In his days Pharaoh-Nechoh king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates; and king Josiah went against him; but [Nechoh] slew him at Megiddo, when he had seen him.
Josiah was one of the best kings Judah ever had. Then, with no word from God, he marched north against an Egyptian army that was not even coming for him. His death at Megiddo raises the hardest question of his story: how does a king this good end this way?
Prophecy had already told Josiah what these armies meant. He had no business joining in.
The time had come, as prophecy said, for the power of Assyria to be broken. That power had pressed hard on all the nations. Now it must give place to the worldwide empire of Babylon. Neco goes up with an Egyptian army against the king of Assyria. Josiah sides with Assyria against Pharaoh, something God had never commanded him to do. Why should he prop up the crumbling power of Israel's cruel enemy? Prophecy had told him that Assyria's final ruin was near. Had God sent him to put world events right, or to take a hand in them?
The same writer names the price: "the world punishes us for our intervening in its affairs."
God's warning came through the last man anyone would expect — the king of Egypt himself.
Amazing words! Does it strike Christian readers as strange that God should speak through a pagan king to one of His own choicest servants? The Holy Spirit adds His own comment on Pharaoh's message: Josiah "did not listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God." Here is a remarkable example of the sovereignty of God. He works and speaks through anyone He pleases.
Josiah had not always been deaf to that voice.
A few years earlier Josiah had a sensitive conscience about the will of God. When the book of the law was read to him, he knew it was God's voice and obeyed it. Why did he not recognise that same voice speaking through Pharaoh Neco? How easy it is for any of us to sink into spiritual dullness! Then God's voice fails to move us, even when it rings out clearly through some chosen messenger or passage of Scripture.
Josiah went into the battle in disguise. One writer traces the whole collapse back to a heart lifted up by God's own blessings.
When a believer stops watching himself, his old sinful nature feeds on the very blessings God has given. A heart lifted up with pride both deafens and blinds. We may refuse to listen to the voice of God. But no disguise can get us out from under His eye, and no shelter will save us. Like godless Ahab, Josiah pretended to be someone else. And like Ahab, he is struck down by an arrow sent from Him who sees through every disguise.
Israel had fought at Megiddo before, with a very different result.
Megiddo was the scene of a great victory when Barak and Deborah moved in faith against the Canaanites, for God was with them (Judges 5:19). Now Megiddo was the scene of a crushing defeat, for God was not with Josiah in his foolish venture.
The arrow that killed him did two things at once.
In this matter Josiah did not ask the Lord: it was his own eagerness that led him to stand against Pharaoh Neco. The God of battles, Who guided the arrow that gave Ahab his death-wound, controlled the archers who killed Josiah. Mercy took him away from the evil to come (Isa. 57:1). But there was judgment in the way he died, and on the guilty city that judgment fell with no mercy mixed in.
Josiah's fall does not erase his life. Scripture keeps the whole account.
So God records our goodness as well as our badness. Our first deeds, done when love was fresh and warm, are not wiped out by any sad last deeds. God remembers everything and gives it His own value. "The LORD is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed" (1 Sam. 2:3). Not "counted," as if quantity were everything with God, but "weighed"; quality is the chief thing with Him.
- Unsent. Josiah went out to a battle God never gave him; the fight belonged to Egypt and Assyria, not to him.
- Unheard. God warned him through Pharaoh Neco's mouth. The king who once obeyed God's book no longer knew His voice.
- Uncovered. No disguise hides anyone from God's eye; the arrow found Josiah anyway.
- Undone. The field of Deborah's victory became the field of Josiah's defeat, because God was with her and not with him.
- Unforgotten. His death was both discipline and mercy; it spared him the ruin ahead. God still weighs and remembers his first, faithful deeds.
And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own sepulchre. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed him, and made him king in his father's stead.
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