Abraham, the Exodus from Egypt, or the divine promise to King David. It is not just that King Josiah is seen in the Bible as a noble successor to Moses, Joshua, and David: the very outlines of those great characters—as they appear in the biblical narrative—seem to be drawn with Josiah in mind. Josiah is the ideal toward which all of Israel’s history seemed to be heading. “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him,” reports 2 Kings 23:25 in a level of praise shown for no other biblical king. A sixteenth-generation lineal descendant of King David, Josiah came to the throne at age eight in the violent aftermath of his father’s assassination in Jerusalem. Of his early life, we know very little. Stories of his teenage religious awakening reported in 2 Chronicles 34:3 are almost certainly biographical idealizations after- the-fact. But during his thirty-one-year reign over the Kingdom of Judah, Josiah was recognized by many as the greatest hope for national redemption, a genuine messiah who was destined to restore the fallen glories of the house of Israel. Because of—or in accordance with—the tenets of a law book miraculously “discovered” in the Temple in Jerusalem, he embarked on a campaign to root out every trace of foreign or syncretistic worship, including the age-old high places in the countryside. He and his puritan forces did not even stop at the traditional northern border of his kingdom but continued northward to Bethel, where the hated Jeroboam had established a rival temple to that of Jerusalem—and where (so the prophecy of 1 Kings 13:2 related) a Davidic heir named Josiah would someday burn the bones of

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the north’s idolatrous priests. Josiah’s messianic role arose from the theology of a new religious movement that dramatically changed what it meant to be an Israelite and laid the foundations for future Judaism and for Christianity. That movement ultimately produced the core documents of the Bible—chief among them, a book of the Law, discovered during renovations to the Jerusalem Temple in 622 BCE, the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign. That book, identified by most scholars as an original form of the book of Deuteronomy, sparked a revolution in ritual and a complete reformulation of Israelite identity. It contained the central features of biblical monotheism: the exclusive worship of one God in one place; centralized, national observance of the main festivals of the Jewish Year (Passover, Tabernacles); and a range of legislation dealing with social welfare, justice, and personal morality. This was the formative moment in the crystallization of the biblical tradition as we now know it. Yet the narrative of Josiah’s reign concentrates almost entirely on the nature of his religious reform and its reported geographical extent. Little is recorded of the larger historical events that were unfolding in the areas around Judah and how they may have influenced the rise of the Deuteronomistic ideology. An examination of the contemporary historical sources and archaeological finds may help us to understand how Josiah, this otherwise forgotten king, who ruled over a tiny kingdom under the shadow of the world’s great powers, would—consciously or unwittingly—become the patron of the intellectual and spiritual movement that produced some of the Bible’s major ethical teachings and its unique vision of Israel’s history. An Unexpected Discovery in the Temple This momentous chapter in the political and spiritual life of Judah began with the accession of the young prince Josiah as king in 639 BCE. It seemed to mark a turning point in the Bible’s view of the ups-and-downs of “evil” and “righteous” kings in the history of Judah. For Josiah was a faithful successor of David, who “did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left” (2 Kings 22: 2). According to the Bible, that righteousness led Josiah to decisive action. In his eighteenth year of rule—622 BCE—Josiah commanded the high priest Hilkiah to use public funds to renovate the House of the God of Israel. The renovations led to the dramatic surfacing of a text, found by the high priest in the Temple and read to the King by his secretary Shaphan. Its impact was enormous, for it suddenly and

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shockingly revealed that the traditional practice of the cult of YHWH in Judah had been wrong. Josiah soon gathered all the people of Judah to conclude a solemn oath to devote themselves entirely to the divine commandments detailed in the newly discovered book. And the king went up to the house of the LORD, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great; and he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the LORD. And the king stood by the 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 his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book; and all the people joined in the covenant.” (2 KINGS 23:2–3). Then, in order to effect a thorough cleansing of the cult of YHWH, Josiah launched the most intense puritan reform in the history of Judah. His first targets were the idolatrous rites being practiced in Jerusalem, even within the Temple itself: And the king commanded Hilkiah, the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. And he deposed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places at the cities of Judah and round about Jerusalem; those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, and the moon, and the constellations, and all the host of the heavens. And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the LORD, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes, which were in the house of the LORD, where women wove hangings for the Asherah. (2 KINGS 23: 4–7) He eradicated the shrines of foreign cults, notably the shrines that had reportedly been established under royal patronage in Jerusalem as early as the time of Solomon: And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech. And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the precincts; and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. And the altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, he pulled down and broke in pieces, and cast the dust of them into the brook of Kidron. And the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. And he broke in pieces the pillars, and cut down the Asherim, and filled their place with the bones of men. (2 KINGS 23: 10–14) Josiah also put an end to the sacrificial rituals conducted by the rural priesthood

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who conducted their rites at the scattered high places and shrines throughout the countryside. “And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba” (2 Kings 23:8). The old scores were being settled one by one. Next was the great “sin of Jeroboam” at the idolatrous altar at Bethel, where he fulfilled the biblical prophecy that one day a righteous king named Josiah would see that it was destroyed: Moreover the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, that altar with the high place he pulled down and he broke in pieces its stones, crushing them to dust; also he burned the Asherah. And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the mount; and he sent and took the bones out of the tombs, and burned them upon the altar, and defiled it, according to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who had predicted these things. Then he said, “What is yonder monument that I see?” And the men of the city told him, “It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and predicted these things which you have done against the altar at Bethel.” And he said, “Let him be; let no man move his bones.” So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria. (2 KINGS 23:15–18) Josiah did not stop at Bethel, and the purge continued farther north: And all the shrines also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which kings of Israel had made, provoking the LORD to anger, Josiah removed; he did to them according to all that he had done at Bethel. And he slew all the priests of the high places who were there, upon the altars, and burned the bones of men upon them. Then he returned to Jerusalem. (2 KINGS 23:19–20) Even as he battled idolatry, Josiah instituted national religious celebrations: And the king commanded all the people, “Keep the passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant.” For no such passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah; but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this passsover was kept to the LORD in Jerusalem. (2 KINGS 23:21–23) In retrospect, the biblical description of the religious reform of Josiah in 2 Kings 23 is not a simple record of events. It is a carefully crafted narrative that contains allusions to all the great personalities and events of Israel’s history. Josiah is implicitly compared to Moses, the great liberator and leader of the first Passover. He is also modeled after Joshua and David the great conquerors—and he follows the example of Solomon, the patron of the Temple in Jerusalem. The story of Josiah’s reformation also redresses the evils of the past. The sins of the northern kingdom are also called to mind as Josiah succeeds in destroying Jeroboam’s altar at Bethel, the cult center of the kingdom of Israel, which had competed with Jerusalem for so long. Samaria is there, with its high places, and the bitter memories of its destruction are evoked. The entire history of Israel had now reached a turning

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point. After centuries of wrongdoing, Josiah had arisen to overturn the sins of the past and lead the people of Israel to redemption through a proper observance of the Law. What Was the “Book of the Law”? The discovery of the book of the Law was an event of paramount significance to the subsequent history of the people of Israel. It was regarded as the definitive law code given by God to Moses at Sinai, whose observance would ensure the survival of the people of Israel. As early as the eighteenth century, biblical scholars noted the clear similarities between the description of the book of the Law found in the Temple and the book of Deuteronomy. The specific and direct parallels between the contents of Deuteronomy and the ideas expressed in the biblical account of Josiah’s reform clearly suggest that both shared the same ideology. Deuteronomy is the only book of the Pentateuch that asserts it contains the “words of the covenant” that all Israel must follow (29:9). It is the only book that prohibits sacrifice outside “the place which the Lord your God will choose” (12:5), while the other books of the Pentateuch repeatedly refer, without objection, to worship at altars set up throughout the land. Deuteronomy is the only book to describe the national Passover sacrifice in a national shrine (16:1–8). And while it is evident that there are later additions included in the present text of the book of Deuteronomy, its main outlines are precisely those that are observed by Josiah in 622 BCE in Jerusalem for the first time. The very fact that a written law code suddenly appeared at this time meshes well with the archaeological record of the spread of literacy in Judah. Although the prophet Hosea and King Hezekiah were associated with ideas that are similar to those contained in Deuteronomy, the report of the appearance of a definitive written text and its public reading by the king accords with the evidence for the sudden, dramatic spread of literacy in seventh-century Judah. The discovery of hundreds of personal signet seals and seal impressions inscribed in Hebrew from this era attests to the extensive use of writing and written documents. As we have mentioned, such relatively widespread evidence of literacy is an important indication that Judah reached the level of a fully developed state in this period. It hardly had the capability of producing extensive biblical texts before. In addition, scholars have pointed out that the literary form of the covenant between YHWH and the people of Israel in Deuteronomy is strikingly similar to

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that of early seventh-century Assyrian vassal treaties that outline the rights and obligations of a subject people to their sovereign (in this case, Israel and YHWH). Furthermore, as the biblical historian Moshe Weinfeld has suggested, Deuteronomy shows similarities to early Greek literature, in expressions of ideology within programmatic speeches, in the genre of blessing and cursing, and in the ceremonies for the foundation of new settlements. To sum up, there is little doubt that an original version of Deuteronomy is the book of the Law mentioned in 2 Kings. Rather than being an old book that was suddenly discovered, it seems safe to conclude that it was written in the seventh century BCE, just before or during Josiah’s reign. A Rising Pharaoh and a Dying Empire In order to understand why the book of Deuteronomy took the form it did—and why it had such obvious emotional power—we need first to look at the international scene of the last decades in the history of Judah. A review of the historical and archaeological sources will show how major changes in the balance of power throughout the entire region were central factors in the shaping of biblical history. By the time the eight-year-old prince Josiah ascended to the throne of Judah in 639 BCE, Egypt was experiencing a great political renaissance in which images of its remote past—and of the great conquering founders—were used as powerful symbols to enhance Egyptian power and prestige throughout the region. Starting in 656 BCE, Psammetichus I, the founder of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, had thrown off the imperial overlordship of the Assyrian empire and later expanded his rule over much of the area in the Levant that the great pharaoh Ramesses II had controlled in the thirteenth century BCE. The key to this Egyptian renaissance was, first of all, the sudden and precipitous decline of Assyria in the closing decades of the seventh century BCE. The precise date and cause of the collapse of Assyrian power, after more than a hundred years of unquestioned world dominance, are still debated by scholars. Yet Assyrian power clearly began to decline near the end of the reign of the last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal (669–627 BCE), due to the pressure of the mounted nomadic Scythian tribes on the northern borders of the empire and from continuous conflicts with the subject peoples of Babylonia and Elam on the east. After the death of Ashurbanipal, Assyrian rule was further challenged by a revolt in Babylonia in 626 and by the eruption of a civil war in Assyria itself three years later, in 623 BCE.

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Egypt was an immediate beneficiary of Assyrian weakness. Pharaoh Psammetichus I, founder of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, ruling from the Nile Delta city of Sais, succeeded in uniting the local Egyptian aristocracy under his leadership. During his reign from 664 to 610 BCE, the Assyrian forces withdrew from Egypt and left much of the Levant to be controlled by the Egyptians. The Greek historian Herodotus, who is an important source for the events of this period, recounts (in a story embellished with many legendary details) how Psammetichus marched north and laid a twenty-nine-year-long siege to the city of Ashdod on the Mediterranean coast. Whatever the truth of that report, archaeological finds at sites along the coastal plain indeed seem to indicate a growing Egyptian influence in the late seventh century. In addition, Psammetichus boasts in a contemporary inscription that he controlled the Mediterranean coast as far north as Phoenicia. The Assyrians’ retreat from their former possessions in the coastal plain and in the territory of the former northern kingdom of Israel appears to have been peaceful. It is even possible that Egypt and Assyria reached some sort of an understanding, according to which Egypt inherited the Assyrian provinces to the west of the Euphrates in exchange for a commitment to provide Assyria with military support. In any case, the five-centuries-long Egyptian dream to reestablish their Canaanite empire was fulfilled. The Egyptians regained control of agricultural wealth and international routes of trade in the rich lowlands. Yet as in the time of the great conquering pharaohs of the New Kingdom, the relatively isolated inhabitants of the highlands—now organized as the kingdom of Judah—were relatively unimportant to the Egyptians. And so, at least in the beginning, they were largely left to themselves. A New Conquest of the Promised Land The withdrawal of the Assyrians from the northern regions of the land of Israel created a situation that must have seemed, in Judahite eyes, like a long-expected miracle. A century of Assyrian domination had come to an end; Egypt was interested mainly in the coast; and the wicked northern kingdom of Israel was no more. The path seemed open for a final fulfillment of Judahite ambitions. Finally it seemed possible for Judah to expand to the north, take over the territories of the vanquished northern kingdom in the highlands, centralize the Israelite cult and establish a great, Pan-Israelite state. Such an ambitious plan would require active and powerful propaganda. The book of Deuteronomy established the unity of the people of Israel and the centrality

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of their national cult place, but it was the Deuteronomistic History and parts of the Pentateuch that would create an epic saga to express the power and passion of a resurgent Judah’s dreams. This is presumably the reason why the authors and editors of the Deuteronomistic History and parts of the Pentateuch gathered and reworked the most precious traditions of the people of Israel: to gird the nation for the great national struggle that lay ahead. Embellishing and elaborating the stories contained in the first four books of the Torah, they wove together regional variations of the stories of the patriarchs, placing the adventures of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in a world strangely reminiscent of the seventh century BCE and emphasizing the dominance of Judah over all Israel. They fashioned a great national epic of liberation for all the tribes of Israel, against a great and dominating pharaoh, whose realm was uncannily similar in its geographical details to that of Psammetichus. In the Deuteronomistic History, they created a single epic of the conquest of Canaan, with the scenes of the fiercest battles—in the Jordan valley, the area of Bethel, the Shephelah foothills, and the centers of former Israelite (and lately Assyrian) administration in the north—precisely where their new conquest of Canaan would have to be waged. The powerful and prosperous northern kingdom, in whose shadow Judah had lived for more than two centuries, was condemned as an historical aberration—a sinful breakaway from the true Israelite heritage. The only rightful rulers of all Israelite territories were kings from the lineage of David, especially the pious Josiah. Bethel, the great cult center of the northern kingdom, which Josiah took over, was strongly condemned. “Canaanites,” that is, all non- Israelite inhabitants, were also disparaged, with a strict prohibition against intermarriage of Israelites with foreign women, which, according to the Deuteronomistic History and the Pentateuch, would only lure the people into idolatry. Both those policies were probably related to the practical challenge of expanding into parts of the Land of Israel where large numbers of non-Israelites had been settled by the Assyrians, especially the southern regions of the former northern kingdom, around Bethel. It is impossible to know if earlier versions of the history of Israel were composed in the time of Hezekiah or by dissident factions during the long reign of Manasseh, or if the great epic was composed entirely during Josiah’s reign. Yet it is clear that many of the characters described in the Deuteronomistic History—such as the pious Joshua, David, and Hezekiah and the apostate Ahaz and Manasseh—are portrayed as mirror images, positive and negative, of Josiah. The Deuteronomistic History was not history writing in the modern sense. It was a composition

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simultaneously ideological and theological. In the seventh century BCE, for the first time in the history of ancient Israel, there was a popular audience for such works. Judah had become a highly centralized state in which literacy was spreading from the capital and the main towns to the countryside. It was a process that had apparently started in the eighth century, but reached a culmination only in the time of Josiah. Writing joined preaching as a medium for advancing a set of quite revolutionary political, religious, and social ideas. Despite its tales of apostasy and the disloyalty of Israel and its monarchs, despite its cycles of sin, retribution, and redemption, with all its calamities of the past, the Bible offers a profoundly optimistic history. It promised its readers and listeners they would be participants in the story’s happy ending—when their own King Josiah would purge Israel from the abominations of its neighbors, redeem its sins, institute general observance of the true laws of YHWH, and take the first steps to make the legendary kingdom of David a reality. Revolution in the Countryside Josiah’s were clearly messianic times. The Deuteronomistic camp was winning and the atmosphere in Jerusalem must have been one of exceptional exhilaration. But the lesson of the transition from the righteous Hezekiah to the sinful Manasseh had not been forgotten. Josiah’s reformers surely faced opposition. So the time would also have been one for education and social reform. In that connection, it is important to note that the book of Deuteronomy contains ethical laws and provisions for social welfare that have no parallel anywhere else in the Bible. Deuteronomy calls for the protection of the individual, for the defense of what we would call today human rights and human dignity. Its laws offer an unprecedented concern for the weak and helpless within Judahite society: If there is among you a poor man, one of your brethren, in any of your towns within your land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him, and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.

(DEUTERONOMY 15: 7–8)

You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow’s garment in pledge; but you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this. (DEUTERONOMY 24: 17–18) This was not to be a matter of mere charity, but a consciousness that grew out of the shared perception of nationhood, now strongly reinforced by the historical saga of Israel, codified in text. The rights of family land were to be protected by

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prohibition against the moving of ancient boundary stones (19:14) and the inheritance rights of wives rejected by their husbands were secured (21:15–17). Farmers were instructed to give the tithe to the poor every third year (14:28–29); resident aliens were protected from discrimination (24:14–15). Slaves were to be freed after six years of servitude (15:12–15). These are only a few examples of the wide range of personal legislation that was meant to override the traditional injustices and inequalities of everyday life. The functioning of government was also addressed, with a clear intention to limit the power of the leaders of Judahite society to exploit their positions for their own interest or oppress the population at large: You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns which the LORD your God gives you, according to your tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality; and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. (16:18–19) Even the king was to be subject to the laws of the covenant and it is clear that the authors of Deuteronomy had both the sins of the kings of Israel and the righteousness of Josiah in mind: One from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. Only he must not multiply horses for himself, or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to multiply horses, since the LORD has said to you, “You shall never return that way again.” And he shall not multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly multiply for himself silver and gold. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, from that which is in the charge of the Levitical priests; and it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them; that his heart may not be lifted up above his brethren, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left; so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. (17:15–20) Perhaps the single most evocative archaeological artifact seemingly exemplifying this new consciousness of individual rights was discovered in 1960 at a fortress of the late seventh century BCE known to archaeologists as Mesad Hashavyahu, located on the Mediterranean coast south of modern Tel Aviv (Figure 27, p. 258). Inside the ruins of this fortress were fragments of imported Greek pottery that testify to the probable presence of Greek mercenary soldiers there. To judge from the Yahwistic names that appear on ostraca found at the site, there were also Judahites at the fortress, some of them working in the surrounding fields and some serving as soldiers and officers. One of the workers composed an outraged appeal to the commander of the garrison, written in ink on a broken pottery sherd. This precious

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Hebrew inscription is perhaps the earliest archaeological evidence that we possess of the new attitude and the new rights offered by the Deuteronomic law: May the official, my lord, hear the plea of his servant. Your servant is working at the harvest. Your servant was in Hasar-asam. Your servant did his reaping, finished and stored [the grain] a few days ago before stopping. When your servant had finished his reaping and had stored it a few days ago, Hoshayahu son of Shabay came and took your servant’s garment. When I had finished my reaping, at that time, a few days ago, he took your servant’s garment. All my companions will testify for me, all who were reaping with me in the heat of the sun—they will testify for me that this is true. I am guiltless of an infraction. (So) please return my garment. If the official does not consider it an obligation to return your servant’s garment, then have pity upon him and return your servant’s garment. You must not remain silent when your servant is without his garment. Here was a personal demand that the law be observed, despite the difference in social rank between the addressee and the petitioner. A demand of rights by one individual against another is a revolutionary step away from the traditional Near Eastern reliance solely on the power of the clan to ensure its members’ communal rights. This is a single example, preserved by chance, in the ruins of a site far from the center of Judah. Yet its significance is clear. The laws of Deuteronomy stand as a new code of individual rights and obligations for the people of Israel. They also served as the foundation for a universal social code and system of community values that endure—even today. Archaeology and the Josianic Reforms Although archaeology has proved invaluable in uncovering the long-term social developments that underlie the historical evolution of Judah and the birth of the Deuteronomistic movement, it has been far less successful in providing evidence for Josiah’s specific accomplishments. The temple of Bethel—Josiah’s primary target in his campaign against idolatry—has not yet been located and only one contemporary Judahite temple outside Jerusalem has so far been discovered. Its fate during Josiah’s program of religious centralization is unclear.1 Likewise, seals and seal impressions of late-monarchic Judahite officials and dignitaries provide only possible evidence for Josiah’s reforms. Though earlier Judahite seals had featured icons related to astral cult—images of stars and the moon that appear to be sacred symbols—in the late seventh century most of the seals include only names (and sometimes floral decoration), conspicuously lacking iconic decorations. Artistic styles in other regions such as Ammon and Moab evidence a similar shift, which may be related to the general spread of literacy

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throughout the region, but none is as pronounced as Judah’s, which may possibly reflect the influence of Josiah’s reform in insisting that the imageless YHWH was the only legitimate focus of veneration and in discouraging the worship of the heavenly powers in visible form. Other evidence, however, seems to suggest that Josiah failed to stop the veneration of graven images, since figurines of a standing woman supporting her breast with her hands (generally identified with the goddess Asherah) have been found in abundance within private dwelling compounds at all major late-seventh century sites in Judah. Thus, at least on a household level, this popular cult seems to have continued despite the religious policy emanating from Jerusalem. How Far Did Josiah’s Revolution Go? The extent of Josiah’s territorial conquests has so far been only roughly determined by archaeological and historical criteria (see Appendix F). Although the sanctuary at Bethel has not been discovered, typical seventh-century Judahite artifacts have been found in the surrounding region. It is possible that Josiah expanded farther north in the direction of Samaria (as suggested in 2 Kings 23:19), but as yet no clear archaeological evidence has been found. In the west, the fact that Lachish was re-fortified and that it again served as a major Judahite fort is probably the best evidence that Josiah continued to control the areas of the Shephelah revived by his grandfather Manasseh. But Josiah could hardly expand farther west, into areas that were important for Egyptian interests. In the south, continuous Judahite occupation suggests that Josiah controlled the Beersheba valley and possibly the forts farther south, which had been established a few decades earlier by Manasseh, under Assyrian domination. Basically, the kingdom under Josiah was a direct continuation of Judah under Manasseh’s rule. Its population probably did not exceed seventy-five thousand, with relatively dense occupation of the rural areas in the Judean hill country, a network of settlements in the arid zones of the east and south, and a relatively sparse population in the Shephelah. It was in many ways a densely settled city-state, as the capital held about 20 percent of the population. Urban life in Jerusalem reached a peak that would be equaled only in Roman times. The state was well organized and highly centralized as in the time of Manasseh. But in terms of its religious development and literary expression of national identity, the era of Josiah marked a dramatic new stage in Judah’s history.

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Showdown at Megiddo Josiah’s life was cut short unexpectedly. In 610 BCE, Psammetichus I, the founder of the Egyptian Twenty-sixth Dynasty, died and was succeeded on the throne by his son Necho II. In the course of a military expedition northward, to help the crumbling Assyrian empire fight the Babylonians, a fateful confrontation occurred. The second book of Kings describes the event in laconic, almost telegraphic terms: “In his days Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. King Josiah went to meet him; and Pharaoh Necho slew him at Megiddo, when he saw him” (2 Kings 23:29). The second book of Chronicles adds some detail, transforming the account of the death of Josiah into a battlefield tragedy: Necho king of Egypt went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates and Josiah went out against him. But he [Necho] sent envoys to him, saying, ‘What have we to do with each other, king of Judah? I am not coming against you this day’ . . . Nevertheless Josiah would not turn away from him . . . but joined battle in the plain of Megiddo. And the archers shot King Josiah; and the king said to his servants, “Take me away, for I am badly wounded.” So his servants took him out of the chariot and carried him in his second chariot and brought him to Jerusalem. And he died, and was buried in the tombs of his fathers.” (2

CHRONICLES 35:20–24)

Which of these accounts is more accurate? What do they say about the success or failure of Josiah’s reforms? And what significance do the events at Megiddo have for the evolution of the biblical faith? The answer lies, once again, in the unfolding political situation in the region. Assyria’s power continued to dwindle, and the ongoing Babylonian pressure on the heartland of the dying empire threatened to unbalance the ancient world and to endanger Egyptian interests in Asia. Egypt decided to intervene on the side of the Assyrians, and in 616 its army marched to the north. But this move did not stop the Assyrian collapse. The great Assyrian capital of Nineveh fell in 612, and the Assyrian court escaped to Haran in the west, an event that was recorded by the prophet Zephaniah (2:13–15). Two years later, in 610, when Psammetichus died and his son Necho came to the throne, the Egyptian forces in the north were forced to withdraw, and the Babylonians took Haran. In the following year, Necho decided to move and set off for the north. Many biblical historians have preferred the version of 2 Chronicles, which describe a real battle between Necho and Josiah at Megiddo in 609. According to their view, Josiah had expanded over the entire hill country territories of the ex- northern kingdom, that is, he annexed the former Assyrian province of Samaria. He then extended his rule farther north to Megiddo, where he built a great fort on the east of the mound. He made Megiddo a northern, strategic outpost of the growing

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Judahite state. Some scholars proposed that his goal was to side with the Babylonians against Assyria by blocking the advance of Necho in the narrow pass that leads to Megiddo. Some even argued that the passage in 2 Chronicles 34:6 was reliable, and that Josiah managed to expand farther to the north, into the ex- Israelite territories in Galilee. Yet the idea that Josiah arrived at Megiddo with an effective military force to try to stop Necho and prevent him from marching to the north is a bit far-fetched. It is highly unlikely that Josiah had a large enough army to risk a battle with the Egyptians. Until about 630 BCE, his kingdom was still under Assyrian domination, and later, it is inconceivable that Psammetichus, who was strong enough to control the entire eastern Mediterranean coast up to Phoenicia, would have let Judah develop a strong military force. In any case, it would have been a great gamble for Josiah to risk his army against the Egyptians so far from the heartland of his realm. So the version of Kings is probably more reliable. Nadav Naaman has offered a very different explanation. He has suggested that one of the reasons for Necho to march through Palestine in 609, a year after the death of Psammetichus and his accession to the throne of Egypt, was to obtain a renewed oath of loyalty from his vassals. According to custom, their previous oath to Psammetichus would have become invalid with his death. Josiah, accordingly, would have been summoned to the Egyptian stronghold at Megiddo to meet Necho and to swear a new oath of loyalty. Yet for some reason, Necho decided to execute him. What did Josiah do that infuriated the Egyptian monarch? Josiah’s drive to the north, into the Samaria hill country, could have threatened the Egyptian interests in the Jezreel valley. Or perhaps an attempt by Josiah to expand in the west, beyond his territories in the Shephelah, could have endangered Egyptian interests in Philistia. No less plausible is Baruch Halpern’s suggestion that Necho could have been angered by independent policies of Josiah in the south, along the sensitive routes of the Arabian trade. One thing is clear. The Deuteronomistic historian, who saw Josiah as a divinely anointed messiah destined to redeem Judah and lead it to glory was clearly at a loss to explain how such a historical catastrophe could occur and left only a curt, enigmatic reference to Josiah’s death. The dreams of this king and would-be messiah were brutally silenced at the hill of Megiddo. Decades of spiritual revival and visionary hopes seemingly collapsed overnight. Josiah was dead and the people of Israel were again enslaved by Egypt.

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The Last of the Davidic Kings If this was not devastating enough, the following years brought even greater calamities. After the death of Josiah, the great reform movement apparently crumbled. The last four kings of Judah—three of them sons of Josiah—are negatively judged in the Bible, as apostates. Indeed, the last two decades in the history of Judah are described by the Deuteronomistic History as a period of continuous decline, leading to the destruction of the Judahite state. Josiah’s successor Jehoahaz, seemingly anti-Egyptian, ruled for only three months and reverted to the idolatrous ways of the earlier kings of Judah. Deposed and exiled by Pharaoh Necho, he was replaced by his brother Jehoiakim, who also “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord,” adding insult to impiety by exacting tribute from the people of the land in order to hand it over to Pharaoh Necho, his overlord. There is clear documentation in the Bible (including the prophetic works of the time), confirmed by extrabiblical sources, that describes the tumultuous struggle between the rival great powers that took place in the years that followed the death of Josiah. Egypt apparently maintained control of the western territories of the former Assyrian empire for several more years, bringing to a new height the dreams of resurrecting the pharaonic glory of old. But in Mesopotamia, the power of the Babylonians steadily grew. In 605 BCE, the Babylonian crown prince later known as Nebuchadnezzar crushed the Egyptian army at Carchemish in Syria (an event recorded in Jeremiah 46:2), causing the Egyptian forces to flee in panic back toward the Nile. With that defeat, the Assyrian empire was finally and irrevocably dismembered, and Nebuchadnezzar, now king of Babylon, sought to gain complete control over all the lands to the west. The Babylonian forces soon marched down the Mediterranean coastal plain, laying waste to the rich Philistine cities. In Judah, the pro-Egyptian faction that had taken over the Jerusalem court a few months after the death of Josiah was thrown into a panic—and their desperate appeals to Necho for military assistance against the Babylonians merely heightened their political vulnerability in the terrible days that lay ahead. And so the Babylonian noose around Jerusalem tightened. The Babylonians were now intent on the plunder and complete devastation of the Judahite state. After the sudden death of Jehoiakim, his son Jehoiachin faced the might of the terrifying Babylonian army: At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up to Jerusalem, and the city was

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besieged. And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to the city, while his servants were besieging it; and Jehoiachin the king of Judah gave himself up to the king of Babylon, himself, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his palace officials. The king of Babylon took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign, and carried off all the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of the LORD, which Solomon king of Israel had made, as the LORD had foretold. He carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths; none remained, except the poorest people of the land. And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon; the king’s mother, the king’s wives, his officials, and the chief men of the land, he took into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. And the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon all the men of valor, seven thousand, and the craftsmen and the smiths, one thousand, all of them strong and fit for war. (2 KINGS 24:10–16) These events that took place in 597 BCE are also documented by the Babylonian Chronicle: In the seventh year, the month of Kislev, the king of Akkad mustered his troops, marched to the Hatti- land, and encamped against the City of Judah and on the second day of the month of Adar he seized the city and captured the king. He appointed there a king of his own choice and taking heavy tribute brought it back into Babylon. The Jerusalem aristocracy and priesthood—among whom the Deuteronomistic ideology burned most passionately—were taken off into exile, to leave increasing conflict among those remaining factions of the Davidic royal house and court who had no clear idea what to do. But that was only the first step in the forcible dismantling of Judah. Nebuchadnezzar immediately replaced the exiled Jehoiachin with his uncle Zedekiah, apparently a more docile vassal. It was a mistake; a few years later Zedekiah plotted with neighboring kings to rise up again, and like a character in a Greek tragedy, he doomed himself and his city. In 587 BCE Nebuchadnezzar arrived with his formidable army and laid siege to Jerusalem. It was the beginning of the end. With the Babylonian forces rampaging through the countryside, the outlying cities of Judah fell one by one. Clear archaeological evidence for the last years of the southern kingdom has come from almost every late-monarchic site excavated in Judah: in the Beersheba valley, in the Shephelah, and in the Judahite highlands. At the fortress of Arad, a center of Judahite control and military operations in the south, a group of ostraca, or inscribed potsherds, were found in the rubble of the destruction containing the frantic orders for the movements of troops and transportation of food supplies. At Lachish in the Shephelah, ostraca found in the ruins of the last city gate offer a poignant glimpse of the last moments of the independence of Judah as the signal fires from the neighboring towns are snuffed out, one by one. Presumably written to the commander of Lachish from an outpost

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in the vicinity, it reveals an impending sense of doom: And may my lord know that we are watching for the signals of Lachish according to all the signs that my lord gave. For we do not see Azekah . . . This grim report is confirmed by a description in the book of Jeremiah (34:7), that notes that Lachish and Azekah were indeed the last cities in Judah to withstand the Babylonian assault. Finally, all that was left was Jerusalem. The biblical description of its last hours is nothing less than horrifying: . . . the famine was so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land. Then a breach was made in the city; the king with all the men of war fled by night . . . And they went in the direction of the Arabah. But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and overtook him in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him. Then they captured the king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, who passed sentence upon him. They slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in fetters, and took him to Babylon. (2 KINGS 25:3–7) The last act in the tragedy took place about a month later: Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguards, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the LORD and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem . . . And all the army of the Chaldeans . . . broke down the walls around Jerusalem. And the rest of the people who were left in the city . . . Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile. (2 KINGS 25:8–11) The archaeological finds convey only the last horrible moments of violence. Signs of a great conflagration have been traced almost everywhere within the city walls. Arrowheads found in the houses and near the northern fortifications attest to the intensity of the last battle for Jerusalem. The private houses, which were set alight and collapsed, burying all that was in them, created the charred heaps of rubble that stood as a testament to the thoroughness of Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians for the next century and a half (Nehemiah 2:13). And so it was all over. Four hundred years of Judah’s history came to an end in fire and blood. The proud kingdom of Judah was utterly devastated, its economy ruined, its society ripped apart. The last king in a dynasty that had ruled for centuries was tortured and imprisoned in Babylon. His sons were all killed. The Temple of Jerusalem—the only legitimate place for the worship of YHWH—was destroyed. The religion and national existence of the people of Israel could have ended in this great disaster. Miraculously, both survived.