20–24 (= 1 Esdras i. 25–31; compare 2 Kings xxiii. 29, 30a).
The Death of Josiah.
The account of Josiah’s death is very much fuller in Chronicles 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 Chronicles.
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 Kings xviii. 16; 2 Kings 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 Chronicles 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 verse 20, “After all this ... came Neco.” The same words are used of Hezekiah (xxxii. 1), “After these things and this faithfulness, Sennacherib came ...,” but in his case the sore trial of faith proved to be for the greater glory of the God of Israel. Here the plea of a successful issue to the trouble was not available, and no doubt the story of Josiah’s end was too famous to be passed over in silence. It would seem as if the Chronicler therefore adapted the narrative so as to make it appear that Josiah made an attack on Neco in defiance of a Divine warning (verse 21), and thus deserved his fate. The somewhat similar tale of Ahab’s death (xviii. 28–34 = 1 Kings xxii. 29–37) was in the Chronicler’s mind, and he appears to have drawn upon it for certain details introduced into his version of Josiah’s end (see verses 22, 23).
²⁰After all this, when Josiah had prepared the temple, Neco king of Egypt went up to fight against Carchemish by Euphrates: and Josiah went out against him.
20. Neco] This was Neco II who reigned 610–594 B.C. (Flinders Petrie, History of Egypt, III. 335). According to Herodotus (II. 159) he conquered the “Syrians” at “Magdolus,” and then captured Cadytis (Kadesh on the Orontes, or Gaza?), an important city of Syria. Herodotus no doubt refers to the same great campaign of Neco which is recorded in Kings and Chronicles, though it is not at all likely that the victory over the Syrians at Magdolus is to be identified with the encounter of Neco and Josiah at Megiddo. The account of Herodotus is obscure, ambiguous, and defective, but a comparison of 2 Kings with an inscription of Nabu-na’id king of Babylon (555–538 B.C.) sets Neco’s action in a clearer light. The campaign (which took place about 608 B.C.) was directed “against the king of Assyria” (2 Kings xxiii. 29), i.e. against the last king Sin-šariškun (Saracos) who was at war with Nabopolassar (father of Nebuchadrezzar), king of Babylon. Nabopolassar, hard pressed, called in to his help the Umman-manda (Scythians), who destroyed Nineveh circa 607 B.C.; compare Messerschmidt, Die Inschrift der Stele Nabu-na’id’s (pp. 5–13). Neco advanced to the Euphrates to secure some of the spoils of the Assyrian overthrow, but the crushing victory of Nebuchadrezzar over Neco at Carchemish (circa 605 B.C.) finally excluded Egypt from any share.
against Carchemish] compare Jeremiah xlvi. 2. It was a city situated near the junction of the Habor and Euphrates. In 2 Kings, “against the king of Assyria.”
²¹But he sent ambassadors to him, saying, What have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah? I come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith I have war; and God hath commanded me to make haste[¹]: forbear thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that he destroy thee not.
[¹] Or, hath given command to speed me.
21. against the house wherewith I have war] In 1 Esdras i. 27 there is a different reading, “my war is upon Euphrates.”