Lost Book Found In The Temple

Stories From The Hebrew Bible
THE LOST BOOK FOUND IN THE TEMPLE

Manasseh, the fourteenth king of Judah, followed the signs of his grandfather Ahaz, and not the good deeds of his father Hezekiah. He was only twelve years old when he began to reign; too young for so great a kingdom. In his youth he turned away from the teachings of the prophet Isaiah and from the service of the Lord. He built again the altars to Baal and the Asherah, which his father Hezekiah had thrown down. Manasseh worshiped the sun and moon and stars. He set up images in the Temple, the house of the Lord. When Manasseh grew older and had children of his own, he sought to please the false gods by making his children go through the fire. The Lord sent prophets to warn him, but he would not listen. Though the Bible does not tell us, some believe that Manasseh put the good prophet Isaiah to death.

Manasseh reigned longer than any of the wicked kings who had gone before him, and he led his people further away from God than even wicked Ahaz. Because of Manasseh’s sins, and the sins of his people, the Lord brought the Assyrian army with their host upon the land. They took Manasseh prisoner. They bound him with chains and carried him to the city of Babylon, where the king of Assyria was then living. There Manasseh remained a prisoner for a time.

While in prison, Manasseh saw how wicked he had been, and he sought the Lord. He prayed to be forgiven for his sins, and the Lord heard him. Afterward, the king of Assyria allowed Manasseh to rule over his land again. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was the only true God. From that time he worshiped only the Lord. He took the altars and the images of false gods out of the Temple. Once again he built the altar of the Lord, and caused offerings to be laid on it. He commanded his people to worship the Lord and to leave the idols. However, they had gone too far to come back, and only a few followed their king’s example and sough the Lord. Manasseh could easily lead his people into sin, but could not bring them back to God.

After a long reign of fifty-five years Manasseh died, and his son Amon became king. He reigned for only two years – years of wickedness and idol worshiping. Then, his own servants killed him. Then the people killed the servants, and made Amon’s son, Josiah, king.

Josiah, the sixteenth king, was only eight years old when his father Amon was slain. At first he was too young to rule over the land, and the princes of his court governed in his name. But when Josiah was sixteen years old, he chose the Lord God of his father David, the God whom Hezekiah had worshiped; and he served the Lord more fully than any of the kings who had gone before him. When he was twenty years old, he began to clear away the idols and idol temples from the land of Judah. He did his work more thoroughly than it had ever been done before by Jehoshaphat or by Hezekiah. In fact, he did not leave a single place in all the land where idols were worshiped. He even went beyond his own borders, into the land that had been the land of Israel, from which most of the people had been carried away as captives long before. In every place he broke down the altars and burned the images. He even dug up the bones of the idol priests and burned them with their images.

He came to Bethel, twelve miles north of Jerusalem, where Jeroboam of Israel had built the temple for the worship of golden calves, two hundred years before. There, as he was burning the bones of the idol priests upon the ruins of their own altars, he found a tomb and asked who was buried there. They said, “This is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and warned King Jeroboam of one who would do these very things that you are doing.”

“Let his bones rest,” said King Josiah. “Let no man touch the bones of the prophet.”

While the men of King Josiah were at work in the Temple on Mount Moriah, taking away the idols, making the house pure once more, they found an old book, written upon rolls of leather. It was the book of the law of the Lord, given by Moses, but it had been hidden so long that men had forgotten it. They brought the book and read from it aloud to the king.

And when King Josiah heard the words of the law and the warning of the woes that were to come upon the people for disobeying them, the king was filled with alarm. He said to the rulers, “Go and ask of the Lord for me and for all the people. Great is the anger of the Lord against us, because our fathers have disobeyed the words of the Lord written in this book.”

They sought for a prophet to give them the Word of the Lord, and they found a woman named Huldah, living in Jerusalem, to whom the Word of the Lord came. She was called “a prophetess.” They brought her the king’s message. The prophetess, Huldah, said to them,

The Lord, the God of Israel, says, “Go and tell the man who has sent you, Behold, I will bring evil on this place and on the people living in it, because they have forsaken the Lord and have worshiped other gods. My anger will fall upon this city and upon this land. But because King Josiah has sought the Lord and has done God’s will and has called upon the Lord, therefore the Lord says that He will hold back His anger against this city and this land as long as Josiah lives, and he shall go down to his grave before all these evils come upon Judah and Jerusalem.”

When Josiah heard this, he called all the princes and the priests and the people to meet in the Temple of the Lord. There the king stood by a pillar and read to all the people the words of the book that had been found.

Then the king and all his people made a promise to serve the Lord and do His will; to keep His law with all their hearts. And this promise they kept while Josiah lived; but that was only a few years. All this time the kingdom of Judah, like all the kingdoms around, was a part of the greater kingdom or empire of Assyria. But the great kings of Assyria had passed away, and now the kingdom or empire of Assyria was becoming weak and falling apart. Pharaohnechoh, the king of Egypt, went to war with the Assyrians, and on his way passed through the land of Judah and what had once been Israel before its people were carried away captive. Josiah thought that, since the king of Assyria was his overlord, he must fight against the king of Egypt, who was coming against him.

Pharaohnechoh, the king of Egypt, sent a message to King Josiah, saying, “I have nothing against you, O king of Judah, and I am not coming to make war on you, but on the king of Assyria. God has sent me and commanded me to make haste. Do not stand in my way, or you may be destroyed.”

But Josiah would not heed the message of the king of Egypt. Instead, Josiah gathered his army and met the king of Egypt in battle on the great plain of Esdraelon, where so many battles had been fought before and have been fought since. There the Egyptians won a victory. In the fight, archers shot King Josiah. He died in his chariot, and they brought his dead body to Jerusalem. And all the land mourned and wept for the king whom they loved because he had ruled wisely and well. And with the death of the good King Josiah also died the last hope of the kingdom of Judah.