Page:The Books of Chronicles (1916).djvu/407

Rh against the above every people and kingdom, and how they grieved him exceedingly, so that the words of the  were confirmed against Israel." Then follows ver. 25 (cp. Heb. ver. 20) "Now after all these acts of Josias it came to pass that Pharaoh, king of Egypt," etc. Probably some words have been lost at the point where the dots are placed. As it stands, the passage seems to associate the reign of the godly Josiah with wicked and irreligious doings. The inference to be drawn is that this passage was originally part of the Hebrew text (from which the old LXX. was translated), but was subsequently excised on account of its apparent aspersion on the character of Josiah. The gap thus created was filled in some Heb. MSS. by the insertion of 2 Kin. xxiii. 24—27, and from such a Heb. text the later Greek version (the present LXX.) was made. In other Heb. MSS., however, the gap was left unfilled, and from one of these was derived the Heb. text which has reached us (see Torrey, Ezra Studies, pp. 87—89). It is only by the use of the Greek versions that we are now able to perceive that an omission has been made.

20—24 (= 1 Esd. i. 25—31; cp. 2 Kin. xxiii. 29, 30 a).&emsp;

The account of Josiah's death is very much fuller in Chron. than in Kings. The features which are peculiar to the Chronicler are, (1) Neco's message to dissuade Josiah from war, (2) Josiah's disguising himself and coming to fight in the valley of Megiddo, (3) the wounding of Josiah by archers, (4) the transfer of the wounded king from a war chariot to another chariot. Thus all the details which represent the meeting at Megiddo as a battle are peculiar to Chron.

The account given in Kings is simply:—"King Josiah went to meet him (Neco), and he put him to death at Megiddo when he saw him. And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem." The Hebrew expression for "went to meet" in this passage is the same as in 1 Kin. xviii. 16; 2 Kin. xvi. 10; it does not suggest a hostile meeting, though it can be used in a suitable context to describe one. The phrase "when he saw him " suggests an interview rather than a battle. Thus we have two versions of Josiah's death: according to Chron. he was mortally wounded in battle, according to Kings he sought an interview with Neco and was assassinated by him at the town of Megiddo.

These differences may be due to two distinct traditions, but it seems more probable that the Chronicler's account is an intentional adaptation of the Kings narrative to suit the main principles of his work. We can easily realise that the bald fact of Josiah's death at the hands of Neco presented a distressing moral perplexity to the Chronicler's mind. Why, when Josiah had been so diligent in the service of his God, did Jehovah abandon him to death in this fashion? The stress of the problem is reflected in the rather pathetic phrase of ver. 20, "After all this came Neco." The same words are used of Hezekiah (xxxii. 1),