So it happened, in the year 639, that a boy eight years old reigned as king in Jerusalem.
CHAPTER III.
Jeremiah's Call.
Josiah and Jeremiah passed through the first great and vital experience of their lives together and the friendship between these two lads was thereby knit as closely as was that of David and Jonathan.
From the very beginning of Josiah's mounting the throne of Judah, this friendship promised even to outrival that of the king's great ancestor and Saul's son. Every day Hilkiah had to bring Jeremiah to the palace, because the young king was not permitted to leave Jerusalem and go to Anathoth.
One of the very first official acts of the king was to make Ebed-melech a freedman; but the young Ethiopian chose to remain at the palace in Jerusalem, to be at the right hand of his master, even to put the young king to bed, for many years after he was crowned, as he had done the baby prince.
This friendship of Josiah and Jeremiah had an unlooked-for effect upon the former; for, though teachers in all the subjects that pertained to the education of the young king were appointed, Hilkiah, the high priest, practically became the young monarch's guardian and father.
In fact, the older Josiah grew the more he understood the love of Hilkiah for him and the heroic act he had performed in saving him on that terrible night of the conspiracy.
So it happened that while the boy king was instructed by special tutors in the laws and intricacies of government, his religious and moral training came under the influence of Hilkiah. This meant that the moral qualities that make for manhood and character, and the principles of religious belief that were developed in Josiah, were identical with those that Hilkiah taught his own son.
At the suggestion of Hilkiah, a cousin of the young king, named Zephaniah, a member of the Prophetic Party and follower of the teachings of Isaiah, was appointed Josiah's religious instructor. The king, therefore, grew up in total ignorance of the idolatrous religious beliefs and practices introduced by his grandfather, Manasseh, and practiced by his father, Amon.